Slashdot Mirror
The Web Fueling A Crisis In Politics?
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC is reporting that Tony Blair's outgoing chief strategy adviser fears the internet could be fueling a crisis in the relationship between politicians and voters. 'Mr Taylor said Mr Blair's online grilling from voters — and other initiatives such as environment secretary David Miliband's blog and Downing Street's new online petition service — showed the government was making good progress in using the Internet to become more open and accountable. But he said more needed to be done by the web community in general to encourage people to use the internet to "solve problems" rather than simply abuse politicians or make "incommensurate" demands on them.' 'But rather than work out these dilemmas in partnership with their elected leaders, they were encouraged to regard all politicians as corrupt or mendacious by the media, which he described as "a conspiracy to maintain the population in a perpetual state of self-righteous rage." Whether media was left wing or right wing, the message was always that 'leaders are out there to shaft you.'" Some credit was given to the Internet for high voter turnout in this month's elections ... how is that a bad thing?
High turnout is bad for the right wing.
The funny part of that is that Mr. Blair is actually a Labour party candidate....the left wing of British Politics.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
One of the big problems in politics is communicating with and informing the general population. Not only does the Internet itself make it easier than ever to do so, but offshoots like mailing lists, wikis, etc help to organise people and information. We already know these things have the ability to coordinate efforts to build things as complicated as operating systems. Why not apply that experience to other problem domains?
We've already seen the beginnings of this. TheyWorkForYou.com publishes and indexes what MPs say in the Houses of Parliament, and notifies people when something they are interested in is discussed - with all the source code for the website available and a web service too. A few days ago, the same team launched an open-source online petition system backed by the UK government (sign the "fair use" petition). The same team also have a number of other projects in the same vein, such as mailing lists for MPs. Some MPs now have weblogs. Across the pond similar work is being done in the USA.
The real problem is that current MPs mostly grew up without the Internet and haven't gotten to grips with it. This is why MySociety's work to get them on board is so important. For instance, it took me thirty seconds to find out that my MP "replied within 2 or 3 weeks to 73% - 96% of messages sent via WriteToThem.com during 2005, according to polling data -- well above average amongst MPs," and I can sign up to get an email every time he speaks in Parliament.
Far from fuelling a crisis in politics, I think the web can be incredibly beneficial. Unfortunately, there is incredible inertia amongst government to adopt new strategies like this.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Belgium has a similar system to this. It's a bit less strict since party contributions are allowed but they're capped at a certain amount. Any party that manages to make the voting treshold in a certain area (5% of votes) will get government funding for their next campaign. I personally think it's a very good system since it greatly reduces the influence big business can exert on candidates. Would be interesting to see how it would scale to a bigger country though.
Most politicians (secular and religious) globally are worthy of the citizens/public disgust. It was not the news media, movies, or a friend that provoked cynicism in government, politics, and/or religion. Skepticism comes very naturally to any observant human wanting to be objective about what they are monitoring in their day too day life and having confirmed by additional reliable sources on the Internet.
Mr. Taylor and all other politicians should take note that politicians are not aristocrats and they do not have any god-given birthrights to any position in any government.
As I have said for years now give me a Clinton having a BJNDO over a flaming-Bush NDO anytime.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
So, the electorate in the UK are like 'Teenagers' who make 'demands' but refuse to 'be governed'. What an arrogant statement. Democratic governments work in the interests and by the grace of electorate, not the other way around. The electorate is fed up with virtually no accountability from the leadership. Countries with a first-past-the-post voting style are going to increasingly run into this problem. The average Joe has issues that he wants addressed with but no one listens to him, so why should he be required to worry about someone else's problems as well? In my experience whenever the government talks about tradeoffs, they generally look like this: Company X wishes something. People complain since it offers them no tangible benefit, often the opposite. Government then 'compromises' by giving company X some of what it demanded. People lose.
For too long politicians have had the luxury of campaigning on the interests of the electorate then flipping and governing in the interests of those who fund their campaigns or have the money to lobby and make connections. Times are changing, and peoples interests are more diverse. This means that government must become more representative of a diverse range of interests.