This is part 4 of my “Achieving True Democracy: A New Breed of Party as Realistic Next Step” articles. Here you can find part 1, the introduction for the article series, and part2, a short description of the idea of the Proxy Party, and part 3, a description of how a party program should look like. The Proxy Party focuses on designing and securing party-internal information processes and democratic processes effectively and efficiently and implementing the results developed in the processes: Important points of the content-related work are above all to: pick up new topics weight the incoming topics with the members prepare important topics enable factual input and fact-checking provide a platform for a deliberation process that aims at knowledge gain for all participants and their individual forming of their political will create a culture that focusses on finding common ground determine if the topics should be included in the
Articles from August 2020
Achieving True Democracy: A Sound Basis and New Party Operating System
This is part 3 of my “Achieving True Democracy: A New Breed of Party as Realistic Next Step” articles. Here you can find part 1, the introduction for the article series, and part2, a short description of the idea of the Proxy Party. The Proxy Party could give itself the normal type of program like a normal political party. But I would argue that it should go a different route to emphasize that. This route includes: …the Proxy Party is more trustworthy, …will be more open and adaptable to add topics based on the will and current priorities and their members and…will ensure it will stay to be more representative than the conventional parties. Why a party program at all? A program should achieve the goal to rally people around a set of values and goals and enable its officials and elected representatives in parliament to act efficiently guided by this
A New Breed of Political Party — The Proxy Party
This is part 2 of my “Achieving True Democracy: A New Breed of Party as Realistic Next Step” articles. Here you can find part 1, the introduction for the article series. As long as we don’t fix the political system itself, the system will not represent us. Therefore, democracy itself needs an upgrade. Urgently! If we are serious about strengthening democracy within the next years and achieve true representation, we must rethink the political party as a vehicle for representing democratic interests. The new breed of political party shouldn’t impose its political will on its members but only assist them to form their individual political will and represent this as accurately as possible. It will not force a decision by majority vote but truly represent the breadth of decisions its members reached after consideration of the topic. Why do I call this new type of party “Proxy Party?” Those familiar with
Achieving True Democracy: A New Breed of Party as Realistic Next Step
Introduction: Politics Doesn’t Represent Us Politics doesn’t represent the majority of the People. Public opinion and public policy differ, sometimes a lot. Even if an overwhelming majority is clearly in favor of a certain policy it doesn’t mean that this will translate to legislative action in parliament. A ‘good’ example are the two US-parties locked in a partisan death spiral. Without them, the US population could easily agree on dozens of issues listed in the article What if a Presidential Candidate Ran on What Most Americans Actually Wanted. An American study has shown that “when preferences of low- or middle-income Americans diverge from those of the affluent, there is virtually no relationship between policy outcomes and the desires of less advantaged groups.” A German study revealed very similar results. Worldwide, the currently implemented democratic systems and their rules seem to work against a democratic representation. The systems themselves and their rules were formed by professional