The New York Times has an interesting article, talking about the wave of political attack books in the US in advance of the general election, with a particular focus on a new anti-Obama diatribe.

I liked this, from Cass Sunstein’s 2001 book, Designing Democracy: What Constitutions Do:

A social or legal system that has produced preferences, and done so by limiting opportunities unjustly, can hardly justify itself by reference to existing preferences. The satisfaction of private preferences, whatever their content and origins, does not respond to a persuasive conception of liberty, welfare or autonomy. The notion of autonomy should refer instead to decisions reached with a full and vivid awareness of available opportunities, with relevant information, and without illegitimate or excessive constraints on the process of preference formation. When there is inadequate information or opportunities, decisions and even preferences should be described as unfree or nonautonomous.

Sunstein is referring to women’s rights, and specifically the argument that women in some countries are happy with the status quo and don’t want more equality. I think the argument applies just as well to claims that we don’t need to do more on participation because people are happy with the situation as it is.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died over the weekend, and a long and thoughtful biography in the New York Times pays tribute to his literary genius, while alluding to his more complicated political history.

The Times recounts:

[On returning to post-Soviet Russia in 1994,] he and his family began a two-month journey by private railroad car across Russia, to see what his post-Communist country now looked like. On the first of 17 stops, his judgment was already clear. His homeland, he said, was “tortured, stunned, altered beyond recognition.” As he traveled on, encountering hearty crowds, signing books and meeting dignitaries as well as ordinary people, his gloom deepened. And after settling into a new home on the edge of Moscow, he began to voice his pessimism, deploring the crime, corruption, collapsing services, faltering democracy and what he felt to be the spiritual decline of Russia.

[...]

In October 1994, Mr. Solzhenitsyn addressed Russia’s Parliament. His complaints and condemnations had not abated. “This is not a democracy, but an oligarchy,” he declared. “Rule by the few.” He spoke for an hour, and when he finished, there was only a smattering of applause.

Mr. Solzhenitsyn started appearing on television twice a week as the host of a 15-minute show called “A Meeting With Solzhenitsyn.” Most times he veered into condemnatory monologues that left his less outspoken guests with little to do but look on.

[...]

In the final years of his life, Mr. Solzhenitsyn [spoke] approvingly of a “restoration” of Russia under Mr. Putin, and was criticized in some quarters as increasingly nationalist.

Solzhenitsyn was a hero of anti-communist democrats outside Russia for years. It was, perhaps, not surprising that someone whose idealism had taken him to the gulag and into exile would return home to be disappointed.

I am not aware of any writing, at least in English, where Solzhenitsyn addressed what he thought democracy really meant. He seems to have seen a spiritual and nationalist element in his version of democracy that many liberal democracies would shun. Whether this attitude was specifically his, or whether it is an element of current Russian political character, it led him away from his fan club in the West and to a place that to me seems less democratic and less enlightened.

Solzhenitsyn’s literary works are acknowledged masterpieces, and will certainly survive. His political views and actions post-1994 are relatively unimportant, but they provide another example of a common truth: oppressed idealists are good fighters for the principle of democracy, but they are often bad at handling the reality.

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.

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.

I’ve just finished reading Assault on Reason, Al Gore’s 2007 book subtitled How the Politics of Fear, Secrecy and Blind Faith Subvert Wise Decision-making and Democracy.

You might think, given the Society’s interest in wise decision-making and democracy, that this would have been an interesting read. Unfortunately, it disappointed, being 352 pages of Al Gore blazing away with both barrels at George W Bush’s administration, and not looking to one side or another for more than a moment.

This was all the more disappointing because Mr. Gore’s fundamental position, on the importance of rational debate and sound information in democracy, is one that I completely agree with. However, all the rallying cries for people to be given access to information or opportunities to participate are then followed by an angry description of how the Republicans have prevented all those good things from happening. It feels like a very long political speech, directed at Democrat voters.

The tone of the book rather falls on the stony ground between closely-argued indictment and impassioned philippic - it isn’t clinical enough to be the first, and is too long and repetitive to be the second. There are notes sourcing some of the statements made and quoted, but they are not referenced within the text and so very hard to use.

The book feels lopsided, like it’s an extended chapter of a much larger and more interesting work. Imagine a history of Liverpool FC that only considered their matches against Middlesbrough, if you want to get the general gist.

Rational debate faces far more problems than the administration of George W Bush, and these problems get very little airtime in the book. Moreover, while reverence for the Founding Fathers and appeals to a semi-mythic original American constitution probably go down a storm in America, they are much less relevant in Europe or other places where reason is just as severely assaulted.

Perhaps it was too much to expect a politician to have written something non-partisan, or for an American vice-president to have taken an international standpoint, but the constant drone of America-specific political accusation makes the experience of reading Assault on Reason different only in tone from reading Ann Coulter or Al Franken. An opportunity, missed by miles.

Congressional Management Foundation - Communicating with Congress: How the Internet Has Changed Citizen Engagement (via Do-Wire)

The case for democracy being unworkable with the (American) voters we have is made by Rick Shenkman’s new book Eight Myths That Are Ruining America, published in America as Just How Stupid Are We?. The book is reviewed by Louis Bayard at Salon Books.