An idealist who wants a realist form of government: the UK election candidate offering digital democracy
30th April 10
Posted in crowdsourcing, culture, digital
Author: Kirsty Saddler, Planning Director, BBH New York (@keava)
BBH is strictly non-partisan and typically avoids politics, but is intrigued by an independent candidate standing for Hackney South and Shoreditch this election who has taken mainstream digital behavior and applied it to politics, so offering a new model for voters.
Denny de la Haye is no career politician and has never had any party affiliation. He is instead motivated by a belief in a better political system. So he is standing with no policies and the promise of direct democracy; if voted in he will poll constituents before he votes on any issue or piece of legislation.
He believes that while there is apathy about political voting, people’s support for issues is rising – as digital has facilitated more activism and support for issue based organizations.
“If you allow people a forum and a say they will use it, but they are not motivated to vote politically as they are disillusioned by the system. The UK political system has people in positions of power who answer to a party, before their voters”.
De la Haye is aware that his system relies on people remaining consistently engaged, but this is where his experience as a web designer kicks in and he draws on participation models like Digg and Reddit.
For issues and legislation he will endeavor to get people reading around the issue to inform themselves. To do this he will post an objective synopsis of government’s texts online – inspired by Simplyunderstand.com ‘translation service’ – links can then be added to the synopsis by constituents, which can in turn be rated so the most valuable rise to the top.
It will be crowd-sourced information, without any party bias.
De la Haye’s model would become more valuable over time, as people realized the power of influence they could exert as exemplified by Obama’s election campaign and the model would build a representative picture of constituents views and how the constituency had changed over time, which can be tracked and learnt from.
If followed through it would also do away with the need for party politics, however it is still likely people would cluster around ideologies – but perhaps more their own, not those dictated by a small group of people.
So . . . back to BBH’s real interest here which is how could this work in the business and marketing world. What would happen if shareholders were done away with and there was a model based more on interest invested by people through contributions of time and/or ideas?
This suggests a world of crowd-controlled brands and an open dialogue where the brand does not assume a position of authority or expertise but is accountable to its public. It does not necessarily work for all sectors, but surely more brands could open themselves up in this way, know their place and just facilitate?
Where has this worked before and where has it failed? Could this ever really work? Love to know what you think.
Direct democracy is great….in theory. The experience in California has been fairly negative – where money and influence play a strong role in deciding what gets publicity, funding etc. Take Prop 13 which froze local tax rates – the people who did not have kids or whose kids were in private school voted in an idea that caused the California school system to go down the tubes. They did so because they had greater participation and funding. The same principle applies to Digg and reddit and other social media – a smaller group creates most of the content and controls the conversation. I am not sure that the model being proposed really deals with that issue.
Participation inequality is a much abused notion, and it varies widely on the platform, engagement required, etc, but I think you’re right tha a small group of people would probably dominate the process, however, that small group would almost certainly be many times larger than the current group who run our democracy, I suspect we’ll see some kind of experiment with direct democracy within the next four years. Whether or not this is just ‘window dressing’ is another question.
I agree John, feels like ‘something has to give’ in the political process as it stands still and such new engaging models of participation and influence crop up in social, business and brand contexts. The question for me is who is the credible force that will launch that kind of experiment – parties, a coalition or just a great enough number of independents?
I think it is a very valid concern Mark, particularly because that has been proven in the digital space. You also do not want to have to bring people out of their apathy through raising the negative implication of them not participating – I’m thinking of a UK campaign a while back that was intended to get people to the polls “Use your vote” by Ministry of Sound. I think in this instance some confidence comes from money and influence playing no role.
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I love the notion of greater involvement from the electorate, but as a few other people have pointed out, that involvement depends on a good understanding of the issues and a good understanding of the medium for participation – my mum wouldn’t know what any of these platforms are, but she knows how to get in touch with her local MP.
What about a role for involvement which isn’t directly translated to action for digital savvy voters? It could be more sentiment based – i’d love to be able to ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ my MPs actions in real time.
To Kirsty’s point about the Ministry of Sound campaign, the potential momentum which could be generated through positive support for an MP’s action could address the apathy issue in a really inspiring way.
Plus it would be quite fun…. like that brilliant tagminister site.