10th Anniversary of Online Activism

               As I said last month, my online activism completed ten years. This activism began in June of 2006 with I doing summaries from Newsweek magazine that I read in the municipal library and then rewrote them in my email and sent to some persons that I knew had an interested in the issues and in the English language. This was the case with the articles: "Lessons from Locke", "Still a Lot to Learn," "Correa's curriculum," and the "Dark Side of Globalization." In that time, I accessed Internet in the Infocenter at UFJF, where I kept accessing till 2011, Only in January of 2012, I started accessing at home. For the past ten years, I have been doing summaries of articles, reports and books. It is a good way for me to practice reading and writing English and in the same time educate myself and others about important issues that concern everybody. And those who do not know English and want to read, they can use the Google translator.  The issues that I have been writing in my activism has remained the same since the beginning. They are: the economy in Brazil and in the Latin America. Importance of quality in education with its consequencies in democracy and in the development. The importance of an effective and efficient democracy and how to achieve this. The importance of human rights for democracy, for justice and for citizenship. The importance of political participation directly and indiretly. The importance of activism for democracy, for human rights and other issues. We can also have learnt about remarkable writers that influenced the world literature and other issues beyond literature. I have done summaries of many books, since 2006 and I have learnt a lot about all these issues that I have written about. and those who read my blog have learnt a lot too. The important writers that I have written and we have known them better, are: Charles Dickens, George Orwell, J.D. Salinger, Machado de Assis, Nathanael Hawthorne, Honoré de Balzac, Aldous Huxley, Voltaire, Gyorg Lukacs, Thomas Mann, Alexis de Tocquevill, Dante Alighieri, Mark Twain, Jane Austen, Jack London, Euclides da Cunha, Charlotte Bronte, and recently George Bernard Shaw. Also I wrote as a way to celebrate the anniversary of: Brazilian Constitution, United Nations, The protestst in June of 2013, and the Independence of Ireland. As I said before, I have read many books, and to remember these are some books that I have summarized: The first was, "A Short History of the World," by the famous fiction writer, H.G.Wells. I put on the blog, the chapter where he described the development achieved by Germany after investment in education in the 1870 and 1880 decades. The second book I summarized was, "Latin America 2040, Breaking Away from Complacency," this book says that many countries in Latin America is stuck in the 'middle income trap' and only investment in education and smart policies of development will raise the L.A. economic growth rates. The thid was the book, "Manufacturing the Future: The Next Era of Global  and Innovation." This book is about the importance of R&D and innovation to development. The fourth book was "Raising Student Learning in Latin America: The Challenge for the 21st Century." The fifth book was "The Theory of the Novel," by Gyorg Lucaks. This book, I first read many times the Portuguese edition in the university. Then for my TCC I read again, the Brazilian edition, and for the summary on the blog, I read online the American edition. This book is really good, and help us to analyse fiction. The sixth book was, "Civil Society and Social Movement: Building Sustainable Democracies in Latin America." This book is about the necessity to increase citizen engagement in politics to strength democracy. In order to achieve this is essential that community organizaions, social movements and NGOs can be able to gain access to the halls of power. The seventh book was, "Democracies in Development: Politics and Reform in Latin America." This book is about how is essential to develop policies that are responsive to the will of the people. And the importance of a well-organized civil society and an independent media to monitor government, expose human rights violations and to bring political accountability. But institutions and policies that are good from the standpoint will have a limited impact if not accompanied by civil education and campaigns against abuse of power, government corruption and mismanagement. The development of democracy must be a concern in our everyday life, because only with a effective democracy, the voice of the people are heard, the human rights are respected, by the way, during this ten years of activism, I have posted many summaries proving the connection between human rights, democracy, justice and development. It is very important that everybody is aware to respect human rights in order to improve democracy, and justice. The eighth book summarized was, "The History of Human Rights." This book tell us how the idea of the people have rights was strongly developed during the 19th century. And how important they are to the people can live with dignity, freedom, equality, justice and peace. These were the first eight books I summarized, there were many others after them, but they were summarized recently, so I think it is not necessary to remember them. It has not been easy to maintain this activism for a decade, I do not know anybody else who keep a activism for so many years, a decade, in a row. Usually I read and publish the summaries on the weekend, it is when I have more spare time. But in order to do this, I have to sacrifice other things that I could be doing in my scarce spare time. I am not complaining about this, I already have more serious things to complain about. And whatever happens this year, I will keep doing summaries in my blog. I will try to keep it for as long as possible, if possible for the rest of my life. I really enjoy to see that people are learning something with me, something very important to their present and future, something very important to our democracy, our life as dignified citizens and very important to our history as a civilized society in this digital era, when there are millions of witnesses commenting about the right and wrong, the injustice and justice, the hipocrisy and the truth, the wise answer and the stupid answer, the courageous and the coward, the solidarity and the selfish indifference. And because millions interconnect with each other every day, we are being judged all the time, we could become famous without knowing about it. Because this, we have our responbility increased about the protection of our dignity, our justice, our rights while honest citizens, because, for example, a serious human rights violation happens, if there is justice for the victims, more justice could spread, but if not, a precedent of injustice could do more victims and in the end only sorrow and fear will exist.

Reinventing Government and Democracy for the Digital Age

           This post is a summary of two reports. The first was published with the title above in 2004 at http://canadiangovernmentexecutive.ca/reinventing-government-and-democracy-for-the-digital-age/. The second was published in 2013 https://www.utwente.nl/bms/vandijk/research/itv/itv_plaatje/Digital%20Democracy-%20Vision%20and%20Reality.pdf

           The push for government cutbacks is running up against growing public expectations about what government should be and do. They should offer better services, healthcare, safety and provide stability for our troubled economies. So while cost-control measures may be necessary they are clearly insufficient. We can no longer tinker with government, we need to reinvent it. Even though it is 21st century, most government still reflect industrial-age organizational thinking, based on the same command-and- control model as industrial-age enterprises. These bureaucracies operated like individual "stovepipes" with information only flowing vertically and rarely between departments. During the last forty years, governments, like corporations, applied computers to their work. The result is that old procedures, processes and organizational forms were just encoded in software. This is not sustainable. Governments face a reality in which they are more and more dependent for authority on a network of powers and counter-influences of which they are just a part. The first-wave of digitally-enabled "e-government" strategies delivered some important benefits. It made government information and services more accessible to citizens while creating admnistrative efficiencies. But too many of these initiatives simply focused on automating existing processes and moving existing government services online. It is the next wave of innovation that presents an historic occasion to fundamentally redesign how government operates, how and what the public sector provides, and ultimately, how governments interact and engage with their citizens. This second wave of innovation are beginning to appear in cities around the world. Knowledge, information, talent and energy are being moved, shaped and channeled in brand new ways, inside and outside of the boundaries of government. A growing number of governments understand the need to distribute power broadly and leverage innovation, knowledge and value from the civil society and private sector. There is a new kind of public sector organization emerging: open government. This is government that co-innovates with everyone, harnesses the power of mass collaboration, and behaves not as an isolated department, but as something new: a truly integrated organization. Thanks to the internet, government is becoming a stronger part of the social ecosystem that binds individuals, communities and businesses, not by absorbing new responsibilities or building additional layers of bureaucracy, but through its willingness to open up formerly closed processes to broader input and innovation. In other words, government becomes a platform for the creation of public value and social innovation. It provides resources, set rules and mediates disputes, but allows citizens, NGOs and the private sector to do most of the heavy lifting. We need to reinvent e-government must take place within the context of a new vision for democracy. In Western countries a growing number of citizens can not be bothered to vote. Many do not care who is power, since they feel the end result will be more of the same. they question the legitimacy of public insitutions. Opposition parties champion a more 'participatory democracy,' but it rarely happens. What we end up with is what I call 'broadcast democracy.' Citizens listen to speeches, debates, and television ads. They vote. But when it comes to having input into policy and real decision, they are relegated to the sidelines. The first era of democracy was once appropriate because public policy issues were simple and evolved slowly. The public did not have the education, time, resources or communication tools to participate more fully. This is no longer the case. The policy advisers on the government payroll can barely keep pace with defining the problems, let alone craft the solutions. Today, information networks can enable organizations to tap the insights of large numbers of people to arrive at decisions and outcomes that are could be superior to those presided by individuals and small groups of advisers. The second era of democracy requires governments to create opportunities for sustained dialogue between voters and public officials. We need ways to allow citizens to contribte ideas to the decision-making process. When citizens becomes active, good things can happen. We all learn from each other. Initiatives get catalyzed. Public office holders need to embrace integrity, which is basically about doing the right thing. Politicians know that negative advertising is toxic to democracy, poisons reasoned political debate and dumbs down the discussion. We also need fuller transparency. Everything should be done in the light of day. Sunshine is the best disinfectant, and the internet is the perfect vehicle to achieve this. Post online all government activities and financial transactions. Municipal corruption in Quebec would have been thwarted if Quebec citizens could have compared the cost of construction contracts with similar work in Toronto or Vancouver. To restore democracy requires stronger, more open institutions, active citizenship and a culture of public discourse and participation. This will change the nature of democracy and the relationship between citizens and the state for the better.

                With the arrival of PCs and the internet on a massive scale in the 1990s these media immediately appealed to the imagination of future scientists and the early adopters of these media. The effects of digital democracy were often framed in the perspective of a democratic revolution in politics and public governance. They were also seen as instruments that only by sing them would overturn institutional politics and modes of policy making. This is the assumption that a medium such as the internet is democratic in itself. Opposed to these utopian visions of digital democracy, some scientists and politicians defend dystopian views considering these visions to be a threat to democracy as we konw it. Others have defended 'syntopian' views of diigital democracy, highlighting both opportunities and risks. A closer analysis of the calls for digital democracy reveals that in fact different views of democracy are behind these calls. It is very important to make these views evident from the start. Six views of democracy can be distinguished in two dimensions: 1) Government-centric view - The classical Western view on democracy is legalist democracy. In this view, the lack of information gathered and distributed by the state is the most important problem to be solved with the aid of digital media. Digital media should be used for information campaigns, information retrieval by citizens and information gathering among citizens. The second conception of democracy in the government-centric dimension is called competitive democracy. It is mainly supported in countries with a two-party system. According to this view, parties and leaders compete for the support of the ellectorate. This rather elitist view of democracy emphasizes representation decision-making by leaders. Digital media are foremost used for information and election campaigns. 2) Citizen-centric view - Four other view of democracy have a different strategic orientation. Supporters of these views aim for a socialization of politics. This implies a more prominent role for social organizations and individuals. The assumption is that internet will enable them to have an influence on politics and even to bypass institutional politics or replace it with their own political relations. Here the most radical view is plebiscitary democracy. According to this view, political decisions have to be made through plebiscites. This implies a preference for direct democracy. Another alternative view is pluralist democracy. In this view, opinion formation within and between social organizations is emphasized. It is a combination of direct democracy and representative democracy. Digital media offer numerous opportunities for pluralism in debates.  So-called deliberative democracy also belongs to this view. It emphasizes discourse in free and open debates. The fifth view is participatory democracy. Its supporters promote a socialization of politics, encouraging active citizenship. The emphasis lies on the broadest possible opinion formation on a combination of direct and representative democracy. If the digital media are to play a positive role in enabling these instruments, access for all is vital. The last view has appeared as a dominant model among the pioneers of the internet. The libertarian democracy emphasizes on autonomous politics by citizens using computers networks and in this way bypassing institutional politics. eParticipation is most used in the first phases of the policy process: agenda setting and policy preparation. Policy evaluation is a second area, mostly visited on the initiative of citizens. At the end of the 1990s many governments were experimenting with online consultations that were disappointing in terms of participation. Now ePetitions, eVoting and eComplaints are more popular than the online consultations and official online discussions of those days. These applications of eParticipation might be popular, but this does not mean that everybody is able to use them. They require a number of digital skills added to the traditional skills of citizenship. These skills are: 1) operational computers skills. 2) skills for searching information on the web. 3) strategic skills for using internet applications. However, the decisive touchstone of eParticipation is the influence on political decisions. Few decisions of government, representatives and civil servants have changed on account of the input of citizens in eParticipation. Few decision makers are prepared to accept the direct inroad of eParticipation on their decisions. Therefore, it is no surprise that governments and public administrations have problems with the incorporation of the initiatives and results of eParticipation in their operations and models of governance. So, in terms of democracy the sober conclusion is that "most administrations do not yet have mechanisms and capacities in place to cope with a significant increase in participation."

           

Connecting Institutions and Citizens in the Digital Age

                This post is a summary of the report published in the final of the World Forum for Democracy in November 2013 at http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/cultureheritage/news/wfd/2013report_en.pdf

              Global trends point to a worldwide decline in the level of trust in democratic systems. Voter turnout rates and party membership are falling across the world. What we are witnessing is not only political apathy but a sense of betrayal felt by ordinary citizens towards their leaders. The World Forum for Democracy reviewed the potential of Internet-based democracy applications to restore citizens' trust, making government more open and transparent and to increase motivation for political participation by shifting power from organisations (parties, NGOs, trade unions, traditional media) to individuals. The internet makes possible for ordinary citizens to voice their concerns and express their vision for society through content sharing on social media. It also enables individuals to mobilise support and resources for various causes and makes activism safer. The interactive nature of the internet stimulates citizens-driven solution journalism to promote and harness new ideas and solutions emerging outside institutional channels and enables deliberation on a large scale of shared positions on complex issues. While the balance of power still remains within institutions, their functioning is to an ever greater extent subject to scrutiny, influence and input from citizens empowered through e-participation tools. However, tech developments in the fields of democracy raise a number of concerns: Liquid democracy needs to be framed by a common understanding of democracy in general, for example about which subjects should be decided by public referendums and which areas should be reserved to representative institutions. The increased the effectiveness of e-petitions systems requires a formal response from the public authority or to develop public e-petitions systems. The engagement of elected representatives with citizens is motivated by elections and rarely lasts throughout the political cycle, this failing to restore the eroded trust in elected institutions. Political parties will not cease to exist because of liquid democracy, rather they will have to reinvent themselves. They need to become more flexible, less hierarchical and more open to input on policy proposals from members and society at large. Democracy is work in progress, as a system of governance it need to continuously evolve and improve to keep up with a world that is changing faster than ever before, liquid democracy and e-participation are a part of this evolution. The interplay between digital participation and real-life participation is essential. Tech is not sufficient to enable real impact of citizens' voices, even in the digital age. Political actors and institutions need to stimulate greater participation of citizens in more classical forms of political life. Mary Kaldor, professor at the London School of Economics, stated that social life is currently in the midst of a profound transition. As governng institutions fail to adapt to these profound changes, there is a need to rethink democracy, in particular in terms of the digital age. She distinguished between formal and substantive democracy. The former describes objective values of democracy such as the rule of law, freedom of speech, or civil society. Whereas the latter refers to subjective values, as for example the societal condition, the "habits of the hearts" and the ability to influence political decision-making. There is a global increase in formal democracy which corresponds to the higher level of interconnectivity among states. However, formal democracy does not correlate with substantive democracy. This create a democratic gap. It doesn't matter so much how we use the internet but what we use it for. Professor Kandor concluded by depicting two scenarios. In a dystopia, the internet is used for mass surveilance, to control people, to maintain market discipline, and to increase authoritarianism. In a utopian world, the internet offers greater accountability and increases citizen participation. Bill Gates predicted that the digital age will change representative democracy. The way politicians act has also changed: they need to react instantly and be more responsive. Moreover, the rise of e-petitions is transforming the relation between government and citizen. Robert Walter, chairperson of the European Democrat Group of the Council of Europe. recognised that there is a crisis of confidence and that representatives need to improve the way they engage in order to strengthen transparency. Online consultation is giving people an excellent way to participate in legislation-procedures and offers a platform to introduce new topics. The political dialogue created on e-petition platform is a huge step forward in the relation between officials and citizens. However, as the majority of people is not in the position to fine-tune the details of policy-making, the need for solid parliamentary debate remains. Tools of liquid democracy could also reduce the feeling of alienation from politics, which many citizens share, by improving the flow of communication as well as the substance of debate between citizens and their representatives. Open government initiatives, often referred to as e-government, e-parliament or democracy 2.0, aim to establish the link between citizens and officials by increasing transparency and collaboration. They create spaces for citizens to share their vision for society and debate policy choices or to oversee the integrity of democratic insitutions and the quality of public services. Several conditions for the successful implementation of e-democracy project need to be in place. First of all, the existence of political will. The will should extend to the actual reform of local government. In this relation, e-democracy is a good way to test the public opinion and gain the support of citizens, therefore it should not only be applied during election perioods. the aims of the project have to be clear and correspond to citizens' concerns. Another important key for success is accessibility, in order for people feel encouraged to participate, it is useful to make the work behind the project visible and understandable for them. Something to be careful about is ensuring the representativeness of the debate. Readily available access to the internet is a pre-condition for e-participation, but not a sufficient condition, people need to be motivated by guarantees that their participation will make a difference in policy and practice. Direct democracy can be, under certain conditions, a way of dealing with the citizen's disengagement from representative politics. A range of other ways of involving citizens in governance has emerged, fuelled by web and social media: participatory budgeting and crowdfunding, for example, give community members a voice in the fiscal decision-making processes and invite them to deliberate on the local authorities' financial decisions. Are these phenomena confined to a few pioneering cities or are they heralding a shift towards participatory democracy? Thanks to e-participation platforms run by local authorities and NGOs, citizens have more opportunities to participate in the decision-making and improve governance at local level. What are the lessons learnt and the obstacle to such approaches? What kind of platform would be the best to improve citizen participation at local level? E-government is supposed to improve the quality of government by providing public information and services online but is often conceived in a top-down way with little scope for citizen input and influence. Online tools now make it possible for citizzens and services users to keep service providers in check by using collective intelligence and public presssure. Education for democratic citizenship and through active participation from an early age is a key issue for sustainable democracy. New technologies can facilitate this, even in countries with autocratic regimes, democratic online technologies give people opportunities for learning skills of democracy, they would not have offline considering the repressive political system. There must be consideration of the relationship between the state and the individuals as simultaneously free and social beings in a digitally literate society, moving away from emphasis on control of digital lives and instead promoting the values of respect and fairness in the online domain. There must be investment in research and development of innovative forms of democracy. This innovation must be conscientious in promoting equal empowerment of all citizens. And it must be willing to truly think outside the box, challenging ingrained conceptions of political parties and electoral processes. developing new democratic models replace the principle of competition with the principle of cooperation. Governments need to be more assessable, responsive and accountable. They need to respect citizens' rights both online and offline. The Snowden case has shown that citizens believe strongly in the rights of privacy and protection of data. The internet should be used to strengthen communication and partnership between officials and citizens. New technologies can help to revitalise democracy which should remain the only system of government for nations.

The Relevance of Political Science

            This post is a summary of four articles. The first with the title above was published at http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/book-review-the-relevance-of-political-science/. The second was published at https://www.reference.com/world-view/importance-studying-political-science-eaedb9432d357260. The third was published at http://political-science.williams.edu/. The fourth was published at https://blog.udemy.com/importance-of-political-science/

           A new collection engages directly with how political science can achieve wider relevance as a discipline. Matt Wood finds the book The Relevance of Political Science a must read for any scholar interested in the impact debate and he welcomes a return to the more social constructivist ideas of impact through teaching and learning. But there is a risk this relevance debate descends into a buzzfeed world of tips. More attention could be spent justifying to society why the theoretical and conceptual work political scientists already do is valuable in any democratic society. According to Stoker, Peters and Pierre in their new edited collection, The Relevance of political Science, quite a lot there is to be said about this 'relevance'. For them, "the key agenda is how best to understand the obstacles that need to be resolved in achieving relevance and the potential for relevance that could thereby be realised". But the key is how to make that relevance less rhetorical and more of an empirical reality. This book helps to highlight the range of answers to the 'how?' question, particularly the relevance of teaching, but could go further in stressing the importance of conceptual and theoretical reflection about politics. The book begins with the core of the problem: How can political scientists, in all their theorical, conceptual and empirical diversity, achieve the perception that they are 'relevant'? The answer is a strongly pluralistic discipline, with a diversity of approaches to relevance. Many recently minted approaches to political science that reject the scientific label often do so for the reason they are criticised, the issue of relevance. Their aim is hence nothing less than putting the 'political' back into political science. "Teaching students to pose questions about social construction, is a especially powerful way to help them become critical thinkers. Whether or not constructivists hold a philosophy of science that gives them a claim to specialist knowledge, they can all teach the broad lesson of posing constructivists questions", said, Craig Parsons. The route to relevance through teaching is perhaps the most traditional concept of relevance. Indeed, if we view impact this way, then arguably the 'alternative' approaches to political science. But in reflecting on the book I want to know why the activities I do as a political scientist genuinely matter to society. in my own work, I am interested in conceptual formulation about understanding and defining concepts in a way that makes them clearer and enables academic work to proceed with rigour and clarity. This book stresses the importance of 'real world problems' driving research. But, which forms of political science research do not address 'problems' in the 'real world'? or rather, are there any researchers out there who principle could not somehow justify their research by resort to an important 'problem', if pushed? The real challenge is to justify why does society actually need theoretically, conceptually and methodologically knowledge about politics rather than simply timely and helpful evidence about what works, from political scientists readily provide? This might seem a daunting question, but it is easily answered. Concepts are critical to the functioning and evolution of social science. Clarity of thought, intellectual willingness to define, delimit and defend one's understanding of a term, or a theory, is a good thing in a democratic society that wants to solve complex problems. We have the unique position of being able to reflect critically on how society understand concepts, theories and empirical data relevant to democratic choices and actions. If we do not offer this reflective capacity by trying to improve how concepts are understood, then we run the risk of merely being in competition with so many other retailers, governments bodies and NGOs who want to brand and market concepts. So, this book is a must read for any scholar interested in the disciplinary debate on relevance. It is crucial intervention to move the relevance debate from 'why' question to the 'how' question of relevance. In doing so, however, this book also distracting from the essentially political project of justifying to society at large why the work we already do has value, because it is intimately valuable in any democratic society that value a deep understanding of the problems society faces.                                            Studying political science is not only useful for employment in governmental or local administration jobs, but for life as well. Studying political science can deepen understanding and knowledge of the way the world works. Political theory is an important basis of humanistic studies, and it has been a concern of intellectuals since the times of Aristotle. Studying political science can prepare one for various careers that require highly developed skills in both analysis and communication. Also, studying political science helps build experience working with diverse communities to accomplish specific goals. It is also requires reading relevant literature and expressing views through writing, these activities help to develop research in critical thinking. Reading through such literature also helps to develop research and analytical skills that are useful to all professions. Studying political science develops the skills of conclusions and making decisions by synthesizing different sets of data. Additionally, it helps the individual to understand and become involved in national and international politics in a more comprehensive way than merely voting in an election.                                     As a social science, political science focuses on group power, he 'how' and 'why' of collective decision-making. Hence it leads us to consider the ethics of power, which in turn involves conceptions of community, identity, justice and citizenship. Under the banner of political science we gather the study of democracy, war, law, rights, wealth, and authority, as well as the institutions that shape and secure them. Power may be used wisely or foolishly, rightly or cruelly, but it is always there. The contests over power and the values that should animate it give politics its drama and pathos. Naturally, then, the effort to understand politics aims not only to describe and explain, but also to improve collective life.

               We, ordinary citizens may know and learn about our political rights and privileges from a given form of government that includes the political structure and processes of state. Without this knowledge we would not know which rights we have and more importantly the battles that were fought in order to award us these rights. As you can see, the study of Political Science is not only useful, it is valuable. Political Science deals with theory and practice of politics, as well as the analysis of political systems, behavior and culture. Economics, Law, Sociology, History, Anthropology are all pieces of the political puzzle. In order for our leaders to make the best possible decisions they must be aware of all developments in each of these areas. You have heard the saying 'Power to the people' before. Well, have you ever stopped to think of how people gain their power? Through knowledge! Share your knowledge with the people  and give them the power to make informed decisions on subjects that may directly or indirectly have an impact on them. The study of political science is especially important to our success as a democracy. People who are informed of their rights and duties are more aware and vigilant. A aware society is one that is more likely to prevent or speak out against things that are unjust. We have to look out for one another, our rights, our freedoms in order for democracy to work.