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Democracy and Futures

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Democracy and Futures Democracy and Futures Eds. Mika Mannermaa Jim Dator Paula Tiihonen Kuva: Wäinö Aaltonen, The Future, 1932/1969 Bronze. Parliament of Finland, Assembly Chamber Committee for the Future Parliament of Finland tel. +358 9 4321 fax +358 9 432 2140 tuv@parliament.fi www.parliament.fi /TuV Democracy and Futures Eds. Mika Mannermaa Jim Dator Paula Tiihonen . ISBN 951-53-2885-3 (nid.) ISBN 951-53-2886-1 (PDF) Foreword This year the Parliament of Finland celebrated, in a great variety of ways, its 100-year history as an institution founded on equal and universal suffrage. The Committee for the Future decided that its own contribution to this celebration of democracy would be, in a spirit of futures work, to produce this book on the future of democracy. It is, naturally, difficult or nearly impossible to predict what democracy will look like in several decades’ time, but nonetheless collectively pondering what lies ahead is important also in politics. Because the Committee has felt from the beginning that a global examination is a valuable aspect of its work, we decided to ask international authors to contribute to this sounding of the future of democracy. Our most sincere thanks to all of the authors, and especially Professor Jim Dator and Dr. Mika Mannermaa for their expert guidance. Thanks are due also to the members of the Steering Group, Representatives Kyösti Karjula, Päivi Räsänen, Esko-Juhani Tennilä, Anne Huotari and Jyrki Kasvi, whose advice and evaluations contributed to the work in many ways. A warm thanks to Doctors Paula Tiihonen and Osmo Kuusi and Researcher Ulrica Gabrielsson from the Secretariat. The publication of the book is timely, coinciding with the nationally and internationally acclaimed Pori Jazz Festival 2006, where the Parliament’s Grand Committee (or so-called EU Committee) and the Committee for the Future will be taking part with their own sessions and seminar, getting out to meet the people. I hope this book will stimulate a lively discussion of the many futures of democracy. Kalevi Olin Chair of the Democracy Steering Group Deputy Chair of the Committee for the Future . Contents Introduction 1 Dr. Mika Mannermaa (Finland) Cyclicity of Strategic Challenges in Russian History and development scenario for XXI century 15 Prof. Alexander Ageev (Russia) Global Citizenship and the New Cosmopolitans 27 Dr. Walter Truett Anderson (USA) Anticipatory Democracy Revisited 38 Dr. Clement Bezold (USA) Linking people to pixel, next steps in EU democracy and power 52 Prof. Riccardo Cinquegrani (Italy) Will America ever become a democracy? 61 Prof. Jim Dator (USA) Some Future Threats to Democracy 69 Director Jerome Glenn (USA) Beyond dreaming of democracy… How do we face the reality of democracy? 77 Dr. Fabienne Goux-Baudiment (France) Current crises challenging U.S. democracy, and alternative future scenarios 89 Prof. Linda Groff (USA) Democracy in the Light of Globalization 100 Prof. Bernd Hamm (Germany) Alternative Futures of a Challenged Democracy 113 Prof. Sohail Inayatullah (Pakistan-Australia) Women’s Contribution to the Future of Democracy 128 Prof. Eleonora Masini (Italy) On Futures of Democracy Democracies of the Future 137 Prof. Peter Mettler (Germany) India, China and Future of Democracy 148 Mr. Takuya Murata (Japan) Whither Democracy? Reflections on the Prospects of Democracy in the 21st Century 160 Director Ruben Nelson (Canada) Futurists as Pionieers in Handling Participativity and Aggression in a Post-Socialist Democracy 170 Prof. Erzsébet Nováky – Dr. István Kappéter (Hungary) Age-Cohort Shift and Values Change: Futures for Democracy in Korea 180 Mrs Youngsook Park Harmsen – Ph.D.Cand. Yongseok Seo (Korea) Democracy is institutional gardening: A hundred year is a short time 191 Dr. Paula Tiihonen (Finland) List of Authors 205 Dr. Mika Mannermaa (Finland) . Mannermaa Introduction Mika Mannermaa Doctor of Economics, Docent Finland In 2006 and 2007 the Parliament of Finland is celebrating its 100th anniversary under the theme "The right to vote – trust in law. One hundred years of Finnish democracy". In connection to this celebration the Committee for the Future of the Parliament started the project "Futures of de- mocracy". As part of this project the Committee decided to produce an international collection of articles written by distinguished futures researchers. The authors were invited on the basis of their competence in the field of futures studies. The idea was to let professional futures-thinkers to approach the theme of democracy and futures from different cultural, scientific, technological, geographical and other perspectives. New ideas and personal well-argued views were especially welcomed. As it should be self-evident, the views expressed in the following articles are solely those of the authors and do not present in any way the positions of the Committee. * The concept of democracy is a Latin translation of Aristotle’s terms demos and kraiten. Demos means an area or humans as a group, and kraiten means administration or power. Patrick Love, for example, interprets the present concept of democracy as a product of the Age of Enlighten- ment. According to him, it is based on Immanuel Kant’s concept of autonomy, the roots of which are in antique’s Greece. Autonomy is a law (nomos) that someone orders herself for herself (Greek. autos=‘self’). Shortly, “governing humans, by humans, for humans”. In the place of word human the word people is often used. In the future demos will probably be something else than it used to be in the past or even what is at the present. Traditionally, demos has been connected primarily to citizenship or to the nation (eg. Finns), which by using autonomous power in a specific territory (Finland as a geographical territory), is practicing democracy. Although this idea will probably stay as prevailing for a long time, demos in the future will almost certainly be more multivaried than the existing understand- ing of it. 1. In the future, the autonomously acting group of people, demos, can be a small tribe of an information society, which consists of minorities only, contrary to the industrial society of majorities. The people in a tribe can be joined together by varied factors like profes- sion, lifestyle, culture or hobby. 2. These tribes can be partly or entirely virtual, and they constitute a multiple systemic unity – for example one person can belong to many tribes. 3. The tribes will probably require and cherish autonomy, for which new models to practise democracy will be developed: “the democracy of minorities”. 4. On the other hand it is possible that in the long-range future demos can be a bigger group of people than previously; a genuine European identity, or even global identity can evolve and produce a new understanding of a demos. Furthermore, although the global perspective concerning the idea of demos may seem to be politically, culturally and in economic sense difficult to accept, even naïve in the light of the events in the beginning - 1 - Introduction of the new Millennium, in the longer run it may become increasingly plausible, if not a necessity. 5. This development, too, produces its own models of democracy; eg. democratic European community, and democratic global governance. Global strategic questions – the relation- ships of human systems to the environment, the playrules of global economic and other relations on the globe, etc. – need democratic global governance, which in the year 2107 can be as natural as is the Finnish parliament at the moment. It is justifiable to hope that the development to this direction will take place much more rapidly. It would be alarming for the humankind and the globe, if we should have to wait for democratic global govern- ance still more hundred years. 6. Demos as small tribes and as big supranational communities are not contradicting trends of the future, but they can co-exist simultaneously adding to each other. The trends of globalisation and localisation may produce the trend of glocalisation. As a result of these developments diversity and complexity of societal systems will grow. 7. Correspondingly, it is possible to estimate that communities connected to one physical place and representing traditional locality, and novel virtual tribes that are independent of place, can, in principle, live in harmony in the future. Novel models of power and gov- ernance will exist between and inside of them. 8. In the very long-range future it is possible that most human actions, measured by eco- nomic indicators, are virtual, and almost all societal activities and decision-making go over to virtual space. We will be witnessing more virtual decision-making and politics than traditional face-to-face meetings. 9. Although the number of countries applying democratic models of governance, and the number of humans living in those countries has grown up till the present, it would be na- ïve to think that in the future we will be witnessing some kind of deterministic triumph of democracy in the world. There are very powerful cultural and societal trends, which are pushing forward other models of governance than democracy. 10. Additionally, the models of democracy will face prominent challenges in the traditionally democratic western societies in the future. The main reason for that is the general societal development from industrial nation-states into global information societies. Technologi- cal, economic and societal phenomena are more complex than before, and changes are accelerating everywhere. One can even speak of a paradigm shift from the concept of democracy of the industrial age into the one of the information age. - 2 - Mannermaa From the point of a futures researcher, the prevailing models of democracy and political culture in the western countries possess many features, which are far from the primary starting-points of future-oriented thinking. The differences – even paradoxes – are described in following table: Futures thinking Prevailing (representative) democracy Long range; decades or more Shor range; parliamentary cycle (frequently four years) Multisectoral systems thinking Sectoral ”not my job” -thinking New modes of thinking and organizing societal activities Modes of thinking and organizing societal activities (eg.
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