democracy - Vision the Italian Think Tank

Similar innovations may then be experimented at other institutional levels: regions,nation states, and the European Union.In Italy and Germany, it is healthcare the public service area which could be moreusefully exposed to public scrutiny at regional or Laender level. The scheme could besimilar to the one we mentioned for urban mobility at city council level. The overallresponsibility for providing healthcare services in such a way that quality andaccessibility to all is maximised, is in many cases already mandated to some regionalagency. The possibility here is to call elections where alternative programmes andteams are chosen directly by the citizens and once again to give citizens thepossibility to witness a competition whose metrics may be much more “concrete”,closer to the quality of their existences than the one which is typical in “generalcontests”.At nation state level, similar sectoral competitions may be called in areas such aseducation. The example of “education” can also respond to another need forrationalisation that modern democracies show. Some areas – education is a clearexample of it – seem to demand much longer term strategies as opposed to others.In fact, the separation of political competitions for different policies, may also meetthe need of establishing different political cycles (see above point 1) for differentsectors. The length of each political mandate for agencies working on a multi yearprogramme of transforming the schooling system may then be longer than the periodallowed to other elected bodies.Similar reasoning for the European Union and in this case areas such as publicresearch projects and regulation of private ones, may be the issue upon which todevelop specific European wide political competitions.In each of these cases we may undoubtedly realize that most people are notknowledgable enough to express an opinion. However this is even more the case ingeneral elections, as we explained before. The very realization of the lack ofknowledge that we as citizens (and politicians) display when it comes to developingspecific needs and opinions, will be an even stronger incentive to start expandingthese sorts of innovations. Their value will, in fact, be mostly in terms of a learningexperience for a public opinion and for a society who often seems not to be used anymore to the responsibilities that democracy demands.THE QUESTION OF THE SCOPE OF OPINIONSThis is the fourth mistake that the parliamentarian systems makes in respect to theobjective to gather citizens’ preferences for technological evaluation that is possibletoday (and, in our opinion, politically desirable).In fact, not only do elections occur with sub-optimal frequency, questions that are tooboard and in constituencies that are unrealistic.34