Democracy is Possible, Here's How

 

    How People Harness their Collective Wisdom and Power

to Construct the Future in Co-Laboratories of Democracy
by Alexander N. Christakis
and Kenneth C. Bausch

a book review by Dan Shaw

Read How People to find out how Democracy is possible. Many Americans may feel pessimistic about the possibility for effective democracy, How People presents an essential formula for citizen empowerment based in the logic of democratic decision-making. One may well ask, "In a complex situation, how is it possible for a diverse group to come to a democratic decision?" Even when it comes to making a decision as individuals, we rarely apply consistent rules of logic. Christakis ("Aleco") and Bausch lay out the logical formula for arriving at a decision, perhaps for the first time. More than 30 years ago, Aleco, a physicist, began his quest to apply the laws of logic to democratic decision-making. His system, the Structured Design Process (SDP), makes possible effective participatory democracy. Without a logical process, and a ‘transparent´ process, without tools to manage complexity, Democracy is not possible. I hope this article will convince you, as I am convinced, that SDP is the best model for Democratic dialogue, that nothing less will do.

Not surprisingly, the process has numerous stages, and processes, and requires from the participants an ongoing commitment. Christakis and Bausch identify four stages of decision-making: Definition, Design, Decision, and Action Planning. Everyone holding a stake in the outcome is invited to participate. SDP requires a strict distinction between the roles of the facilitators, who guide the process, and the participants, who control the content of the discussions. Defining a "Triggering Question" is perhaps the most important factor to the successful outcome of the group acting together on shared concerns. Often a small group will conduct interviews and write a "White Paper" to provide a starting point in discussions. For example, a triggering question may be, "What are critical current and anticipated issues (or challenges) to be addressed in order to achieve our strategic vision?" A group is then engaged in a sustained dialogue to articulate as many relevant observations as possible. This complexly inter-related mass of observations is called a problematique. The goal then becomes to clarify meanings, and to cluster these observations into groups of items with significant similarities. The relationships between these ideas, the direction of influence, is then mapped using Root Cause Mapping software. If a group focuses on importance, rather than influence, then they will choose the wrong priorities.

In the Design Stage, action options are identified, grouped into categories, then their complex inter-relationships can be graphically mapped. Because the software generates a graphic of the relationship between ideas, action options with the highest leverage become obvious. In the Decision Stage, participants design alternative action profiles, then vote on which action profiles would be most effective.

SDP is designed to use software tools to simplify decision-making within highly complex situations, and to overcome what the authors call "The Burdens of Dialogue". Participants can focus on a limited and manageable number of relationships while the software keeps track. As the process advances, the method of that progression is completely tracked and made public.

Without the SDP, there is really little hope for citizen empowerment and the logical advance of Democracy. Christakis and Bausch have succeeded in identifying the essential components of Democratic decision-making. Even the groups most engaged in our Democracy are rarely themselves operating democratically. Each of us must learn the basic formula for democratic decision making, and apply that process in the development of our organizations. Incredibly, the techniques and tools of democracy are just now being honed, but, it seems that to keep up with the times, the tools of Democracy must be continually sharpened, and applied to the task, otherwise they will surely turn to dust. Christakis and Bausch´s SDP is the toolbox, and if we want Democracy, thankfully, we can now apply the best tools.

Locating Consensus for Democracy: A Ten-Year U.S. Experiment

by Alan F. Kay

a book review by Dan Shaw

Opinion Polling has gotten a bad name. Special interests, including the media, sponsor polls which are biased in many ways. To counter this abysmal trend, Alan Kay has applied his fortune to the pursuit of Public Interest Polling. Perhaps naively, Kay thought that if he conducted rigorous polling, in an unbiased way, that politicians would actually be interested to know what the public thought on specific policy issues. In Locating Consensus, Kay establishes some surprising truths about how people think about politics, and how politicians think. Average Americans are surprisingly adept at answering complex political questions, when they are skillfully asked. Kay has been asking thousands of Americans vital questions over ten years. The consensus on national security and other issues that has emerged will be ignored by politicians at their own risk. Conversely, a politician, political campaign or social movement that represents this consensus will be swept to dominance.

It would be impossible to sum up here the results of hundreds of questions Kay has been able to poll. The book´s 400 pages are about as dense as any I´ve read. Kay begins with an expose´ of the shortcomings of polling as it is practiced today. For example, polls with a high number of "Don´t Know" responses indicate the responder was rushed, or that the options offered were insufficient. Also, where 3% or more of respondents offer an answer that was not an option, that choice would have received a higher number had it been offered.  In multiple-choice questions, options must be rotated to eliminate the possible confounding effects of primacy and recency. Kay takes us along on his learning curve, as he comes in as a novice and emerges as a master of the linguistics and statistics of polling. Through follow-up polling, he is able to improve the precision of questions and answers. By polling over years, he is able to track trends. By "debate format" polling, he shows that given arguments from two sides, respondents do switch their "before and after" opinions, but the switchers go both directions, and the net change is often negligible. By splitting the sample, and asking some questions to both groups, and asking each group some unique questions, it is possible to effectively double your "bang for the buck" in a statistically valid way.

To avoid any bias, Kay engages two teams of pollsters, one each from the democratic and republican parties. He finds that in some cases, neutral questions are not necessary. He can split the sample, and ask each half the question in ways equally and oppositely biased. He finds that some bias in the question has a negligible impact on the responses, giving greater confidence that the impact of any unintentional bias in the questions would be slight.

Public Interest Polling identified some policy options that were supported by 90%. However, 80% support for a policy option is enough to show that it has support among all major demographic groups in all states and Congressional Districts.

To give just one example of Kay´s findings, his nineteenth poll asked how we could get more energy and help the environment, and how we could get more energy and help the economy.  Respondents were given a number of options, such as high fuel efficiency cars, retrofitting commercial and industrial buildings, building more efficient trains and planes, etc. All the items just mentioned were "Triple Winners", that is, a strong majority of respondents felt that the proposals would be good for the economy, the environment, and for energy supply. A candidate or campaign could ride this public sentiment into office, or craft a referendum that would be guaranteed passage. In Kay´s words there is a "Total Disconnect" between the public opinion and the leaders. Public Interest Polling, as Kay has defined it, is the key to actually hearing the will of the majority. Democracy is founded on the assumption that every citizen can make informed decisions about policies that affect them, and that the majority will expresses a kind of collective wisdom. Without Public Interest Polling, that collective wisdom will remain untapped. We must tap in to that wisdom, to heal the disconnect between the leaders and public. We dare not rely on the opinion polls of the special interests. Only enacting the majority will can lead to Democracy, for if special interests are allowed to define the questions, as a society we will surely not be happy with the answers. Only Consensus will lead to lasting stability and quality of life. Consensus exists out there, it does not need to be achieved so much as located, as the book´s title says. The politicians may be quite polarized, but citizens are not nearly so extreme. The public consensus, it turns out, is quite wise and we would do well to listen to it and put it into practice.

Escaping the Matrix: How We the People Can Save the World

by Richard Moore

book review by Dan Shaw

On rare occasions, reading a book, you find yourself nodding your head in agreement, as you read paragraph after paragraph of agreeable ideas, eloquently expressed, and you keep thinking of people you want to share the book with, who would also be comforted and strengthened. Escaping the Matrix is one of those rare shining examples of books to be hungrily read in one or two sittings, and shared with friends of all political stripes. Richard Moore's whirlwind tour of the "Matrix", our modern dilemma of elite political and economic domination and ecocide, and his "Brief History of Humanity" are breathtaking for his depth, synthesis, and readability.

In the first two chapters Moore effortlessly brings us through the darkness of the Matrix and actually gives us the "red pill", the formula for waking up from the hypnotic illusion and seeing the painful truth of society. Moore shows how the dominator culture is overturned simply by changing our own human and community relations to embody partnership values.

Escaping the Matrix describes two "imperatives", the "Transformational Imperative" and the "Harmonization Imperative". By this he means that we must Transform and Harmonize, because our dominator society is destroying the natural environment and the social systems, and this is evidenced by our national foreign policy priorities, "oil-based dominance".

Harmonization is a strategy we already use in cooperative meetings, but our justice system and our political system are divisive and adversarial. Factionalism plays into the hands of those who are masters at "Divide and Conquer". Moore provides examples of "two promising meetings" where these principles were successfully put into practice: the "Michigan Conference" and the Rogue Valley Wisdom Council. "If everyone were to have this kind of experience," Moore says, "our culture itself would be transformed. Not only would this fill our 'cultural gap' as regards meetings, but also our cultural paradigms about competition and adversarial politics would be neutralized. Although our societal systems would remain unchanged, for a while at least, the culture that supports them would be gone. The elite's divide and rule strategy would be fatally undermined. No longer would we feel compelled to choose sides among political parties; no longer would we feel isolated as citizens. Our culture, beginning in the grassroots, would be transforming into the partnership category." [page 135]

In the following chapters Moore clearly shares visions for a transformational movement and a liberated global society, with insights for even the most seasoned activists: "If a movement makes demands, then it is affirming that power resides elsewhere-- in the person or agency which is the target of the demands. If a movement creates solutions, then it is asserting its own empowerment; it is taking responsibility for its own welfare." [89]

"Only when they had achieved overwhelming success at the grassroots did [the Populists] turn their attention to the ballot box." [90]

Peppered with inspiring quotes from many sources, and with such a fluid style and sensible analysis, Moore's book ended too soon. It will be up to us to put this advice into practice and transform our political systems so that Moore can write the sequel.

www.EscapingTheMatrix.org

www.DanShaw.com