Are the masses fit to govern?

The massess need to participate for representative democracy to work properly. The web makes this much easier.

Representative democracy should strike a balance between autocracy andpure democracy (government by frequent referendum). History gives usvery good reasons for not returning to the former, and the latter isfrightening when you consider the public's views on many things (e.g.the death penalty: Ipsos ,  Observer ,  YouGov  ,  The Sun   - take your pick).  Switzerland has a system  that leans towards the latter, although the political situation is verydifferent to the UK. To me, e-democracy is all about improving:

• the quality of information available to the public, so that they can develop informed opinions,
• the transparency of decisions on what happens, both legislatively and judicially, and how public money is spent,
• the way in which people can give feedback to their representatives,

Number one is happening through the creation of many government websites, centrally linked by  DirectGov , and through the great work of  mySociety , particularly through TheyWorkForYou.com.Informed opinion needs to be tesetd and incrementally improved, whichis where Yoomoot's ability to host debates is key. Number two hasbecome a key part of British politics over the summer, with theexpenses scandal highlighting how important transparency is. The thirdpoint is the one where there is still work to be done, particularly asthe quality of feedback necessitates leading most people through oneand two.

As far as Yoomoot is concerned, if it can make it easy for people togive informed and direct feedback to their elected representatives, beit at parish, borough, county, regional or national level, then I thinkit could really have an effect. mySociety has already created WriteToThem.com,which doesn't currently have an API, but could, and so I see Yoomoot'srole as helping improve the quality of information and opinion throughgood debate.

Bug reporting systems have developed immensely over the years and there is some  interesting research into bug reproting quality, with mySociety providing a real-world analogue in FixMyStreet.com,but giving feedback on policy is a lot more complicated. Constructingcoherent, well-argued policy responses is currently limited to peoplewith the skills, motivation, time and/or money to do so, althoughorganising efforts to produce a response across a distributed group ofpeople has got easier with tools such as Co-ment.net, Glinkr.net and MixedInk.com.Where Yoomoot sits in this space will emerge over time, but educatingthe public about how to influence the political process is key. Astep-by-step process with a good UI would help, maybe:

• Get informed - meta-search to gather information sources;
• Debate - Yoomoot, Traditional Discussion Forums;
• Construct a response - Co-ment, Glinkr and MixedInk;
• Send that response to your elected representative - WriteToThem.com.

I guess the power of a response doesn't often originate in its authority,  witness the recent sacking of a world-renowned Professor for criticising government decisions , but in the number of people who are saying it. I'm sure Yoomoot can help here.

BTW, apologies for mixing in the answer to the question with some Yoomoot feedback - time is pressing - sorry!

One minor thing - you need to enable people to import HTML links more easily - I wrote this in another HTML editor, pasted and none of my links came through, so I had to enter them all using your editor :-(

• By paddington
• Oct. 28, 2009