Let’s reimagine democracy: replace elections with lotteries

Brexit and the Trump presidency are making people ask whether the current form of democracy is the best we can do. By Joe Humphreys. As published on The Irish Times What’s happening to our democracies? Donald Trump’s presidential-election victory in the United States, after a bitter campaign characterised by deceitful and incendiary rhetoric, is not...Continue reading

Luca Belgiorno-Nettis. The greatest underused asset in politics is people; ignore them at your peril.

Conventional wisdom holds that the common sense of everyday people finds its voice in elections, and referendums. However, it’s apparent that political campaigns are banal popularity contests at best, and toxic, divisive, ideological battlegrounds at worst. The French philosopher Emil Cioran said: “Ideas should be neutral, yet man animates these ideas with passions and follies,...Continue reading

Lyn Carson. From audience democracy to wisdom-for-the-whole

Closing remarks to Strasbourg’s World Forum for Democracy 2016, by “an interloper from Down Under.” On this day of all days (the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States), it’s good to note that this is a World Forum for Democracy, not a forum for representative government, that unfortunate system that...Continue reading

The Guardian. The People Trying to Save Democracy from Itself

by Patric Chalmers, The Guardian, Saturday 2 July 2016 These are difficult days for democracy. European nations struggle to elect governments on low turnouts. Populists wielding half-truths go from strength to strength. Facts are a devalued currency, personalities never more important. People use ballot boxes to bloody the noses of the political elite. Young people...

There are better ways to decide the big issues than referendums

INSIGHT 6 June 2016 They seem democratic but referendums are flawed. If we want people involved in the political process, there are smarter ways to go about it, says Niall Firth Referendums are “a splendid weapon for demagogues and dictators”, argued Margaret Thatcher in a debate over Britain’s place in the EU in 1975. Was that...Continue reading

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