Changing Politicians

Posted on March 4, 2007
Filed Under For Argument's Sake |

A headline that could be mis-read I know. In this corner of the planet the annual blog awards are over and my abiding impression is we are no nearer having an impact on the behaviour of politicians. In fact everywhere I look the political party as an institution is divorced from majority opinions but nonetheless more deeply entrenched in the way they exercise power.

I make this point partly in response to one of my favoruite bloggers Donncha who suggests that blogging’s relevance has to be seen in the context of people’s universal desire to gossip and exchange views. I agree and it could be I’m expecting too much of an outcome from that but let me explain why.

When the web got going French philosopher Pierre Levy called it a collective intelligence and he like many others expected collective intelligence to impact on many areas of life, maybe even to bring about a more responsive politics. It is a feature of rational people that they expect rational outcomes from innovation. What we have instead of a better political environment is a democratic deficit where the disaffection we feel with politics is allowing politicians to exercise more arbitrary powers.

I think the environment is a case in point. I suspect the majority of people want urgent action and are prepared to do a lot to secure a better future. That’s the precise coincidence of self-interest and mutual self-interest that gave us modern politics. I care about myself first but to achieve my own ends I need to band together with other people. Hence trades unions and political parties or coalitions that represent the views of a majority of adults.

The web should be giving us the voice that makes a viewpoint on the environment count. It should bring all those individual gripes and concerns into one powerful voice. Instead it’s the television that’s doing this job. And doing it as ineffectually as ever as broadcasters are increasingly unlikely to upset politicians, cowed as they are by arbitrary power. TV interviews on environmental issues are hopelessly inane.

I can imagine the possibility of changes in politics and one of those might be the web becoming a forum where the voices of enough people make politicians sit up and listen. I wouldn’t count on it because the opposite seems to be happening.

The more our interests dissipate and the more remote politicians become the more contemptuous they are of anything that might be called a populist point of view. They know the people ain’t got teeth and that even elections are controllable events.

That leaves me curious about what will bring the changes we need simply to make democracies function better, something which I think is pressing not just because of the way we’re currently trading our future for short term gains, but also because non-democratic regimes around the world can hold up modern western democracy and say to potential fanatics - look, democracy is hollow, it’s a sham.

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