democracy – Slugger O'Toole

LA vs Belfast: How do you move forward in a divided city? (Tuesday 12 September) #imaginebelfast

Soapbox on September 7, 2023, 8:59 am | Readers 551

poster for Imagine Belfast event about Los Angeles vs Belfast: How Do you move forward in a divided city?

Imagine! Belfast Festival are hosting a free transatlantic hybrid event from 8pm on Tuesday (12 September) asking what if anything can Belfast and Los Angeles learn from each other, and from the world, about how to find reconciliation and achieve cooperative governance?

Representative democracy and its likely (and perhaps unlikely) rivals to power

Mick Fealty on September 30, 2020, 2:39 pm | Readers 1503

Whilst Citizen’s Assemblies are not the panacea that some of their advocates suggest, what they can do is reveal otherwise unregarded characteristics of the electorate to elected representatives. As Jamie Pow notes in Fortnight Magazine, the New Decade, New Approach Deal document pledges to hold regular citizens’ assemblies that might bring democratic institutions and the people closer. But he says, they must be meaningful. Well, quite. As The Economist noted last week… …because citizens’ assemblies reflect the population, their conclusions …

Asking the right questions for a better-informed public

Allan LEONARD (Mr Ulster) on February 4, 2020, 2:03 pm | Readers 970

Asking the right questions for a better-informed public by Allan LEONARD 28 January 2020 Representing FactCheckNI and as part of a four-person panel, I was invited to give evidence to the UK House of Lords Select Committee on Democracy and Digital Technologies. Fellow witnesses were Ed Humpherson (Director General for Regulation, Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR)), Will Moy (Chief Executive, Full Fact), and Jenni Sargent (Managing Director, First Draft). This was an extension of the committee’s previous call for written …

What is democracy?

Andy Boal on March 22, 2019, 10:49 pm | Readers 1343

By definition, democracy is rule by the people. In practice the UK has representative democracy. We elect representatives to Parliament to essentially make the decisions for us, and if we don’t like the decisions they make, we can vote them out. And plenty of MPs – my own included – vote against the wishes of the majority of their constituents. So this is the thing. Does representative democracy mean that the representative is required to represent and speak for the …

Why Brexit is going wrong and how it could be fixed…

Paul Evans on November 27, 2018, 11:10 am | Readers 2462

This is the first of two posts here in which I’m going to look at Brexit through a democratic, rather than a political lens. I’d argue that Representative Democracy is humanity’s single most valuable invention. It has provided government that fosters a level of prosperity and a standard of justice that all of our ancestors could only dream of, and it has hosted history’s greatest period of innovation. Representative Democracy is a robust system. It has an internal logic – …

Why do we need a government anyway?

Brian O'Neill on August 21, 2018, 11:26 am | Readers 3235

In 7 days we will overtake Belguim for the record of longest time without a government. Now putting aside the whole debate of do we have a government or regional assembly the big issue is no one seems to care. People are not exactly taking to the streets demanding the restoration of Stormont, so it is fair to conclude the general population could not give a monkies if it ever comes back. There is the wedeservebetter campaign but really what is …

Nichola Mallon brings the sort of forensic scrutiny that’s vital to the future health of democracy.

Mick Fealty on May 5, 2018, 10:16 am | Readers 1945

Interesting to see that the Assembly’s absence produced an opportunity for an individual MLA to corner a particularly troubling issue that’s arisen in the Belfast Trust area. In this case, it was the SDLP’s North Belfast MLA and deputy leader, Nichola Mallon. It is too little understood, just how important this kind of visible inquiry into the conduct of public services (whether it be infrastructure or healthcare) matters to the health of democracy. Many issues (and I’m not just talking about …

Democracy Requires Another Assembly Election

Nat O'Connor on September 4, 2017, 4:15 pm | Readers 1178

In most established democracies there is only one solution when the political parties are deadlocked and cannot come to an agreement: hold another election. In Northern Ireland, for historical reasons, there has been the suspension of ‘normal’ rules with so-called ‘direct rule’ by the government in London instead of continued regional democracy. In the rules governing the Assembly, there is a short timeframe to form an Executive—just one week—after which the Secretary of State has the power to call another …

Is British Democracy Becoming A Competition of Incompetence?

Ed Straw on May 4, 2017, 4:02 pm | Readers 1511

If we all stand back and take a ruthless, non-tribal, unheroic look at the standards on offer in the general election, this is a competition of incompetence. It is only because the Labour Party has so lost its way that the Conservatives appear in any way competent. In practice, the Conservative’s current majority and ‘liberation’ from the moderating power of the LibDems, has seen them binging on their ideology: cut public services in the name of austerity economics, harsh on …

Imagine! Belfast Festival of Politics and Ideas (20-26 March 2017) #imaginebelfast

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on March 20, 2017, 8:00 am | Readers 340

PREVIEWING the non-partisan ‘Imagine! Belfast’ festival with its eclectic mix of talks, comedy, music, film, theatre, workshops, tours and exhibitions to encourage people to discuss and debate. 20-26 March.

Whichever way you vote, in Northern Ireland, the Government always does get in…

Felicity Huston on January 23, 2017, 3:10 pm | Readers 2641

Tony Benn was, in my opinion, as mad as a March Hare, but this quote of his is truly insightful in the context of our own very particular [Nay, peculiar? – Ed] democratic experiment: “In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. If one meets a powerful person–Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates–ask them five questions: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? …

“It might not take much to expose this as a vulnerable sort of robustness.”

Mick Fealty on January 5, 2017, 10:00 pm | Readers 1637

Missed this yesterday, which I’ll put down to a bad dose of man flu. It’s Newton Emerson in the Irish Times: In financial and administrative terms, RHI is hardly an unprecedented failure. Its loss is currently estimated at £490 million (€577m), spread over 20 years. Comparable sums have been squandered on other Stormont schemes and projects since devolution, with official reports revealing similar levels of incompetence. The annual loss from RHI, at just under £25 million (€29m), is mundane by …

“[Women] need to be held accountable for their actions, just like any man. “

Mick Fealty on January 5, 2017, 9:14 pm | Readers 879

Let’s just remember we’ve not seen the terms of an inquiry (remember, it’s not a line I’m in favour of) never mind the detail of what Ms Foster may be culpable for, but for now, I’m just putting this here: …you know what isn’t sexism? Facing valid criticism after overseeing a calamitous failure. It all reminds me of the Emily Thornberry debacle in September. The shadow foreign secretary was asked a relatively obscure but still relevant question in a Sky …

Speaker ignores standing orders and sparks an Assembly walk out…

Mick Fealty on December 19, 2016, 12:47 pm | Readers 2778

This morning the dFM withheld his consent for the First Minister to make a statement on behalf of the joint office of the Executive (the artist formerly known as OFMdFM). As Mike Nesbitt raised in a point of order just after the start, this changed the terms on which the Assembly had been summoned. Extraordinarily, the Speaker at first refused to accept Nesbitt’s point of order and then was forced to take a 20-minute adjournment. Restart brought a flurry of points of order …

OPINION: Promote critical thinking skills for better democracy @WFDemocracy Strasbourg 2016

Allan LEONARD (Mr Ulster) on November 14, 2016, 7:30 am | Readers 343

OPINION: Promote critical thinking skills for better democracy: World Forum for Democracy: Strasbourg 2016
by Allan LEONARD for Northern Ireland Foundation
7 November 2016

The 600 seats of the hemicycle of the Council of Europe soon filled with young activists and seasoned practitioners at the 2016 gathering of the World Forum for Democracy in Strasbourg. I attended as part of a delegation from Northern Ireland, all beneficiaries of the Civic Activism Programme administered by Building Change Trust. Our objective was to learn and share experiences to improve democracy and equality through education.

Allan LEONARD (Mr Ulster)

Peacebuilding a shared Northern Irish society ✌️ Editor 🔍 Writer ✏️ Photographer 📸 https://mrulster.com

After Colombian Peace Accord rejected at the polls, whither Santos, and FARC?

Mick Fealty on October 3, 2016, 9:50 am | Readers 328

As noted by Paul at some length here, Referendums are turning out to be something of a game of Russian Roulette for ruling political elites (and in the case of Colombia, political insurgents). Colombia has by the narrowest of margins voted to reject a peace deal ratified by the President and the leader of the FARC rebels just last week. The BBC were reporting on Saturday that Colombia has never rejected any motion put to them in a referendum (including one …

David Cameron and the problem of setting real political choices

Soapbox on August 4, 2016, 10:04 am | Readers 1175

David Cameron’s referendums were regarded as reflections of ‘the will of the people’. But is that true? Here Peter Emerson of the de Borda Insitute questions that assumption then proposes a better methodology. 2011 Referendum on the Electoral System. Cameron’s first problem? “Those damned Lib-Dems and the voting system!” Hence the first ‘which’, to silence dissent in the coalition cabinet. Many people wanted proportional representation, pr, either pr-list as in Denmark, the Irish pr-single transferable vote, pr-stv, or whatever. …

Changing the conversation with e-petitions in Northern Ireland

Allan LEONARD (Mr Ulster) on June 16, 2016, 4:14 pm | Readers 260

As part of the Xchange Summer School, Mairaid McMahon announced the launch of e-petitions in Northern Ireland, which is scheduled to appear on the Northern Ireland Assembly website in September 2016. She described the shortcomings of the current system of petitioning politicians, which included the need for support from an MLA — making them gatekeepers to what could be submitted. There was also the matter of not know whatever happened to the physical petition documents. Mairaid was motivated by the …

Friday Thread: Could we have a democracy without Politicians?

Soapbox on March 18, 2016, 2:00 pm | Readers 582

We are all gearing up for an Assembly election at which we will select decision makers, complain about them for the next five years, and then select a slightly different crew in five years time. This is called democracy. Broadly speaking it works, but given the gridlock in the system and a pervasive sense of apathy about politics, it is probably wise to be on the look-out for ways of improving our democracy. One approach is to suggest that for …

Labour, Syria and the problem with mandates…

Paul Evans on December 1, 2015, 7:52 am | Readers 636

DEMOCRACY OR POLITICS: Labour is asking for a two-day debate as a sticking plaster to cover for the lack of compressed wisdom it would get from a functioning internal party debate Labour MPs need some armour if they are to make a principled decision to support the government, and they will have to expose themselves to endless suspicion if they don’t…