The
Electoral Reform Society Scotland (ERS Scotland) has just published a report,
“Democracy Max: an Inquiry into the Future of Scottish Democracy”. The report
follows a year long process of discussion and deliberation which set out to
explore a vision for a good Scottish democracy. It started with the premise
that politics is too important to be left to the politicians. I was involved with the second phase of the
process as a participant in the round table discussions which explored issues
in a little more depth, chairing the third of the round tables and co-authoring
that section of the report.
This short post
does not set out the findings of the report in any detail, nor does it
represent the views of ERS Scotland. These are simply personal observations on some
of the broad themes.
Increasingly, it seems, people
are not interested in politics. And if they are not interested in politics per
se, they are even less interested in its dullard, techy, room-mate political
process.
Try and run a vox pop on
deliberative democratic techniques, or the case for a written constitution, and
you’d have a hard job keeping the participants awake long enough to get a
response. In that context ERS Scotland’s Democracy Max initiative could be seen
as an anoraky exercise in constitutional navel gazing.
I disagree. Democracy Max asks a
question of fundamental principle; not what party of government do we want, or
even what powers we want, but what kind of
democracy do we want?
And people do care about that.
People may not be interested in
political process but they are interested in power. They know when they are
denied it. They know when decisions are taken, not in their interests, but in
the interests of powerful lobby groups, or political parties themselves. They
know when politicians act in bad faith.
The clichés of, “They’re all as
bad each other”, or “They’re all in it for themselves”, may do our
parliamentarians a disservice, but those sentiments exist because of a real and
deep dissatisfaction with modern politics. It cannot be wished away as
ignorance, or railing against authority for its own sake. Traditional
representative democracy is faced with falling confidence, and without the
confidence of the people it will fail.
In Scotland the forthcoming
independence referendum is an opportunity to rethink how our democracy works.
To re-imagine how power is exercised. Sadly to date the debate has ploughed a
depressingly narrow furrow, with parties bickering over where to draw the line
on powers and economic shroud waving.
Is this really the best we can
do? Can we not take this opportunity to introduce some more radical thought to
the question of how political power could be shared and exercised more
equitably and with greater integrity? Are we really saying political evolution
stops here, with the shuffling of powers from one established political class
to another? If so, how sad, how complacent and how limited is our vision of the
future, and how little faith we must have in ourselves.
No one is suggesting that we take
a hatchet to the central concept of parliamentary democracy. There is much in
the political life of Scotland and the UK to applaud and to be thankful for,
but we have been depressingly reluctant to open our eyes and minds that little
bit wider.
There is ample precedent
internationally if we care to look and to listen: citizen’s assemblies where
members are selected by lot; further devolution of power to local communities
who control the budget for their public services; a genuine belief in the
concept of virtuous leadership - these are not ridiculous notions. They exist
and work in the real, wider world
Certainly alternative models are
not perfect. Neither are they a replacement for electoral politics. But they
can complement, scrutinise and “round out” representative democracy, making it
more diverse, more open and less susceptible to atrophy and self-interest. Any
alternative systems will have drawbacks and problems and there will certainly
be failures along the way. But frankly traditional policy making has produced
some catastrophically awful results, yet we still keep putting our money in the
slot and taking the gamble.
The Democracy max report does not
pretend to offer fully thought out solutions to all of democracy’s woes.
Neither should it. Far too much government is about a handful of interested,
well- meaning people with a bit of expertise shutting themselves in a room and
doing the policy making equivalent of the Disney Fairy Godmother’s “Bibbidi
Bobbidi Boo”. Many proposals in the report are embryonic and seek simply to
open up a dialogue. Democracy Max is just one way of encouraging our political
elites to demonstrate their willingness to talk, to listen and to live up to
the rhetoric of a desire to introduce a new kind of politics.
Change is needed, but it will not
happen of its own accord. I hope this inquiry will be an important early step
in challenging the political system to deliver on the high hopes that voters
still hold for democracy in Scotland.
