Lean Democracy and the Leadership Vacuum 45 Charles Leadbeater and Geoff Mulgan
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Demos Demos is an independent think-tank set up to improve the breadth and quality of political and policy debate. It encourages radical thinking and solutions to the long-term problems facing the UK and other advanced industrial societies. It brings together thinkers and doers. Demos is a registered charity. It is financed by voluntary donations from individuals, foundations and compa- nies. The views expressed in publications are those of the authors alone. They do not represent Demos’ institutional viewpoint. Demos has received invaluable support from a wide range of organisations including: Northern Foods, Cable & Wireless plc, Pearson, Scottish and Newcastle, National Westminster Bank plc, British Gas, Shell International, Story Hayward, the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, the Rowntree Reform Trust, the Inland Revenue Staff Federation, Etam, Heidrick and Struggles, the Charities Aid Foundation, the Corporation of London, and the Economic and Social Research Council. Demos’ Advisory Council includes: John Ashworth, Director of the London School of Economics Clive Brooke, General Secretary, Inland Revenue Staff Federation Janet Cohen, Director, Charterhouse Bank Jack Dromey, National Officer TGWU Sir Douglas Hague, Templeton College Jan Hall, former chair of Coley Porter Bell Stuart Hall, Professor of Sociology, Open University Chris Ham, Professor of Health Policy, Birmingham University Charles Handy, author and broadcaster Ian Hargreaves, Deputy Editor, Financial Times Christopher Haskins, Chairman of Northern Foods PLC Martin Jacques, Sunday Times Richard Layard, Professor of Economics, LSE David Marquand, Professor of Politics, Sheffield University Sheila McKechnie, Director, Shelter Julia Middleton, Director, Common Purpose Yve Newbold, Company Secretary. Hanson plc, Director, British Telecom Sue Richards, Director, The Office of Public Management Anita Roddick, Group Managing Director, Body Shop PLC Dennis Stevenson, Chairman, SRU and the Tate Gallery Martin Taylor, Chief Executive, Barclays Bank plc Bob Tyrrell, Managing Director, The Henley Centre Open access. Some rights reserved. As the publisher of this work, Demos has an open access policy which enables anyone to access our content electronically without charge. We want to encourage the circulation of our work as widely as possible without affecting the ownership of the copyright, which remains with the copyright holder. Users are welcome to download, save, perform or distribute this work electronically or in any other format, including in foreign language translation without written permission subject to the conditions set out in the Demos open access licence which you can read here. Please read and consider the full licence. The following are some of the conditions imposed by the licence: • Demos and the author(s) are credited; • The Demos website address (www.demos.co.uk) is published together with a copy of this policy statement in a prominent position; • The text is not altered and is used in full (the use of extracts under existing fair usage rights is not affected by this condition); • The work is not resold; • A copy of the work or link to its use online is sent to the address below for our archive. By downloading publications, you are confirming that you have read and accepted the terms of the Demos open access licence. Copyright Department Demos Elizabeth House 39 York Road London SE1 7NQ United Kingdom [email protected] You are welcome to ask for permission to use this work for purposes other than those covered by the Demos open access licence. Demos gratefully acknowledges the work of Lawrence Lessig and Creative Commons which inspired our approach to copyright. The Demos circulation licence is adapted from the ‘attribution/no derivatives/non-commercial’ version of the Creative Commons licence. To find out more about Creative Commons licences go to www.creativecommons.org Demos Quarterly Issue 3/1994 Demos Quarterly is published by Demos 9 Bridewell Place London EC4V 6AP Tel: 0171 353 4479 Fax: 0171 353 4481 © Demos 1994 All rights reserved Editorial team: Charles Leadbeater Geoff Mulgan Martin Bartle Joanna Wade Liz Bailey Martin Summers Lisa Barclay Andrew Adonis Printed in Great Britain by EG Bond Ltd Design and Art Direction: Esterson Lackersteen Special thanks to: Simon Esterson Andrzej Krause Mark Perryman Oregon Progress Board Ted Backer Christa Darly-Slaton MORI Contents FEATURES Back to Greece: the scope for direct democracy 1 Andrew Adonis and Geoff Mulgan Repossessing the House: Parliamentary 29 audits and the Constituent’s Charter Martin Summers Lean democracy and the leadership vacuum 45 Charles Leadbeater and Geoff Mulgan The cracked mirror: the future for representation 83 Judith Squires Positive sum politics 93 Graham Allen Democratic cures: lessons from Oregon 97 Howard M. Leichter Democracy’s quantum leap 105 Christa Daryl Slaton Electrifying Democracy 111 Ted L. Becker Demos v Demos 3/1994 Initiatives and experiments 117 Martin Bartle REGULARS Media Watch 121 Signs of the times 124 vi Demos Lean democracy Democracy is leading a double life. Two and a half thousand years after the emergence of democracy the virtues of contested elections and par- liaments are still spreading to countries where people have the vote for the first time. Yet in democracy’s heartlands there is a sense that the political system has run into the sand. Dissatisfaction with governments’ performance is widespread. Parliaments look like antiquated talking shops. Leaders have lost credibility. Political parties are losing members. A realisation is slowly dawning that a model of democracy that we inherited from the 19th century is on the verge of far reaching change. Democracy has changed in the past, with the extension of the fran- chise, the development of local government and the creation of new political parties. We believe mounting public dissatisfaction with poli- tics will force it to change again to restore public confidence that politicians are fit to lead society. In this special issue we set out ideas which may inform that transfor- mation. We describe the principles of a Lean Democracy, which gives the governed more direct control over governors, and makes politics more transparent and responsive, more effective and more account- able. To achieve that the tasks of the political system have to be broken up into their components parts. The institutions and people charged with those tasks – whether it be economic management or education policy – should be held accountable through new democratic channels which expose them more directly to the people. Demos vii Demos 3/1994 As it stands democracy uses methods which are crude and anachro- nistic. The voters rarely exercise their democratic rights. Once they do, layers of political and administrative bureaucracy separate them from the people who hold power. Lean Democracy will deploy a wide range of methods to give citizens more influence over powerholders.We argue for a more participative, responsible democracy which will use the new technologies of push button democracy and the electronic town hall, as well as devices such as citizens’ juries and advisory referendums. At the moment voters have access to power only through an occasional, nar- row opening in the walls of politics. We envisage a political system which will offer people multiple points of access to power. Lean Democracy goes far beyond more familiar arguments for con- stitutional reform. Many of these, such as proportional representation and a Bill of Rights, are essential. But the danger of some proposals, such as reforms to create an elected second chamber or regional assem- blies, is that they will simply pass power from one group of politicians to another. That would deepen rather than resolve public alienation with politics. Instead we argue for: a wholesale redefinition of the role of politicians so that powerholders can be held more clearly accountable for their performance combining representative with direct democracy in the form of referendums, rights of initiative and recall, and voter vetoes on parliamentary legislation the creation of new forms of ‘reflective’ body, such as voter juries and deliberative polling groups to advise on policy issues creating an independent election regulator Ofelect, to scrutinise elections and political argument to encourage truth-telling a raft of reforms to parliament to ensure better training of MPs, better policy-making, and better accountability, including the development of constituents charters. viii Demos Lean democracy The reforms we envisage under the umbrella Lean Democracy will not be easy to implement. The people who benefit most from the exist- ing system – the established political class – are the least willing to recognise the need for change.Yet in the past decade and a half change has swept through other institutions in Britain. Companies have been through waves of radical restructuring. The public sector is being refashioned. As disillusion with politics mounts, the case for radical change to our oldest democratic institutions will become irresistible. Demos ix Back to Greece: the scope for direct democracy Andrew Adonis* and Geoff Mulgan† If democracy means self-government, it is doubtful whether Britain and other western countries should be called full democracies. The doubt is not a matter of semantics. It derives from two of the most fun- damental weaknesses in contemporary western states: the divorce of politics from society,