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Re: (1/2) Parlement pyramidal ou democratie directe ?
Doug EVERINGHAM
Wednesday, 19 March 2003 01:16:37
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(* ... one elects the politicians for a function and non for a work. ... At a global scale, we are too numerous... We would be obliged to be organized in local assemblies which would elect the cantonal assemblies, which would elect regional assemblies, then national then continental... the basis will feel very little represented... even betrayed... ...how these representatives * of the fifth or sixth march * of the pyramid could be still faithful to the desires of the populations of the first level? ... we are electing People, instead of precise material desires. ... *)
Extracts by Doug Everingham from an original message of Julian Hinton, a review of the book: * A New Way to Govern * by Shann Turnbull.
... From his hands-on experiences in the corporate world and in academic research he has... the belief that the way things are done in 'management' or governance (of corporations and societies) can and needs to be done a lot better. ... enlightened management and progressive workers can see the same basic reality from widely different life experiences and perspectives.
... Rather than being treated with deference or contempt and ignored, the workers who actually do the jobs and the people who deal with a corporation day in and day out, are the ones best qualified to judge how to run it ...
. Through networks of people familiar with their own particular areas of specialization and aware of the overall standards and goals of the firm or organization. ... stakeholders in the enterprise. Those who buy from the company or sell to it. People who live next to it and have to put up with its noise or pollution, or investors who have shares in it.
The traditional system of organizing, imposed on us over the last few hundred years, Turnbull calls the 'centralized command and control hierarchy'. This dominance by management specialists and autocrats invites corruption and the pursuit of narrow, short-term interests. Turnbull and the anarcho-syndicalists see the possibilities for society at large - of having corporations and governments managed much more by the people who stand to lose most by their failure rather than by elites of footloose, globetrotting executives and consultants. ... his theoretical perspective is about not just collective human activities but about the organization of natural systems generally. Natural systems are not usually hierarchical but function though complex interrelations of similar parts. Turnbull sees collective governance as a more natural, organic way of doing things because it involves better information flows throughout networks ... of stakeholders, over owners or those with executive power who are liable to corruption.
Nature does things by a spread of regulatory mechanisms throughout complex systems. The human body is replete with self-regulation mechanisms that control things like body temperature ... 'contrary characteristics' of the different materials that have been used in the body give it strength and versatility. This implies that balances have to be worked out over periods of trial and error. ... recorded in the organism's genetic material and passed on. Many of these features of natural systems have been discovered in the last 50 years by the study of biology and ecology. Modern organizations are too complex to be left to individuals and single governing mechanisms like unitary corporate boards. Instead conceptual plans and rules of governance need to be present in all units of an organization (individual people) like DNA is present in all living cells.
The plan for and rules of the system are thus well understood and transparent. Not the exclusive property of the 'head'. ...
Ecosystems work like this ... He has discussed it all in more detail in academic form at <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=310263> but this will be lost on the non-specialist, general reader who is the intended audience for the short book.
[End of review extracts]
Practical examples in the book include explanation of how large complex organizations can achieve 'organic'/ self-correcting feedback by using 'networks of networks' or 'nested networks'.
In my 20-page 'World Democracy' I also refer to possible electorates based on ideas, not geographic divisions.
-- Doug Everingham
WP21 Alliance Forum on a World Parliament for the 21st Century
E-mail : world-parl@forums.alliance21.org
Fax 1 717 264 5036
Information, inscriptions, désinscriptions: germa@alliance21.org
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