Rescuing State Politics: innovation for a more direct democracy

remylow's picture
Submitted by remylow on 3 December 2009 - 10:31pm
What's this idea about?
In less than 100 words, what is your idea?: 
The litany of dramas in NSW State politics do not represent any potential widening of democratic dialogue. Rather, it is likely to continue the malaise felt by the State's residents towards its government. Badly needed is a web-based political space that can provide a space for voice and a potential rallying point for people as particular issues relating to State politics are experienced in real time and real life. I envision a virtual place where effective communication and debate occurs between people with similar and opposing demands around issues pertaining to State politics (e.g. hospitals, schools), and a place where 'pressure points' around key concerns can be developed through linkages across geographic and demographic lines. Think Porto Alegre plus Facebook.
What is the social need or challenge your idea could address?: 
The atrophied character of State political life, in which citizens participate little in innovation and public debate over alternatives, might be altered if there is a 'space' for politics where peoples voices can be not only heard, but debated and connected around nodal points. This will prevent a slide into malaise and generalised antagonisms (e.g. "NSW government is bad", etc.) towards democratic dialogue over 'real life' issues. This can potentialy facilitate the broadening of democratic dialogue by linking particular experiences and localised issues to other similar experiences and issues, thereby forming nodal points across geographic and demographic bounds. These can then serve as pressure points for State representatives to act. This 'space' can potentially also be extended to those whose voices are presently excluded or alienated from public discussion, in particular youth, the aged and people living in isolated rural communities.
What’s really new about your idea?: 
This is not 'new' in the sense of novelty, but certainly 'new' in the context of its reiteration and possible evolution. If we can cannect on facebook and blogger over things like jam-making and stamp-collection, why not hospitals, schools, environmental issues, etc? This is an opportunity to create a purpose-built 'space' or 'means' for political dialogue and potentially, the expansion of both participation and the scope of issues beyond the narrow confines of what currently constitutes 'politics as usual'. For example,the experiences and quality of life for a stay-home mum can be shared, generating an opportunity for others to articulate these experiences with broader issues of creating means for empowering women at different life stages, thus creating a criss-crossing of linkages that can form into a nodal point for political pressure/debate. These can in turn connect to a broader node concerned with families issues, and so on. In short, a deepening and broadening of democratic impulse that is needed with regards to State politics of NSW especially.
Stage of development
What inspired you to come up with your idea in the first place?: 
Concretely speaking, the direct democracy experiments in Porto Alege and the 'interests' links used in blogger and facebook that connects people with similar interests. More generally, there are no genuine alternatives to an extremely rigid way of conducting State politics that is fast losing legitimacy in the minds of the people. The loss of vibrant discussion over State-based issues beyond the nihilism of prospect is dangerous for democratic life.
From 1-5, what stage of development would you say your idea is in? - Explain further: 
2. Well formed in theory and in dialogue with like-minded people. Less well articulated in terms of frameworks and possibilities for implementation.
What can we do for you?
Tell us what we can do for you: 
Provide a forum and avenue where like-minded people from different social locations, different skills and stakes can sharpen and co-articulate (from the level of ideals to concrete tools) a positive mechanism for broadening and deepening participation around issues that pertain to State politics.
Select which are the one or two most important things that you need to help the development of your idea: 
Developer - to help you create your software
Mentor - to help you through the process of turning your idea into reality
If Social Innovation Camp is able to help push your idea forward, do you have the time or desire to take ownership of it?: 
Yes
0 individuals signed up
3.8125
Your rating: None Average: 3.8 (16 votes)

Comments

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
Ozziemedes's picture

Re: Rescuing State Politics: innovation for a more direct ...

by Ozziemedes - 27 Jan 2010 - 7:09pm
Interesting concept, but nobody outside of NSW cares about how useless NSW's political system has become (with the possible exception of comedians looking for new material). If you were to broaden the scope to creating a new kind of approach to providing information to citizens about government activities (e.g. via some sort of per-jurisdiction RSS/Atom feed) and tie that into a web 2.0 solution for aggregating debate and opinions about the issues concerned, I think that would be more helpful.
Renae's picture

Re: Rescuing State Politics: innovation for a more direct ...

by Renae - 19 Jan 2010 - 1:53pm
Would also be good to link the grass roots discussion to the current issues open for debate in NSW Parliament eg. a feed of this stuff word be worthy... http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/committee.nsf/V3Home
fxl's picture

Re: Rescuing State Politics: innovation for a more direct ...

by fxl - 15 Dec 2009 - 3:40pm
I like the idea, but I'm wondering if you have looked for an existing forums that might be close to this description? In which, case, it might be better to work with them, their existing users, and just add some "marketing oomph" to their message. It sounds a bit like a permanent and wider forum like what happens for the SBS Q&A program.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.