I was at the Local Government Association last night, at the launch of Votes and Voices, a pamphlet on the complementary nature of representative and participatory democracy. The NCVO were the partners for the publication and the launch event.

The main thing I took away from the event was a very positive mood among local government around the participation agenda. The audience list was hefty. Paul Coen, the LGA Chief Executive, was enthusiastic. Points from the panel and the floor were forward-looking.

The pamphlet itself was less impressive. It was described as a series of essays, though a series of articles would be more accurate, touching on the complementary nature of participative and representative democracy. This description led me to expect a light philosophical treatise - along the lines of the Empowerment White Paper, in fact - but the essays divided between big unchallengable statements on the importance of participation, and descriptions of political engagement work in a couple of local authorities. There was little that made me sit up and take notice, although in fairness this may be because I work on this every day, and I doubt that I was the target audience.

In some ways it was not surprising that the pamphlet underdelivered on the speeches. There is a rhetoric gap around participation and engagement at the moment, with people picking up on the ideas in the Empowerment White Paper, but not yet really doing anything with them. I hope that the gap is a simple time lag. My worry is that the new enthusiasm for participation will be a flash in the pan, and either nothing will happen and local government will move on, or participation will be redefined to mean ‘the things we were going to do anyway’.

Involve have published a short new guide to principles of deliberative engagement in policy making. Download it in PDF here.

David Lammy, the MP for Tottenham, gave a talk at the Fabian Society a little while back, on what lessons the left can learn from the American elections. One section of his speech is devoted to widening participation in political activities, and is worth a read. The summary line:

I think we have been far too cautious in finding new ways to lower the barriers to involvement in politics itself.

Earlier this year, the Council of Europe produced a generic e-democracy toolkit - a 142-page report reviewing the different ways in which people support democracy through electronic means.

Through a circuitous route I came across Andrew Wadge’s blog. Andrew is the Chief Scientist at the Food Standards Agency and his site is a good example of how government specialist blogs can impart complex information in ways that engage people and don’t preach.

Libertas, the Irish group that defeated the political establishment over the Lisbon Treaty, may stand Europe-wide in next June’s European Parliamentary elections. Declan Ganley, the businessman who leads the group, is quoted in the Telegraph and the Irish Times, saying that the campaign, if it happened, would be a proxy referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

The idea of a referendum through a normal Parliamentary election has just been tried in our very own Haltemprice and Howden, and was not a great success. If Libertas and Mr Ganley are serious, they would not be able to run the Parliament on the basis of blocking the Lisbon treaty, even if they campaigned on that basis. They would need to have a proper set of policies and platforms, which would presumably come from the centre-right pro-business space that Mr Ganley himself occupies.

From the Society’s non-partisan position, I think that this would be an excellent development for European politics. If Libertas were to stand, and campaign strongly in all member states, it would be a big step towards a single European democratic space, the absence of which has long been a problem for the EU’s legitimacy (see previously on this blog). Although doubtless sceptical about business regulation and harmonisation, Libertas would not be a wrecking crew like UKIP and other organisations - they would believe as a baseline in the continued existence of the EU, and of Ireland’s membership within it. It is richly ironic that all this potential development comes as a result of a no vote in the Irish referendum.

A successful Libertas campaign could seed a European political space, with Libertas as one of the centre-right players. However, if Libertas are serious about democratising the business of the European Union, there is one other step that I am sure they would welcome: the creation of a similar pan-European movement to put the opposing case. It would be disastrous for debate if the Libertas argument were to come up against a ragbag of national establishments and national political parties - we have already seen the political outcome of that sort of tussle.

Hence the title of this post - if Libertas are going to create the field of pan-European democracy, they must not be left to march around it alone, or be attacked by a poorly co-ordinated army of midgets. One or more parties similarly committed to EU democracy must be created to put the case for closer integration, more social action and more regulation. Then we could have a meaningful election in June, and a stronger democracy in Europe.

• It’s Belgium’s National Day
• An article in the ESRC’s Society Now (pdf - article on page 7) claims private ownership of media outlets harms public knowledge of current affairs
• Dave Briggs was at the same civil service blogging event as Ingrid.

If we are going to get more rational debate into online politics, we can’t do without the views of civil servants and policy makers. The new rules on civil service blogging are a good start. Ingrid at Policy & Performance reports from an FCO session on the role of blogging and social media in the Civil Service.

• A couple of interesting articles on management of discussion in online communities:
  • Dave Briggs
  • Ed Mitchell
• A campaign to have a referendum on an elected Mayor for Bristol is underway

For those who don’t know, the New Yorker has caused a minor ruckus in the political world by running a satirical cartoon on its front cover, showing one of the US presidential candidates as a Muslim terrorist, standing in the White House with the US flag burning in the fireplace and a picture of Bin Laden on the mantelpiece.

In the standard unit conversion table of the political internet, one minor ruckus equals nine million anguished blogwords, and the present case is no different.

The scandal itself is not of much consequence - read up on it at the Guardian or CBS if you want the full skinny - but it is a good example of one of the intellectual fallacies of political commentary.

This is the idea that a single comment (or cartoon) is going to make much difference to voters’ attitudes. This fallacy is general, but particularly ridiculous when applied to the New Yorker, a magazine that - as as Gary Kamiya says - only makes the political weather between 110th Street and Canal.

It’s also a fairly patronising fallacy, assuming as it does that citizens in general are mere automatons, much more gullible and easily-led than readers of [your blog name here] (even though they apparently read the New Yorker). To give it a name, let’s call it the ‘outgroup gullibility fallacy’.

The church service used to say ‘fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’ - perhaps the online catechism should be ‘respect for others’ intellect is the beginning of wisdom’.