democracy - Vision the Italian Think Tank

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complexity has been multiplied and we are still using the same mechanisms toaggregate individual opinions into decisions relevant to an entire community.These are the limits of institutional mechanisms (especially elections) that were builtfor a Society totally different from the one we now live in. We should look more indepth at what the limits are and what could be the (very preliminary) hypotheses forsolutions that could be experimented with, using a smart combination of technologiesand politics.THE PROBLEM OF ELECTORAL CYCLES.We vote every four or five years and this generates a number of costs both in terms ofthe ability to represent and to be efficient.To be more precise let’s say that each of the major institutions that builds ademocratic system are chosen through an electoral moment that lasts one or two days.This is preceded by an electoral campaign that is carried out over two or three monthsand which is renewed every four or five years.In reality there are many ways for measuring the popularity of a given government(and thus of a given political offering including the alternatives to ones currently ingovernment).This normally happens using elections occurring at some institutional level for testingthe support of governments (and oppositions) at different levels which are not underscrutiny. This has been frequently the case for regional and European levelconsultations used to verify how well national governments were doing 19 .Opinion polls are also increasingly used not only to forecast election results andadjust political offerings and government behaviours to public opinions, but also toevaluate governments’ perfomance. It is not uncommon to see governments‘delegitimised’ by trends in popularity even before any proper vote-counting.The problem is similar to the one that is normally called the “political cycle”: Herewe are arguing that the error of such a cycle has become bigger than it used to be. Itimplies not only a reduction of the capacity of a given democratic system to reflectthe opinions of its citizens in the formation of the political will and therefore of itslevel of “democracy”, but also the reduction of the capability of the government tosolve problems.Let’s start with the first question and thus the impact on the level of democracy.The theoretical point (that has, as we will see, substantial consequences on a practicallevel) is that an election that is renewed every four or five years produces a loss of“information” on citizens’ preferences.19 This, in fact, a paradox: whereas economic and social forces seem to push towards an increase of the importance ofsub national and super national decision making levels, media, politicians and public opinions continue, de facto, toconsider regional and European political domains as somehow subordinate to national ones.16
Such a loss of information is, in theory, measured by the distance between the choice– made on the day of the elections – and the (weighted) average of the choices (or atleast satisfaction levels) that month by month, day by day (or whatever is the timeunit we want consider) the citizen would have expressed during the government lifecycle.If we express ourselves at moments which are apart in time, it is likely (natural) thatclose events (last week, last hours) have a greater weight than episodes that may haveinfluenced more the quality of our lives, but that have disappeared from our memory,that may have influenced our opinion for a longer period of time but are not relevantfor “electoral” purpose.The graph below gives a sense of the magnitude of the “error” in the case of the lastUS presidency.Current US President approval rate (2000-2005, %)100Election 2000Election 20046530Sett 2000Nov 2001 Nov 2002 Nov 2003 Nov 2004 Ago 2005Source: Vision on USA Today/ CNN dataIn the case of the most important political competition, it would have been enough tomove back or forward the election date to get completely different election outcomes.The theoretical issue has, clearly, heavy practical consequences.Electoral campaign experts have realized this for some time and are, by now, used toconcentrate the selling of different political products over the electoral period.17
Page 1 and 2: BACK TO DEMOCRACY 1In progress pape
Page 3 and 4: General elections UKShare of eligib
Page 5 and 6: 2. the inequalities; if we try, mor
Page 7 and 8: The current limits of democracy’s
Page 9 and 10: DEVELOPING AN INFORMATION BASED THE
Page 11 and 12: The changes of a democracy that ‘
Page 13 and 14: minimum expectations that are assoc
Page 15: 1. ARE ELECTIONS STILL A LEGITIMATE
Page 19: The issue we are talking about is n
Page 24 and 25: of a much celebrated choice of bein
Page 26 and 27: democracy today and specifically of
Page 28 and 29: decide to divide her/ his own vote
Page 30 and 31: It would then be much more realisti
Page 32 and 33: Iraq). The vote was “obviously”
Page 34 and 35: Similar innovations may then be exp
Page 36 and 37: situations are not equivalent, and
Page 38 and 39: 3. ARE CONSTITUTIONS STILL USEFUL?
Page 40 and 41: 5. DOES TELEVISION STILL MATTER? TH
Page 42: We, in fact, also, think that the d

democracy - Vision the Italian Think Tank

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