The Politician 2.0 and an introduction to post-Democracy

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This is the second article to be re-posted on this blog from Gaianomy blog (A new socioeconomic theory & a think-tank). I encourage readers to visit their  About Gaianomy page.

We established in the previous blog Do we really need the Politician? that the politician as an institution needs to change and together with it, the institutions of the political party and public administration.

No to War by Bert Monterona Tapestry Painting

Where can we start the change?

Inevitably, we need to evaluate  the probable “futures” we can see, compare these with today’s reality and plan a phased transition from today to the future vision, with the minimum of “allergic” reactions, ideally. Equally important is to agree on the fact that no one solution can fit all, as different nations will start from different systems and institutional forms that support them currently so probably localisation of the principals will be needed.

So, “back to the future” and let us see how our vision of post-Democracy could be defined.

Based on current trends and having excluded several incompatible scenarios we can see it as:

• A framework allowing  the country’s and the global interests to coexists at least as equal partners
• An environment whereby political parties are groups of thinkers or citizens-members, an evolution of a think tank in combination with an evolved political party, that will never get into power
• Whereby politics and public administration are two distinctly different things
•  An environment where policy making is a process of careful impact analysis on the socioeconomic level within a globalised framework
• A socioeconomic environment whereby election circles do not exist but instead
• A process where legislation and policies are approved by the means of a fully electronic process driven by common grounds between the interested non political parties (instead of a majority) and based on impact analysis on both the environmental and social aspects
• An environment where public administration is run in the background funded by a central independent body that is responsible for the country’s fiscal policies, the socioeconomic analysis needed for decision-making and the allocation of funds
• A framework where the citizen rules
• A framework where the economy and the social coexist as equal partners
• An environment whereby public services/resources  are distributed equally to all
• An environment that rewards the citizens according to their contribution to society
• A framework within which taxation forms are related to social and environmental contributions
• A system where the politician is used only as a representative of the state in global institutions, as foreign policy leaders, diplomats, ambassadors, institutional entrepreneur, and social lobbyists for new policies and maybe as political philosophers if they are up to it

So, how Democracy 1.1 can look like, what the first step can be to start the journey, from where we are, to where we would like to be?

We believe that societies are currently mature enough to:

• Break the connection between a political party and the country’s  governance
• Eliminate party vote in favour of the elected individual
• Separate the politician from the party during elections and vote him on his political manifesto, personal integrity and capability with all of them graded in the vote. When elected they can group into political fractions if they wish
• Reduce the amount of elected politicians
• Progress with (or start if not in place yet) the separation between Politics and Public Administration by assigning Undersecretaries and restructure the Public Administration Structure according to real needs
• Enhance the public consultation principal, by presenting the recommendations of all parties in it as the baseline, for all legislations
• Give gradually-increased  gravity to public consultation into regulations affecting the majority of the citizens and national policies
• Transfer to an independent body, away from political groups, the country’s fiscal policy, the socioeconomic analysis needed for decision-making and the allocation of public funds.
• Reduce the central governance and move responsibility to the periphery
• Plan for the transition away from Parliaments
• Change taxation of individuals and enterprises to reflect social and environmental impact
• Eliminate corruption and crime by introducing the electronic only currency (see relevant articles on the subject)

Then sit back and enjoy!

The Gaianomy think-tank