Politics can be both the creator of global crises and the path to their solutions. The
rise of sophisticated new communications technologies is enabling an improved functioning
of democracy and helping build new kinds of political parties that will better represent
the wishes of citizens. With these communications tools, political parties could
potentially educate the global public on how to deal with massive organized crime, world
hunger, global pandemics, piracy, and struggles for peace and justice where genocide
threatens.
Effective political parties of the future will need to reach out to each other globally
even before humanity achieves successful global governance. This is not necessarily a new
idea--the Communist party became a global party in the twentieth century. However, it
failed to succeed as a global party because it tried to operate from the top down instead
of giving an effective voice to people from the bottom up. Today's political parties do
not yet give an adequate voice to all citizens or enlist them in responsible debate on
political alternatives. Democracy is thus weakened.
To alter that model and strengthen democracy, political parties could use their new
tools to help educate and inspire citizens with new ideas and a sense of enfranchisement.
One place to start, at least in the United States, is political party conventions.
Instead of providing a model for future democratic governments, party conventions now
resemble pep rallies before a football game rather than forums to educate voters on the
pros and cons of political alternatives. After sessions, conventioneers gather to dance
and party rather than debate serious issues or learn more about major crises that elected
leaders will need to address.
New technologies are already working major transformations in business, medicine, and
education, but not enough yet in politics. The speeches of many political candidates
rarely discuss the real global crises facing humanity, or offer only simplistic solutions.
Many politicians try hard to obscure their ignorance and poor judgments, but this will not
be possible in an information-empowered and transparent global society.
For example, now in America a legislative body can be presented with a 400-page
legislative bill without adequate time to reflect seriously upon it. Posting such a
document online will give not only the legislators adequate time to consider it but also
allow all citizens to read it. The document would be indexed and linked to sources of
information, helping educate all stakeholders on the issues in the proposed legislation.
In the future, political conventions should electronically listen to voters to learn
what most concerns them, what they are angry about, what kinds of legislation they would
like to see debated, and how to accomplish the best possible solutions. The parties that
are out of power will have to be better prepared to focus on alternative solutions rather
than on the failures of the party in power.
The Global Knowledge 97 conference in Toronto, funded by the Canadian government, could
serve as a model for future political conventions. It began with a "voices of the
poor" survey that interviewed the most miserable of the poor to enlist their help in
defining their needs and solutions. For six months prior to the conference, delegates were
briefed from an online library of successful projects under way in the world. Similar
online conferences on global issues have been sponsored by such organizations as BBC World
Service, FAO, WHO, UNICEF, and UNESCO.
The sort of local participation that was used for the Toronto conference will, in the
future, greatly enliven global democratic politics. The technologies used for the Toronto
conference enabled the participation of people from around the world who could not afford
to go to Toronto. Future political parties could use local community telecenters that will
turn every neighborhood school into a 24-hour-a-day community electronic education center.
The connections formed at Toronto continued after the conference. All the information
stayed on the Internet for continuing further work, so the proposals and decisions made at
Toronto could receive adequate follow-up.
Future political party conventions could develop online working groups for key issues,
such as health-care legislation. The groups would solicit suggestions and criticisms from
all stakeholders--physicians, their patients, hospitals, and pharmaceutical
corporations--but do so openly and above board, not in after-session arm-twisting, and
shared with informed people all over the world.
Many legislators already use electronic voting so that the yeas and nays--and who cast
them--can be seen instantly on large monitors or individual PCs. Such electronics will
speed up the process at a political convention so that there will be more time for serious
education and debate. After a first vote, all the party members at home could be polled
for their reactions, with details spelled out on the Internet so they could give informed
opinions.
Complex new problems will always keep arising to require growth and change, so vibrant
and more-open political parties are needed to contribute their solutions. Otherwise, a
single party becomes dominant without checks and balances from a loyal opposition. Or
forms of authoritarian government may emerge that lose the confidence of the majority of
citizens. Too often now, raising money for propaganda has become more important than
engaging the public in intelligent, informed debate. Future political conventions thus
need to become "teach-ins" providing education for both the politicians and the
public as well as opportunities to debate alternative ways of solving problems.
Town-hall meetings and questionnaires are the traditional tools for parties to gain
feedback from the electorate between conventions and elections. But too often the
questionnaires are thinly disguised campaign contribution solicitations ("Do you want
better schools? health care? environment?"), and town-hall meetings may not draw
enough local interest in crucial but esoteric topics, such as building a lifelong
education system for everyone on the planet. Online, those who are interested can meet
with hundreds or thousands of others; together, they can generate new ideas for their
political parties. One recent project that benefited from putting thousands of minds to
work online was organized by the World Bank and other global organizations to focus on
water shortages and pollution.
Since communication technologies are global, they could be used to share ideas and
expand political parties across national boundaries. This may be especially important
because major human problems have both local and global components, and many will be
solved only on a global level.
Two-way networking could also strengthen the United Nations and help make it more
effective. Giving a voice to all the world's people and not just those gathered in New
York will encourage participation and large-scale public debate.
Global political leaders need to be educated on how to involve the public in designing
plans for decades into the future. Many politicians seem ignorant and narrow-minded
because they don't know what is possible with new technologies, especially the Internet.
Rather than using new tools to conduct old political business (campaign financing, for
instance), future political parties could stress education of the global public. Present
efforts are too simplistic to deal with the complexities of global problems.
In an era of globalization, democracy will be strengthened as political parties with
similar missions link together across national lines. Future political leaders will also
be engaged in a process of self-education and discovery. They will use more comprehensive
and sophisticated information bases, models, tools, policy development, assessment
procedures, problem-solving skills, international consensus building, and decision-making
procedures to address complex and controversial issues.
The bottom line is that, if wisely used, communication technologies will enhance the
creative-age political party by enabling political education and facilitating citizen
involvement. Perhaps politics was never simple, but its complexity will require ever more
sophisticated tools and comprehensive collaboration.
Parker Rossman's online book Transforming Human Society: The
Future Of Higher (Lifelong) Education (http://ecolecon.missouri.edu/globalresearch), on providing
education to everyone on the planet, has been translated for publication in China. He may
be contacted by e-mail at g.p.ross@mchsi.com.
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