Democratisation is a term that is most often used to describe the process of increased political participation. In the past, political participation was described as voting, joining a political party, or in the case of some experimental social engineering projects of the 20th century, such as Yugoslavia's socialist self-management, as creating consultative bodies at all levels of social, economic and political activity, regardless of their success. In its less democratic forms, political participation has historically been facilitiated through rallies, rioting, lobbying, formation of nationalist movements, paramilitary or other pressure groups, in other words, by any means serving the human need to exercise political will.
Political needs of a system (or a time), have often determined what democratic political participation actually means. It is not often remembered that the so-called communist political systems based their idea of democratic participation on the need to re-distribute the means of production and ensure equal access to them for all citizens, before making ideological adherence to the (one)party line into a dominant discourse and the definition of ‘the rule of the people'. What is interesting about this, as about the fact that Hitler was a democratically elected leader, or that the birth of the contemporary notion of democracy involved the Guillotine (just like the doctrine of spreading democratic principles today involves the use of military force or various levels of economic and political pressure on the non-willing participants); is that democracy remains an arbitrary notion - and not a very participative arbitrary notion at that.
Put simply, if democracy is measured by participation only, and participation is based on the ability and willingness of people to participate in democratic elections, then, in reality, it is more of a ritual than a real consulting process between governments and their citizens. To play the Devil's Advocate, there is not much difference in the process that allows people to vote for two (in realpolitik terms) not-so-different political options (as is often the case with the Labor-Liberal political divide at home), and some less democratic forms of governing, if that process doesn't involve a level of real engagement, consultation and participation with the constituents. Because real engagement requires two-way communication beyond the polling place.
Politicians have often claimed that the real barrier to the two-way consulting process is erected by our lack of culture of engagement in an informed political debate (and the lack of mechanisms to facilitate such debates), rather than by the lack of willingness to enable such a process. Technology, or more specifically, the Internet, has been identified as one of the answers to the problem, and Open Forum is one such experiment.
It is one of our intentions to provide the right information and the context to put that information in, and encourage you to ask questions that you would have otherwise not have a mechanism to ask or simply would not have talked about in a public forum. However, in order to understand how to best do that and utilise Open Forum as a mechanism of consultation, we need your thoughts on what this forum should be. Please take a moment to share some thoughts with the Open Forum community or email me at tamara@openforum.com.au [1].
RECOMMENDED READING
Former Labor federal minister Barry Jones discusses the political process and the need for more active and informed political participation.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/it-is-not-too-late-to-save-the-political-process/2007/02/28/1172338709542.html [2]
John Keane, profesor of politics at the University of Westminster, looks at the growing disaffection with the concept of parliamentary democracy.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/democracy-some-dont-want-it-many-dont-care/2007/10/10/1191695986236.html [3]