In many countries, democracy and capitalism may actually be oxymorons (contradictory expressions) –and never forget, low intensity democracy leads to populism. (Albino Gomez)
Be the change you want to promote (anonymous slogan)
1. There is little democracy left in our election-based political systems where the same wo/men keep trying to fight each other and where the interest of the many is buried under layers of elitist complacency. Young people know all this and seek solutions elsewhere. They know the post-war (for the North) and postcolonial (for the South) solutions will have to be abandoned, or at least seriously re-visited. We should be grateful for young generations focusing on what needs to be changed. Formal changes in rules and institutions will be indispensible though. Ethics, solidarity and human rights (HR) must be the basis from which to start. Francine Mestrum calls this ‘reciprocity based structural solidarity’ and says this is what will have to be pursued, and further says that it is local initiatives that are the way to democratically build something new, bottom up.
2. If the little that is left of representative democracy is said to be ‘a higher form of human civilization’ and elections to be ‘the festival of a democracy’, then we are not including the violence, the terrorization, the corruption, the filthy speeches, the rigging, the voting booth capturing and the malpractices that go with it. (Swasthya Siksha Unnayan)
3. The problem is that, ideally, democracy expects all its wings to function independently, but in a way that ultimately allows sovereignty to stay with the people. It is another matter that rulers themselves become authoritarian and behave like the worst of the emperors. Those who ought to ensure that democracy functions in the interest of the people are the judges who, in theory, have the power to interpret and apply the law. The debate about whether the judiciary or the executive is supreme is an ongoing discussion. Moreover, on HR issues, journalists are too often failing us in the standards, the rigor and the ethics they apply. None of this has been helped by the new digital technology that promotes very short stories or sound bites. In fact, things have deteriorated to such an extent today that news columns can be bought. It is an open secret that several stories are nothing more than paid news. Some leading newspapers feel no shame in selling the space to whoever wants to buy it. For them, it is purely a question of revenue –forget democracy. (Kuldip Nayar)
4. Are we living in a post-ideologies and post-parties era? Is being on the left or on the right becoming increasingly irrelevant? Without ideologies, politics are becoming just acts of administrative action, where differences disappear. Parties without ideologies carry little motivation and identity. Gone are the times when they were based on strong membership with a vibrant youth wing. Parties are becoming just movements of opinions which mobilize citizens only to vote in temporary campaigns, where hired experts of marketing tools and other instruments of mass communication have replaced debates on actual visions and values. More important yet, the Internet and new technologies have changed how people relate to politics. The relationship between the parties and voters is no longer direct and vertical, as it was at the time of the radio and of TV. Voters still use the TV, but more and more the Internet as their primary instrument of information. Clearly, the great popular meetings filling public squares are something of the past. Is the Internet destroying good politics? The net is progressively reducing the power of the traditional system of information for people now immune to the traditional information systems like the printed press and even TV. (Roberto Savio)
What we are left (or right) with
5. Will the traditional political elite be able to learn lessons from reality and change austerity for growth, discard banks as a priority, come back to a debate of ideas and visions, values and ideals, begin to discuss at least social remedies in the face of the disasters of an unregulated globalization? –and growing violence?* (R. Savio)
*: Winston Churchill famously stated that it is always better to “jaw, jaw than to war, war.”
6. Will the traditional political left get its act together and rally around HR? Their leaders tell themselves: “Deep down we are struggling for the same, but too many shades of thinking separate us”. [As opposed to this, the traditional right leaders tell themselves: “Many shades of thinking separate us, but deep down we are on the same page and have a common objective, don’t we?”].** (Politika, Chile)
**: ‘The Right’ has it clear what it wants and what it rejects. ‘The Left’, when it is divided (and it always is), immediately shows its key shortcomings, namely: leadership and a common program of action.
6a. Because ideology also plays a key role elsewhere, this brings us to the equally hot topic of governance. [Governance is the tradition and institutions that determine how authority is exercised].
Good governance needs to be measured by more than the number of meetings where jawing occurs, but also by who’s invited to do the talking
Not being facetious, what is needed for better global governance is not convergence, but rather more dancing together… or better, what is actually needed is not negotiators trying to fit into the same shoes, but rather taking off their shoes as a gesture of equality.
7. The problems States face when negotiating with other states at the global level is to be found in their divergent interests and ideologies and their unequal wealth and resources. This invariably results in conflicts as relates to finding the solutions they can eventually agree-upon. There is a glaring neglect of true efforts to find common interests and ideas that are to benefit humanity and are not constrained by national physical, political and mental borders’ interests; the result is watered-down initiatives, resolutions declarations or whatever. (adapted from Kelley Lee)
8. Newly proposed governance tools, even the so-called whole-of-government approaches, have proven insufficient to the task. (Olivier de Schutter) Political negotiations involve complex political processes over prolonged periods of time with a predicable conciliatory outcome inevitably dominated by the same old tensions between rich and poor counties. (F. Sassi) Power imbalances and the ensuing impacts on decisions taken should not merely be seen as ‘inconvenient obstacles’, because they invariably end up taking center stage. (IPES)
9. Multilateralism creates a false confidence that global governance is adequate. On the contrary, if its outcomes are shaped by the interplay of national interest perspectives generated from highly unequal circumstances, it is naïve to think that global interests will be adequately served. (Richard Falk) The challenge is making multi-actor governance work for the HR of those lacking the necessary power to have not only voice, but influence.
10. The network model of governance highlights how power is mobilized through nodes that link ideologically linked groups (in political and HR terms, basically two). Each group ultimately aims to alter the distribution of power more in their favor. This is the logic of the approach public interest civil society organizations and social movements are using to achieve political change (…and so do their opposing forces, but only to keep the status-quo). (adapted from David Legge)
11. If we take the example of the needed global mobilization aimed at democratizing all instances global health governance, we have to be clear that this objective is not separate from, but very much part of, a global mobilization effort of a wider perspective. To treat global health governance as somehow independent of global economic and political governance is outright absurd. Simply said, proclaiming that the challenges of global health governance can be dealt independently plays the important political role aimed at obscuring the vested interests and power relations at play. (D. Legge)
Welcome to the Human Rights Hive
12. Here is an interesting novel theory: The value of being connected is not in just-being-networked; it also is in arriving-at-a-shared-opinion and collectively-moving-into-action-towards-the-desired-outcome. This is why the concept of a hive is a smarter one, as it has now evolved from the concept of a network. The hive is bigger than the sum of its parts. The hive calls for: i) increasing the frequency of interactions, and ii) creating a higher level of synchronicity between members of the hive. This produces stronger ties between individual members and allows the hive to act collectively. As we are moving towards the idea of achieving more with less, hives will beat networks. If you want to survive, do not just build a network. You have to build a hive, and eventually a ‘hivemind’. In that sense, a network is a neutral description of how connections between composite parts form a system. The hive learns collectively and this is how the hive makes informed decisions in response to a changing external environment; in short, it becomes more effective. Hives produce stronger ties between individual members and allows them, as a hive, to act collectively. Because of the increased frequency of interactions, a hive behaves more intelligently. It ongoingly responds; interactions get everyone on the same page so as to work in sync aligned around shared goals. (Arjun Sethi)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
schuftan@gmail.com
Postscript/Marginalia
-Political will is usually understood as a greater resolve on the part of states. But political will is not owned by politicians –who usually act only in response to consistent and compelling pressure from claim holders. Therefore, it is not a lack of political will, but rather the accumulation of a political will by the powerful to oppose or stall, in our case, the implementation of progressive policies that tackle HR abuses.
-In the corridors of governance, we can often hear the haves say: “Other things being equal, the safer option is obviously the better one”. But other things are not equal….
-In the corridors of governance, we can often hear the have-nots say: “We had the best slogans, they won the war”. (Spanish Civil War) [Is this because it is which voices, and at what decibel levels, are the ones that ultimately clinch decision-making…?].