So it seems that a government advertising campaign is to target climate change sceptics. Certainly, policymakers appear to be hitting problems in bringing the public along with measures to address this issue, and it’s not very likely that ‘business as usual’ within the democratic process will deliver sustainable development. So there are great hopes pinned [...]
Posts under ‘Direct democracy’
A few links to be going on with
Just a few interesting things I’ve seen over the past few days that impact further on this councils v local newspapers issue. The first is that – when councils decide to factor in ad-revenue into their communications budgets, it adds a significant amount of uncertainty – because ad revenue can go down as well as [...]
“Too much democracy”?
Douglas Carswell MP and Daniel Hannan MEP, along with a few others, may wish to have a glance at Tim Garton-Ash’s latest – this time answering the queston ‘why has California got itself into such a mess: “…its prisons are overflowing; the energy-guzzling way it meets its water needs takes a staggering 19% of the [...]
Football phone-ins v consultation exercises
Matthew Taylor has a good post up about the architecture of morality, and it’s all the better for the fact that he’s chosen an important issue (football) to illustrate his point. Personally, I spend six days a week tut-tutting about the way that popular political discourse is convened and managed. Panel shows on TV and [...]
Against participatory democracy
Brian Barder’s excellent – and comprehensive – opposition to ‘participatory democracy’ has been up and commented-up for long enough to be worth a second visit if you’ve seen it already. My only problem with it is that posts such as this probably have an obligation to advocate consultation – in it’s most creative and energetic [...]
Campaigns
Here’s LD’s co-blogger Anthony writing (or rather, quoting) from his main blog on the growing ‘pressure group industry’: “The flourishing of associations is the denial of mediation. Taken to its logical conclusion, the slogan of the movement is: for each individual their own association, and by that very fact, no association at all.” It’s often [...]
Reality scores from the rebound
Direct democracy experiment MyFootballClub was featured in recent online movie Us Now. You’ll remember the MyFC website took over Ebbsfleet United (the former Gravesend and Northfleet) and promised its members all the experience of running a real football club, team selections, transfer listing players, and the rest. According to a piece on the When Saturday [...]
Demand-revealing referendums
I’m reliably informed that the plural of referendum is referendums and not referenda. Anyway, leaving that aside, have a look at Chris’s really-good post on the subject. A few years ago, I interviewed him on this subject elsewhere and it was a very enlightening experience.
What democrats can learn from the Classics
An opinion piece in today’s Guardian makes the case for the teaching of Latin and Greek in schools. Traditionally elitist subjects in the UK and US, Charlotte Higgins argues for the classics as a means of widening horizons: The value of classics today is incalculable, but it is nothing to do with turning out nice [...]
Reinventing democracy
At the start of May, there’s a forum on the future of democracy taking place in Grenoble. Sounds like a fascinating event, although on the academic rather than practical end of the conference spectrum. Pierre Rosanvallon, Professor at the College de France, has written an explanatory article for (of course) Le Monde, which is well [...]
A blog about representative democracy, social media and a conversational politics. How will peer-to-peer communications change local democracy? How is representation changing? 
