{"id":30368,"date":"2017-02-02T06:00:29","date_gmt":"2017-02-01T19:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=30368"},"modified":"2017-02-01T14:30:47","modified_gmt":"2017-02-01T03:30:47","slug":"harnessing-politics-disruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/harnessing-politics-disruption\/","title":{"rendered":"Harnessing the politics of disruption"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"15349602218_f15162417c_z\"<\/figure>\n

The United Kingdom\u2019s vote to exit the European Union and Donald Trump\u2019s election as US president exposed a deep generational divide. Cosmopolitan millennials and nationalist pensioners\u2014what Thomas Friedman calls<\/a> \u2018Web People\u2019 and \u2018Wall People\u2019\u2014seem to have nothing in common. But both point to the same crisis of political representation.<\/p>\n

In the UK, for every \u2018Leave\u2019 voter under the age of 24, there were three over the age of 65. In the US, Trump won 53% of the over-65 vote, but was supported by only 37% of 18-29-year-olds.<\/p>\n

In both cases, the elderly were attracted by pessimistic rhetoric assailing the damage to their communities brought about by free trade, free movement, free love, and human-free technology disrupting their jobs and economic security. Young people were far more optimistic about the future, their personal prospects, and technology\u2019s potential\u2014and far more empathetic toward marginalised groups.<\/p>\n

The pessimists won, and now they\u2019re feeling pretty hopeful. The former optimists now fear the worst.<\/p>\n

But, despite their fundamentally different attitudes toward technology and globalisation, the Web People and the Wall People have one thing in common: both are deeply skeptical of existing institutions. They think that representative democracy has broken down, and they see the creative potential of disruption.<\/p>\n

The Wall People want to smash the existing system, in the hope that something better emerges\u2014something that looks a bit more like the familiar world of times past (or at least of their fancy). The Web People, for their part, believe that technology must transform politics and institutions, just as it has transformed newspapers, taxi services, and hotels.<\/p>\n

The web mentality is exemplified by Vyacheslav Polonski, a 27-year-old network scientist of Ukrainian origin, who has spent time at Harvard and is currently completing a PhD in social media at Oxford University. \u2018We are dealing with a twenty-first-century world,\u2019 he tells me, \u2018but our political system has not evolved since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.\u2019<\/p>\n

Polonski points out that our government institutions were established not just before Facebook and Instagram, but even before television and radio. Whereas our economy is now characterised by choice, customisation, and participation, our politics remains stifled by bureaucracy, special interests, and entrenched-yet-declining political parties. \u2018As our government becomes more agile,\u2019 he says, \u2018people can vote for specific ideas and agendas, rather than a political party.\u2019 As a result, \u2018politics will become more like Uber: more decentralised, more open, more immediate.\u2019<\/p>\n

To reinforce his point, Polonski connects me with his friend Mar\u00eda Luisa Mart\u00ednez Dibarboure, a 27-year-old trainee lawyer who is one of the founders of El Partido Digital<\/em>, a new digital political party in her native Uruguay. \u2018We live in a crisis of representation,\u2019 Dibarboure tells me on Skype (how else?). \u2018Once people are in power,\u2019 she laments, \u2018they vote according to their own preferences,\u2019 not those of the voters who put them there.<\/p>\n

Dibarboure\u2019s solution is to use the Internet to ensure accurate representation. El Partido Digital <\/em>is currently working to elect a representative to parliament. That representative would use the Internet to poll her constituents before each parliamentary vote, thereby ensuring that she really is a voice for voters.<\/p>\n

More intriguing, constituents will be able to delegate their votes to others, perhaps friends with more expertise on particular issues. Fred the economist could vote on my behalf on economic questions, and Anne the scientist could vote for me on environmental matters.<\/p>\n

Dibarboure\u2019s concept relies on neither elections nor referenda. Instead of representative or direct democracy, it offers what she and Polonski call \u2018liquid democracy\u2019\u2014a system that combines the best of both. \u2018We are about representation, not ideology,\u2019 she clarifies. \u2018We don\u2019t represent left or right.\u2026 This is about the people.\u2019<\/p>\n

Polonski and Dibarboure are members of a community of 6,000 \u2018global shapers<\/a>,\u2019 brought together by the World Economic Forum. These 23-27-year-olds are creative, connected, cosmopolitan, and full of energy. They are crestfallen about recent election results (\u20182016 was the year in which I lost faith in humanity,\u2019 says Dibarboure). But my sense is that they will bounce back soon, and find opportunities in today\u2019s political disruptions.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that these disruptions are the answer to their problems, or even to the problems of the Wall People. On the contrary, today\u2019s political disruptions could make some of the outcomes that these groups favor more difficult to achieve.<\/p>\n

The old and young alike hope to recapture the opportunities enjoyed by the post-1945 Baby Boom generation. But those opportunities were enabled by a commitment to collective action, broad support for redistribution, and strong economic growth\u2014none of which can be counted on today. On the contrary, the backlash against globalisation and immigration will likely damage global growth, while the need to build ad hoc <\/em>coalitions of the willing undermines progress in building new institutions. For many nowadays, redistribution has become a dirty word.<\/p>\n

So the politics supported by the Wall People isn\u2019t the answer. But nor is the politics of the Web People. While disruptive, Internet-enabled politics can upend the status quo<\/em>\u2014the Arab Spring revolutions taught us that\u2014it has not proved particularly effective at creating sustainable alternatives.<\/p>\n

The grievances of the old and the young are very real. The economic gains of the last few decades have not been shared widely enough. Political parties are more beholden to themselves than they are to the communities they serve. There is socialism for the rich, and capitalism for the poor. The war on terror is creating more terrorists. And trade and migration systems are losing support.<\/p>\n

Rather than defend the status quo<\/em> from the counter-revolution, the political class should work to create a new system\u2014one that responds to the needs of the people. Both the young and the old have made their demands known. It is time to respond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The United Kingdom\u2019s vote to exit the European Union and Donald Trump\u2019s election as US president exposed a deep generational divide. Cosmopolitan millennials and nationalist pensioners\u2014what Thomas Friedman calls \u2018Web People\u2019 and \u2018Wall People\u2019\u2014seem to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":529,"featured_media":30369,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1631,1428,1025,759,1734],"class_list":["post-30368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-brexit","tag-donald-trump","tag-european-union","tag-globalisation","tag-populism"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHarnessing the politics of disruption | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/harnessing-politics-disruption\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Harnessing the politics of disruption | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The United Kingdom\u2019s vote to exit the European Union and Donald Trump\u2019s election as US president exposed a deep generational divide. 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