A failure or success?

For us, the free debate has come to replace the nailed thesis, said the former leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party Olof Palme (1927-1986). He meant that our opinions are preliminary and we must constantly question our own and others’ positions, think independently and deepen our knowledge. It is easy to agree. Without free debate, the information society would hardly exist. For a debate to be called free some fundamental rules are necessary –  such as openness, freedom of opinion and freedom of expression. A free debate calls for independent media.

I asked Palme’s party brother in Vallentuna Hans Strandin why he did not want to participate in the public debates that Demoex arrange?

– We are debating internal in the party, he replied.

Internal debates favor the dominant persons only. Internal debates are not free in the sense Olof Palme was arguing for. They tend to produce polarization or groupthink, which means a loss of relevant information. A balanced debate requires different points of view. Openness and public lighting is necessary to make sure that the arguments are properly illuminated.

Linnea Nilsson, co-founder of Demoex, evaluated the experiment at the University of Stockholm two years after it started. She pointed out the weakness of our democracy model: Visitors must feel that they get something out of Demoex, such as easy access to relevant information. It requires a political debate worthy of the name. The naive idea that local politicians would participate in the experiment and maintain the quality of the debates failed. Bad for us, because the information is crucial both for the usability and for the decisions.

Citizens in Vallentuna have not shown much interest. Only between 5-15 persons use to decide how Demoex will vote. (At most 41 persons.) The basic idea fails if people choose not to participate. One reason for the low voter participation might be that Demoex enters the process too late to affect the policy. Democracy does not work as intended. Issues are decided in advance, before they come to the City Council.

More people would certainly take part if Demoex had more influence. On the other hand one might ask what is most important – the number of voters, or that people have the opportunity to participate and vote? Demoex gives the opportunity, but a few uses it. The fewer who are voting, the more valuable is each individual vote. The decrease of political power of one person is mirrored by the same increase of influence of another person. Maybe we have to accept that some issues have a lower participation in order to empower the engaged people?

On Vallentuna Municipality Web is a poor tab called “Democracy”. There are no links to Demoex site or any politician’s blog on the municipality’s website. Election day is in September 19. I think blog publishing would be a good way to inform voters on the political alternatives before the election. Therefore I put to a written question the City Council on June 14: Are we going to use a blog publishing service at the Democracy tab before the election?

I directed the question to the Municipal Mayor. Two days later I call him to check that he has got it. “Yes, but I will not answer the question because it was submitted too late”, he says. I get upset, because the municipality’s statute says that a question should be answered in the same meeting that it is provided. The next City Council is not until September 6, then it is too late to start blogging before the election. Therefore it is desirable to receive a response at this meeting.

City Council meeting on 14 June begins. Chairman would usually ask “Are there any questions?” Instead, he says:
– And we have no questions.
– Yes we have, I say
– No, it came too late, he replies.

I tell the audience that Demoex have submitted a written question. Chairman interrupts and say that I am not allowed to ask the question. When I start to argue why it should be answered at this meeting, the Chairman shouts “QUIET!”.

I was not even allowed to ask the question! Later on at the same meeting I complain to the elective dictatorship in the council, and takes the fact that I was not allowed to ask a question earlier as an example. Once again the Chairman tells me to be quiet.

Political repression means that a stronger party unfairly exercise its power to prevent a weaker party from participating. After ten years in prison under Ian Smith‘s racist regime, Robert Mugabe took over in Zimbabwe with the Socialist party ZANU-PF. He was greeted as a liberator. Thirty years later with unbroken power holding from Mugabe, his opponents are repressed in a similar way as he was.

Long, uninterrupted possession of power easily leads to systematic repression of dissidents. My point is that political repression is a structurally shortcoming of the representative democratic system. The problem does not depend on the ideology of the ruling party.

In his work The History of Madness Michael Foucault demonstrates how madness has been separated out as “deviant from the actual discourse” and how different times and cultures have different classification of madness. What counts as insane is ultimately a question of power, according to Focault.

Demoex was counted as madness in a similar way. To my great grief and astonishment Demoex became taboo to talk about at my work, Vallentuna 2:nd High, where the experiment once started. I  looked forward to train my students in argumentation and let them take part in the internet debates. I thought Demoex was a good thing both for the students and the school. Where else in the world can all students vote in the City Council from the age of 16? In Stockholm’s highly competitive educational market this must be a dream marketing argument. I took for granted that the school should use Demoex in education and marketing, but instead the former headmaster told me to be quiet. Demoex must not be associated with Vallentuna 2:nd High. I was not allowed to talk about the experiment in my teaching. My boss warned me.

Our Core Values in Vallentuna are “Commitment, Equal Dignity and Development”. Demoex fit pretty good with this values, but it was forbidden to talk about the experiment. Tragic, but understandable. We had no ambition to change the politics, we just wanted to try to change the political system, to mix direct- and representative democracy. But our opponents saw Demoex as a radical populist party. We failed to explain that changing the political system doesn’t mean changing politics. Demoex might be dangerous to dictators, but not to the popularly elected politicians in Vallentuna, Sweden.

Demoex replied in the local newspaper that we did not want to replace the representative democracy. On the contrary, we want to give politicians greater audience and democratic legitimacy. We told that our idea is an open political debate at the internet where the public can participate. The best politicians will then become highly respected by virtue of their expertise and convincing argumentation, we wrote.

It failed because of the existing Nash equilibrium mentioned earlier. The governing parties did not want to cooperate with us. Too bad, because we needed to involve politicians to carry out the experiment. Demoex is a virtual council meeting, waiting for debaters from all parties. The leading parties are keen to have an active dialogue with residents in the municipality – at least they say so. Demoex offer just that! We hoped that the important decisions would become better entrenched among the citizens thereby.

We wrote that a problem with representative democracy is that coalitions tend to eliminate the principle of majority by iterated voting. When a coalition have 60 percent of the mandates, and 60 percent of the coalition stands behind a decision, only a minority – 36 percent – actually supports it. When the liberal-conservative coalition in Vallentuna negotiates it often leads to a minority decision. Leading politicians “bouncing ideas” is not so innocent as it may sound.

Following our response they remained silent. The leading politicians probably realized that they had nothing to gain from the debate, so they decided to quiet down Demoex instead. They held that democracy works well in Vallentuna. We thought it could work better and we wanted to continue the debate, but they did not answer. We asked why? They did not answer. We were unable to debate alone, so the vital discussion about democracy just died out.

During the first years of Demoex in politics the public debate became more open. We wrote letters to the editor in a local newspaper and complained to democratic deficits and the leading politicians responded to us.

This was in a period of vast privatization unprecedented in the municipality’s history. Inspired by neoliberalism the idea was to sell out public property. The heating plant was sold, the sewage system was incorporated, and so on. The residents did not get information until the deals where basically done.

Business between public domains and private companies are not easy, and they should not be. Laws protect against corruption by requiring openness. Transparency is a core of democracy and a precondition for citizen’s participating.

When the municipal center buildings were for sale for the first time attentive citizens stopped the deal. At the next attempt the politicians negotiated in secret and remained silent until the last moment to avoid unnecessary attention. The silence did not only exclude the public, but also Demoex.

“Maybe business work this way, but silence and lack of information hurts the democracy”, we wrote in the local newspaper. We wanted the governing politicians to inform the citizens and argue for their privatization proposal. “Put all the cards on the table before the deal, and let us have a public debate worthy of the name”, we said.

The governing politicians responded in the newspaper. They admitted that they where discussing and “trying out different options” before deciding. “But to say that we cover up, or not put all cards on the table, is almost a bit silly”, the leading politicians said. “Moreover, we welcome an open dialogue with voters, but we don’t want to replace the representative democracy as Demoex want”, they argued.

Demoex is a direct democratic injection into the system of representative democracy that in fact presupposes other parties. The leading politicians did not want to understand the concept of Demoex, they tried to make us foolish instead. A good thing came with it – their misunderstanding forced us to reply and explain, and so the public debate continued.