Monday, May 01, 2006
This Post In Which I Try To Look Into The Future Of Politics
The world around us is changing rapidly, generally moving towards apparent chaos. (Ah, the Second Law of Thermodynamics may apply to human behavior as well.)
We are in an age of deinstitutionalization and decentralization. Consider blogging. The traditional institutions of information are getting very weak-kneed these days, they will start falling soon. Hugh Hewitt has been the most visible and leading prophet of this trend. But there are a lot of others now too.
George Barna's latest book, Revolution, takes the emerging/home church trend a step further, boldly declaring "millions of believers have moved beyond the established church...and chosen to be the church instead." While this is problematic from a theological standpoint (I'll be blogging extensively about that between this blog and How To Be a Christian And Still Go To Church in the coming weeks and months.) I do think Barna has put his finger on a trend.
Consider the trend to home business and the increase in contract employment and consulting. No longer are we confronted with monolithic businesses, but rather loosely organized networks of individuals and capabilities that make business happen. My own consulting business, originally conceived to provide top-notch environmental health and safety talent on an as-needed basis to businesses that could not afford employees in that area is increasingly getting inquiries from very large publicly-traded corporations that would rather work in this networked fashion.
Which brings me to politics. I attended a lecture by Hugh Hewitt last Thursday. In his presentation Hugh opined that the leading GOP presidential hopefuls and not "party men" in the traditional sense of that word. I wondered if this is reflective of the decentralization of the political party and how that would work.
What is a political party? In a nutshell, it is an organization designed precisely to centralize political will on an issue, or even in general. A bit of pedagogy. Let's say there are a bunch of people in the country that want to see a law passed to turn the sky green. As individuals, they are not going to get very far. But, if they form a political party, now their individual political wills becomes centralized and they can exert far more political force on government.
Then there are the more generalized parties like the GOP or the Dems, while they are issue driven, their real power lies in managing the electoral process that is necessary to bring issues to the fore. But again it is about centralization, about gathering electoral resources. The availability of these resources builds party loyalty which in turn achieves goals in areas a particular candidate might not care about because the party does.
There is real value in this centralization. It is really how candidates and elected official come to be informed about issues that they have no direct interest in. It also provides us, the public with a place to go to raise our specific issues.
But in an age of increasing decentralization will this system survive? Will we find ourselves to begin to look more like a parliamentary government with its many fringe parties and temporary coalitions and alliances? Of course, the constitution prevents some of that, but we could move that way. What role the GOP and the Dem parties in this new world? Will they find themselves more in the role of alliance builder than stance dictator? Will they be reduced to a purely financial role? If so, on what basis will the distribution of resources be decided? WHERE WILL THE POWER END UP? Or will it ever be able to be so centralized again? Without that centralization of power will true chaos emerge?
So many other questions. There is a chicken-and-egg question when it comes to whether philosophy creates the party or the party creates the philosophy. How will unifying political philosophies arise in the future?
And then, for effective representation, decentralization of the political process will demand much higher level of individual participation, or else the perception of class division will be reinforced, with all sorts of potentially problematic results. How to increase this individual participation? Will the decentralization of the information industry aid that?
I find these fascinating questions and I intend to explore them in the future on this blog as time allows. In the meantime, your thoughts and comments?
Related Tags: emerging, political parties, power, decentralization, deinstitutionalization
We are in an age of deinstitutionalization and decentralization. Consider blogging. The traditional institutions of information are getting very weak-kneed these days, they will start falling soon. Hugh Hewitt has been the most visible and leading prophet of this trend. But there are a lot of others now too.
George Barna's latest book, Revolution, takes the emerging/home church trend a step further, boldly declaring "millions of believers have moved beyond the established church...and chosen to be the church instead." While this is problematic from a theological standpoint (I'll be blogging extensively about that between this blog and How To Be a Christian And Still Go To Church in the coming weeks and months.) I do think Barna has put his finger on a trend.
Consider the trend to home business and the increase in contract employment and consulting. No longer are we confronted with monolithic businesses, but rather loosely organized networks of individuals and capabilities that make business happen. My own consulting business, originally conceived to provide top-notch environmental health and safety talent on an as-needed basis to businesses that could not afford employees in that area is increasingly getting inquiries from very large publicly-traded corporations that would rather work in this networked fashion.
Which brings me to politics. I attended a lecture by Hugh Hewitt last Thursday. In his presentation Hugh opined that the leading GOP presidential hopefuls and not "party men" in the traditional sense of that word. I wondered if this is reflective of the decentralization of the political party and how that would work.
What is a political party? In a nutshell, it is an organization designed precisely to centralize political will on an issue, or even in general. A bit of pedagogy. Let's say there are a bunch of people in the country that want to see a law passed to turn the sky green. As individuals, they are not going to get very far. But, if they form a political party, now their individual political wills becomes centralized and they can exert far more political force on government.
Then there are the more generalized parties like the GOP or the Dems, while they are issue driven, their real power lies in managing the electoral process that is necessary to bring issues to the fore. But again it is about centralization, about gathering electoral resources. The availability of these resources builds party loyalty which in turn achieves goals in areas a particular candidate might not care about because the party does.
There is real value in this centralization. It is really how candidates and elected official come to be informed about issues that they have no direct interest in. It also provides us, the public with a place to go to raise our specific issues.
But in an age of increasing decentralization will this system survive? Will we find ourselves to begin to look more like a parliamentary government with its many fringe parties and temporary coalitions and alliances? Of course, the constitution prevents some of that, but we could move that way. What role the GOP and the Dem parties in this new world? Will they find themselves more in the role of alliance builder than stance dictator? Will they be reduced to a purely financial role? If so, on what basis will the distribution of resources be decided? WHERE WILL THE POWER END UP? Or will it ever be able to be so centralized again? Without that centralization of power will true chaos emerge?
So many other questions. There is a chicken-and-egg question when it comes to whether philosophy creates the party or the party creates the philosophy. How will unifying political philosophies arise in the future?
And then, for effective representation, decentralization of the political process will demand much higher level of individual participation, or else the perception of class division will be reinforced, with all sorts of potentially problematic results. How to increase this individual participation? Will the decentralization of the information industry aid that?
I find these fascinating questions and I intend to explore them in the future on this blog as time allows. In the meantime, your thoughts and comments?
Related Tags: emerging, political parties, power, decentralization, deinstitutionalization
