Tag: Democracy

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Institutional Reform in the European Union

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By Svetlin Dimitriev, student at the University of Victoria

With the shattering of the status quo in the European Parliament (EP) elections a few months back, the European Union (EU) might now be at the precipice of real and substantial change. In a time in which the public seems engaged with EU activities, be it because of Brexit, immigration, or the environment, the EU now seems to be experiencing a change in its political climate. It is no longer met only by a growing resistance, but now also by a surge in support. This support needs to be harnessed, grown, and cultivated. This new fledgling public enthusiasm might be the EU’s only chance to recover from all the problems and crises it has had to endure over the last decade. If the EU is to learn from its mistakes and past experiences, it must adapt. The only way to adapt is to change via institutional reform. If the EU is to survive in the coming decades it must alter its power structure. The target of these reforms, should be none other than the controversial behemoth of the EU institutions – the European Commission.

Reform can be made in numerous ways, but most importantly, any reform must address the root of the problem. The most frequently made criticism of the Commission is that it is bureaucratic and technocratic. These points are then used to make an argument that it is therefore illegitimate. There is certainly substance to this argument, especially when taking into consideration the Commission’s composition and its glaring lack of democratic representation. However, although undemocratic, there is value and a place for the Commission’s technocratic structure in a system as complicated as the EU’s. It gives officials, experts, the means to create and implement efficient and effective policy. The success of technocracy can be evidenced by the sheer volume of work that has gone towards EU integration over the last few decades. The Commission’s actions and decisions most certainly warrant scrutiny, but the problem with the Commission as an institution is not that it is technocratic and bureaucratic. The problem with the Commission is that it wields a tremendous amount of power on top of already being a technocratic, bureaucratic, and undemocratic institution. The Commission’s character is not what needs to be changed. What needs to be changed is the scope of the Commission’s powers. The Commission should lessen its involvement in legislation in favour of transforming into a fully fledged and operational executive body of the EU, one which can then successfully meet the needs and desires of EU citizens.

In its current state, the Commission takes on far too many tasks and responsibilities. Legislation is a perfect example. The Commission, the executive body of the EU, is the one directly responsible for proposing legislation. Having the right of initiative grants the Commission a near monopoly of power in matters concerning legislation. Although pending approval of the EP and Council, the Commission nonetheless still technically proposes the very policies that it might later have to implement and enforce. This has created a serious imbalance of power between EU institutions. By retaining the right of initiative, the Commission is actively sapping power away from the only institution which gives the EU some sort of democratic legitimacy – the EP. The Commission not only holds a disproportionate amount of power by legislating as an executive actor, but it then also hurts democracy at the EU level by hindering the efforts of the EP. As a direct result, this could then be responsible for discouraging the public from engaging in EU politics by giving citizens a very legitimate reason not to, thus further hurting democracy at the EU level.

An obvious solution which might address this problem would be to grant the EP the right of initiative instead. This would not be considered a radical idea. Just recently during the EP elections, parties and EU officials alike brought up and even campaigned on the idea of institutional reform. Their proposal – exactly the same – take away the Commission’s right of initiative and grant it to the EP. This would certainly remedy the imbalance of power between EU institutions. It would empower democracy at the EU level and perhaps encourage more public participation. Although initially a loss from the perspective of the Commission, granting the EP the right of initiative could yield substantial long-term benefits for the EU as a whole.

The solution to give the EP the right of initiative, however, would only resolve half of the problem. In such a scenario, although the Commission would still retain a rather large scope of powers, the Commission would nonetheless remain a tremendously flawed institution. This is due to the fact that it would still fail to fulfill its role as an executive actor. When it comes to the Commission and its ability to enforce laws, there is a tremendous gap between reality and expectation. As the Commission primarily operates through the use of normative soft power, it actually has very few tools at its disposal when it comes to truly enforcing policy at the EU and national level. Although in force at the legal level, it has not been uncommon to see EU regulations and standards ignored or delayed simply because the Commission does not have the means to ensure member state compliance. The success of oversight can be debated, while fining non-compliant member states does little when it comes to actually moving the EU forward. The Commission needs more mechanisms of enforcing rule of law, standards, regulations, democracy, etc.

Granting the Commission more power might sound radical; however, that is what it would take to integrate the union and close the gap between Northern and Southern Europe, and Western and Eastern Europe. All member states would benefit from a Commission more capable of combating corruption and safeguarding democracy. For example, citizens of post-communist states in particular could benefit tremendously from a Commission which can effectively keep their national government in check. As corruption remains an endemic problem for post-communist states, it has been made abundantly clear that general EU oversight and that citizens’ efforts to try and combat these issues are simply not enough. More ought to be done, and having a reliable extra buffer of accountability at the EU level might be what these countries need to have a real chance to catch up to the rest of the EU. The alternative would be to leave these countries improving at a snail’s pace and perpetually trapped in a vicious cycle of corruption induced poverty. The benefits of a Commission with empowered executive capacities would go far beyond combating corruption in post-communist states. It would also have a much greater capacity to ensure the provision of human rights, compliance to environmental regulations to aid the fight against climate change, protection of minorities against discrimination, and much more.

The outcome of the last EP elections present the EU with the opportunity for real change, change through institutional reform. Confidence in the EU is by no means high, but the status quo has definitely changed. The EU needs to make use of this opportunity while it still can. The Commission ought to lose its right of initiative for the benefit of the EU as a whole. As the EU needs to be made more democratic and accountable to EU citizens such that it does not disintegrate, the EP must be empowered and transformed into a fully functional legislative assembly which holds the right of initiative. This is vital as more citizens need to be encouraged to participate in the EU political process. Furthermore, the Commission would need to divert its efforts and expand its executive abilities such that it is able to serve the EU to the benefit of its citizens, but in a different way than it ever has before. The Commission has never been a democratic institution and it probably never will be. But what the Commission could do, is focus its efforts and powers on safeguarding and strengthening democracy elsewhere – at national level of the member states. If granted the ability to successfully do so, it could do even more to serve the interests of EU citizens. The opportunity to make a number of positive changes in the EU has finally arisen. It is only a matter of time before it is made clear what the EU will do with it.

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Surveillance and Democracy

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By Pablo Ouziel, Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria

I was recently asked by the journal Surveillance & Society, to review the book Surveillance Studies: A Reader (2018), edited by Torin Monahan and David Murakami Wood. As I was writing my review, I could not escape thinking about the implications of modern surveillance for our democratic societies. Without a doubt democracies are being hollowed-out. At the same time, we are witnessing the rise of populist right-wing and far-right parties across the planet. All this is happening, while popular movements engaged in democratization practices and demanding a deepening of democracy in their societies are being systematically surveilled and often brutally repressed.
Anyone who has participated in democratizing protest movements or has had contact with activists and demonstrators working within them, will be aware of the impact surveillance has had on their lives. In many instances, people have been indiscriminately arrested, followed, or charged with crimes which oftentimes they did not commit. A case in point, is one of the protestors that I interviewed years ago for my PhD dissertation on the 15M movement which occupied public squares in 2011. This was a movement demanding “democracia real ya!” (real democracy now!) and shouting “no somos mercancia en manos de politicos y banqueros” (we are not merchandise in the hands of politicians and bankers). The person, I am referring to, a few years after the protests, experienced his house being raided in the middle of the night by SWAT teams from different Spanish security forces. He was arrested in front of his partner and child and was left for three days in a cell without having access to a lawyer, and without being told why he was being arrested. Upon release, he was told that he was facing terrorism charges. His crime, having re-tweeted information that had been previously published on Twitter regarding police infiltration within the 15M movement.
Obviously, this is not something that the majority of the population is likely to learn about, let alone experience, but the fact is that while Spain prides itself on being a democratic society, these kinds of activities are happening with increasing frequency. Sadly, these kinds of incidents bring back memories of a not too distant past in which the whole world understood Spain as a dictatorship. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. Not only in Spain, but also in the rest of Europe and North America, people who are resisting the hollowing-out of democracy are facing a similar fate.
In Western societies, it is easy for citizens to look at the all surveillant state of China and be repelled by the kind of surveillance practices being implemented there. When from the West we witness through the media the police brutality experienced by protestors in Hong Kong – who for the past few days have occupied the island’s international airport – most find it quite normal to reject both the surveillance measures they are submitted to and the repression they endure. Yet, when similar surveillance and repression tactics are used in the West, I often witness too much tolerance – by the majority of the population – towards the actions of the security forces and other state institutions. It seems, in many cases, as if the mere fact that those in power say we live in democratic societies, serves to justify the kind of treatment those subverting the status quo are facing. It is this observation, which leads me to think more broadly about surveillance practices and the kinds of consequences they are having on different demoi.
What interests me about surveillance within the context of democracies is the fact that in our technological societies what we are experiencing is dataveillance; the systemic use of personal data systems to investigate or monitor the actions or communications of one or more people. The danger with this kind of surveillance is that it facilitates the large-scale combination of data points and the construction of profiles that oftentimes are used to discriminate against people even in advance of any wrongdoing. This sorting of people happens in unequal ways that obscure the inherent biases of the systems being used. Like in all other societies, in democracies it is subversives, minorities, and the poor that are most affected by this kind of profiling.
It is true that when we study surveillance and try to define it we come to the realization that as a concept it escapes definition. Nevertheless, when we read the literature, amidst family-resemblances (similarities and differences), it becomes quickly apparent that most people studying it agree that it is one of the dominant modes of ordering in the post-modern era. New technologies allow surveillance to be technologically mediated, frequently undetectable, of an involuntary nature, and often automated. The information rich environments we are creating with embedded sensors, mobile computers and algorithmic processes help subject whole populations to automated management. Increasingly embedded in material infrastructures, these surveillance practices help individualize people and commodify data in a manner that exponentially increases the potential of corporations and states to sort populations. What is most problematic about this, is that while such technologies are often described as neutral, the mechanisms of discrimination they hide continue to operate in the background. This reality exposes marginalized populations to augmented forms of oppression, violence and control. Added to this, since 9/11, governance has undergone huge transformations towards a model of risk management aiming to discern threats in advance. This move has in turns consolidated racialized discrimination and social inequality.
We know that surveillance played a key role in the rise of the modern nation-state. It served the purpose of identifying and governing populations, under the implied contract between state and citizens that in exchange for knowing its citizens the state would protect their bodies, property, and rights. We also know that colonial states used their colonies to test forms of surveillance which would be later implemented in the metropolis. We can also read about the role that surveillance played in slavery – hot-iron branding and lantern laws regulating movement are just two examples. In addition, we have seen how in totalitarian societies the culture of fear and suspicion generated by surveillance remained for decades following democratization processes. The case of East Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall illustrates this clearly. Yet, for most citizens in the contemporary West these events seem too distant to be relevant.
We remain distant when we read about the kinds of atrocities that the surveillance of South African apartheid made possible. Or when we see the surveillance and control methods deployed on the Palestinian people by the State of Israel. Generally, we think it has nothing to do with us. There is nothing we can do about it and most importantly it does not apply to life in our Western societies. Yet, most of us are aware of kind of surveillance the United States National Security Agency has been practicing illegally for decades; the leaks by Chelsea Manning, made available by investigative Glenn Greenwald leave little room for doubt. Notwithstanding, not even such revelations about the not so benevolent nature of the state lead us to a serious social discussion on the kind of societies we are and want to become.
There seems to be little fighting back going on. Our hyper-accelerated societies seldom give us time to focus on such issues for too long. There are many ways to obfuscate or evade surveillance systems, but one of the biggest problems we face has to do with our social imaginary. Despite the numerous warnings we receive about the dangers of surveillance, until we can imagine our societies working in a different manner, surveillance seems to be here to stay. It will continue to enter into more domains of our life, as we embrace or ignore it without too much critical analysis. Considering this as the most likely scenario, I think it remains our responsibility to imagine what democratizing surveillance practices can look like. Perhaps by doing this we can begin to prefigure how as democratic citizens we might respond to it, and how democratic surveillance assemblages can be co-constructed by all those surveilled by them. I fear that if we do not address this urgent issue in depth, the hollowing-out of democracy will continue at an ever-accelerating pace supported by the surveillance complex we have silently helped to construct.

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Youth Climate Justice Activism: Changing the Agenda

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By Pablo Ouziel, Cedar Tree Institute at the Centre for Global Studies, University of Victoria

A few weeks ago, I attended the webinar ‘Youth Climate Justice Activism: Changing the Agenda’. This was part of the EUCAnet Webinar Series Global Politics in Critical Perspectives: Transatlantic dialogues. The event brought together youth activists and allies from movements in the UK and Turtle Island as they shared their experiences with one another and discussed the ways forward.

The Webinar was co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union and counted with the support of the Centre for Global Studies (CFGS) and the Cedar Trees Institute (CTI) at the University of Victoria (UVic), and with the support of the International Institute for Child Rights and Development (IICRD).

Speakers included the following:

  • Mary-Jane Farrell & Roseanne Steffen, Youth Strike 4 Climate Brighton (YS4CB), UK
  • Rose Henry, Tla’amin Nation
  • Kiana Alexander, Director, Emerging Leaders Program, Raven Institute
  • Emily Thiessen, youth activist/organizer, Canada’s Green New Deal, Rise and Resist, Our Earth our Future (Victoria Youth Working for Climate Action) / the Canada Climate Strike Network
  • Antonia Paquin, youth activist/organizer, Canada’s Green New Deal, Rise and Resist, Our Earth our Future (Victoria Youth Working for Climate Action) / the Canada Climate Strike Network
  • Danny Noonan, Global Program Coordinator, Our Children’s Trust, US
  • Samantha & Carolyn Norr, Youth Vs Apocalypse

The event was co-chaired by Keith Cherry of CTI and the CFGS at UVic, and of Rise and Resist, and Rebeccah Nelems, also of CTI and the CFGS at UVic, and of IICRD.

Four key questions triggered the discussion:

  • How are movements currently coordinating or collaborating across movements, cities, countries and continents?
  • What are the opportunities and challenges for future collaboration?
  • What are opportunities for leveraging inter-generational support?
  • How might movements draw on the wisdoms of Indigenous nations, communities and organizations with respect to living in reciprocal relationship with the earth?

In this blog post, I want to highlight some of the contributions made by different speakers during the multilogue. It was a great experience to witness the level of commitment and expertise revealed by the youth involved in the Webinar and their allies.

In one of her interventions, Emily Thiessen pointed to the need of building a movement of the kind pre-figured by Occupy and suggested that the Green New Deal could be a platform from which to engage the broader community outside of the environmental movement bubble. For her, engagement with churches, unions and other communities of practice is important. Thiessen argues that this is the moment for youth to lead a glocal effort to coordinate a movement that can change the world.

Antonia Paquin spoke of an epiphany following a time of feeling intensely overwhelmed in which she realized that we lived in a globally polluted world in which young people were disempowered. She realized then the need to make a change in her life and to acknowledge the enormous power of a vision of a world that is more just. She became aware of the enormous capacity for change if people team up in a mindful manner. She gave the examples in Victoria of Rise and Resist and the Youth Climate Strike, and spoke of the March 15th 2019 demonstration in Victoria which brought out 2000 people in a revolutionary spirit. For Paquin, young people are always a force for change because young people are generally bolder and more provocative. Young people she argues, have more capacity to imagine a new vision for the future because of their fearlessness. This is why, she argues, the older generations are now looking at them to lead the way. Paquin spoke about numerous issues, she mentioned urban agriculture, food security, water and food, self-sufficency, energy democracy, and reducing the power of large corporations. She placed great emphasis on the source of our food, and on indigenous rights groups and their anti-colonization efforts together with allies. One prominent example repeated by other speakers was the Tiny House project in which activists built a Tiny House and carried it up the highway for 22 km to the location of a planned pipeline. This she described as indigenous people re-occupying their homeland. For Paquin, what is important as we transition to a healthy earth is authenticity. We need to help each other, and we need to speak and listen with our hearts.

Mary-Jane Farrell & Roseanne Steffen, joined the conversation from the UK and spoke of their experiences in the Youth Strike for Climate. In it, schools, colleges and universities are involved, and once a month since February they have been striking. As they explained this was initiated by Greta Thunberg from Sweden but it is actively being acted upon in the UK. They predominantly spoke of their local experience in Brighton and the diverse range of people from different generations active in the movement. The first strike in Brighton counted 2000 people, including local politicians, youth, academics, and performance artists. By the March strike, the numbers had doubled. Then Mary-Jane and Roseanne spoke of their trip to the EU parliament in Belgium to meet other youth activists from around Europe. They were invited by the democratic and socialist alliance in the EU parliament. For that trip, they planned a protest outside of the EU parliament, asking the EU to shut down British Petroleum (BP). They were asked politely to leave, then Swedish Green Party youth delegates decided to join the protest and they all ended up in a park nearby sharing with each other their strike experiences and discussing what to do in the future. What was most inspiring for them was the fact that this was a spontaneous meeting, which revealed the fact that coalitions can happen in the oddest of places. Their experience within the movement is one in which hierarchies have been broken and everyone is respectful of everyone in the space.

Samantha & Carolyn Norr, joined the Webinar from Oakland, California. Carolyn is an adult supporter of youths fighting for a liveable planet and has been supporting Samantha and other youths to travel to strikes. Carolyn spoke of a city with concentration camps on one side and rich people on the other. She described global inequality as it is lived within their city. She spoke of children in concentration camps following waves of deportations. For Carolyn, combating inequality and injustice is at the core of climate justice work. She spoke of the Climate Strike in San Francisco and how children from East Oakland could not afford public transport to attend ($10 roundtrip). Her work emphasizes getting children to these strikes so that they can fight for their communities. She also spoke of the block to the coal export terminal of the Oakland port. Samantha, spoke of Warriors for Justice in her middle school and of environmental racism. She also mentioned the difficulties they had getting people to go to the Climate Strike because of the strong resistance from teachers. This was due to the fact that the strike was not in the curriculum. Samantha launched a petition which was signed by 3/4 of the 7th grade class asking the school to let them go. Then some teachers threatened with lowering grades if people did not come to school on the day of the strike. They also threatened with calling their families. Those who made it to the strike, Samantha described, went to Nancy Pelosi’s office denouncing her proposal to tackle climate change. In a subsequent press conference, Pelosi withdrew her proposal. Samantha’s final comment was ‘do or die’. As she put it: “If we do not take action now we are going to go away”.

Danny Noonan of Our Children’s Trust, explained the work they are doing providing legal support to 21 young people across the US who have presented numerous lawsuits against the government, claiming that the government had knowledge of climate change while promoting fossil fuels. He spoke of these as youth led systemic legal actions. A growing movement in the courts protecting the fundamental right of people to be protected from climate catastrophe. Danny emphasized that their work is supported by a movement and that international awareness is rising thanks to local, national and international mobilization. He mentioned the 4th of July in Portland, Oregon, 360.org, Earth Gardens, and the Sunrise Movement as exemplars of the kind of action making their work possible. Danny also mentioned the support they receive from legislator allies on social media, and the work they have been doing on Podcasts to make their arguments more broadly accessible.

Rose Henry, Elder of the Tla’amin Nation, began by emphasizing how pleased she was seeing so many young people speaking about ‘our climate change’. She then went on to talk about the fact that we should be doing a lot more. That we should be making space for indigenous people and young people in our rallies. Rose was clear about the fact that we are in a crisis and that we need to change our climate direction. The youth, she argued are showing the rest of the world the direction we need to take. She mentioned how she has been fighting for social change since she was 14 years old. For her there are many links between murdered indigenous people and climate change. She denounced lack of action from leaders and voting people. For Rose, it is ironic that now people are looking at indigenous people and youth to make the change, while these are the people who have been oppressed. As she put it, in order to empower youth, we need to give them the microphone and allow them to speak. We have three elections, she reminded us, before many of the youth involved in this movement can vote, but many will already be voting in the next two elections. She spoke of Trump’s and Trudeau’s empty promises. She mentioned the Tiny house being moved 22 km down the highway as their attempt to stop the pipelines. Then, she emphasized that we need a major day of action. She suggested a day of action in October to shut down cashiers and coffee shops. Finally, she spoke of how she can see how climate change is affecting our oceans and our air, and how sick the trees are. She repeated the importance of saving the trees and spoke of this webinar as an event to bring communities together, pass the microphone around and see what we can do.

Kiana Alexander, of the Raven Institute began her contribution by reminding us of the fact that what is happening to the land is the same that is happening to people. She then moved on to talk about how disconnected we have become and how we are living our lives. According to Kiana, our identities and our cultures are interconnected with our ability to connect with the land. For her it is connectedness to each other that can provide the understanding needed for healing the world. She also felt a great sense of urgency and spoke of the Raven Speak Programme; a public forum for indigenous change-makers. For Kiana, pivotal to climate action is healing ourselves. This is integral to climate change from her perspective. She also thinks that climate action is an inevitable and deeply interconnected part of our reality. Therefore, it is important to deconstruct how things have been done previously, and to reinvent new ways of being the change. People in the movement need to remember to laugh, to play, and to connect.

Keith Cherry and Rebeccah Nelems from CTI and CFGS kept their moderation fairly minimal, yet Keith thanked the participants for all their amazing work, and described the kind of power, hope and optimism that this event had generated. For Keith, the Webinar served as a reminder of the fact that every issue is a climate issue. Every person, everywhere, whether in a faculty, union or church needs to be involved. Rebeccah closed the event by thanking all the participants, the audience, the organizers and the supporters of the event.

Youth Climate Change

Closing remarks

Echoing Keith’s sentiment regarding the Webinar and the inspirational contributions of the different participants, I would like to close this blog post with some reflections on the lessons young people are teaching us with their actions. No matter where I talk with youth, there seems to be a reoccurring theme of having a voice and prefiguring the change they wish to see in their societies. There seems to be a conviction regarding the fact that we can organize breaking hierarchies and at the same time there is a huge disconnect between what they are enacting and asking for, and what leaders from around the globe propose as solutions. I agree with Rose that it seems ironic that those people we are looking at to change the world are those who have been oppressed. I think the biggest lesson we can draw from this webinar, as far as university is concerned, is that we must innovate by listening to our students. We must actively refuse becoming obsolete by incorporating changes into our educational system which draw from the multiplicity of examples presented to us by youth, indigenous people and their allies. Together coalitions of demoi from across the planet are actively being the change they wish to see. Dialogues of reciprocal elucidation with them are urgent.

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DEMOCRACY HERE AND NOW The exemplary case of Spain

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By Pablo Ouziel, Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria

Reflections on the talk and presentations given at the Political Theory Research Group seminar, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona on June 20th 2019

 

On June 20th 2019, I had the pleasure of initiating a multilogue on Spain’s 15M democratization practices, with the Political Theory Research Group (GRPT) at the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) in Barcelona.

In 2011, Spanish public squares were occupied by a ‘collective presence’ constituted by a ‘strange multiplicity of culturally diverse voices’ shouting “Basta Ya!”(Enough!). These voices were challenging the political system of representation with the phrase “No nos representan!” (They do not represent us!). They demanded “democracia real ya!” (real democracy now!) and shouted “no somos mercancia en manos de politicos y banqueros” (we are not merchandise in the hands of politicians and bankers).

At this UPF event in 2019, everyone in the room had a certain lived experience within 15M. From 2011 until 2013 Spain was immersed in a 15M climate which altered the way in which many Spanish citizens thought about what it means to be political. Everyone who attended this GRPT seminar was in Spain during the occupations of 2011. For this reason, I thought it best, being faithful to the mode of being I have learnt-with while studying 15M, to begin my talk by asking the GRPT members present, to describe what they thought 15M was or still is. This was my way of situating my descriptions of 15M within a multilogue of reciprocal elucidation in which we all co-learnt about what 15M represents in/for Spanish politics.

Marc Sanjaume, researcher and adviser at the Institut d’Estudis de l’Autogovern (Self-government Studies Institute, Catalan Government) was the first to describe what 15M was for him. From a personal perspective, he described 15M as an expressive movement, with a high dosage of expression and a multigenerational component, which was unwilling/unable to articulate or organize a political project. He understood 15M as vaporous, and thought that in the end, every day in the square people repeated debates on the same issues because every day new people were joining the square.

Ultimately, Sanjaume thought that the absolute and radical commitment to assembly based decision making was unable to make proposals, and argued that its voluntarist nature created a blind spot in its understanding of the political.

Pau Bossacoma Busquets, lecturer in public law at UPF and legal advisor to the Catalan Government, followed by adding that it was a social movement that brought people together and then crystalized into a political party (Podemos), and various associations which achieved numerous things in different areas of social life. He specifically mentioned the Platform of those affected by mortgages (PAH) and Democracia Real Ya. The later was actually the organization that called for the demonstration on May 15th of 2011, which later materialized into square occupations.

Bossacoma Busquets argued that 15M was unable to articulate its relationship to the Spanish state in a manner which managed to convince Catalan society. He identified a conflict between Spanish assembly based movements and secession movements in Catalonia and argued that this antagonism was not resolved. He reminded us of the fact that language was a big issue in square assemblies and of the fact that Catalan speakers were not happy with the assembly being carried out in Spanish. For Bossacoma Busquets, 15M was clearly an extremely urban movement and thus saw it disconnected from rural communities.

Peter Kraus, professor at the University of Augsburg, continued by adding that those in 15M should ask themselves how come once institutionalized, those in government had quickly become like the old parties they had previously been denouncing. Specifically, he referred to Ada Colau, who after being a spokesperson for the PAH had become mayor of Barcelona. He reminded us of the fact that in the recent mayoral elections she has pacted with mayoral candidate Manuel Valls, former Prime Minister of France from 2014 until 2016, in order to retain her position as mayor. Valls is thought of in Catalonia as a radical neoliberal politician striving for a strong Spanish state. He is seen as someone expressing no interest in listening to the voices of the Catalan independence movement. For Kraus, with this pact, Barcelona En Comú, Colau’s party (and Podemos’ partner in Catalonia) stopped being the party which could act as a dialogue facilitator between the Catalan independence movement and groups around and within 15M.

Klaus-Jürgen Nagel, Professor of Political Science at UPF, painted a similar picture of 15M. For him, it was first in the squares, it then became more organized and started a new political party. In speaking of a new party, he referred to Podemos and all the new regional and municipal coalitions made up of new parties stemming from 15M. As to to the question of what is left of 15M, he simply stated that all that is left is a political party with its internal crises.

Ferran Requejo, Professor of Political Science at UPF and director of the Institut d’Estudis de l’Autogovern (Self-government Studies Institute, Catalan Government), argued that 15M combined two things: First, citizenry disaffection building up since the 1980s against representative democracy. Second, conflict stemming from the 2007 economic crisis. For him, in the squares we witnessed a debate between pseudo-intellectualized people who used very little empiric data. To him, the language that was used seemed too abstract and he argued that people were against the state of the system rather than against the state. To him, it appeared like the kind of discourse one would expect in a high school. In addition, he found 15M to be too pro-Spain and pro-Spanish to be representative of the Catalan citizenry.

For Requejo, 15M accomplished nothing and is today a dead movement which is on the decline. He mentioned that he never understood what people were referring to when speaking of ‘real democracy now’, and he argued that people came together because of discontent presenting an unfriendly and unappealing discourse.

Following reflection on these contributions, I proceeded to present my imaginary of 15M. I described what I discovered during my research trip in 2013. I explained how 15M showed civic and civil citizens practicing participatory democracy and joining hands. I argued that with their examples of civic activities and exemplars of civic citizenship, individuals being 15M were contesting while simultaneously constructing alternatives. Finally, I explained how disclosing the field of 15M in this manner, crystalized 15M as a political phenomenon in its own right that is overlooked by state-centric framings.

A precious multilogue ensued, within which we discussed distinctions between being the demos and being a demoi, we spoke of constitutive processes, of the similarities and differences between the Catalan independence movement and 15M, about crisis time versus slow time, about violence versus nonviolence, and about the national versus transnational dimension of 15M.

In an inviting yet provocative manner, Kraus asked whether I might be tinting my imaginary of 15M by wearing Tullian glasses imported from Canada when entering research in Spain. To this I simply responded that I co-constructed my understanding of 15M with those being 15M by immersing myself in dialogues of reciprocal elucidation across Spain. Nevertheless, I took his point to heart and I realize that this is something which is important to always keep in mind when arguing like Foucault that people know what they want, why they want it, and are perfectly capable of speaking with their own voice. We must avoid at all times misrepresenting agents we are entering into dialogue with. We must avoid super-imposing theories we have learnt upon social realities we observe and interact with. An ‘ethic of interruption’ (Mathias Thaler) is crucial as we engage with people we are going to write about.

Finally, in an exemplary joining hands gesture, Requejo made a valuable suggestion regarding the importance of exploring family resemblances between the Catalan Procés and 15M. This could be a valuable contribution as Catalonia and Spain undergo deep transformations. Clearly there is a lot of work to be done in this area and I hope to join hands with people at UPF to explore criss-crossing and overlapping similarities between these two crucial events marking present day Spanish politics.

Overall this was a valuable conversation in which we discussed different imaginaries of what is possible in current day Catalan and Spanish politics and explored the futures of democracies in these lands.

 

 

 

 

 

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Democracy in the Age of Surveillance

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By Alexandra Crabtree, 4th year political science undergraduate student at the University of Victoria

Surveillance has become an activity people choose to engage with. We surrender personal information without thought of consequences or broader societal implications. Entering a digital era, technology has become an inescapable feature of our lives requiring us to forfeit privacy liberties in exchange for access. We consent to engage because otherwise we are cut off from the benefits of this transformative era.

Political campaigning has always involved access to voter information. The ability to communicate and deliberate with the electorate is a crucial component of any democratic process. In order for a political party to operate, they have to know what the voters want. Yet as the recent Cambridge-Analytica scandal exposes, there is a fine line between democratic deliberation and data-driven campaigns built off of personal information. As free and fair elections are the bedrock of any democratic society, should big data play a role in campaigns?

Political parties create a “vital link between the citizen and the state” (ICO, 17). With the proliferation of social media and digital advertising, there has been a notable shift in the way parties interact with the electorate. Following the Brexit vote, debates have emerged over the use of data in political campaigns in the UK. By “microtargeting,” political parties can select certain demographics, locations, or behaviors to target with their campaign.

Following the Analytica scandal, the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has released a series of recommendations to keep political processes transparent and lawful when using data analytics. The ICO calls for an “ethical pause” to allow parliament, regulators, and political parties the time to “reflect on their responsibilities in respect of the use of personal data in the era of big data, before there is a greater expansion in the use of new technologies” (ICO, 3).

The UK operates under significantly more regulated laws in terms of the harvesting and sharing of data than the US (under the General Data Protection Regulation). Yet, parties in the UK have significantly increased their investment in data-driven campaigning after seeing how effective it was in the 2015 general election. As Colin Bennett notes, “these practices are far less common in countries that have multi-party systems in elections based on proportional representation.”

Data-driven campaigns are far more effective in countries that operate under first-past-the-post voting systems because they typically result in two-party majorities. In which case, targeting and creating a campaign for a profiled electorate is much simpler. When there are multiple political parties, profiling the electorate is much harder to do because predictive analytics are less effective as there are a wider variety of interests.

In an era of populist parties and decaying democracy, regulating access to personal information is crucial. As seen in the 2016 US election, microtargeting enabled Trump to create and target a platform of specific groups. The ICO’s ethical pause gives regulators the opportunity to come up with effective data analytic campaign laws to prevent populist parties entering parliament through tailored campaigns.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bennett, Colin. 2018. Island Voices: Proportional Representation Isn’t All About the Data. November. Accessed 2019. https://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/op-ed/island-voices-proportional-representation-isn-t-all-about-the-data-1.23484578.

Lunden, Ingrid. 2018. UK’s Information Commissioner Will Fine Facebook the Maximum £500k Over Cambridge Analytica Breach. Accessed 2019. https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/10/uks-information-commissioner-will-fine-facebook-the-maximum-500k-over-cambridge-analytica-breach/.

Macintyre, Amber. 2018. United Kingdom: Data and Democracy in the UK. Accessed 2019. https://ourdataourselves.tacticaltech.org/posts/overview-uk/.

Nivens, Sergey. n.d. D: 486793459. Accessed 2019. https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/camera-keep-eye-on-woman-mixed-486793459?src=8e_s9a-UJALesvITvyZUkA-1-0.

Office, Information Commissioner’s. 2018. Democracy Disrupted? July. Accessed 2019. https://ico.org.uk/media/2259369/democracy-disrupted-110718.pdf.

Picture Credit:  By Sergey Nivens

 

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DEMOCRACY and its FUTURES: Moving away from jargon and excessive theoretical baggage

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Photo by Kévin Langlais on Unsplash

Graduate students in Victoria, Canada, debate the approach to readings on “democracy from below”

by Ryan Beaton, Trudeau Scholar, Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria

While the preparations for a gathering of a scholarly discussion on the Futures of Democracy in Victoria BC take place, a pre-seminar organized by graduate students discusses a series of readings by Fonna Forman and Teddy Cruz, Robin Celikates, Antje Wiener, and Peyman Vahabzadeh, gathered loosely under the heading of “democracy from below”. While we took a dive into the substantive content of those pieces, particularly by Celikates, I won’t rehearse that aspect of our conversation here. What stuck with me from our group discussion is a commitment to two rather “procedural” points, using that term loosely and with the understanding of course that this is simply my subjective recollection of our discussion, always subject to revision and clarification by other members of our group.

First, a number of us expressed a desire to move away from jargon, esoteric references, orother specialist language, to the extent we can manage it. It’s important to move away from jargon both to ease the discussion across disciplines and also (here I may speak only for myself) because jargon is our distinctive mode of defensiveness as academics, signaling an expertise that is often hard-earned but that too often also distances us from the phenomena we are meant to be illuminating and from non-specialist discussions of them.

Second, picking up where the above point left off, we also seemed to share a common desire to ground our discussions squarely in the phenomena under discussion (for instance, the illegal crossing of borders as an act of civil disobedience, or the contestation of fisheries regulations and related international law). One of our key aims, as I understand it, is to avoid placing excessive theoretical baggage between ourselves and the phenomena we are discussing, so as to avoid also falling into the trap of cherry-picking the phenomena for confirmation of our preferred theoretical angles.

By a happy coincidence, a friend just yesterday forwarded me a lecture by Edward Said in which he captures the above points most eloquently. Below is an extract, followed by a link to the full lecture for those who are interested:

[In the academy,] there’s always the danger of specialization, and of what has come to be called professionalization. That is to say, I think that the tendency in the academy to focus upon membership in a guild tends, therefore, to constrict and limit the critical awareness of the scholar. And this kind of restriction is manifest in a number of things. For example, the use of jargon, specialized language that nobody else can understand. One of my early works — well, perhaps not that early; but it was written, or published seventeen or eighteen years ago — was a book called Orientalism, which took its main subject from the way in which a field, as all fields are, is constituted by its language; but that the language itself becomes further and further removed from the experiences and the realities of the subject, in this case the orient, about which the language was supposed to turn.

http://archives.acls.org/op/op31said.htm#said