Source the crowd, don’t rouse the rabble: Crowdsourcing as a modest response to populism

Many political actors have experimented with ‘crowdsourcing’, or in other words, the testing and gathering […]

01/06/2017

Many political actors have experimented with ‘crowdsourcing’, or in other words, the testing and gathering of policy ideas online. Public authorities have conducted online consultations on such matters as road building.

Candidates in elections have used the internet to crowdsource ideas for manifestos. The Dutch MEP Marietje Schaake has even crowdsourced ideas for a European Parliament report. But can crowdsourcing really contribute to public participation and debate? Can it even help answer and defeat populism?

Populism is, above all, a criticism of representative democracy. No one, populists tell us, can represent the authentic views of the people. Certainly not a professional, elite class of representatives, made unrepresentative precisely by the detachment from the people that follows from making a profession out of representation.

Representing complex societies

Yet there is no obvious (democratic) alternative to representation. The political scientist Robert Dahl famously demonstrated that any group of more than 60 people would struggle to apply even the most basic democratic standards – such as voting and a minimum of discussion- to all its decisions without relying to some degree on representatives.

Still, populists may have a point. Representative democracy is in trouble. Society has become complex and hard to represent. The relationship between representatives and the represented was always one of trust. Yet, it is no longer trusted. The need to fund elections means that, in some systems, representation is easily bought.

Although representation is supposed to be the main way of doing politics, it often seems depoliticized and technocratic. Representatives, it is complained, offer little choice in competing for the people’s vote. Globalisation and Europeanisation seem to make things worse. As more problems need to be managed internationally, ‘representative government’ seems little more than an opportunity to be represented in only semi-visible forms of intergovernmental bargaining or in technical forms of policy co-ordination between states.

These are huge problems and crowdsourcing can only be a tiny response to them. Indeed, crowdsourcing could make things worse. Representation is supposed to represent each person equally. It must avoid forms of consultation that create unequal opportunities for those with strong opinions. Like Shakespeare’s joke about alcohol, the internet has been a ‘great equivocator’. It has ‘provoked the desire’ for more public debate. Yet it has ‘taken away the performance’. It has encouraged more people to debate with strangers. It has also fragmented public debate into so many echo-chambers of those with self-confirming views.

Crowdsourcing as the answer

Still, got right, crowdsourcing could help. Crowdsourcing is a form of recognition. It recognises that citizens are not just passive objects of representation whose views are only consulted on the one day every four or five years they are able to vote. Here, crowdsourcing can respond to a difficult challenge. Representation needs to be a continuous interaction between representatives and the represented. Yet that cannot be at the expense of debate between representatives. So, representatives need to form – and justify – their views both in debate with one another and in interaction with the represented. Crowdsourcing can help form that triangle, informing the represented of where their representatives stand in the debate between them, as much as up-dating representatives with the changing views of the represented.

Indeed, crowdsourcing can deepen knowledge of the public and its problems. In a world of fluid, complex and conflicting opinions, representatives cannot easily know what to represent. Yet, the solution is not in populists’ claims that there are authentic views of the people discoverable independently of any process of representation. That claim is itself a shameless bid for domination. It licenses those making it to claim public views are whatever they say they are. In contrast to the wholly unsubstantiated claims of populists to know the authentic will of the people, crowdsourcing can leave a trail of evidence of how views have been formed by debate. It can visibly nail the lie that representatives impose limited policy choices on the public without consultation. More prosaically, crowdsourcing is suited to building knowledge of problems and of opinions through trial, error and experimentation. Political parties, unsure of reactions to their proposals, and anxious to proof them against populist misrepresentation, might be tempted to use on-line debates to test policy ideas.

As much of this suggests, crowdsourcing can help deliver the idea of democracy as trial by debate. John Stuart Mill wrote of the importance of testing all opinions in ‘adverse controversy’ with all others. John Dewey later added that, for sure, majorities should get their way. However, they should get their way with difficulty. First, they should be expected to make their case to others: to hear the other side and provide reasons for opinions. Structured and moderated by such norms of public debate, crowdsourcing may have a small but significant contribution to make to a further standard that populists can neither abide nor provide: respect.

Photo © Lucky Team Studio / Shutterstock, Inc.
Find all related publications
Publications
21/09/2023

A European Health Union

A blueprint for generations
18/09/2023

Making trade work for prosperity, people and planet

FEPS Primers series - Arancha González and Yanis Bourgeois
14/09/2023

SDGs for all: Strategic scenarios

Earth4All system dynamics modelling of SDG progress
07/09/2023

European perceptions of public programmes for zero unemployment

Online survey and qualitative interviews: The results
Find all related news
News
20/09/2023

FEPS is recruiting 1 project officer

Notice of vacancy
14/09/2023

FEPS President at the SDG Summit and United Nations General Assembly in New York

FEPS President Maria João Rodrigues is in New York this week on the occasion of […]
14/09/2023

Call for tender – Researcher on inflation

Basic Information Project    The profits-prices spiral: measures to avoid inflation  Partners   TASC (Ireland), Pietro Nenni Foundation (Italy)  […]
12/09/2023

Call for tender – Research and analysis for the project “Progressive paths to rebuild Ukraine”

Basic Information Project Research “In search of a ‘lost generation’. Harnessing youth potential for post-war […]
Find all related in the media
In the media

‘SDG funding gap swells to $137trn’ New Policy Study from FEPS, together with Earth4All, to deliver a five-point plan for the SDGs.

by Edie 19/09/2023
The “SDGs for All” report emphasises that policymakers have the potential to significantly advance SDG implementation by the original 2030 deadline and beyond by enacting five “extraordinary turnarounds” that break away from current trends.

“Trade doesn’t work in isolation from good domestic policies” Interview to Arancha González

by Borderlex 19/09/2023
Interview to Arancha González, former Spanish foreign minister, who released together with FEPS the new book entitled 'The Trade Handbook: Making Trade Work for Prosperity, People and Planet'

AI to ‘determine course of global trade, jobs’ in near future

by The Financial Express 14/09/2023
The Financial Express's article focuses on the publication of FEPS Primer on Trade written by Arancha González Laya and Yanis Bourgeois

Un nuevo informe de prospectiva identifica las medidas políticas urgentes necesarias para volver a encarrilar los ODS

by Cope 14/09/2023
'New foresight report identifies urgent policy measures needed to get the SDGs back on track' Cope's article on the policy study 'SDGs for all: Strategic scenarios', published in collaboration with Earth4All