Solution #2 – participation

Representative democracy is adversarial and is not leading itself well to solutions in a crisis. Political parties in opposition often oppose by necessity and often underine the party in power by necessity in order to increase their own chances of gaining the reins.  If they succeed then roles of those in power and opposition are reversed.

The whip system means politicians on both sides have to vote in favour of things they are against and against things they are in favour of on a regular basis.

Democracy means the rule of the majority so where does that leave the minority – the poor, the weak, the disaffected, the opressed ?  Often without a voice.

Additionally when crises such as the current economic situation occur, lack of agreement on solutions through lack of co-operation can arise. The attacks from opposition can be crippling for the decision makers.  Moulding of the public anger and its manipulation takes place with some degree of success.  The blame game takes centre stage.

Participation by the public is one key to finding solutions. Presently once politicians are elected, with the exceptiuon of a relatively small number of people active in lobbying (some for self-interest and others for the common good), the public leaves them to get on with it.   However, the expertise to get out of the problems is often within the communities and not within government or its advisors. Therefore – participation from the public is going to need to increase (at the moment, the most prevalent public feeling is anger – by and large a destructive emotion which isn’t really going to get us anywhere fast).

More town hall meetings are required involving people getting together to pool their ideas on effective decision making. It means a re-examination of all levels of governance towards a more participatory system where greater consensus and non-adversarial methods are sought.