6. Yellow vest movement in France

In this movement, people gathered on street to protest, wearing the yellow vest “as symbol of rallying”[7.3]. As for the vest, Ghislain Coutard called on to use it on 24 October[7.3.1]. A video posted by Jacline Mouraud on Facebook in October “was watched more than 6 million times”[7.3.2]. 

6.1. Citizens’ initiative referendum claimed in France

In the Yellow vest movement in France, the demonstrators claimed the necessity of the citizens’ initiative referendum — le référendum d’initiative citoyenne (RIC) in French which is one of the major demands in the manifestation. In the context of the demand, the referendums, particularly in Switzerland and Italy were referred[7.4]. According to an article on Le Figaro[7.4.0.5], Italy has “three types of referendums: abrogative, constitutional and territorial”[7.4.1]. In the Switzerland’s case, they have “optional referendum”[7.5] and “federal popular initiative”[7.6]. What the optional referendum is that “Any citizen who has the right to vote, including the Swiss abroad, can launch an optional popular referendum”[8] when they are against the “the decision of Parliament”[8.5]. The organizer of a referendum have to assemble “50,000 signatures”[9] in minimum within “100 days”[10]. If the organizer met this baseline and the signatures were recognized as “valid”[11] by “the Federal Chancellery”[12], optional referendum will be conducted. This is for whether to change decision of the parliament and not to introduce or change federal law as legislative initiative is not available in federal level[12.3]. Next, the federal popular initiative which is for amending the constitution[12.5] can be carried out by “anyone who has the right to vote in Switzerland – including Swiss citizens living abroad”[13]. At least, “100,000 signatures”[14] has to be assembled within “18 months”[15]. In this initiative, there are paths to be taken counter-action[16], but what I want to emphasize here is that Switzerland has political structures to enhance the reflection of the opinions of its citizens.

What is the important point of this type of referendum is that it is obliged to reflect the public opinion after enough votes are calculated — related law for set up the system need to be enforced in advance. In conventional petitions, organizers submit the lists of names to authorities, but since authorities are not forced to take action even if volume of signatures are huge, they can ignore them. However, in this instance, it’s not just assembling the signatures, if they go through proper procedure, it is going to be taken into effect in authorized framework.

7. Voting

In voting for representative or referendum, the system has unequalness. 

7.1. Gerrymandering in US

For example, US has a problem of gerrymandering. As Lawrence Lessig explains that the name comes from “Massachusetts governor (and the fifth vice president of the United States) Elbridge Gerry, gerrymandering describes a technique for drawing electoral districts. More Pejoratively, it is a way for politicians to pick the voters rather than the voters picking politicians”[18.9]. 

8. Deliberation in politics

Deliberation is regarded as important in democracy. To have debate in national scale creates opportunities from politicians and experts to citizens to discuss their ideas. In 2018, France conducted the national grand debate (le grand débat national in French)[19] which had “four themes”: “The ecological transition”, “The taxation and the public expenditure”, “The democracy and the citizenship”, “The organization of the state and the public services”[19.2]. It started on 15 January and its whole schedule ended on “10 April” of “Debate in Senate” during which period “the local meetings” continued to be held to “15 March”[19.5]. This is also a matter of institution we need to build carefully.

9. On structure

If we focus excessively on decision of those in power or the expertise among pundits, it would lead to ignoring citizens. If we move to complete direct democracy, at least at this moment I think it would not work. In order to build society which doesn’t exclude  member in the society, there’s necessity to come up with institution which reflects the public as well as the experts who are great at each domain. Thinking about the combination of those two, the better idea than the present is the general will 2.0. In my understanding, Hiroki Azuma proposed the general will 2.0[20] which is the interface of deliberation among pundits and database (subconsciousness of mass)[20.5]. 

In his argument, he focused on people’s subconsciousness accumulated online as he said that the general will 2.0 “should be perceivable”[22] in contrast to his description that the general will by Jean-Jacque Rousseau “cannot be perceived”[23]. His idea was that the visualized subconsciousness based on data online and deliberation complement each other — “deliberation and database complement each other”[24]. What’s remarkable is that collected and “statistically processed”[24.5] “reaction of audience”[24.6] to deliberation among pundits broadcasted online[25] work in a sense that experts “cannot be so much far from it, and cannot completely ignore”[26]it. The subconsciousness of citizens directs deliberation among experts while expertise of pundits is reflected. This type of structure that is transparent and not closed within limited people might be a way to prevent deliberation from leaning extremely in certain type of opinion. Cass R. Sunstein explains the law of group polarization which “means that members of a deliberating group predictably move toward a more extreme point in the direction indicated by the members’ predeliberation tendencies”[17].

9.1. Politics divided into inside parliament and outside

In my understanding of general will 2.0, it doesn’t divide politics into inside parliament and outside. Emily Maitlis talked with Jeremy Hunt in BBC Newsnight, she mentioned in a part they touched on parliamentary democracy and protesters outside parliament that “if you look at where the action is coming from, […] the actions from people who’ve given up on believing that what happens in parliament will solve or change anything, this is the action of people who think the streets are more helpful than the democracy goes on inside”[27]. Political participation should be diverse than limited. Not just voting in election and referendum, demonstration, and lobbying, with the capability to ventilate inside and outside parliament, diverse political actions would be better to be implemented in society not to separate politics inside from outside parliament.

[7.3] Translated by myself from “comme symbole de ralliement”. Around 0:08- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rCtJugNkfI Accessed 8 January 2020.

[7.3.1] Ibid. Around 0:07-.

[7.3.2] Translated by myself from “a été vue plus de 6 millions de fois”. In the original phrase in the video, “6 millions de fois” is put emphasis. Around 0:06-. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XDXfwbfViI Accessed 8 January 2020.

[7.4] For example, an article on Le Figaro refers to Switzerland and Italy.  https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/politique/2018/12/12/31001-20181212ARTFIG00250–en-italie-le-referendum-d-initiative-populaire-retablit-l-equilibre-des-pouvoirs.php  Published and last updated on 13 December 2018. Accessed 7 January 2020.

[7.4.0.5] Ibid.

[7.4.1] Ibid. Translated by myself from “trois types de référendums: abrogatif, constitutionnel et territorial”.

[7.5]  https://www.ch.ch/en/demokratie/political-rights/referendum/how-to-launch-an-optional-referendum-at-federal-level/ Accessed 27 November 2019.

[7.6] https://www.ch.ch/en/demokratie/political-rights/popular-initiative/how-to-launch-a-federal-popular-initiative/ Accessed 27 November 2019.

[8]  https://www.ch.ch/en/demokratie/political-rights/referendum/how-to-launch-an-optional-referendum-at-federal-level/ Accessed 27 November 2019.

[8.5] https://www.ch.ch/en/demokratie/political-rights/referendum/mandatory-referendums-and-optional-referendums-in-switzerlan/ Accessed 27 November 2019.

[9] https://www.ch.ch/en/demokratie/political-rights/referendum/how-to-launch-an-optional-referendum-at-federal-level/ Accessed 27 November 2019.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[12.3] https://www.ch.ch/en/demokratie/political-rights/popular-initiative/what-is-a-federal-popular-initiative/ Accessed 27 November 2019.

[12.5] https://www.ch.ch/en/demokratie/political-rights/popular-initiative/what-is-a-federal-popular-initiative/ Accessed 27 November 2019.

[13] https://www.ch.ch/en/demokratie/political-rights/popular-initiative/how-to-launch-a-federal-popular-initiative/ Accessed 27 November 2019.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid.

[16] There are two ways to take counter-action for the initiative: the direct counter-proposal and the indirect counter-proposal are explained in the following website.  https://www.ch.ch/en/demokratie/political-rights/popular-initiative/what-is-a-direct-counter-proposal-or-an-indirect-counter-pro Accessed 27 November 2019.

[17] Sunstein, C. R. (2019). How change happens. The MIT Press. p.19.

[18] Ibid. p.22. Other examples are shown as well on p.21-22.

[18.9] Lessig, L. (2019). They Don’t Represent Us: Reclaiming Our Democracy. DEY ST. p.20.

[19] The website of the grand national debate at https://granddebat.fr/ Accessed 28 November 2019.

[19.2] “Les quatre thèmes du Grand Débat National” available at https://granddebat.fr/ Accessed 8 January 2020.[19.5] “Agenda” available at https://granddebat.fr/ Accessed 8 January 2020.

[20] Azuma, H. (2015). 一般意志2.0—ルソー、フロイト、グーグル. 講談社文庫.

[20.5] Azuma, H. (2017). Genron 0: A philosophy of the Tourist. pp.253-254.

[22] Ibid. p.101, translated by myself from “知覚することができるはずだ”.

[23] Ibid. p.101.

[24] Ibid. at least p.195.

[24.5] Ibid. p197.

[24.6] Ibid.

[25] Ibid. p.196-197. 

[26] Ibid. p175.

[27] BBC Newsnight. UK election: ‘It is essential we implement the referendum result’ – BBC Newsnight. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bOv2QRCA2Y The remark of Emily Maitlis cited begins around 6:31-. Posted on 19 November 2019. Accessed 11 January 2020.

 4. Complexity in election

5. Elements other than policies

4. Complexity in election

Complexity in election needs to be taken into account. Although people choose representatives in representative democracy, it doesn’t mean that they completely agree with all of the opinions which the representatives they chose have. For example, hypothetically in terms of social care, a person vote a representative which has clear manifesto in that domain, but the voter doesn’t agree with the representative’s economic policies. However, in the current representative democracy, citizens have to choose representatives as if they agree with all policies the ones they chose propose, and when elected the politicians try to proceed their policies. 

Chart 1 is a chart of a representative’s policies. There are areas named Economy, Diplomacy, Social care, Immigration, and Others and the size of each area depends on how much emphasized, for example as it can be seen, the candidate focuses more on social care than economy. They are policies explained by the politician. Since those who are elected are voted by huge number of voters, even if some voters choose a candidate because they support only the politician’s economic policy and social care in chart 1, other voters choose the same politician because of immigration and diplomatic policies, this is very simply saying. The domains some prefer are not supported by others although they both voted for the same politician, in this case given votes concentrate in the elected, even if there are policies the voters don’t agree with, some people might say the representative democracy works as it is conducted right now. 

In the same sense, voters who support the same candidate possibly may agree with different domain of policy means that in the policies of the candidate, there can be areas some voters support which are not supported by others who voted for the same politician. After gaining influence by winning election, the representative would move forward the policies promised during election campaign, but hypothetically it is likely to happen that some of the policies are achieved, but others are not. If  there are huge supporters who chose the representative because of non-achieved policies, I think there should be other ways to reflect their opinions — one idea I can think of is having sort of direct-democracy.

Chart 2 hypothetically assume the situation that a group of people voted the person  because of the social care and immigration policies, another group agreed with the economic and immigration policies, and there is third group in favor of diplomatic and social care policies. As it shows that social care overlapped by the first and third group of voters and immigration policy supported by the first and second groups are more supported than diplomacy and economy. From this chart, there is a opinion gap (or policy gap) among them, what can be seen are between those who support social care and people of economic policy. Those people supporting social care don’t agree with economic policy, among them there are certain people of not supporting diplomatic policies (who are people of first group) and people from third group not in support of immigration and economic policies, if elected the representative will basically try to move all these policies forward.

5. Elements other than policies

People choose representatives not just because of their policies. People are influenced by candidates’ personalities or other factors such as leadership — those factors are placed within the category Others in the case above in order to simplify, however I rather think that it might be more proper to build a chart that the those elements including leadership, popularity, and other elements cover the chart entirely as people first come to know candidates by their influence and then may dive into their specific policies, in this case the chart could be drawn as a sphere whose surface corresponds to elements other than policies and the cross-section is divided into specific political domains a candidate present. In the elements, factors such as impression, leadership, negotiation skill, powerfulness of each candidate are included. Impression — not just the first one, but also continuous impression which can suddenly plummet by a scandal or misphrased remark or can be augmented by positive remark — and momentum — which has to do with collectivity of impression as well — of candidate have impact on flow of voters. These elements have more impact on the electorate than the actual policies.

If we move to direct democracy in the future — as of right now, I don’t think it’s possible to function well —, leadership and negotiation are more important factors among representatives than now — assuming that the choices of citizenry are more reflected, though it depends on to what extent the society moves to direct democracy, the authority to choose the direction the state will take is assigned more to its citizens. Even if decision-making becomes what citizens can more participate in meaning that the number of congresspersons is minimized. In order to move things forward domestically and internationally by the leadership and negotiation skill of representatives, we need  representatives. Additionally, I think it’s not so realistic for citizens to play most of roles in policy and decision makings.

Assuming that vast number of citizens have the same opinion on a direction of a state it is not necessarily a right choice as decision by those in power is also not necessarily right — apart from rightness I think there are at least many decisions which are not just due to majority rule that becomes law or other establishments, if think about justice John Rawls wrote in A theory of justice: “justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many”[7.2]. Rightness and justice are key to be considered, but at least for the direct democracy comes top of the current indirect democracy, I suppose here that there would be possibility of bringing about right choices (or aspects) as the wrong would arise, to reflect the public opinion  given the current politics in more democratic countries might not work — I think having a system to do it has benefits in a sense that if the system is made to deal with the cases such as abuse of power of representatives or the very decision which would determine the future of a nation. And from the point that the majority rule and justice, it would be better to have other option than indirect democracy for the citizenry to participate in politics.

[7.2] Rawls, J. (1999). A theory of justice. Revised edition. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. p.3.

The previous chapter “[1/4] Structure of politics — (direct-democracy, indirect-democracy, referendum, deliberation)“

2. Decentralization

2.1. Technology and direct democracy

3. US presidential election in 2016 and French one in 2017

2. Decentralization

The transition of the world from “Before the Internet (BI)” to “After the Internet (AI)”[1] brought benefits, but with regard to the flow of information, human beings are affected negatively as well. However, I do believe that we can have better political structure inclusively works to make society for everyone. As a way to establish the political system, I focus on the notion decentralization to distribute powers from center to edge so that we can prevent abuse of power or corruption among those who in power. As decentralization (in political sense) enables citizens to have further accessibility to join in — in this respect I wonder if I might be able to say the universal suffrage is one of the cases since before that happened people didn’t have right (or power) to choose which means that was enclosed in those in power,  decentralization prevents excessive concentration of power in a few authorities — after the emergence of the Internet the power balance between center and edge became relatively smaller to some extent. People speak up by gathering together on the Internet and move on to making movement, and there are many cases that it had impact on our world. Because of this sort of phenomenon, society would be more inclusive, less people left behind. Decentralization is related to direct democracy in a meaning that people have a way to express their collective voice to authority.

2.1. Technology and direct democracy

An idea to implement system of direct democracy is worth discussing, as in technologically developed society we can almost simultaneously catch up with what is going on, for example in where decision is being made or in our life basis we can be updated everyday. People can take various actions such as raising question, giving critical comment, launching movement.  Given the concerns I mentioned, direct democracy is too early at this moment — suppose in the future people might be able to deal with vast amount of information in daily life which may be idealistic, another possibility is that as the current world has the tendency that people are divided into the different fields depending on interest of each, our future world might be divided more, less people are interested in politics — , but expecting the (near) future in which we would be able to install by our capacity or even now and more for the future because of technological advancement there’s need to at least think about whether direct-democracy works or not, I take a look at it this time.

3. US presidential election in 2016 and French one in 2017

Concern on democracy derived from politics of the latter half of 2010s. Democracy has been always on the table of discussion as it’s been discussed especially using terms like crisis, defect, problem, and other negative aspects of democracy, so improving democracy (or political system) is a shared sense among us — it depends on persons how much they feel the current system is not working well though. We are more and more moving into crucial phase, so do democracies, as we have seen the current political trend around the 2016 US presidential election in which Donald Trump was elected, and the 2017 French presidential election in which Emmanuel Macron won, Marine Le Pen showed her strong influence. As for the French case, based on the report of Le Monde[1.5], the result of first round was: Emmanuel Macron (24.01%), Marine Le Pen (21.30%), François Fillon (20.01%), Jean-Luc Melenchon (19.58%), Benoît Hamon (6.36%), Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (4.70%), Jean Lassalle (1.21%), Philippe Poutou (1.09%), François Asselineau (0.92%), Nathalie Arthaud (0.64%), and Jacques Cheminade (0.18%). Since Marine Le Pen who is regarded as far-right showed popularity, on 23 April 2017, François Fillon from The Republicans clearly said that he supports Macron[1.6] and, as Levitsky, S. & Ziblatt, D. (2019). How Democracies Die explains, “called his partisans to vote for center-left candidate Emmanuel Macron to keep far-right candidate Marin Le Pen out of power”[2], although François Fillon is “right-wing”[3], he asked support for Macron to prevent an extremist from taking office. In the second round, citing the analysis of Financial Times[4], Levitsky and Ziblatt explained that about “half of François Fillon’s conservative Republican party voters followed his surprising endorsement of Macron; about another third abstained, leaving around a sixth of Fillon’s supporters who went for Le Pen, arguably making a key difference in that country’s election”[5]. For US case, it analyzed about the presidency of Donald Trump, using “the Four Key Indicators of Authoritarian Behavior” — “1. Rejection of (or weak commitment to) democratic rules of the game”, “2. Denial of the legitimacy of political opponents”, “3. Toleration or encouragement of violence”, and “4. Readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including media”[6]. While referring examples to the criteria, Donald Trump is applied to all of these indicators[7]. These two cases indicate that in the current politics, politician with extreme political ideology can (almost in the case of Le Pen) reach to the very center of politics supported by citizens. If we continue to see this sort of influence that extremists can have, the concerns over more democratic political system would be piled up.

[1] The words “BI (Before the Internet)” and “AI (After the Internet)” come from Joi Ito. For example, he described this way in his TED talk titled Seeing the Future: Joi Ito at TEDxMidwest available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LN6Vn-aqgFs 1:08-Accessed 3 December 2019.

[1.5] Le Monde. Présidentielle 2017. Available at https://www.lemonde.fr/data/france/presidentielle-2017/ Accessed 3 February 2020.

[1.6] Fillon spoke of it on 23 April 2017, as for this a report from Reuter available at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-election-fillon-idUSKBN17P0T0 Accessed 28 November 2019, a video posted by Bloomberg Politics available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRWcwmJhXm8 Accessed 28 November 2019.

[2] Levitsky, S. & Ziblatt, D. (2019). How Democracies Die. Published in Penguin Books. Originally published by Crown in 2018. p.68. 

[3] Ibid.

[4] Financial Times. French election results: Macron’s victory in charts.  https://www.ft.com/content/62d782d6-31a7-11e7-9555-23ef563ecf9a Published 9 May 2020. Accessed 20 March 2020.

[5] Ibid. p.70. 

[6] Ibid. p.61-67.

[7] Ibid. His actual remarks are cited in the book in detail.

This series of text is written to picture political structure, or more broadly social structure. It hasn’t been written enough yet, and will be added further or modified in the future.

1. Concerns over direct democracy

1. Concerns over direct democracy

As we have been moving to more democratized politics along with the development of technology, there is voice that hopes to move to direct democracy. Even if we look at democracies in the modern world, indirect-democracy, in which a certain number of people is chosen in election and becomes representatives of citizens, doesn’t reflect public opinion precisely and straightforwardly. In this respect, direct democracy allows citizens to have more chance in decision-making in politics and presumably direct democracy could reflect the public opinion more precisely — this doesn’t mean that I completely agree with direct democracy because even if a large number of people have a same opinion and hypothetically it leads to an actual action of the state, it is not necessarily a right choice, not necessarily a proper choice that means the possible outcomes the decision would cause are not necessarily taken into account adequately given the complicatedness of the current politics. This time, as for reflecting public opinion in politics more directly, I take a look at the Switzerland’s referendums and the case of France in which citizens’ initiative referendum was claimed among the demonstrators in the Yellow vest movement. 

Before beginning to step into it, first I do emphasize the concerns over direct democracy. Generally saying, the world has been getting increasingly to the direction of improving democracy. I don’t think this trend is wrong and I’m not saying that I’m against democracy. But the emergence of the Internet, particularly social media, made possible the traffic of huge amount of information which, I presume,  people cannot deal with at least as of right now. That changed the world. Opinions and claims on the Internet can be powerful by being shared by its users — I understand this has positive aspects which made possible the movements such as Me Too uniting those who are willing to change society in better way, however in the meantime it allows to spread negative information such as fake news which include those posted to deceive Internet users on purpose and others which didn’t intend to, but incidentally caused by lack of understanding on the matters. Much importantly, the media literacy hasn’t developed enough among the public to live in highly rapid-informational life. This is a reason many people are stirred up on social media. In order to digest huge amount of information, we unconsciously need to do comprehensive understanding what the essential(s) of each topic is(are), how much important it is, and whether it’s worth sharing or adding comment to. Even though there are those who publicize posts stirring up others at this moment, if they are more with rational way of thinking they would not find out value in heckling. This way of thinking is not always consciously carried out, I think that if we are with more critical capabilities which presumably could be focused in compulsory education by having philosophical and critical class, we would be able to unconsciously be better at media literacy and might be able to process vast amount of information. The internet enabled citizens to come across enormous volume of information in daily life. I have an impression that people tend to focus just on small pieces of information trending then and when the next one comes up, they jump on it. They quite emotionally move on to new pieces. People tend to be quite easily swung by comments and pieces of news provoking them. In order to have politics proceed in more logically and rationally — this doesn’t mean excluding or eliminating some people, we need to comprehensively understand politics or whatever matters we have from broader viewpoint. Also, the dramatical increase of superficial information can be dealt with by thinking essentially. Even if superficially increased, the cores are the almost same. This is a reason why I emphasize the importance of being capable of comprehensively understanding. In addition to the descriptions above, I think the problem that feelings are more powerful than facts in the current world has to do with the weakness or loss of what Jacques Lacan explained in his theory.

As politics is polarized and more fragmented, BBC faces difficulty.

And now they face changes.

Tony Hall will leave the position of director general at BBC “in summer”[1].

Also, BBC News announced they will cut 450 jobs in the near future[2].

In the polarized world, the way that a news organization raise fund by collecting license fee from the public isn’t applicable. The role of media as watchdog should be kept in society, but the divided society causes harsher backlash or hostility in the case like the current politics in UK.

[1] The Guardian. Tony Hall to step down as BBC director general. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jan/20/tony-hall-to-step-down-as-bbc-director-general Uploaded 20 January 2020. Accessed 29 February 2020.

[2] BBC. BBC News to close 450 posts as part of £80m savings drive. https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-51271168 Uploaded 29 January 2020. Accessed 7 March 2020.