Category Archives: Countries and Democracy

Dear Trump Supporters, Dear Undecided Citizens of the US

If you really want to make America great again, your strategy must be to vote for Harris and then to make the government work for all American people.

Voting for Trump in contrast threatens to utterly destroy America, and all the values America stands for in the world.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Presently the world is crazy and unhinged. New power relationships are emerging. Dictators all over the world are inflicting havoc and destruction, they are causing suffering and death for other and their own people. Whether we believe it or not, there is at least a risk that we actually are destroying the world. Basically, all people in the world need to work together to protect it.

Now the world is looking to America, a nation which has in the past had a leading role in maintaining peace, order, and democracy in the world. Still today, Europe is grateful and indebted to the US for having under the leadership of one of its greatest, longest serving, and most cherished presidents, Franklin D. Roosevelt, played the leading role in liberating Europe from fascism. Many Americans gave their lives in this awesome battle for freedom and democracy. This to me is what the real America stands for.

Now your goal is “to make America great again”. That is a highly valuable goal. We, all citizens around the world, should be aiming to build great, healthy, and fair nations, we all should work together to make this world a better and more just place to be.

But what kind of leader does a nation need to become truly “great”?

It seems to me that the Founding Fathers of America themselves, when striving to build a new and prosperous nation, have already provided the clue to this question.

About 200 years ago, at the start of the US as a nation, Alexander Hamilton, a young active leader who eventually died in a duel because of his extremely high ethical principles, and Thomas Jefferson, who later became the third president of the United States, serving from 1801 until 1809, intensely discussed the qualifications required by the nation’s politicians and leaders. In connection with the election of a president for Columbia College, Hamilton states: “It is essential that he be a gentleman in his manner, as well a sound and polite scholar, that his moral character be irreproachable: that he possesses energy of body and mind, and be of a disposition to maintain discipline without undue austerity; and in the last place, that his politics be of the right sort.” If a president of a college must have such qualities, they would certainly be required for the president as the top leader of the nation. Thomas Jefferson in his writing puts forward the need to find officers to work in public administration and politics “whose talents, integrity, names, and dispositions, should at once inspire unbounded confidence in the public mind, and ensure a perfect harmony in the conduct of the public business”.

Anybody who wants to make America great again, a healthy, strong and sound nation, must look for leaders who possess these exact qualities. The fate of the nation depends on having a leader of high moral values.

Nobody is perfect. But if you look closely, you will see that Donald Trump does by no means at all fulfil the criteria specified by these two Founding Fathers. To the very contrary, if you look closely, you see that he is a man of the vilest character. Even many people who once were prepared to work under him confirm it. The one thing Donald Trump is extremely good at is manipulating people for his own aims. Please, look behind his façade, you do not want to be led astray by the pied piper. A down-to-earth gentleman from Maine, I know well, ninety-six years of age, a man of a generally traditional outlook on life who served in the Air Force and studied engineering on the GI bill, plainly and simply calls Donal Trump a “jerk”. Trust in the old man. Electing a person of such dubious and low character as Trump involves the greatest risk to utterly destroy the nation.

Clearly, a person who boasts about “grabbing” women by their genitals is despicable and no gentleman at all. One might consider such statements pub talk. But a person of that standard is by no means suited as a leader of a great nation, he is by no means suited as a role model for the young generation of a great nation. Do you really want the great United States, the first democracy of the world in modern times, with this astounding Declaration of Independence to be represented in the world by a person of such manners and abject, low character?

If we want to build great and sound nations, if we want to build a better and fair world, we need leaders of true and high integrity.

Jefferson emphasizes the need for leaders “whose talents, integrity, names, and dispositions, should at once inspire unbounded confidence in the public mind, and ensure a perfect harmony in the conduct of the public business”.

If you check these demands, it becomes clear that Donald Trump does not match any of them at all. Even if you were to disagree with this observation, the criterion “names”, i.e. the reputation of a person, would tell you that you cannot vote for him. If half of the US population and the citizens around the world looking on get into a state of the greatest panic in fear of Trump being elected, if they completely doubt his suitability and qualification, that would at least need to make you worried; you cannot elect him. That is what Jefferson says.

The large majority of US citizens loved Franklin D. Roosevelt. “By God, if it ain’t old Frank“, shouted a worker in a Detroit tank manufacturing firm, when Roosevelt surprisingly drove though the factory on a visit during WWII. “The President laughed with delight and waved his hat at the man”, describes Doris Kearns Goodwin the scene. Donald Trump divides the nation instead of unifying it. Such a conflict arising out of the election would weaken and harm the US. If you want to make America sound and healthy, you need a leader who unites the nation.

How then to make government work for the people?

This is the second crucial and decisive issue for the country, next to voting for a leader of high integrity.

Presently you may not trust government, you may not trust the so called establishment. But the solution cannot be to vote for a single person who promises us to believe that he is the great man who can fix everything for us. Our world of eight billion people is far too complex for this. New developments occur in the world which are hard to control and influence for any government. Anybody who promises us to be able to fix all our problems is instantly highly suspicious. He is either an absolutely dangerous fool or a criminal aiming to mislead us.

The thought of people voting for Trump reminds me of people in Germany suffering in the terrible economic crisis of the 1930s. They voted for Hitler, a person who painstakingly practiced his way of seducing the people in front of a mirror and who in rousing speeches made people believe that he could fix all their problems. People did put their hopes in him, but as a result of the chaos and utter destruction he unleashed over the world, much of humanity suffered and more than fifty million people died. Currently the world is under threat. We cannot afford such havoc. We need cooperative leaders and most importantly government systems of the highest capacity to bring the world back on track. We as citizens must demand governments of such high performance and quality.

What is the way to make America great again?

Dear Trump supporters, dear undecided US citizens,

To make America great again, vote for a leader of high integrity, and then work with that leader to make the American government work truly and effectively for all American people.

Let history, Hitler and his madness to make Germany the most powerful nation on earth be a terrible warning sign for you. Such madness will destroy America.

If you want to make America great again, vote for Harris and Walz, a man of the people. You must change from being actual or potential Trump supporters to being Harris/Walz supporters.

Give them a chance, strike a deal with them!

Tell them, if we vote for you, then you must promise to make the American government the best government America ever had in its history. A government which truly works for all American people.

Ask Harris, whether she promises to make her government the best America has ever had in its history.

Then vote for Harris and Walz.

This is the right strategy to make America great again.

It is decisive for America and for America’s standing and leadership role in the world.

Getting order into Number 10

Leave a reply

A rational systemic approach is urgently required to make UK government perform as effectively and efficiently as possible.

What kind of system is government really? What exactly is its purpose? How to structure government best, so it serves the nation and the people best? How to make government perform optimally? How to set up an effective Government Performance Management System?

The UK government, generally speaking, is responsible for protecting and enhancing the wellbeing of around seventy million people. That is a huge and daunting task in our complex and challenging world.

As a consequence, when someone is entrusted with running government, they are obliged to ensure they do their job properly, or better even, optimally. Every degree in performance of the government will affect the lives of seventy million people in one way or another. The failure to get the job right can ruin the well-being of people and ultimately destabilise and destroy the entire nation.

Presently, only three months into the new Labour government, news have leaked out about infighting and chaos in Downing Street. Now ministers are calling for Keir Starmer “to get a grip of Number 10”. [1]

What the chaos shows is that a convincing rationale is missing for making Number 10 work. That is devastating for the nation. If the “head office” of government is not working properly, the entire government machinery won’t.

So, what exactly must Keir Starmer do, to bring order into number 10 and to make government perform optimally?

Systems Thinking provides a rational and transparent approach to answer this question.

A system is shaped by its purpose. So, the first thing Starmer, like any responsible head-of-government in our world, must ask is: What exactly is the purpose of “a” or “our” government system?

Systems Thinking also tells us how to get to the best answer to this initial question and to finding the solution to the overall problem of making government as effective and efficient as possible. It is by using all know-how distributed in society, and ideally in the world, through comprehensive research and consultation with the people. One of the fundamental typical mistakes in British government is that it is run by a narrow “boys’ club”, by people who consider government their private turf and think they personally know best how to run it. Most governments on earth suffer from this fault in one or another way. The attitude has caused much harm to the British nation. Not to engage in comprehensive consultation on how to structure and run government optimally at the beginning of one’s time in office, or ideally beforehand, amounts to negligence towards the seventy million inhabitants of the UK. Since the world depends on effective and efficient governments and leadership, not optimising government performance amounts, moreover, to negligence towards the entire world.

So let us assume for now the consultation on the exact purpose of the government system were to conclude: The purpose of governing is the identification, weighing, and the management of public issues in the most effective and efficient manner possible, so that the work of government maximises the wellbeing of the British population, today and in the future.

This definition tells us that our government system requires four fundamental sub-systems: One sub-system to make government perform in the “most effective and efficient way possible”, one sub-system to identify public issues, one sub-system to weigh and prioritise them, and one sub-system to manage them.

Systems and sub-systems are organisational units. They must translate into the organisation chart of government. Presently you will probably not find these four sub-systems on the first sub-level on line two of the organisation chart of the British government. This is a key reason why government cannot work optimally and will commit blunders. Evidently, if you do not have an effective system to make government performance as effective and efficient as only conceivable or, in other words, to “optimise government performance”, then you will probably not have a government capable to handle the extremely difficult political problems of our time adequately. Government will fail, disappoint voters, it will not be trusted and get into trouble, by the latest at the next election. Moreover, you will undermine trust in democracy altogether, you might cause discontent and riots.

What structuring government work in a rational, systemic way allows concerning the relationship to the public is to make government work absolutely transparent. It allows you as a head of government to lay your books open and to inform the people: This is how we optimise government performance. You can, moreover, involve the people in shaping government and tell them: This is your government. If you have a better proposal for optimising government work, please let us know. You can precisely show: This is how we identify public issues, this is how we weigh them, this is how we manage them. You can again involve the people by stating: If you have proposals how we can improve the performance of these systems, let us know. We will examine your proposal and feed it into our open consultation process on government optimisation.

Each of the initial four sub-systems will have many sub-systems on their own. The system for “managing” public issues, for example, will require a sub-system for strategy making, one for strategy implementation, and one for evaluation. The system for strategy making itself will require a system which identifies and confirms the exact goal of each policy, a system which identifies all factors affecting the achievement of the goal specified, and a system which builds strategies which incorporate all factors of relevance identified. If one omits any factors of relevance, the policy will not work, and resources will be squandered.

As regards the concrete identification of policy issues, one policy issue which is probably never properly recognised is the specific task of “stabilising UK democracy”. In a time when all democracies are threatened by populist tendencies and are at danger of sliding into destructive dictatorships, the issue of “stabilising democracy” is of critical importance for the nation, like for any democratic state.

How to stabilise UK democracy? One key factor would be to create contentment with it. To achieve this goal, one would have to make UK democracy work optimally, meaning concretely that one would need “a system to make UK democracy work optimally”. But making a machine work optimally alone does not suffice to create contentment. One would also have to communicate to the client, how exactly the machine is constructed and why its way of construction would be optimal, so people really see that their democratic system is the best they can get. What this requirement tells us that we need an effective system of communication with the citizens. We also need an effective citizenship education system to maintain the stability of democracy and to avoid that people are being misled by populists. What is the present state of the UK citizenship education system? Does it comply with the requirements? We would need to check, but it is highly unlikely.

While the individual lay-out of each system and sub-system largely depends on its specific purpose, all systems must have two effective standard systems for them to function properly: Effective control and effective communication. No system works effectively without effective control, and all system needs effective communication systems, both inside the system and with stakeholders on their outside. In case of government those stakeholders are primarily the people. How to set up effective control and effective communication? It will again depend on identifying all aspects which influence effective control and communication and on incorporating all relevant factors into the system.

For us as citizens it is important that democracy is “government by the people”. This means that it is ultimately our responsibility to make democracy and government, as its key part, work. We must set up an effective chain of control from us, over our control institutions, to the head-of-government, and to ultimately all policy making units. Presently Parliament and House of Lords are our key “control systems” over government work. Do they function effectively as control systems? If members of the House of Lords give presents to government, at worst they might do this to bribe government, at best they might simply be more like friends to members of the government. In any case, they will not be acting properly as “controllers” on behalf of the people and unlikely to control government work effectively. Yet, if our control systems do not work, we cannot be astonished if we are not content with the work of government.

How can we set-up effective control over government? Systems Thinking tells us that, we, the people, need to form a driver to achieve this goal, an organisation which deals with the question of “how to set up an effective democracy and an effective government”. Without the people forming a driver, an organisation which deals with the question of how to optimise democracy and government performance, we will not get an effective democratic system, and we will not have a government which performs optimally.

But back to government itself. What must Keir Starmer now do to ensure his government works optimally?

I suggest he now needs to do two things: First, he must ensure that government runs optimally on the basis of its present organisational set-up, and, second, he must set up a system which develops a new government structure on the basis of Systems Thinking, a structure which optimises government performance. For these tasks the Prime Minister needs to hire two persons: One person familiar with present government operations who ensures government works as smoothly and efficiently as possible on the basis of its current organisational structure, and one person whose task it is to optimise government performance. For the task he or she needs to understand Systems Thinking and to set-up an effective “Government Performance Management System”. The time frame for developing a new, systems based organisational structure for government would perhaps be a year. As soon as the new, systemically sound system would be developed, the organisational structure of the government system would be adapted to it. To gain the confidence of the people, Starmer should inform the public about these actions.

After years of turmoil in government the British people finally need and want a government which works optimally. Starmer must explain to the public how he will build it.

[1] Andrew Rawnsley, Urgent memo from his anxious ministers to Sir Keir Starmer: you need to get a grip of No 10, The Observer, 29 September 2024https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/28/keir-starmer-no-10-ministers

Biden’s crucial failure: So far, no success in stabilizing US democracy

Leave a reply

Now, in the remaining months before the election, an instant democracy turn-around program is of decisive relevance. Further measures to stabilize US democracy on the long-run are also indispensable.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

To make it clear upfront: The thoughts in this essay are not an encouragement to vote for what I perceive to be a dangerous demagogue. To the contrary. They are a call on the Biden government to now rectify some fundamental flaws in policy making. Most democratic governments suffer from these deficits. Securing democracy in the US and globally requires that we mend them.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

“Tonight, I come to talk about crisis and opportunity, about rebuilding the nation, revitalizing our democracy, and winning the future for America.” Under the impression of the chaos in government under the Trump presidency and the upheaval he caused after losing the election in 2020, Joe Biden declared “revitalizing democracy” the prime task of his government in pretty much the first sentence of his address to Congress at the outset of his term in April 2021. [i]

One must appreciate that Joe Biden stood against a demagogue like Trump and maintained the US as a democracy, even if certainly not a perfect one, over the last three years. One can only hope that he manages to repeat this achievement in a now likely second electoral competition for the Presidency against Trump in November 2024.

Still, by now, about seven months before the new election, it becomes disturbingly evident that Biden and his government spectacularly and critically failed to deliver on what three years ago they themselves declared to be their prime responsibility in office. According to polls in the spring, 45 percent, nearly or around half of the electorate are still in favor of Donald Trump.[ii] The outcome of the upcoming election is unclear and now, even more so than in previous elections in which Trump stood, the US is at risk of decaying into a chaotic and destructive dictatorship. The Trumpist action plan for a takeover of the state formulated in the “Project 2025” document evokes disturbing images of the ferocious wiping out of all opposition by the NAZIs in Germany in the 1930s.[iii]

Why have the many democracy endeavors which the Biden government undertook over these three years, the “Presidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal”, the repeated international “Summits for Democracy”, and the overall expense of “approximately $9.5 billion… to support democracy, human rights, and good governance globally”, not produced any results, neither nationally nor globally? [iv] And what needs to happen now to protect democracy in the US?

Faulty Policy Approach

The range of reasons for the failure of the Biden democracy project appears rather large. It seems to begin with the wrong philosophy behind the approach. In his speech to Congress Joe Biden declared: “We have to prove democracy still works — that our government still works and we can deliver for our people”.[v] What, however, if the political and economic circumstances were to make delivering what people expect difficult or even impossible? Then there is the imprecise overall definition of the policy aim ranging from “defending democracy, fighting for it, strengthening it, renewing it” to “revitalizing it”, when the overall goal after the last election clearly must have been and now urgently must be “stabilizing” US democracy.

Moreover, the design of the project strategies appears incoherent. The outline of the Summit for Democracy called for input on three main areas, “Defending against authoritarianism”, “Addressing and fighting corruption”, and “Advancing respect for human rights”. These aspects are without doubt somehow connected to healthy democracies at home and around the world, but they clearly do not exert a direct impact on the goal of “stabilizing” democracy. Sound strategies depend on a precise analysis of all factors affecting the achievement of the policy goal. Any effort to “stabilize democracy” clearly depends on ensuring trust in the democratic system, at least as a key aspect. From this thought follows the necessity to ensure that the factors warranting trust in the political system are in place, including certainly the solid construction of the political system. One aspect in the policy design of the Biden government also appears to be that national and international efforts are fused, enhancing the lack of clarity in the strategy design. A further problem appears to be a certain mingling of the role of Joe Biden as a head of state responsible for ensuring the stability of US democracy and as a competitor against Trump in a seemingly never-ending election campaign, with both roles demanding different strategic approaches.

Finally, there seem to be deficiencies in the communication with the public on the democracy efforts. The website on the Summit for Democracy is far too convoluted for any citizen to take any information in on how democracy is to be made to work for the people.[vi] One will not want to emulate Trump, but with his populist style of communication he appears to reach people far more effectively.

Structural Deficits in Government Policy Making

Two reasons behind these deficits in strategy making appear to be a lack of methodological know-how for policy making, evident from the flawed design of the democracy project, and the lack of an effective Government Performance Management System, which would have insured an effective policy design.

A further fundamental structural shortcoming causing these deficits is the apparent failure to set-up government as a permanently learning system, a set-up which would include an effective system of open consultation with the public both on governance and policy design. Practically all democratic governments in the world appear to suffer from this lack of openness. They operate as “closed shops” in which government decision and policy making largely happens in a small circle of ministers, advisers, and possibly, public officials and is often based on personal convictions of the decision makers, rather than on comprehensive consultation and rational decision-making methods.

As Michael D. Shear and Shane Goldmacher observed in the New York Times already in December 2020, more than three years ago, the members of the then incoming Biden government were largely selected on the basis of their years, if not decades of cooperation with Joe Biden. They looked like a “team of buddies”. Reflecting on the benefits, but also the risks of such a tightly woven staff network, they wrote: “Even some allies in the Democratic Party say they worry that Mr. Biden’s reliance on the same people threatens to undermine his ability to find solutions to the country’s problems that go beyond the usual ones embraced by the establishment in Washington.” Observers were suggesting, “With building his team based on credentials”, he would miss the “opportunity to introduce fresh blood and new thinking…”. They felt: “Tackling the big problems in America…is going to require a lively debate…It doesn’t have to be a room full of people you like.” [vii]

These warnings have come true, as the remarkable failure of the democracy endeavours of the Biden government show, so far at least. In an essay the author of the considerations presented here already made suggestions in January 2021 on what the Biden government needed to do to be successful in its approach to stabilizing US democracy.[viii] Later in the year he spent days trying to get through to the US government, both the White House and the Department of State, to offer know-how on systemic problem structuring methodologies to help ensure the success of the “Summit for Democracy” and of the other democracy efforts of the Biden government. No result. No way to get through to the government, even on a question of such existential relevance for the nation. If one suggests that a policy concept cannot work in the way it is structured, people in government appear to build defense walls around their approach, rather than checking such suggestions out. That is partly natural human behaviour. To overcome such inherent resistance an independent quality control system in government is required which ensures that policy approaches are sensible and work. Especially if democracy is at stake, a responsible government must actively look for and include any potentially relevant know-how.

The US – Not A Democracy Anymore?

As also the case in this essay, we keep talking about the US as a democracy. A fundamental reason for the lack of success in stabilizing US democracy, however, must finally be the fact that, many observers suggest that this is wrong. Rather than being a democracy, the US political system would be a system controlled by money.

In a detailed assessment of the matter political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page state already in 2014: “…when a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose”. Later in their essay they conclude: “… we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.” [ix] The former Vice President Al Gore formulates such observations even more unreservedly. In his 2013 book “The Future” he writes: “…Not since the 1890s has U.S. government decision making been as feeble, dysfunctional, and servile to corporate and other special interests as it is now”, and: “The US no longer has a well-functioning self-government…American democracy has been hacked.” [x]

When Joe Biden declares: “We have to prove democracy still works…” he completely ignores such crucial perceptions about the essence of US democracy. Yet stabilizing US democracy undoubtedly requires the trust of the people, and the people will only then trust in the US political system, if it truly is a democracy serving wider society. Fixing this structural deficit in US democracy clearly is an enormous task for any government. But who wants to stabilize US democracy cannot sweep this fundamental issue under the carpet. People will always notice and distrust the system if what they get is not the real thing.

Clearly any government which takes its responsibility in serving society seriously, must examine and discuss suggestions like the ones presented here on why it failed in reaching its prime policy goal. It is, as we realize, of critical, perhaps existential relevance for democracy and a nation.

What now?

Due to the failure of the Biden government to stabilize US democracy over the last three years, the US now, half a year before the new presidential election is more than before on cliff’s edge of turning into a dictatorship. To avert the risk an instant short-term democracy turn-around program appears now desperately required. Moreover, US democracy should be set on a stable footing for the long run.

1. An Instant Democracy Turn-Around Program to Stabilize US Democracy in As Much As Possible Before The Election

What would be the purpose of such an instant democracy stabilization programme?

The first goal evidently would be to avert the risk of the US turning into a destructive dictatorship.

The basic mean required to achieve this goal would be to offer more sensible alternatives to the public for reaching their goals and for turning the US into an effective democracy serving wider society.

To convince the people one would have to gain their trust.

To achieve this, one would have to address all existing problems in society and the state in an honest way, from poverty and inequality to migration, race, and certainly the climate, to the problems of US democracy itself.

One would have to discuss the joint goals of American society, the pros and cons of what “Making America Great Again” means, and the need to instead perhaps simply agree on “building a co-operative, healthy, and strong society” as a joint goal.

One then would have to discuss the central need to make the political system including government as effective as only possible to achieve this goal. In this context one would have to point to the factors which make a government effective, the need for both, effective government processes and for persons of high integrity and high professional qualifications in government and the Civil Service.

Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, as two of the founding fathers of the US, already provided clues on the selection criteria for officials in the US governments. Reflecting on the election of a president for Columbia College, the oldest undergraduate college in New York, Alexander Hamilton notes: “It is essential that he be a gentleman in his manners, as well a sound and polite scholar, that his moral character be irreproachable; that he possesses energy of body and mind, and be of a disposition to maintain discipline without undue austerity; and in the last place, that his politics be of the right sort.”^[xi]Thomas Jefferson suggests that the federal service of the US requires officers “whose talents, integrity, names, and dispositions, should at once inspire unbounded confidence in the public mind, and ensure a perfect harmony in the conduct of the public business”^[xii]^.

Certainly, nobody is perfect, and also the founding fathers were not. Still, the Biden government needs to make it clear to society that especially those who aim to “Make America Great Again” must be looking for leaders who fulfil these guidelines. It must convey that applying these criteria clearly shows that Donald Trump is not at all suited for any political office in the US and certainly not to lead the nation. Instead of making it great, he would rather destroy it.

In as far as government processes are concerned a turn-around program could concentrate on how the government would in the future ensure that citizens are adequately heard and involved in the policy making process and how the government will ensure its optimal performance through an open consultation system with the public and through an effective Government Performance Management System.

If one discusses all these issues with US society in the most open, honest, and constructive way conceivable and communicates with the public on these issues in an effective manner, I am sure one can prevent the US from turning into a dictatorship in November.

2. Stabilizing US Democracy on The Long Run

To stabilize US democracy on the long run three key factors appear essential:

First, people must subscribe to a joint goal, such as creating a co-operative, healthy, and strong society.
Second, people must appreciate and be certain that they have the very best democratic system conceivable to achieve this goal, and,
Third, they must be able how to run their democratic system effectively and to ensure it stays stable. Crucial issues which the public must understand is how to select suitable politicians and how to prevent the democratic system turning into a dictatorship.

Government should lead and agree with society on the goal of building a co-operative, healthy, and strong society. The goal should perhaps form the basis of a joint mission statement of society.

For people to know that they have the very best system conceivable that quality in itself must be a fact. The new government should, therefore, install a work group to initiate the review of the construction of the US democratic system. The group should propose measures to mend its deficits. A key problem evidently is the fact that the US democracy is dominated by money. Fixing this problem will be extremely difficult but must be done. One problem of the US election system evidently is that it repeatedly leads to a show-down between two elderly candidates when in a three-hundred million society easily fifteen candidates could be found who possess the necessary qualities and qualifications to run the nation. A constitutional review should also address this problem evidently caused by the election system. The world is facing huge challenges. For the US being able to cope with these challenges and having the most effective and efficient democratic system conceivable is of fundamental relevance for the nation and for the democratic world.

Ultimately, stabilizing democracy requires that people understand the value of democracy, what it is, how it can and must work to serve wider society as effectively and efficiently as only possible. They must also see that building the perfect political system is extremely difficult and requires huge system building capacities and co-operation. Abraham Lincoln defined democracy as government “of, by and for the people”. People must understand what government “by the people” entails and what they can and must do to make “their government” effective and efficient and to keep the democratic system stable. Conveying all this information requires a highly effective Citizenship Education System. This must be built as soon as only possible.

But back to the present situation.

As we said, there are only seven months to the Presidential election in November. To avert the risk of the US turning into a dictatorship at that point President Biden must now, without delay, initiate an instant turn-around program for US democracy. For the program to be effective, Biden and his government must now finally look for “new ideas and thinking” on the matter, they must tap into relevant know-how distributed in society and consult comprehensively with society on how to structure the program.

[i] Remarks by President Biden in Address to a Joint Session of Congress, U.S. Capitol, April 28, 2021Remarks by President Biden in Address to a Joint Session of Congress | The White House

[ii] 2024 Election: Biden Holds On To Slight Lead Over Trump, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Trump Gets Higher Marks On Age, Mental & Physical Fitness; Biden Does Better On Ethics, Empathy & Temperament, https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3890

^[iii]For a discussion of the Project 2025 see for example MICHAEL HIRSH, Inside the Next Republican Revolution, Politico, 19 September 2023, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/09/19/project-2025-trump-reagan-00115811

[iv] The White House, FACT SHEET: The Biden-⁠Harris Administration’s Abiding Commitment to Democratic Renewal at Home and Abroad, Briefing Room, Statements and Releases, MARCH 29, 2023, FACT SHEET: The Biden-Harris Administration’s Abiding Commitment to Democratic Renewal at Home and Abroad | The White House

[v] Remarks by President Biden in Address to a Joint Session of Congress, April 28, 2021

[vi] Cf. The Summit for Democracy, The Summit for Democracy – United States Department of State

[vii] Michael D. Shear and Shane Goldmacher , Team of Rivals? Biden’s Cabinet Looks More Like a Team of Buddies. In making his picks for the new administration, the president-elect has put a premium on personal relationships., New York Times, Dec. 9, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/us/politics/biden-cabinet-personal-relationships.html

[viii] Hans Peter Ulrich, Biden – The Savior of Democracy? | optimisingdemocracy, 29 January, 2021

[ix] Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, American Political Science Association 2014, Published online by Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592714001595

[x] Al Gore, The Future, 2013, p. 95 and 104

[xi] Quote in Paul C. Light, A government ill executed, Harvard University Press, 2008 , p. 79 (from Lynton K Caldwell, The administrative theories of Hamilton and Jefferson…Chicago University Press, 1944)

[xii] Ibid. (from writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 10, p. 182)

July 2022: How does Britain now get a proper government?

Leave a reply

Are we now getting more of the same? Do we really think that Britain will now get a proper government with another Conservative Party beauty pageant, just like the one it conducted in 2019?

British politics has been a chaotic disaster at least for six years now. The convoluted four-year Brexit decision making process was a political nightmare paralysing government and exhausting the nation. It was caused by faulty policy making conducted by David Cameron, a Prime Minister known for his blunder proneness, and through a referendum process which left many crucial questions unanswered. “Omnishambles”, a term describing his leadership, was dubbed the word of the year by Oxford University Press in 2012[1].

After him came Theresa May, a lady of integrity one tends to believe, who got between the millstones of the intractable Brexit process. Then the Conservative Party members, about 150,000 citizens at an average age of between 65 and 75 years at the time[2], with a curious horse-race-style selection process, eliminated one after another out of a gathering of ten candidates to select their new party leader and the new Prime Minister. Despite the well-known deficits of Boris Johnson in terms of his integrity, they chose him. The aim to keep the party in power appeared to trump what was good for the country. As a result, the selection process haunted the country for nearly three years now. As a crucial part of the picture in the December 2019 parliamentary snap election 43.6% of the voters (less than half) confirmed Boris Johnson as the Prime Minister, falling for his chutzpa and charisma, and through the election system gave him 56.2 % of the seats, a huge majority in parliament.

The decisive question posing itself for the nation now is: How will Britain finally get a Prime Minister of integrity and capability after the botched leadership of Cameron and the incessant daily government soap opera conducted under Boris Johnson? How is the selection process for the head of government to continue? Instead of just going ahead with the same old procedures, it appears useful to look into the pre-conditions for a successful selection process.

Only a sound decision-making process generates a sound government

As regards the selection process for the new Prime Minister one first insight appears crucial: Only a sound selection process will ensure that Britain gets a sound government.

To generate the government, we require, it needs to include two steps: First, we need to define clearly and transparently which personal and professional qualities we precisely expect from a candidate and second, we need to ensure he or she actually possesses these qualifications. Without effective processes dealing with these two objectives, defining which qualities and qualifications the leader of our governments needs and without an effective process ensuring that he or she actually has the qualities required, we will not get the government of the quality the nation needs.

The problem with the beauty pageant style selection process which the Conservative Party is about to arrange for the second time in three years is that it clearly fails on these two counts, it neither defines the required capacities clearly and transparently, nor does it ensure that candidates have these qualifications. It leaves the selection of the new leader of the nation up to a untransparent mix of personal assessments, preferences, sympathies, antipathies, and expected benefits for the party.

As regards the specific qualifications we must be looking for in the leader of a nation, integrity and capability indeed appear the two top requirements. In the 18^th century Thomas Jefferson and James Hamilton already agreed on this point when they discussed which kind of leaders the newly founded United States needed. But what do we mean exactly with these two terms?

In the end we need to discuss these questions and come to a joint result. One key requirement concerning integrity, however, evidently means that the new leader takes his or her job seriously and serves the country and all citizens equally whatever their station in life. Ultimately, selecting a leader of integrity appears to be a matter of honesty towards the nation, of commitment to find the best leader for the sake of the country and not the party, of proper checks on the candidate, and transparency. What indications are there that a candidate puts indeed the country, and not himself nor the party first? As one sometimes hears, the best solution supposedly may even be to select a person which does not really vie for the job.

Regarding the second criterion, the capability of a leader, we also must realise that we will not get a leader of the quality we require, if we do not put an effective process in place to define which qualifications he or she exactly needs and if we do not ensure that the candidate actually possesses these qualifications. Which abilities does a head of government require exactly?

Know-how in Government Performance Management crucial

In aiming to answer this question, we will of course be looking for some standard requirements such as intelligence, analytical capability, leadership, the ability to get things done. I personally would add training in problem solving methodologies as an indispensable criterion.

One recognition, however, appears crucial in answering the question what the requirement of “capability” entails: It is the fact that a person can by no means run a nation by him- or herself, but that they need a highly effective government machinery, or as a more technical term, “government system”, to do the job. Unwittingly, when he says, that no person is remotely irreplaceable Boris Johnson is correct. One fundamental problem in selecting a head of government is that we pin far too much hope on the leader him- or herself and neglect the key role of an effective government system in the task of running a nation.

In the end, we cannot use another Prime Minister who thinks the fate of the nation depends on him or her alone. What we rather need is a leader who acknowledges the importance of a government system of the highest degree of effectiveness and efficiency, we need a leader who knows how to build such a system and understands how to operate it.

Concretely, a Prime Minister who wants to run an effective government must know how to build an effective Government Performance Management System as a tool to form an effective government system. What we must realise is that there cannot be an effective government system without effective Government Performance Management, just as we cannot have an effective power plant without an effective steering system. An effective Government Performance Management System is a causal precondition to effective government. If we want a government which is less blunder prone, and effective, we need to select a leader who understands the role of effective an Government Performance Management System and knows how to implement it.

In the present line up there may indeed be a couple of suitable candidates for the role of Prime Minister. But selecting one of them will not make a decisive difference. To ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of the new British government an effective Government Performance System is essential.

Open consultation process with society

But what are the preconditions for effective Government Performance Management itself? As a general rule, a Prime Minister will only then be able to establish an effective Government Performance Management System, if he or she incorporates all know-how in society and the world on the matter and installs a completely open consultation process to identify this know-how. One of the consistent problems which makes our governments so blunder prone is that they operate as closed shops, a small club of buddies determining what they consider good policy making. The precondition for a successful government is open consultation with society, especially on the fundamentals of how to organise a successful government.

In this context it is of the utmost relevance that already in 2012 a parliamentary inquiry concluded that government strategy making was, I paraphrase, completely unprofessional and would possibly cause serious harm to the nation. This happened now ten years ago. Yet, despite such a grave warning this fundamental problem at the heart of government has not been fixed so far, an incomprehensible oversight by the political system. The fate of the nation depends on a proper Government Performance Management System, ensuring among other things that the central strategy making system in government is effective.

The next steps: Parliament and House of Lords must get involved

The observations seem to be correct: Without proper processes for ensuring the politicians have the qualifications required for their tasks we will not get effective and efficient governments. Without an effective Government Performance Management System and a government operating on the basis of the principles developed by it there will not be an effective government either.

If we want to ensure that Britain gets governments of the quality the nation requires, then we need to create a process which incorporates these insights in the selection process for future Prime Ministers and Cabinet Secretaries.

For now, the nation seems stuck with the Conservative Party selecting another leader. How can we make sure their selection process contains the necessary steps to ensure Britain gets a capable government at least for the next two years until the next election? Obviously, the traditional selection processes are not working. They are not producing leadership of the quality the nation requires. We, therefore, need some fresh and out of the box approaches to solve the conundrum.

Since the fate of the nation is at stake, it appears that the representatives of the people both in Parliament and in the House of Lords should get involved in making sure the selection process for the new government fulfils the requirements of the nation. As a concrete step I suggest the formation of a cross-party working group of the elders in both chambers who set up a committee which draws up a list of the core criteria a candidate needs to fulfil. The working group then engages with the Conservative Party and ensures that their selection process is transparent, employs these criteria, and makes sure the candidate selected as the new Prime Minister possesses these qualifications.

It can be expected that the selection process then generates a new Prime Minister with a decent set of qualities to lead the nation. To ensure that future policy making is less erratic, more structured, and more effective than what we have seen in the past, it is crucial, however, that the Cross-Party Working Group charges the new Prime Minister with instantly setting up a proper Government Performance Management System and makes sure that he or she governs on the basis of the principles designed by the system.

For those used to the standards and practices of British policy making these proposals might sound unusual. Yet, the suggested procedure is not so extraordinary as it may appear.

Ultimately it is the task of Parliament and the House of Lords to ensure that government performs optimally and at the highest degree of effectiveness and efficiency conceivable. One problem of our political system is that both control chambers operate on the basis of standard procedures without ever investigating systematically, how they can fulfil this task effectively. Endeavours for a wholesale review of the British Constitution have been ongoing for a number of years with the overall aim to make the British policy making system work better. So far, they have not produced any results. Such a process might, however, well be necessary.

For the sake of the wellbeing of the nation, the focus of our efforts must be on making the British government as effective and efficient as possible. The two measures discussed here, ensuring that the leader of the nation just as the politicians working with him or her have the personal qualities and professional qualifications required for the task and making sure the Prime Minister governs with an effective Government Performance Management System, are key preconditions in achieving this aim. The citizens will certainly welcome any measure contributing to ensuring that their government performs as effectively as conceivable.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20309441

[2] Bow Group, Statement on average age and analysis of Conservative Party Membership (2019), https://www.bowgroup.org/policy/statement-average-age-and-analysis-conservative-party-membership-2019

Biden – The Savior of Democracy?

1 Reply

So far, half the job done.

To complete it Biden needs a highly effective Government Performance Management System without delay.

What a world of a difference in the entire conduct of the inauguration ceremony, the decent and measured speech of Biden, the thoughtful and classy poem by Amanda Gorman, and in the deep prayers spoken at the inauguration in comparison to the swampy culture of lies and indecencies of the Trump years which increasingly threatened to devour the US. What a relief not only in Washington, but around the world. In a time when democracy globally is under extreme strain, the health of the leading democracy in the world is of crucial importance for human freedom and dignity.

Nobody except Biden could have ousted Trump, state many voices in Washington. So, must we consider Biden the savior of US and perhaps of global democracy?

One thing is undeniable: We owe the greatest admiration and respect to Joe Biden who at 78 years takes on the gigantic challenges the US and the world are presently facing.

Yet, by ousting Trump the job of saving US democracy is only half done. Biden and his excellent team face an extremely difficult mix of policy tasks from overcoming the pandemic, getting the economy back on track, creating jobs and an economically more balanced nation with equal chances for everyone and fighting racism. Furthermore, they only have around two to three years – even less, if one takes the mid-term elections in two years into account – to unify the nation and to stabilize democracy to ensure that a populist politician like Trump will not be elected again. How can Biden achieve success in handling this wide array of extremely difficult and urgent policy tasks?

Practically all democratic leaders in the world believe that running a government optimally is a matter of personal judgement, be it their own or the advisers around them. Yet, if Biden wants to succeed, it is crucial that he and his associates do not fall into this trap. Prevailing over all these challenges in the short time available is only possible with a government system of the highest degree of effectiveness and efficiency. To get it Biden needs a government performance management system which itself operates extremely effectively.

This idea is not new. Ten years ago, the Obama administration in fact already recognized the need for government performance management to make government as effective as possible. It appeared to be a frontrunner among global governments on the matter. But a quick look shows that the approach the Obama administration pursued was inadequate. A presentation from the year 2011 by Shelley H. Metzenbaum, from the Obama administration, and A. Alfred Taubman from the Brookings Institution, lists the three “key elements” of its government performance management concept:

a) Leaders set clear, ambitious, outcome-focused goals for a limited number of priorities,

b) Agencies measure, analyze, and communicate performance information to drive progress on their priorities,

c) Leaders frequently review progress on their priority goals.

These key elements appear fuzzy. What is the “limited number of priorities” supposed to be and of which benefit are “frequent” reviews of progress on priority goals? The approach to performance management by the Obama government evidently misses out completely on a systemically indispensable first step for making any system effective, the need to confirm and agree on its exact goals.

As Hélène Landemore from Yale University writes in her book “Democratic Reason”, the fundamental key to optimal policy making is optimal deliberation, the inclusion of all know-how available in society and the world on a policy problem. It is also the indispensable prerequisite for ensuring effective government performance management. The fuzziness of the approach to performance management by the Obama administration shows that the first step required in creating an effective government performance system through such public consultation is the identification of a suitable methodology.

One concrete suggestion at this point will be: For Biden and his team to ensure the success of the government in unifying US society and stabilizing US democracy and in coping with all the other difficult policy issues it is facing, they must base their approach to making government work on sound systemic thinking. The methodology requires the thorough verification of the precise goals and purposes of the democratic policy making system and of each process in the system. It then entails the exact determination of each and every factor affecting the achievement of the goals identified and ensuring that these factors are in place. If the Biden government does not work diligently through these steps in making government effective, it will not operate as effectively as it must.

While the combined experience of the Biden team is a great asset, given that many of its members were in government, when the increasing discontent with the political system allowed Trump to get into office, it also entails the risk for government to continue exactly as before. “How do we do government?” “What must we improve?” In the light of what is at stake for the Biden government and the nation, a structured independent assessment of the overall quality of the policy making process which investigates these questions appears indispensable.

In the current situation it would be a dangerous mistake for the government to believe that it will achieve the critical goal of stabilizing US democracy simply by solid and effective policy making in the wide array of areas which it is facing. Given the complexity of the tasks, chances are that government success over the next two years or so will not be far-reaching enough to convince the great majority of the citizens of the merits of a decent democratic government.

Effective systemic government performance management will highlight that the goal of stabilizing US democracy rather must be treated as a distinct policy area on its own. It will emphasize that, next to aiming to deliver on the expectations of the people in such areas as jobs, healthcare, and equal rights, the Biden government must involve the people in the process of policy making so they see how it works and can trust in it. The aim of making democracy more resilient at the same time calls for the implementation of a high quality citizenship education program which conveys to the people what a functioning democracy needs to look like, what the preconditions for effective democracy are, what the personal and professional requirements concerning its leaders must be, and, finally, how the people themselves can engage with their government in a constructive fashion to ensure that their concerns are being heard and taken into account.

Biden will be able to handle the extremely difficult combination of challenges he is facing in the narrow timeframe available only with a government of the highest degree of effectiveness and efficiency conceivable. To ensure his government operates at such level of quality he must open it for new thinking on how to run government effectively. He and his team must install an effective government performance management system without delay.

What is the Prime Task of a Prime Minister?

Leave a reply

An essay competition on the subject between the candidates

The British democratic policy making system is in shambles. Britain and the Tory party specifically are looking for a leader able to sort out the mess and to get the nation back on track. As an intriguing new element in the three-year spectacle, now eight or so candidates have entered the stage and are jockeying for the top job. The show could go on for ever.

By now, however, the British public have enough of the spectacle. We need rationality to re-enter. The nation urgently needs a capable leader to clarify what happens on Brexit and to address the many other challenges the nation is facing.

To select the best candidate and to see whether the candidates understand at all what the job is about I suggest starting with an essay competition. The question to be discussed by all candidates is: What is the prime task of a Prime Minister? The candidates have half a page, at most one page to answer the question.

The plain truth is, no one can be the Prime Minister of a country, if they do not understand what the prime task of a Prime Minister is … and how to fulfil that specific task.

So the Conservative Party should really hold that essay competition. I offer to be on the panel of experts to evaluate the essays. This is no joke. A process which does not establish objectively – and transparently – whether a candidate is at all qualified for the job and who ultimately is the best candidate lets the nation down again.

Ultimately all of the UK ought to be discussing these questions: What is the prime task of a Prime Minister? And: Which qualifications does a Prime Minister actually need? If the nation does not answer these questions and does not select the best candidate accordingly, the play is set to continue.

Back to Basics for British Politics

Leave a reply

The decisive question: How can Britain get a government with professional decision and strategy making capacities of the highest quality?

After the upheaval of Brexit, which divided the nation, the election greatly added to Britain’s political chaos rather than ameliorating it. For a small regional party like the Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to determine who governs Britain in such a difficult situation, can only be considered a fluke of history, not the result of purposeful and effective design of the political system. The mayhem of the election outcome seems to reflect an increasingly chaotic world in which the most varied positions and beliefs clash with each other and in which no party seems to be able to offer a convincing view suitable to generate wider consensus in society on what the best policy solutions are.

What Britain needs to do in order to sort out the political mayhem caused by Brexit and the election outcome is to go back to the basics of politics. Society needs to refocus on what it ultimately requires from its political system. Speculating on who will be governing in the future and when a new election might be necessary, does not generate a sustainable solution. It only extends the instability harming the nation. To provide stability and to unify the nation, Britain requires nothing more or less than an extremely qualified government free from any pre-conceived beliefs and dogmas, but simply bent on and fully capable of identifying and communicating the very best solutions for the nation on each and every political issue at stake.

But here is the flaw. Unless British society improves some fundamental mechanisms of the political system, it simply will not get a government of the quality it urgently needs. Already in 2012, a Parliamentary Committee came to the devastating conclusion that government practically did not possess any professional strategy making capacity whatsoever. They formulated: “We have little confidence that Government policies are informed by a clear, coherent strategic approach, itself informed by a coherent assessment of the public’s aspirations and their perceptions of the national interest.” The parliamentarians emphasised that such lack of strategy making capacity in government would necessarily lead to faulty policies in all policy areas and, as a consequence, cause the greatest harm to the nation. Rather than concentrating on sound and solid policy making and on fixing this fundamental fault in the British political system, both, Cameron and May gambled, lost, and created chaos.

What the nation has to realise, is that whichever person or party governs, whether May, Johnson, or Corbyn, whether Conservatives, Labour, or any other party, does not make much of a difference for the quality of policy making at all. As Anthony King and Ivor Crew describe in a book with the title “The blunders of our governments”, the history of politics in Britain over the past decades shows that governments formed by all parties are liable to severe blunders in their policy making. This will only change, if it is ensured that the governments formed by any party or politician possess decision and strategy making capacities of the greatest degree of professionalism and effectiveness.

How can it be ensured that the country gets a government of the quality it requires?

As a first step for creating an effective government and sorting out the present chaos, the nation or parliament ideally should select a person as the leader of the government and as Prime Minister who, objectively and independently of their party affiliation, possesses the most advanced qualifications in decision and strategy making. In the present quasi stalemate in parliament this would be a non-partisan approach by all politicians serving the nation best. Unfortunately, such a proposal may sound too unconventional and may not generate much support, even if, objectively seen, it appears to make sense. Especially the leader of a government must have a comprehensive grasp of professional decision and strategy making methods in order to guide the political system in the formulation of sound and effective policies.

An advisory council on effective decision and strategy making processes indispensable

Independently of who is or will be nominated as the Head of Government in the future, a second step is indispensable: Government needs a system of some kind, let us call it an “advisory council”, which supports government in making use of the very best methods in decision and strategy making, such as for example the management sciences provide them. Government needs to know about and use problem solving tools provided by Operational Research, it needs to be familiar with systemic decision and strategy making methodologies, it needs to apply methods such as the Alternative Hierarchy Process in decision making, which induces government to clearly identify, weigh and prioritize goals exactly against which to evaluate its strategic alternatives. In the decision-making process on EU-membership for example until today there exists no clear listing of the goals of the country especially in terms of international co-operation, no weighing, and no prioritisation, against which to measure the different strategic options. Such deficits in strategy making are one reason why governments cannot come up with convincing solutions suitable to generate a far-reaching consensus and why they are unable to unite society behind a proposed solution.

So far, like in most, if not all democracies, in Britain there is no institution which supervises the functioning of the political system. As a consequence, such fundamental deficits as the lack of decision and strategy making capacity in government identified by the Parliamentarians already in 2012, now five years ago, are not being fixed. The effects are constantly causing harm to society and threaten to increasingly destabilise the nation.

Only if the political elite and society as a whole ensure that government has the necessary capacities in decision and strategy making and that government actually applies these capacities to the benefit of society, will Britain get political leadership of the quality the nation urgently requires. Only then will it get a government which can provide direction to society, join it together, and lead society effectively in an extremely complex world of 7.5 billion people.

Democracy is a …religion? No, it is a mechanism which we urgently need to fix.

Leave a reply

“Democracy is a religion that has failed the poor” states Giles Fraser in his weekly column “Loose Canon” in the British Guardian.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2015/may/08/democracy-a-religion-that-has-failed-the-poor

Now, Giles Fraser is a highly intelligent man, a theologian and doctor of philosophy whose column, even if one may not always fully agree, generally contains some stimulating thought.

But is democracy a “religion”?

Certainly, Fraser’s thoughts contain some truth. He points out how piously we pursue a process – voting – even if we may not have any idea whatsoever who to vote for or may seriously wonder which difference our vote makes at all. Giles suggests (with Banerjee) that voting may simply be an “expression of one’s citizenship”.

But then, this makes a mockery of human beings. If one believes in human beings as conscious architects of their world and lives, for them to pursue a more or less useless process which does not ensure a sound management of our nations and world is by no means adequate.

In a way Fraser’s bias as a theologian is understandable. We all look at the world from our personal angle. Changing vantage points, exchange of views is necessary to arrive at the most suited perspective. To talk about democracy as a religion in fact appears highly disconcerting and even paralysing.

If we want to make this world a better place, then we clearly need to adopt a more constructive stance, one of a kind which might come more naturally to managers or engineers: Rather than looking at democracy as a sombre force over which we have no influence, we need to consider democracy as what it ultimately is, as a man-made mechanism, which we need to improve, if it fails us. We, humanity constantly work on all kinds of systems, processes and mechanisms which do not fulfil our needs and expectations. Why not fix or improve the way we practice democracy?

In which way is democracy actually failing us? Following the UK elections, many observers clearly highlight a deficit in the election process, it does not turn votes into adequate representation in parliament. Then there are the issues of devolution and “English votes for English Issues”: The structure of regional representation in the UK is unclear and needs to be overhauled. All in all, we need to check whether each element of the democratic system optimally fulfils the purpose it is meant to fulfil. Generally and perhaps most importantly, like in many democracies there is increasing disenfranchisement between the people and the political system. Democratic policy making needs to be changed in such a way in that it offer new channels for the public to engage in and to take adequate control of the management of public issues.

True citizenship and stewardship for our world means shaping the processes with which we govern it. Since we as individuals do not have any influence, we must join with other citizens to make democracy work. Forming an association called “Citizens Controlling Democracy” will be crucial to ensure that our democratic policy making processes work effectively and represent the interest of all people in society.

In a way we talk far to much, we publish hundreds of articles every week on what needs to happen in politics. If we do not take joint and constructive action to make democracy work, it never will. A machine which was considered adequate fifty years ago, may well not be adequate anymore for our world of seven billion people. It may have to be overhauled and re-engineered.

Democracy – a “mechanism which needs to be fixed”. It would greatly help, if also theologians could adopt and support this perspective.

A New UK Constitution? – No Effective Democracy without Permanent Effective Control by Citizens

Leave a reply

Key Points

The London School of Economics (LSE) has initiated a highly important project for the well-being of society in the UK, now and in the future, a project to design a new UK constitution. The project should be of great relevance for all democracies in the world, since they also suffer from to a larger or smaller degree ineffective policy making systems.

We suggest that the success of the project, ultimately success in ensuring the highest quality of democratic policy making conceivable in the UK, will depend on two key aspects:

The work of creating an effective constitution must itself be structured in the most effective way possible.

Establishing a new policy making system is only the first step. It must be followed up by establishing a permanent effective civil society control system over the democratic policy making system.

________________________________________________________________________

A Dire State: Society and the World at Risk

Our society and our world of seven billion people are in a dire state. In the UK like in other western countries poverty is on the increase, there is high youth unemployment. We talk about a “Lost Generation” and a “Broken Society”. At the same time, we, as part of humanity as a whole, are overexploiting the resources of our world, we are polluting it. With allowing climate change we are actually even contributing to the destruction of the world, the home of future generations.

Ineffective Policy Making Systems, also in the UK

Our democratic policy making systems do not seem able to cope with these enormously complex problems. While governments cannot even agree on a strategy to limit global warming at 2ᵒ Celsius, scientists are already suggesting that this limit is far too lenient and that we cannot allow any further increase in global temperatures whatsoever. Governments are far too slow in picking this information up. They allow humanity to run towards the precipice of destroying the world without suggesting a comprehensive strategy to stop climate change. Governments including the UK government also allow biogenetics to change the nature of human and animal life without empowering society to control the developments. The UK government like other governments does not stop wealth and income gaps from widening and society to disintegrate, so that observers warn about a continuous decay of society into social instability and chaos[i]. The rise of new and extreme parties and the protest movements in different European countries illustrate the consequences of increasing discontent of society with economic developments. Studies suggest that unemployment and deprivation was a main cause also for the UK riots in 2011.

Reasons for the Ineffectiveness of Our Policy Making Systems

What are the reasons for the incapability of the democratic system also in the UK to deal with the challenges of our time?

Inherent Structural Deficits in the Way We Have Set Up Democracy

First of all deficits in the performance of the UK democracy, as of other democracies as well, appear to be caused by inherent structural deficits in the way we have structured democracy. The key problem is that governments must expect that policies perceived as uncomfortable or a burden by wider society will topple them. They will avoid any necessary but painful measures as long as only possible, even if such delays might seriously damage a society or lead to the destruction of the world, the prospect in the case of global warming. If we want democracy to truly work for the long-term benefits of a society we must establish control mechanisms which disable this inherent destructive mechanism in democracy.

Lack of Leadership?

Political observers like Al Gore and Eric Schmidt from Google put the failure of our systems to manage our modern world to a large extent down to a lack of national and international political leadership. Such lack of leadership will indeed be one cause for the ineffectiveness of our democracies. To some degree it may be connected with the inherent problems discussed above in the way we design democracy. Even great leaders are at least to some degree subject to these mechanisms.

But one reason for a lack of leadership may also be that a society simply gets the leadership it “deserves” or which it establishes. In probably no democracy effective systems are in place to select leaders of the quality society requires, also not in the UK. If we are honest, we realise that we elect our leaders based on an impression of their personality only, rather than on the basis of a clearly defined qualification profile.

Beyond these considerations on the qualities and qualifications to be required from our leaders, a society must recognize that running a nation and the world in the 21^st century is an enormously complex task. No single person can have comprehensive and perfect knowledge and capacities to fulfil such a vast responsibility by him- or herself. Rather than hoping for the appearance of a super-hero, a super-leader who solves all of its problems, a society, therefore, needs to have a system in place which ensures that its democratic policy making system works properly.

No Effective Control System

One fundamental problem in our democracies is that we do not have such an effective system in place, a process which fulfils the task of “making our policy making system function effectively”. The main political control system we rely upon is parliamentary control. But the system does not work well, partly not at all.

“Parliamentary control of government expenditure is a myth” and “if it is not a constitutional myth, it is close to one,” stated two parliamentary committees at the beginning of the 1980s and about twenty years later, shortly before the year 2000.[ii] In the year 2000, still a young MP, the present Secretary for Energy and Climate Change, Edward Davey, published a paper on budget scrutiny by parliament in which he fully subscribed to these observations. “In practice, MPs do little more than rubber stamp the Executive’s budget”, Davey himself formulated, putting the ineffectiveness of parliament in examining government expenditures down to a lack of time, resources, and staff support. As further aspects he mentions the lack of expertise of MPs “on entering parliament”, and their lack of independence. They would be aiming for “promotion up the greasy role of party preferment”.[iii]

We can be certain that these deficits will compromise all other control functions of parliament as well, for example the tasks of making sure that policy making in areas such as climate change, international development, or in government control over the finance system are effective.

Within Government: Even Core Policy Making Processes Not Working

As a result of lacking effective control, even fundamental policy making processes in the UK government have not been working properly, for years or possibly decades of policy making. The deficits happen to be discovered by more or less random processes.

In a 2012 inquiry into strategy making in British government the parliamentary Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) suggested to the Minister of State from the Cabinet Office witnessing on the matter that some observers might consider the strategic aims formulated by the British government at the time “motherhood and apple pie”, i.e. far to general and meaningless. In its final report the Committee concluded:

“We have little confidence that Government policies are informed by a clear, coherent strategic approach, itself informed by a coherent assessment of the public’s aspirations and their perceptions of the national interest. The Cabinet and its committees are made accountable for decisions, but there remains a critical unfulfilled role at the centre of Government in coordinating and reconciling priorities, to ensure that long-term and short-term goals are coherent across departments. Policy decisions are made for short-term reasons, little reflecting the longer-term interests of the nation. This has led to mistakes which are becoming evident in such areas as the Strategic Defence and Security Review (carrier policy), energy (electricity generation and renewables) and climate change…[iv] (We have underlined the most important passages.)

The statement is very clear: A lack of strategic capacity is responsible for the failure of government in many critical areas for society and the globe, including actually the existential issue of Climate Change. Which processes are in place to correct any deficits discovered such as this one, would be a further question to investigate. The author of this article sent a proposal for an improved strategy making system to the Cabinet Office, but never received a reply.

If two core processes in our democratic policy making system such as parliamentary control and strategy making are not working effectively, this is similar to the heart and lung in the human body not working properly. As a consequence the entire policy making system cannot produce the required policies. Due to faulty management and co-ordination at the top of government many other processes in the management of public policy will be ineffective and inefficient as well. It is by no means surprising for example that Sir Philipp Green conducting a review of the government procurement system on behalf of the British government in 2010 stated that government waste was “shocking”. He found that government was squandering billions through lack of management and co-ordination in procurement. After the financial crisis, which cost society many more billions, the fact was revealed that the tripartite control system over the financial sector shared by Treasury, Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority never was designed in an effective fashion.

Deficits like these lead to the waste of public resources in many areas, to the loss of opportunities to create employment or to foster the well-being of society in other respects. Their accumulated effects can contribute to the destabilization of society of which observers warn.

The Need for the Most Effective Democratic Policy Making Systems Conceivable

We might contend against these thoughts that human action will never be “perfect”.

Yet, as we will also agree, a government clearly should have a professional strategy making system in place, and it should also not be wasting billions on procurement. The problems which a nation like the UK and our world of seven billion people are facing are so urgent and so complex that we in fact need the very best tools, we need policy making systems of the highest quality to stand a chance to manage these problems adequately and to preserve society and the world in a healthy state for future generations.

Settling for less than the best tools in managing our public policy issues, settling for less than the best policy making systems could be damaging still to ourselves and would be negligent towards our children and grandchildren, towards future generations who are entitled to receive the world in a good state. The critical question, therefore, is: Are we doing everything to make sure our policy systems are working as optimally as they can?

A “Refurbished” UK Constitution: A First Necessary Step in the Right Direction

If we subscribe to the need for “optimal democratic policy making systems” we recognize that the endeavour to build a new constitution initiated by the London School of Economics is exactly the right step in the required direction. The initiative appears absolutely necessary to ensure the long-term soundness of society and to contribute to the health of the globe.

But for the initiative to lead to success we must take two aspects into consideration: The initiative must be structured in an effective manner to lead to the best policy making system conceivable for the UK, and second, as we shall discuss in more detail below, it is actually only the first of two steps required. We must not only put a highly effective system in place, we also must check and control on an ongoing basis that it in fact operates with the highest degree of effectiveness and efficiency. For a manufacturing company there is no use in only building a highly sophisticated machine. One must also make sure that qualified personnel and adequate resources are in place for the effective operation of the machine and one also must consistently check its performance. If the well-being of sixty million people and the state of the world are at stake, we finally must constantly check for further options arising over time to enhance the effectiveness of our policy making system. The future of a society and of the world may depend on such checks.

Presently the UK constitutional system is a “collection of traditions” which developed over centuries and happen to be combined in a democratic policy making process. One element highlighting the historic background of the present system is the separation of control over government into Parliament and House of Lords without it being really clear what the difference in function between these two houses is. The distinction between the “Lords” and the “Commons” does not make sense anymore in a world built on the paradigm of equality.

Understandably arguments are even being put forward to dissolve the House of Lords altogether. From a systemic perspective this would appear to make sense. A practical guideline in establishing an effective policy making system would be to have one functioning control system over it rather than two systems which do not function adequately (for example in ensuring that government strategy making is effective as discussed above). Last not least two control systems generally cost more than one and in the time of scarce and thoroughly needed public resources no waste can be afforded. Any potential savings by eliminating a redundant control system may be offset, however, by the recognition that the creation of an effective control system will require that we step up the resources we provide for our control system. As mentioned above, parliament presently suffers from a lack of resources as one factor compromising its effectiveness.

To be somewhat provocative one could argue that all in all the present UK constitutional system is like an English vintage car. One might cherish the system and its traditions, but in its present state it is not adequate anymore for the complex policy challenges of our time. In fact most democratic systems in the world suffer from similar or even worse deficits than the UK system. Not only the UK constitutional system needs to be overhauled urgently to match the demands of the world of the 21^st century, the policy making systems in most democratic countries do. If the UK manages to set up a highly effective process in designing a tailor-made constitution capable to address the challenges of our time, then this will hopefully have a pollinating effect on other countries as well. Last not least the well-being of the UK society depends also on the long term economic, social, and political stability in other countries, especially of its neighbours in Europe, and also on the effective functioning of their political systems.

Some Principles for Building the Most Effective UK Constitution Conceivable

If we want to build the most effective UK constitution conceivable we probably have to follow a number of principles:

Structured Approach

Even if it might sound trivial, it will be worthwhile calling a fundamental requirement to mind, the need to identify and apply a structured approach to building a constitution and a democratic policy making system. We must think exactly about what we want to achieve, we must identify the parameters of relevance to our aims, and ensure that they are in place.

Preserving What Works, Improving What Is Faulty

Many people fear that a process which designs a new Constitution on a drawing board might end up throwing practices over board which have proven their worth over long periods of time. Such concerns appear justified to a certain extent. Agreeing on and installing processes which work for a society of millions of people must be an extremely difficult process. Still, we need the courage to identify deficits in our policy making system which might be critical for the long term stability of society and for the maintenance of the world.

Only Regulate The Fundamental Principles For A Society

It will probably be a well-established principle in constitutional law to incorporate only a minimum of regulations in a constitution, regulations which are necessary as the foundation for the functioning of society, of the political system, and the well-being of all. Some of those principles will generally be those concerning the dignity of human life, unalienable rights such individual freedom and equity before the law, the Categorical Imperative, the responsibility towards future generations, the role of the state vs. the role of the individual perhaps, and possibly the fundamental principles on the split of powers and responsibility between regional, communal, and the national government. Other issues of a more changing and contemporary nature should probably be addressed in specific laws to be discussed in detail by society. Where the exact dividing line should be, will have to be discussed in more detail. The general aim should indeed be to create a long-term foundation for a stable society.

Identifying Optimal Methods In Building Effective Systems

A key element of a structured and effective approach to building a new constitution must be to identify the best methods for the very process of building a constitution and effective policy making systems. An architect won’t be able to build a state of the art house, if he or she does not understand the best methods of constructing it. We won’t be able to build an effective constitution, if we do not check which methods might be available, helpful, or even necessary in building an effective constitution. I suggest that one of the methods to be applied should be Systems Thinking. But there may well be other useful methods and approaches as well.

Clear Goal Identification

As the first step in our concrete work on the project we will have to agree on and specify exactly what we want to and must achieve. Given the complexity of the situation and the urgency of the problems we are facing, I suggest we should define as our goal “to build the most effective UK democratic policy making system conceivable, effective both in terms of maximizing the common good and in terms of maintaining society and the globe in a good and healthy state for future generations”. It is necessary for us to discuss and to agree on the “right” goal, whatever this may be, so we do not waste resources by straying in different directions or do not risk missing the point of our endeavours all together.

Identifying Parameters Which Affect The Process of Building An Optimal Constitution Itself

Having defined our goal we must check which parameters affect the process of getting there. The key parameters to succeed in the process of building an effective constitution will be: Know-how and resources. We need the optimal know-how to build an optimal constitution. We need a highly effective system and the necessary resources to be able to identify the best know-how.

Another parameter for relevance in building an effective policy making system is independence, no influence by any select interest group in society can be allowed. To safeguard independence the resources for building a new policy making system must be provided by wider society or by clearly “neutral” donors who do not pursue an agenda deviating from the common good.

Crowd-Sourcing

Crowd-sourcing as practiced in this LSE project on the British Constitution is a key element in establishing the best know-how on methods in building a constitution. It is also important in optimizing the solution for individual issues, such as the question, what the best voting system is or the best control system over government.

In resorting to crow-sourcing we must, however, take into consideration that – as a general guideline – we will only then create the best constitution conceivable, if we collect and assess all know-how available in a society and in the world on a constitutional issue. Our crowd-sourcing process must be designed in such a way that anybody in a society who has relevant know-how has a chance to get involved and to make a contribution. To secure the very best know-how on a constitutional issue the process of crowd-sourcing must be complemented by an effective process to scout all information available in a country and in the world on this particular matter.

Understanding A Constitution As A System Of Systems

One precondition for optimizing our democratic policy making system is that we understand the policy making system as a “system-of systems”. Each of the subsystems in the democratic policy making system needs to be optimized to ensure the entire system indeed works best.

Among other sub-systems of our overall policy making system we need an effective system to define exactly what the “common good” for our society is, what the role of the state in achieving it is, we need an effective system to identify risks and chances for the common good, a system to determine the priorities the policy system must set, and a system for optimal strategy making on each issue.

The policy system will not work effectively, if any of these sub-systems do not work correctly. The slacker the performance of each sub-system, the worse will the overall policy making system work, the more resources will it waste. A failure of the sub-system for strategy making system will affect the performance of the entire policy making system as we saw. We need to know how to build effective systems for all individual functions and system elements.

No Effective Policy Making System without Permanent Effective Control

If we understand policy making as a system of systems, we become aware that the project Constitution UK initiated by the LSE acts in fact as a system to build an effective British constitution, a system “created by parts of and working on behalf of society”.

But as we said we must not only establish a first class policy making system, we also must consistently check and evaluate whether it fulfils our expectations. We must make sure that it performs with the highest degree of effectiveness and efficiency, we must make sure that the people we elect to operate the system are qualified and play by the rules, and we must make sure that the system has sufficient resources to fulfil its tasks effectively. We also must always check whether there are new and better methods arising to ensure our policy system generates the best possible results.

To achieve these goals society must set up a permanent, effective control system over its democratic policy making system. The future of our society and of the world depends on the existence of such an effective citizen control system in the UK and best in all democratic nations.

How To Set-Up An Effective Control System Over The Policy Making System?

Basically in a democracy every citizen has equal rights and equal obligations. If democracy is government by the people, as one element of the well-known statement by Abraham Lincoln, then this theoretically must mean that all members of society should work together in establishing an effective control system over the policy making system. Such effective control requires know-how, resources, and power. All citizens in a society should join to make sure these parameters are in place. In order to establish effective citizen control over the policy making system in practice, citizens need to join in a control institution “outside” of the democratic policy making system to exert control “over” it.

The graph published in the description of our model illustrates how such a system must ideally work:

Click to access how-to-optimize-democracy.pdf

Talking about such citizen control over the policy making system we realize, however, that in the end there is no clear dividing line between society and its policy making system. Just like parliament is part of the policy making system, a citizen control system “over” the policy making system can as well be considered to be a part of the policy making system in a wider sense. The policy system and society are closely intertwined. With controlling its policy making system, society is part of it.

Ultimately no system works without effective control by its stakeholders. Democratic society must engage in its policy making system.

Since a democratic policy making system can only work effectively with an effective citizen control institution checking and ensuring its performance, such an element must be incorporated in a constitution as a necessary part of the policy making process. Describing the function and responsibility of society in the policy making process in the constitution is crucial for the effectiveness of the democratic policy making system.

Even if for functional reasons such a civil society control organisation is necessary to ensure the effectiveness of a policy making system, it may not be possible to establish such a control organization carried by the entire population of a nation. This issue needs to be investigated further. Even if democracy is considered to be government by the people, i.e. by all people, human nature, limited capacities, more immediate needs, and limited inclination to engage in the life of a nation and the state of the world might speak against the entire population of a nation getting involved in such an organisation. Whether it is possible or not may depend on the quality of citizenship education in a nation and on the way one organises the institution.

In any case initially at least these people in a society who feel responsible and have the time and capacities to contribute to the future of a nation and of the world must join. They must establish such a necessary control organisation. To start with, the organisation could simply be created as a public policy institute carried by as many citizens as possible. Over time the institution would have to strive to gather more and more support in the wider population. One aim of the organisation must be to foster better citizenship education in society, so that citizens understand their personal responsibility and critical role in making the democratic policy system work.

Of course the proposal for the establishment of a citizen control institution will raise the question, how citizens control in turn control this new, “their own” control organisation over the policy making system. This is in fact a difficult issue in itself, which cannot be discussed in all detail at this point. The design of an optimal solution for this matter should probably be the subject of a crowd-sourcing and research project in itself.

We can, however, already state that citizens will have more effective control over their own control organisation than over government, if they have the authority to cancel their membership and financial subscriptions, should they not be content with the performance of the control organisation. Citizens don’t have such control leverage over government. They must pay their taxes whether they are content with the performance of government or not.

Maybe creating the “perfectly working” control institution is ultimately not possible. There is, with all likelihood, no switch with which we can control the quality of policy making unequivocally.

But society may simply have to understand that having a lever to move a large boulder, even if it is a bad one, is better than not having one at all. Having a control organisation over the policy making system is better than no control organisation. The constant challenge will be to make this control organisation, the control “system” as effective as only possible.

Having such a control organisation certainly has one crucial benefit for society: Since many policy areas are of relevance, partly of crucial importance for the quality of life of citizens, they basically have to control the quality of government policy making in all of these areas. This is not possible for individual citizens, however.

With establishing a control organisation, citizens have someone to control the quality of government policy making in all policy areas on their behalf. Rather than having to control the work of government in many complex policy areas of critical relevance, they themselves must only control one action, the work of the lever, of their control organisation. If we manage to structure the lever in a clear and simple fashion, controlling its work by society will be comparatively simple.

But of course, if this citizens’ organisation recommends a measure to make government more effective, for example a new effective strategy making process in government, the organisation still may need the support of wider civil society, so that the politicians actually implement the required improvements. At present, even if research institutes or consultants may make sensible proposals for improving policy making processes, the government often neglect these proposals or refuses implementing them, especially if proposals might not enhance or even weaken its chances for re-election. But simply a broad membership in the control organisation will give citizens a substantial influence on the quality of policy making.

In his introduction to the project “Constitution UK” Professor Conor Gearty from LSE provocatively states that “the status quo is no longer an option”…we “surely can do better than a bunch of medieval barons managed to pull off in Runnymede in June 1215”.[v]

One must consent. Given the complex challenges and the partly existential risks for the UK and the world existing in the world of today we indeed urgently need a tailor-made democratic policy making system geared for maximum effectiveness and, in as much as only possible, capable to handle these challenges. If we were to make one amendment to the present constitutional system only, it would have to be a fundamental one serving this goal: the introduction of an effective permanent control system by society over the policy making system.

[i] So for example the British-American historian Tony Judt, Ill fares the land, Allen Lane, London, 2010

[ii] Quotes in: Edward Davey, “Making MPs work for our money: reforming Parliament’s Role in Budget scrutiny”, Centre for Reform Paper No. 19, centre for Reform, London, 2000

[iii] Edward Davey, About the pamphlet, http://www.edwarddavey.co.uk/archive/book2.htm

[iv] House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee, Strategic thinking in Government: without National Strategy, can viable Government strategy emerge?, Twenty Fourth Report of Session 2010–12

Volume I: Report, together with formal minutes, oral and written evidence, p.3

[v] http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/constitutionuk/introduction/

Governments on trial for the destruction of the earth? – Creating democratic policy making systems for a new age

Leave a reply

Imagine, 5 young people, a couple of parents, and two childrens’ organizations in the US – Kids vs Global Warming and the Wild Earth Guardians – are suing the mighty U.S. government.[1] The case is of the utmost relevance to all of us, all citizens of the world, wherever we might live. And actually, it should be brought forward against all governments on earth, if only to raise awareness of the issue: The young people want to force the U.S. government to immediately implement policies which stop the destruction of the earth from global warming. More concretely they demand policies which reduce annual CO² emissions, so the world is maintained at current temperatures.

Defendants in the case are various top members of the U.S. government including the secretaries for the interior, for energy, and defense, and the administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Amazingly and probably for legal reasons, the President himself has not been charged, even if in the eyes of society the head of state of a nation certainly is the main person responsible for government policy making.

In the first round of litigation the case was dismissed by a court in Washington D.C. The plaintiffs filed for appeal of the decision in the U.S. court of appeals in June 2013. At present the case is gaining more and more support by experts and organizations within the U.S. Key scientific advisers for the plaintiffs are a team of scientists around the reputable U.S. climatologist James Hansen including the economist Jeffrey Sachs. The team puts severe considerations forward suggesting that the current climate goal pursued by the international community, the aim to limit the temperature rise at 2ᵒC, more than twice the amount of global warming already incurred over the last 100 years, is far too dangerous and irresponsible[2]. All in all, the situation is even far more critical than these numbers suggest, since it is by no means certain that our international governments will even achieve the more lenient target set by them.[3]

So how should we judge the case against the U.S. government?

Increasing public perception on the facts of global warming

First of all we have to highly welcome the litigation, because it generates publicity for this issue of the highest relevance to all of us and of even existential importance for future generations.

Many, if not most of us, have not realized it yet or still have doubts, but all evidence, generated by the probably largest and most comprehensive research effort the world has ever jointly undertaken, confirms: Our behavior, billions of people around the globe relentlessly burning fossil fuels, is, with all likelihood, causing the destruction of the earth. A report written by more than 250 scientists from 39 countries around the world which took into consideration more than 50000 publications and commentaries from scientists all around the world confirmed those risks in September 2013.[4] Our behavior threatens to increase global temperatures by about 5ᵒC by the end of the century, it is in the process of changing weather patterns and living conditions all over the world, it is causing desertification, and floods, as well as the rise of the sea level in the world, which could well increase by 20 meters over the coming centuries or millenia[5]. If we allow this to happen, the sea will flood large parts of the earth, land and urban agglomerations, directly affecting the life of a large share of the global population and indirectly the entire global population. Finally the warming caused by us threatens to extinguish up to 50% of all species on the earth already by the end of this century, which, because of the interdependence of all life on earth, must have gravely deleterious impacts on the quality of human life on earth as well.

If we still do not believe that this is the case, we are not entitled to rely on random newspaper publications to inform us. If some of the most acknowledged scientists in the world tell us that we are causing the destruction of the earth and that urgent action is necessary to protect it, we must take such a statement extremely seriously. We are obliged to our children and to future generations to examine it ourselves and to establish for ourselves, what the truth is. We are responsible to demand a clarification from our governments. Their proposition that the information “is available” is not good enough. They must present the information in a manner understandable by all people. They must ensure that people know what is happening, just as they ensure that drivers know the traffic rules.

(Note: For more information on the basic facts on global warming and what we have to do about it, please, see https://optimisingdemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/global-warming-facts-and-assessment-compilation-february-2014-optimizingdemocracy.pdf)

Copying the litigation in other countries

One prime disadvantage of the case brought forward in the U.S. is that it is in fact only brought forward in the U.S. Even if the U.S. are a major contributor to CO² pollution of the atmosphere, they are by no means the only ones. [6]All people and countries on earth need to co-operate in stopping global warming and the destruction of the earth. Organizations working to stop global warming in any nation should consider following the example of the young people who are suing the U.S. government, so that necessary actions are not delayed in any country.

The effectiveness of the litigation

While the litigation, while raising public awareness, and moving the policy issue to the top of our agenda are steps of prime relevance to protect the earth against the risks of global warming, we should be aware that the litigation will not in itself achieve that effective policies are put into place. Whatever the outcome of the litigation will be, we still need effective policy making systems to design and to implement the best policies we can only conceive.

One fundamental problem, which the case seems to suffer from and which delays an adequate outcome, is that the issue is being squeezed into a set of legal concepts partly deriving from Roman and medieval times[7]. Yet never before in the history of mankind has the earth been at stake. Old legal concepts, it appears, cannot do justice to such an existential issue of a new kind and of completely new dimensions. Allowing a solution to be slowed down by a discussion of all kinds of legal aspects, such as whether dealing with the atmosphere as a public trust domain is a case of state or federal law, appears to even be inadequate given that allegedly the fate of the earth is at stake and delaying suitable measures to protect it will make saving the earth more and more difficult.

Does it exist, our obligation to protect the earth?

Since the whole issue is novel and of unprecedented character we should perhaps use common sense to guide our decision making on the case, rather than relying on pre-cast historic legal concepts. If we think in problem solving-oriented, constructive terms, the prime question to answer is likely to be: Are we obliged to protect the earth for future generations or not? Even if a court should decide that such an obligation exists for reasons of the law, the success of a national and global program to stop global warming will depend on whether the wider public also subscribes to the duty to protect the earth.

In conversations many people, even if they might have grown up children and become grandparents in a few years, give in to the perception that it could well already be too late to take co-ordinated action, that the support for any program would probably not be wide enough and that, looking at the history of the earth, it might rather be a normal process for a species like man to become extinct. In accepting these as “unalterable developments” they ignore that the destruction of the earth will be a long disastrous process for the nine billion people forecast to live on the globe in the near future. To convince wider society that we indeed must protect the earth and that as a consequence a substantial change in our style of living is necessary, will require outstanding leadership, even if the outcome of the litigation should confirm such an obligation.

A next question to answer will be, which priority policies to stop global warming must have in relation to all other policy issues. The answer to be suggested by common sense will with all likelihood be: The highest priority, since maintaining the earth is the pre-condition for any life and activities on earth. All other policy issues, even those of maintaining jobs and providing good health care are of adjunct, secondary importance compared to protecting the earth, it cannot be the other way around. That is what our governments do not seem to realize and this is one reason why this court case is so relevant. (The scientists supporting the case highlight that efforts to stop global warming will not necessarily hamper economic development, but is actually likely to create jobs. Stopping emissions will protect the health of human beings.)

As the judge dismissing the case in the first instance points out, however, and rightly so: Courts cannot decide what the best action in a specific policy issue such as global warming is.[8] What a court could possibly do is to enforce that governments follow a certain “governance code” in policy making, prescriptions on best-practice processes and procedures in policy making. But then such a code would have to exist and it would have to contain a set of regulations suited to lead to effective policy making.[9]

Even if researchers like James Hansen are convinced that certain steps are urgently necessary to stop global warming, they will concede that a government must adhere to certain procedural standards: Government must examine and confirm the nature, the magnitude, and the urgency of the problem, it must – to start with – establish a consensus on the obligation to preserve the globe in the nation, it must identify the very best strategy against global warming – one which as a secondary condition does not stop the functioning of our economies and societies. Government also must have or establish the capacity to implement these strategies as effectively and efficiently as only possible.

In the end, the plaintiffs can at best expect that the Court of Appeal decides that there exist justified grave concerns that the world is at risk from global warming and that it orders the government to assess the matter and to take the necessary steps to protect the earth as soon as possible. The scientists cannot presume or demand that the government and its responsible agency comes to the same results as they did. But if they have worked correctly and if the government establishes the best decision and policy making capacities, then the result should be the same, at least roughly.

The parameters deciding on the success of the initiative

What is necessary then to ensure that government policy making is “as effective and efficient” as only conceivable in the fight against global warming and that it arrives at the best policies in the shortest time frame possible?

We suggest the first overall precondition for arriving at optimal measures against the threat of global warming are optimal decision and policy making processes in the overall policy making system.

The establishment and implementation of processes of such prime quality depends on:

Optimal know-how
The optimal qualification of policy makers
The motivation of policy makers to exclusively serve the common good or public well-being (or: the exclusive focus of policy makers on the common good)
The power of policy makers to implement policies serving the common good.
The quality of control over the policy making processes by the stakeholders, by wider society.
The resources available for policy making (design and implementation).

As we said these observations will be of the highest relevance for the parties suing for an injunction to make the government design and implement the policies required to stop the destruction of the earth: Only if the mentioned parameters are in place will the government have the necessary qualities to cope with global warming effectively. The stakeholders interested in protecting the earth including the persons bringing the court case against the US government forward must ensure that the policy making bodies have those qualities. Otherwise their endeavors will not generate the required success.

Qualification of politicians and strategy making competencies

One central aspect on which we, as citizens, are just too lenient is that our governments and politicians may simply lack the required qualification and strategy making competencies to manage a complex policy issue like global warming appropriately.

The following statement from an official report by UK parliamentarians examining the strategy making capacity of the British government in the year 2012 articulates those crucial deficits lucidly and even with express reference to climate change (we have underlined the most critical passages) [10]:

The statement could well have been written by parliamentarians in any democratic nation, simply because fundamental processes and structures are similar in all democracies and lead to comparable outcomes. The fact that we, as citizens, accept deficits in the quality of policy making processes like these and the lack of qualification of the people establishing those processes is one cause which could lead to the destruction of the earth.

Motivation, Focus, and Power

The “motivation”, the exclusive “focus” of people involved in the policy making process on the common good is of equal relevance for effective policy making against global warming and in other policy areas. What prevents politicians in democracies from directing their actions to the well-being of wider society may be the desire for maintenance of power, the looking-out for votes and voter reaction, and as a consequence the concentration on more noticeable issues of more immediate relevance to society. Also career considerations or personal interests will distract politicians from focusing on the common good and, of course, corruption and nepotism are detrimental issues in many democracies, diluting or even destroying the effectiveness of policy making for the common good.

Furthermore politicians must not only have the capacity and the motivation to work for the common good, but also the power to implement optimal policies. Everybody behind the litigation will be aware that there are gigantic and even understandable global corporate interests against stopping the burning of fossil fuels. Those interests will do everything possible to prevent policy makers pursuing what must be their primary goal in the interests of this and future generations, the protection of the earth, so future generations can live on it. As odd as it may sound, government may even have to examine possibilities for compensating investors in fossil fuels, to bring them to support policies to protect the earth. Those investors might claim to have invested “in good faith”.

The decisive role of control by citizens

The support of the courts will in any case not be sufficient to overcome such inertia or outright resistance against policies to protect the earth. As Lincoln states, ultimately democracy is government also by the citizens. In order to ensure that our policy makers focus on the common good and have the power to implement measures serving the common good, wider society must both control and support its politicians, it must endow the power of wider society on them so politicians can withstand the pressure of select interest groups.

We as members of society cannot rely on our representatives in parliament to exert effective control over our policy makers on our behalf. One key statement in the report on the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was: “In short, it took a catastrophe to attract congressional attention.”[11] What this statement means is that also our parliamentarians do not have an effective process to identify risks for the well-being of society and to ensure government policy making is effective.

The persons and organizations behind the court case on global warming do not only want to win the court case, ultimately they want to ensure the best measures are taken by the government to stop global warming in the shortest time frame possible. They will only arrive at this goal, if they themselves exert constant and effective control over the entire policy making process required to protect the earth and if they rally as much support as possible behind their case.

Procuring the necessary resources for effective policy making

Governments finally often fail in their policy making because they do not have the resources necessary for effective policy making.

As the report of the commission inquiring the causes for the Deep Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf found out, this was the case for the government agency supposed to control deep sea oil drilling and one reason why the disaster happened. The report states: “But over time, (the agency) increasingly fell short in its ability to oversee the offshore oil industry. The agency’s resources did not keep pace with industry expansion into deeper waters and industry’s related reliance on more demanding technologies.“ [12]

Many people in the U.S. aim to reduce the role of the state by “starving the beast”. This is the wrong approach, if we want to preserve public wellbeing, as the Deepwater Horizon case demonstrates.

In a time when technologies in many areas advance and have more and more decisive effects on our environment and lives, in a world of now seven billion people with ever more complex policy issues it is essential that our policy systems have the resources to fulfill their tasks. Rather than reducing the funds we provide to our public policy systems we may have to enhance them. The people driving the court case and generally anybody interested in stopping global warming must aim to ensure that government has the resources and the capacities necessary to design and implement the required policies to stop the destruction of the earth.

Other existential threats to the well-being of future generations

As necessary and valuable as efforts like the court case against the U.S. government on the issue of global warming are, the problem is: They neglect that other issues of “existential” character threaten the well-being of this and future generations as well. This will be of particular relevance also for organizations aiming to protect the rights and the future of children such as the plaintiffs in the court case, Kids vs Global Warming and Wild Earth Guardians.

In his book “The Future”, published in the beginning of 2013, Al Gore presents a substantial discussion of a number of present critical threats to humanity[13]. One of them appears to be at least of the same magnitude as global warming: With the help of biogenetics and largely unnoticed from the wider public we, humanity, are actually in the process of changing life on earth as we know it, human and animal life.[14] Biogenetics will enable us to extinguish many hereditary genetic diseases. At the same time biogenetics will soon allow us to create designer-babies, whose traits parents or, perhaps at some point in time, society will select. We might turn to throwing away millions of embryos with genetic defects. At the same time we are also changing the life of other creatures: Does humanity really need goats which produce spider silk? Are we going to be able to control the new technologies and their effects? Aren’t we going to create chaos, if we interfere into even the design of life?

As Al Gore points out, society across the globe does not discuss these questions of existential relevance, we lack adequate leadership by our political leaders and we don’t steer. In our terms: We lack effective policy making systems.

A further threat to humanity is the increasing surveillance by governments and corporations. On the internet, “I read and I am being read”, formulates the editor of a leading German newspaper[15]. More and more observers see us approaching the scenarios of “Brave New World” and of “1984”, the scenarios described by Huxley and Orwell in which human beings have no freedom whatsoever, in which they are subjects controlled, manipulated, and perhaps even bred by their governments.

A next problem is that advancing technology such as robotisation and 3D-printing combined with the global transferability of production via the internet threatens to cause the loss of more and more jobs also in industrialized countries and even already in newly developed countries like China.

Not only Al Gore highlights the growing imbalances in wealth, income distribution, and the outright poverty also in the West as a result of these developments as well as the ensuing risks to peace and social stability. In 2009, twenty years after the Berlin wall came down and in the light of the increasing disparities between the rich and the poor in the world, Mikhail Gorbachev already demanded that we need to redefine global democratic capitalism, if we want to avoid social destabilization, conflicts, and terrorism.[16] The renowned British-American historian Tony Judt warns that the increasing economic and social imbalances would cause collapse and brutality in our societies resembling the break-down of societies before WW II.[17] In his 2010 book ”Time for Outrage” (“Indignez-vous” in the original French title) and at already 93 years of age, Stephane Hessel, a WWII concentration camp prisoner, French resistance fighter and former diplomat also expressed his distress with the new extreme discrepancies between the poor and rich and the resulting threats for peace and democracy. In the light of the failure of the leaders in governments and society to cope with these issues he called on the young people of the earth to take charge of the creation of just and social democracies.[18]

Another concern for our earth is that we are already severely over-exploiting the resources of our planet with a population of seven billion estimated to approach nine billion by the middle of the century. Al Gore mentions that even such basic critical resources as water and topsoil, necessary for securing food for the global population, are getting sparse and increasingly become a cause for migration and conflicts, problems which will be exacerbated manifold, if we do not stop global warming. We are also polluting our globe, allowing for example that carpets of plastic garbage the size of parts of Europe are already covering our oceans. Fragments of this garbage even threaten to enter the human food chain

While all of these developments are going on, global power is “in the balance” as Al Gore emphasizes. There presently is no clear leadership structure in the world anymore. Generally, nation states are more and more powerless against large global corporations. Furthermore their influence is diluted by ethnic allegiances of people exceeding the boundaries of nations.

The need for policy making systems of the highest degree of effectiveness and efficiency

Fighting against global warming probably must have the highest priority among all the urgent policy concerns humanity is facing at present. But if we want to maintain the globe, humanity, and our societies in a sound and healthy state for future generations, if we want to maintain peace and well-being in the world, we have to address all the issues threatening the globe and humanity effectively at the same time. Directing energy exclusively to global warming appears as if we wanted to plug one large hole of a leaking barrel, while water comes running out of six or more other big holes. Keeping the water in the barrel requires a comprehensive and highly coordinated effort.

It is obvious that we cannot address all the pressing issues in the world of today by first having to go to court on each issue. The process takes too much time and, as the scientist Hansen points out, comes also too late: Had our governments initiated reductions of CO² emissions already in 2005 decreases of only 3.5% per annum would have been necessary to maintain global temperatures at present levels, now we need to reduce CO² emissions already by 6% per annum. If we wait until 2020 a reduction of 15% per annum will be necessary.[19] What this would mean for our economies we can perhaps grasp, if we imagine we personally would suddenly have to put aside regularly 15% rather than 3.5% of our monthly income for some expense which we did not anticipate at all.

Wasting time can “cost the earth”, the stability of our nations, and millions of human lives. Instead of society having to engage in a court case against their governments possibly over various competing policy issues, so they take long overdue action, our policy making systems need to be so effective that they take the necessary steps by themselves for each policy issue at the earliest opportunity. We as citizens must find ways and means to ascertain that our governments operate so effectively.

An initiative for optimizing the policy making system in the U.S.

All in all our world and humanity of now seven billion people appears to enter a new age with technological possibilities and opportunities, with systemic challenges and threats of a new dimension of interdependence and complexity –while many old problems such a large scale poverty and hunger also persist.

A new age, a new situation requires from us to rethink our conceptions and patterns of behavior. Our only chance to tackle the various existential problems threatening humanity simultaneously at the present time is by reviewing the capacities of our policy making systems and by ensuring that they perform at the highest degree of effectiveness and efficiency possible.

So far most of us living in democracies have taken this advantage for granted. So far we have relied on our governments to handle public policy for us. What the many failures of our governments show us, is that we cannot afford to be so indifferent about government policy making anymore.

Our ancestors fought with their lives for freedom and democracy. We, the citizens of, democratic countries must realize again that living in a democracy is a privilege and an obligation and that we personally, not our governments, are responsible for maintaining the earth. We personally are responsible to ensure that the way we manage our society and our world is effective. We as citizens are responsible to establish effective governments and policy making systems.

To ensure that our governments cope effectively with the challenges and threats of our time, we as citizens need to be effective ourselves. We need to create a strong joint citizens’ initiative to ensure the effectiveness of our policy making system across the board. In the U.S. such an initiative might be called “Optimizing Democracy USA”. Of course, similar organizations are required in all democratic nations. Their task is to make sure that our policy systems are equipped with the parameters necessary for their effectiveness.

Let us come back to the court case against the U.S. government. If we realize, that in a democracy, we the people are ourselves responsible for governing the world, it follows that it is ultimately us, ourselves, who should be sued, not our governments, if we fail to protect the earth. Our politicians think, are trained, and operate within the confines of the political system we (or our ancestors) have established. If the policy making system doesn’t generate the results we require, we are obliged to look for ways to make it able to cope with the challenges and threats of our time.

Global warming and the other policy issues mentioned are of the greatest urgency. If we want to guarantee the well-being of and protect the earth for future generations, we cannot delay our efforts in making our governments and policy making systems as effective as required.

[1] http://ourchildrenstrust.org/US/Federal-Lawsuit

[2]James Hansen, Pushker Kharecha, Makiko Sato, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, Frank Ackerman, David J. Beerling, Paul J. Hearty, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Shi-Ling Hsu, Camille Parmesan, Johan Rockstrom, Eelco J. Rohling, Jeffrey Sachs, Pete Smith, Konrad Steffen, Lise Van Susteren, Karina von Schuckmann, James C. Zachos, Assessing ‘‘Dangerous Climate Change’’: Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature, PLOS ONE | http://www.plosone.org 1 December 2013 | Volume 8 | Issue 12 | e81648

[3] Christina Figueres, Head of the IPCC, formulated at the end of the international Climate Conference in Warsaw in November 2013: “The conference has brought us closer …to an agreement in 2015. It does not put us on track for a 2 degree world.” cf. UNFCCC closing press briefing Saturday 23 November at http://unfccc.int/meetings/warsaw_nov_2013/meeting/7649.php.

It is furthermore disconcerting that scientists put the probability of achieving the temperature limit of 2ᵒC with the current strategy of limiting the total CO² content in the atmosphere to 1000 Billion tons at somewhere between 66 and 100%. (cf. IPCC WGI AR5 SPM p. 20). In other words it is even by no means certain that the temperature target would be achieved with the current strategy, even if the international community were to ultimately comply with it. The current strategy could well lead to even higher temperatures than an increase of 2ᵒC. A more conservative approach as suggested by Hansen appears justified for a number of critical aspects.

[4] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis; http://climate2013.org/

[5] By the end of this century The IPCC expects a maximum sea level increase of .82 m (top of the “likely range” in the worst case scenario), at, however, increasing rates of sea levels rise. (IPCC, WG1 AR5, SMP. p 20, p. 25, p.35). The IPCC writes: “There is high confidence that sustained warming greater than some threshold would lead to the near-complete loss of the Greenland ice shield over a millennium or more, causing a global mean sea level rise of up to 7 m”. The IPCC also states there is high confidence that sea levels in the Pliocene with temperatures between 2ᵒC to 3.5ᵒC higher than pre-industrial levels did not exceed 20m above present.(WG1 5AR, Fin.Draft, Techn. Summary p. 12). Hansen et alii state that in the Eemian, when temperatures were about 2ᵒC higher than in the Holocene, the age of mankind, sea levels were about 9 meters higher, in the Pliocene, with temperatures about 3ᵒC warmer, sea levels were about 15-25 meters higher than today. As Hansen points out, the problem is less to assess which sea levels ultimately correlate with which temperature, but rather at which speed sea levels adapt to higher temperatures. He writes that some researchers suggest a multi-meter sea level rise could already occur this century. (Hansen at alii, p. 6).

[6] According to joint research by the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and the Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) China emitted 29% of the global CO²emissions in 2012 (fossil fuel and cement production)m the U.S. 15%, the EU 27 11%, India 6%, the Russian Federation 5%, and Japan 4%. (Source: Trends in global CO² emissions: 2013 Report, p.8). The largest contributors to CO² emissions per capita are: Luxembourg 21. 75 tons/cap, Australia, 18.77, Kazakhstan 16.44, the U.S. 16.36, EU(15) 7.49, China 7.09 (Source European Emission Database EDGAR http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/overview.php?v=CO2ts_pc1990-2012&sort=des9

[7] United States District Court For The Court of Columbia, Memorandum Opinion, Case 1:11-cv-02235-RLW Document 172 Filed 05/31/12, p.3

[8]Ibid., p.10

[9] The fact that a court case is necessary to increase the attention of the government to a matter of existential relevance for the earth like global warming and to point out that a present policy might destroy the earth, appears to indicate that such an effective governance code does not exist.

[10] House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee, Strategic thinking in Government: without National Strategy, can viable Government strategy emerge?,Twenty Fourth Report of Session 2010–12, Volume I: Report, together with formal minutes, oral and written evidence, p.3

[11] Deep Water The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling, Report to the President, National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, January 2011, p. 289

[12] Ibid., p.68

[13] Al Gore, The Future, Random House 2013

[14] Ibid., p. 204

[15] Frank Schirrmacher, Politik im Datenzeitalter: Was die SPD verschläft (Politics in the age of data: What the social democrats fail to notice ), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 25 September 2013

[16] Mikhail Gorbachev, The Berlin wall had to fall, but today’s world is no fairer, The Guardian, 30 October 2009

[17] Tony Judt, I’ll fares the land, A treatise on our present discontents, Allen Lane, 2010

[18] Stéphane Hessel, Time For Outrage, (French Original: “Indignez Vous!”), 2010, Indigène Éditons, Montpellier

[19] James Hansen at alii, 2013, p. 10

Building a Sound Democracy in Egypt

Leave a reply

What we see in Egypt is a tragedy so far, especially for the people, since they continue to suffer, and also for the world, which urgently requires more stability and to see countries succeed on their way to democratization, peace, and enhanced well-being for society. How can Egypt achieve building a sound democracy “in a second round” since the beginning of the Arab spring? Here a proposal for a sequence of required steps:

1. Defining Joint Goals, Creating a Joint Vision
The first step in building a strong and healthy society and democracy must be forming a joint vision of what the people of a society want to achieve.

The overarching goal for the Egyptian people should be building a balanced society in which everyone gets a chance to live a decent life and has the freedom to do what they like to do – as long as it does not harm any other person.

Present power holders should work with randomly selected activists and thinkers from society on defining goals and a joint vision and communicate with society on these goals in order to build a joined agreed platform.

2. Clarifying the Principles of a Functioning Democracy
The present government must communicate with the people on the rational and philosophical principles which are necessary as a foundation for a functioning democracy. The general guideline must be the Categorical Imperative by Kant, which states that everybody must act in a fashion with which everybody else in society must be able to agree. The common guideline that the freedom of one person ends where the freedom of the other person begins applies as well. Restrictions on and oppression of other peoples’ opinions and lifestyles, in as far as they don’t violate necessary rules and regulations, cannot lead to a functioning and strong democracy.

The government should discuss and communicate these issues clearly with all people in the Egyptian society. It must ensure that everybody in society understands why following certain fundamental principles is necessary in building a healthy democratic society.

3. Religion
Government must especially clarify with the entire population of Egypt which role religion can have in a democratic society.

Religion has much to offer to humanity. Many people look for deeper answers which they do not find in societies which are mainly focused on worldly pleasures and rewards.

But religion must also understand that ultimately there is no proof for religious beliefs and that God, if we believe He exists, in fact has created human beings to be different, at least on the outset. He placed people in different cultures and religious environments; He gave people different minds and the freedom to think and to choose the way they would like to live.

Religions must understand that they cannot force other people in a society or the world to live under their chosen principles. People who believe in a God must accept and even love other human beings as God has created them. If religious people want to have influence on the way a society lives, they can only do this by example and by gentle and caring persuasion.

As the German philosopher Lessing wrote in his play “Nathan the Wise”, the religion is the best religion which accumulates the greatest number of friends over time. Killing or oppressing other people created by God does not make sense. Making friends must be the goal of a religion, appreciating the diversity of creation, not coercion or aggression.

For Egypt the fact that people have been created to be different in thinking and culture means religious values cannot be used in any manner which restrains the values and freedom of other people. Democracy must allow religious freedom for everybody including atheism. Generally only those standards can be enshrined in a constitution which are necessary for the functioning of a society (unless all people were to agree voluntarily on stricter standards, something, which is unlikely to happen).

4. Employment and Income
A political system must aim to help people to fulfill their needs as specified for example in the pyramid of needs by the American psychologist Maslow. To fulfill their prime needs such as the need for food, shelter, and safety people need jobs and income.

To create jobs and income is one of the first tasks of a government. But government cannot do it alone. Creating jobs and income depends on the combined intelligence, endeavors, and on the co-operation of all people and institutions in a society. Jobs and income also depend of course on the natural resources a country offers.

The government must formulate reasonable goals with respects to jobs and income. It must explain to its people on which factors the creation of jobs and income depend, so expectations are realistic and people know what to do generally in order to earn an income.

In tough times all public resources, must be pooled and directed to the common aim of creating jobs and a stable society. Efforts must be rewarded, but any siphoning off of resources cannot be allowed. Building a sound and healthy democracy must be considered a joint, but voluntary effort by all.

Creating jobs and income in a difficult global economic environment requires excellent policy making strategies and capacities. One sector which Egypt should be focusing on is tourism. But tourism requires stability, making people feel safe and comfortable. As pointed out above, religious activists who try to disturb peace in the country sin against the diversity of God’s creation. In turn, a society which expects peaceful and constructive behavior by all its citizens must be just. It must allow everybody to live freely and support people where it can in making a decent living.

5. The Conditions for Effectiveness and Efficiency in Democratic Policy Making
All in all building a strong and healthy democracy first of all requires all people committing to work together to achieve this aim.

They must then put the parameters in place which are necessary to make democracy effective. More specifically they must ensure that:

1. Their democratic policy making system uses the best systems and processes for policy making, systems and processes which serve the well-being of all people.
2. All politicians have a certain minimum set of qualifications
3. Politicians apply the best practices defined under point 1 (so there is no scope for corruption, nepotism).
4. The institutions (including government) which lead the country have the required resources to do their jobs as effectively as possible (if resources are limited government must focus on a reduced number of key tasks)

For the parameters necessary for maximum effectiveness and efficiency in democratic policy making see also the graph Factors Determining the Effectiveness of Democracy

6. The Need for Effective Citizen Control
Finally people must realize that their democratic policy system is unlikely to ever be really effective without citizens themselves controlling the policy making system effectively. Citizens must establish an effective control system over policy making, an effective citizens’ association controlling the operations of the democratic system on their behalf (like a referee controlling a football match).

Effective control requires know-how, power, resources, and communication. To establish the best democratic policy making system people need the best know-how. They must establish a know-how system which informs the citizens what the best systems and processes in democratic policy making are. Citizens must join to accumulate the necessary power to ensure the best practices identified are in fact applied. All citizens should contribute a small amount to establish a citizens’ control system in order to ensure everybody has a voice and that the control organization truly represents all members of society. The control organization needs these funds to be able to work effectively.

7. The Implementation
People must recognize that this process is necessary to get to a satisfactory solution. Building effective citizen control, however, and building effective governing processes and systems takes a while.

The focus must, therefore, to start with be on:

• Establishing the joint will in society to work for a sound and strong society and democracy.

• Committing to and securing peace in the country.

• Getting back to work to create the necessary income, products and service for fulfilling the fundamental needs of people.

A first concrete goal must be to establish peace and to make visitors feel welcome so tourism is revived as a source of income for the people in Egypt (not easy due to economic difficulties in many countries).

The government must also as soon as possible set out a step by step schedule for the process of building a sound society and an effective democracy. It must schedule

• the steps for building a healthy, independent constructive citizen control organization over the policy making system (even if this initiative must in principle come from the people the government should recognize the need for such an organization and support its establishment. The organization offers a way to citizens for their constructive participation in policy making).

• the steps for building a healthy government and administration.

• Government also must specify goals and the necessary steps for creating jobs and employment.

8. Communication
The government must constantly communicate with people on this process. It must ensure that all people in society understand and support the necessary principles and steps for building a functioning democracy. It must communicate on achievements, on things to do next, on difficulties.

Through the way it acts and communicates the government must be perceived as honest, trustworthy, competent and reliable.

9. The Responsibility of the People
Ultimately the people must understand that they themselves are responsible for building an effective and sound democratic system. Establishing effective control and know-how organizations is crucial.

Protests will not generate a sustainable and effective solution for Egypt and its people. Establishing a functioning democracy requires constructive and effective work. Protest, therefore, must change to constructive action of the highest caliber. (If governments do not respond to such constructive work, protests might be necessary again.)

People of all reaches of society must cooperate in establishing an effective control organization over the democratic policy making system.

10. Advantages
The proposed process allows the people of Egypt to work together in a constructive way on the task of establishing a fair and effective democratic policy making system. It gives the people control over the system.

Since the proposed process combines establishing the best know-how with effective citizen control, it must lead to the best democratic policy making system conceivable for Egypt and its people, a system which will be able to handle public resources in the most effective way possible, which will be able to design the best policies to generate employment and income in the country, and ensure that the well-being of the people can be enhanced in as much as possible.

Finally establishing a sound democracy on the basis of the proposed process will allow the people of Egypt to cooperate with the people of all nations in solving the urgent problems our globe is facing and in maintaining the globe in a good state for future generations, something which the international community will certainly welcome very highly.

Optimizing Democracy in Brazil – Two Concrete Steps Necessary

Leave a reply

Brazil has been seeing huge protests for more than two weeks now against many issues – mostly against a lack of transparency, corruption, and ineffectiveness in government.

How can these protests lead to a concrete, lasting improvement in the quality of government?

The model described in this blog provides a solution:

To govern a country like Brazil, to reduce poverty and corruption, and to solve the many other policy issues as effectively and efficiently as possible with only limited resources, “best practices” in policy making are necessary.

What are the best practices in policy making? Hard to say. To establish best practices in policy making Brazil like any other democratic country needs an effective organization working on behalf of the citizens which identifies what best practices in all aspects of governing a nation are. The citizens themselves must set up the organization, so they do not depend on “anybody else”, i.e. for example the politicians, to tell them what best practices supposedly are. The citizens themselves must identify them, so they can be sure they get the best solutions.

Second, the people must ensure that those best practices are actually applied in policy making, concretely that structures and processes in the policy making system are as effective as possible, serve the common good, and do not leave room for inefficiency. One system which the people must optimize is the system for corruption control.

To implement those two steps the citizens must join and create two organizations:

1. A citizens’ organization, lets call it “Optimizing Democracy Brazil” which initiates the necessary actions.

2. A “Citizens’ Public Policy Know-how Institute” which informs the citizens about the best processes and systems in policy making necessary to make their democratic policy making system effective.

The writer Ignácio de Loyola Brandão is very pessimistic about the outcome of the demonstrations. He expects the protests to ebb off after a while and Brazil to return to its “normality” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 24 June 2013).

If people want to see a concrete improvement in how they are governed they must establish a joint initiative taking the necessary, constructive measures towards achieving this goal. They must identify the best practices in policy making and work together to make sure they are applied.

Brazil is an example for what needs to happen in all democratic nations to optimize their democratic policy making systems.

“Send in the clowns” – Which qualifications do our politicians need precisely?

Leave a reply

“Send in the clowns”, titled The Economist after the recent parliamentary elections in Italy when the party of the comedian Beppe Grillo won 25% of the total votes and the party of Silvio Berlusconi 30%.

Of course the views of clowns on developments in society and politics can be refreshing and stimulating. Yet the professional qualification as a clown is unlikely to be a suitable qualification to steer our countries with tens or hundreds of millions of people in the time of globalization. It must be doubted that clowns will have the capacities to create jobs for millions of people, the most pressing issues in many European states at this point in time or perhaps to even select people with the required qualifications for this job. Since the US have had at least two world renowned actors as top nation or state leaders we must of course also ask under which conditions actors can be suitable heads of government. Are intelligence, integrity, and honesty, criteria which clowns and actors might fulfill, sufficient as qualifications to lead our nations and the globe?

“Whether policy making oriented towards the needs of the majority of people is successful, depends ultimately on the capacities and the character of the leading persons in politics”, writes the German law Professor Hans Peter Bull in a recent article on democracy in a paper. But which qualifications do our politicians require precisely for their tasks? And how do we make sure that our politicians in fact possess these qualifications?

One perspective on the tasks of our politicians is that they are responsible for public funds of hundreds of billions of Euros or Pounds or other currency equivalents, or in the case of the USA even for a few trillion of USD, and at the same time for organizations which employ hundreds of thousands or even up to 2-3 million of public employees, the numbers quoted in some analyses for France, Germany, and Italy for example. In comparison the largest private corporation in the world, the US retailer Walmart has revenues in the area of 400 billion USD and about 2.2 million employees, the tenth largest private corporation in terms of employees, Aviation Industry Corporation of China, has about 500 000 employees and revenues of about 240 billion USD (2011 numbers).

As the comparison illustrates, our politicians operate organizations which are at least as large as the largest private corporations in the world. Our politicians must make sure that the gigantic organizations they lead are structured and perform optimally and that they generate a maximum of benefits to the public out of the sizeable amounts of tax money or other public funds they require for their work. The work of our politicians contains a significant, if not a dominant element of management responsibility.

Against this view one might contend that the Civil Service has its own management which “supports” the politicians in their leadership jobs. That view would mean the tail is wagging the dog. We rather elect our heads of government as the key persons we look to in running our states as effectively as only possible and to “sort out things” in the public sphere for us, when they have gone wrong. Our heads of government must lead, not only in policy design, but also in policy implementation.

What are the tasks of our politicians, especially of our Heads of Government, in more detail? They must identify the public concerns of the people and any risks for the well-being of society from economic, technological, environmental or other developments. They must identify which issues are more critical than others, jobs, infrastructure, defense and global stability, health, education, welfare programs, or the exploration of space, a difficult task since many of those aspects are interdependent. More education might generate more jobs and more production, more tax income, and allow for better infrastructure and social services, but more education without simultaneous other measures to create jobs might be a waste of funds. Politicians need the methodical skills to analyze and assess these complex interdependencies. Having set adequate priorities they must raise and assign public funds to these issues. Finally they must design and implement strategies, they must establish the effective organizations mentioned above and effective control mechanisms, and they must co-ordinate the work of public institutions at various regional levels in a country.

Also the look at these individual tasks tells us that policy making is to a large degree a management task. As polls have shown, citizens in fact primarily expect from their politicians effectiveness and efficiency in delivering public policy. Implicitly also citizens attribute the highest importance to the practical management skills of their politicians rather than to “soft” skills, such as presentation and communication.

Of course many other qualities are of importance for the work of politicians such as intelligence, integrity, depth of thinking, openness and creativity, modesty, the capacity to communicate simple manners in a comprehensible fashion, negotiating skills, and finally a certain understanding of political processes. We should specify and weigh all these skills and qualifications in job descriptions for politicians just like in job descriptions for any other job. It is astounding that every accountant, nurse, or engineer must fulfill specific job requirements. Only our politicians don’t, even if the well-being of our entire societies and the state of the world depends on these qualifications. It is amazing that so far we mostly vote for politicians, because they can present their ideas in charismatic and convincing style, not because they fulfill a “hard” qualification profile. If democracy is ineffective it seems to be to a large degree our own fault, since we do not specify the qualifications our politicians need and do not ensure they comply with those requirements.

Many observers make proposals on how to ensure the qualification of politicians for their jobs. In an article for the web-journal opendemocracy Takis S Pappas from Greece suggested in 2011 for example an open list electoral system which would allow voters to choose among individual political candidates rather than on the basis of their party affiliation. Using such an open procedure or a traditional party list we could make it a precondition that anybody wanting to work as the Head of Government or head of any government department must fulfill a minimum qualification catalogue before they are even allowed to stand for election. We could select the five candidates which fit our objective qualification criteria best, then have them present their views thoroughly on TV and elect the best one of these five candidates.

Governing our countries and the world is an extremely complex task, whichever procedures for electing the best candidates we might select. We should in any case, therefore, never rely on a single person to have the required or even optimal knowledge for this task. In addition to making sure that our politicians have certain minimal qualifications we will still need an effective know-how system on how to run a country optimally, an institution which our politicians can draw upon in decision and strategy making and in setting up effective public organizations. Furthermore, as pointed out in other parts of this blog, we as citizens and highest sovereign in democratic states need a control system to make sure that the head of government, the ministers, and the public organizations in fact apply the state of the art know-how in governing the country for the benefit of all citizens, do not risk the state through incompetent policy making or work for their own interests.

What happened with the proposal made by Takis S Pappas in 2011 on the open-list system for elections? Has anybody examined it? Has it been accepted, rejected, or refined and implemented? Where are the results of our thinking about how to improve democracy? What the example shows is that our democratic nations most urgently need an effective organization to discuss and evaluate proposals like the one made by Pappas or made here on the qualifications of politicians, so we get to the best concrete concepts as soon as possible.

The sand glass for our task to make our democratic policy systems effective appears to be running. The social and political stability in many democratic countries is at stake, people even get frustrated with democracy itself, while it is the only form of government which guarantees their freedom. To maintain stable and equitable societies, to maintain the globe in a good state we must improve the performance of our democratic policy making systems, and that as soon as possible. One step for which we, as citizens, are responsible is making sure that our politicians are qualified for their tasks.

Italy – A Citizens’ Association for the Optimization of Democracy

Leave a reply

How can Italy get a stable and effective democratic policy making system, now and in the future, a policy making system able to handle the challenges of the 21^st century? In Italy, like in any other democratic country, the citizens themselves are ultimately responsible for the fate of their country. They themselves must fix any problems with their policy making system.

For decades the Italian people have been hoping for a strong man or a better party to establish stable and effective governments only to be disappointed over and over again. Now the situation is getting urgent. Due to the financial crisis and probably also due to the process of globalization industrial production in the country has fallen by 25% since 2008. Unemployment continues to be high, especially among young people.

Many people in Italy now recognize the need for a radical restructuring of the existing political institutions. But this issue is not being moved forward effectively. Citizens continue to elect politicians and to hope for the political system to fix itself. This cannot work. Politicians have their own agenda. And they may not know how to establish the most effective policy system conceivable. Citizens themselves need to take action.

What needs to happen?

People in Italy, like in any other democratic country, need to change their perception about their role as citizens in a democracy. In a democracy the people are the highest sovereign in the state. They govern themselves. The policy system is their tool for managing their public affairs. The people need to realize that they cannot hope for a politician or party to repair the democratic policy system on their behalf. The citizens in a democratic society must ensure that the system works, they themselves.
In the light of the complexity of the problems of our globalized world of now seven billion people only the best policy making system will suffice to solve the problems of the country. In Italy, like in other democratic nations, citizens, therefore, must aim to optimize the performance of their political system.
To take concrete action citizens must establish an initiative which identifies the best options for making their democratic policy making system effective and which ensures that those concepts are implemented.
Only with the best objective and independent know-how available in Italy and the globe can the citizens be sure to arrive at a democratic policy making system of the highest quality conceivable. The initiative must set up a know-how system which is completely open, invites contributions from anybody who may have to say something on the matter, and identifies the know-how of the required level of quality.
Citizens must realize that making their policy making effective on the long run does not only take isolated one time action, but constant effective citizen control. They should establish the initiative with a view to turning it into a permanent element in the political life of the country and of the constitution, a “Citizens Association for the Optimization of Democracy”. The association will be responsible to persistently monitor the performance of the policy making system and to identify possibilities to further improve its performance.
The qualification of politicians working on behalf of society in policy making is perhaps the most crucial element necessary for the policy system to be able to cope with the problems of our globalised world. The best qualification is of relevance in any function and at any level of the policy making system, especially at leadership level. Specific subject matter qualifications for making the economy competitive and to create millions of jobs are also of the highest importance. The association must make sure that those qualifications are “in place” to ensure that the system is as effective as only possible. One key effect of the objective qualification and performance standards, which the citizens’ association will aim to generate, will be a considerable reduction, perhaps even the nearly complete eradication, of widespread corruption and nepotism presently existing in the policy making system.

For the time being the politicians elected by the Italian people must fulfill their responsibilities for the country and the citizens and form a joint government. But the factors affecting the performance of Italian governments must be analyzed as soon as possible, so the necessary performance level can be established for the policy making system. Only an overhaul of the political system in the sketched fashion can make the country strong enough to handle the challenges which the country is facing.

Democracy is government by the people, as one element of the definition formulated by Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address. The citizens of a democratic country govern themselves. They must make sure their tool for governing the country, their democratic policy making system, works optimally, in Italy like in any other democratic country.

Who tells a Head of Government which ones are the best methods to build effective policy making and delivery systems?

Leave a reply

Whatever a democratic constitution may say in detail: In my opinion the Head of State in a democratic country is responsible to build effective systems and organizations for policy making and delivery. That is why we elect him or her. The fate of a nation, the state of infrastructure, of health systems, of schools, even peace and war and the life of people depend on the ability of a Head of State to take the lead in building effective policy making organizations.

But who tells a Head of State which methods exist and which ones are the best ones to build effective organizations, organizations which fulfill their purpose without wasting tax money?

A builder has his methods to measure whether a wall is level or not, a teacher has her methods to get a certain subject across to her students, a butcher has his methods to skin, let us say, a cow, a structural engineer has his methods to calculate the stability of a building. But what methods does a Head of Government have to build effective systems to serve a country and its people? Who tells the Head of Government about these methods?

We could argue a Head of State should know those required methods, just as a teacher knows their teaching methods. But in reality, our Heads of Government do have all kinds of professional backgrounds. Knowledge in methods on how to build effective organizations is usually not part of their qualification.

Just a couple of hours ago I had the exceptional opportunity to talk to a very high-ranking politician in a European country about this subject. I tried to convince him that the Cabinet Office, the office for co-coordinating the work of all government departments in that country, needed a know-how system to inform the Head of Government and best also the ministers about how to build the most effective organizations in designing and delivering public policy measures.

The conversation surprisingly lasted quite a while. But he, a full-blooded, long-time politician was completely convinced that the existing systems and organizations in policy making in that country were perhaps not perfect, but still rather good, and if they did not perform well enough, there were already plenty of institutions and processes both in the political and public spheres in place to correct any malfunctioning. Those were institutions and processes such as the national audit office, scrutiny by the media, or protests by citizens with concerns over a policy issue.

What we do not know, however, is how effective those processes and organizations are, whether they check in fact all policy making areas, how timely their work is, and which influence they have in establishing more effective policy making processes. The press as one means of control will generally get only involved in high-profile issues with a “story” value. Furthermore, as any professional person knows: Correcting mistakes which somebody made who did not (quite) know what they were doing, most often is a tedious and inefficient exercise. Sometimes people in charge rather decide to start over from scratch. Better to make sure from the beginning that things are done right, especially in the public arena where millions of public funds are at stake and where the well-being or even the life of citizens might depend on the effective design and implementation of public policy.

Heads of Governments need to know which methods exist for building effective systems and especially which ones are the best methods. They are not only responsible for the work of government departments and hundreds of thousands of and public employees, but also for the effects of policy making on millions of citizens. Heads of Governments are also responsible for building effective international institutions which have to tackle the complex and urgent problems our globe is facing. If our institutions are so effective, how come that carpets of plastic garbage the size of the middle of Europe are floating on our oceans? Is there no chance to stop this pollution? Or have we simply not tried well enough?

Even if we ask: “Who tells a head of government…”, we must realize that the knowledge on building effective organizations and systems is vast and may change. An individual person, or two, or three, are unlikely to have the best and up to date knowledge, on what the best methods to build effective public policy systems are. They might come from the same school of thinking, have a certain preference for one or the other approach, they might be lopsided in their judgment. That is why we need to build a truly effective system to inform the Head of State and his or her ministers on the best methods to build effective policy making and delivery systems. In addition, we need a system to check, whether previous Heads of Governments and ministers did their jobs properly, whether they have built truly effective institutions. From the perspective of politicians in the UK today that doesn’t appear to be so in the case of the EU.

Of course a Head of Government and his or her ministers do not only need to know what the best approaches to building effective systems are, they moreover must apply them. One reason keeping them from applying best practices may be that they are corrupt. That is where the relevance of an effective citizen control institution, suggested in other places in this blog, comes in: Citizens must make sure, first that a system exists to inform Heads of Government and their ministers about best practices, second that those best practices are in fact applied in their policy making work.

Who tells a Head of Government which ones are the best methods to build effective policy making and delivery systems? Unfortunately I did not come up with that question in the conversation with the politician. Would that have convinced him of the need to establish a know-how system to inform government about the best approaches to run a country? Does the question convince you? Let me know what you think.