What our governments and we ourselves must now do to have a chance to cope effectively with the situation.

Presently there seems to be great chaos in the world. People everywhere are depressed about what is going on. Everything is enormously complex. It is difficult for us to identify and agree on the necessary steps forward. Also our governments seem overburdened.

How do we get out of the chaos?

It appears that the guiding principle must be to look for the key parameters driving the solution.

I suggest there are two such parameters: First, the optimal performance of our governments, and second, more decisively even, our effective control as citizens over our governments.

I. Our governments must optimise their performance.

Our governments are the systems, the tools, and the institutions, with which we as societies, national or even as global society, develop, and implement the solutions for our political problems.

A key step for us is to recognise that we only then stand a chance to solve the extremely complex problems which our societies and the world are facing, if our problem-solving systems, our governments, are working optimally.

This means that our heads-of-government, must now optimise the performance of the governments, which they lead for us, they must as soon as possible introduce a “Government Performance Optimisation System”.

Answering the question, how to govern optimally, cannot depend, however, on the personal whims and convictions of a single person or a limited group of persons. The optimisation of government performance rather necessitates taking recourse to all know-how distributed in the nation and the world. To ensure the optimisation of government performance heads-of-government must arrange for an open and comprehensive consultation with society on the issue and implement its conclusions.

II. We, the citizens, must exert effective control over government.

Since governments will either not be aware about such fundamental suggestions on their performance – there is  a huge amount of information out there for them to digest – , or they will simply ignore them, perhaps because they are overwhelmed by the day-to-day necessities of governing, it is indispensable that we as the citizens realise that democracy is “government by us, the people”.

This is a privilege and a responsibility. “Government by the people” means that we, as the people, must exert effective “control” over the systems with which we govern, it means that we need to ensure that our governments operate as effectively and efficiently as only possible. Concretely, we must ensure that our governments establish the required “Government Performance Optimisation System”.

Of course, we as individuals largely have no say in the work of governments. For us to exert effective control over our government and to ensure that government operates optimally requires joining forces and resources. Concretely this means we must create and join a “Democracy Society” in our nations.

Participating in elections every four years or so or even not-participating in them at all does not suffice or measure up. Maintaining a functioning society and a functioning democracy rather requires active citizenship. We need to get together once a week, perhaps a Friday afternoon, and consult about how to build and maintain functioning societies and democracies. Together we need to assemble the optimal know-how on how to ensure the optimal functioning of our democratic governments. Since government is “all about systems”, systemic problem structuring methodologies appear to be a precondition for getting to sound results.

Conclusion

Of course there are many more detailed issues to tackle on how to ensure the optimal performance of our government systems. Clearly, to achieve this goal, our politicians must be qualified “optimally” (we need to define what this means and create suitable systems to ensure they have the require qualifications). Moreover, all systems and processes in the government must function optimally as well, such as strategy and decision making, implementation, communication with the citizens, and many others.

Concretely we desperately also need effective Citizenship Education Systems, one issue our governments fail in addressing in perhaps all democracies, a failure which seems to be responsible to a large degree for the problems of our democracies.   

At the same time there is no use in submitting proposals in the public debate when we do not have effective systems in place for the assessment of such proposals and for making sure they are implemented if deemed beneficial.  For this we clearly need the proposed “Democracy Societies” in our nations.

Certainly, depending on their state, in some nations it will be more difficult than in others to implement the proposals made here. If society is suppressed by the rulers it might be impossible, at least for now.

In any case, for us to deal effectively with the huge challenges our world is facing, we need optimally functioning governments.

It seems that our governments would be obliged to install effective Government Performance Optimisation Systems now, without delay, if they do not want to be responsible for the collapse of our democracies and the world.

In our critical situation it appears necessary that we rethink our role as citizens in our society. It appears to be our responsibility as citizens to make sure that our governments perform optimally. The indispensable starting point appears to be to get together on a regular basis to discuss and clarify how to move forward to an effective solution for the chaos in our world.