How democracy can catch up with modern life

“Without the right values in the people, democracy is only a confederacy of fools.”

When the late President Corazon Aquino made this blunt pronouncement, she really meant it. She never accepted democracy for democracy’s sake. There had to be something to back it up and make it sustainable.

Democracy is so far the best of all the imperfect governance systems. 'Democracy' is a magic word that defines the rule of the majority, equal rights and opportunities.

Democracy has opened wide the gates of power; the vote validates decision-making and enhances our identification with our leaders. However, it is not changing as fast as our times.

The rules of the game are still anchored in a romantic candlelit past, where coding, social media and personal profiling are not accepted, or are suspiciously rejected.

Technological advancements during the last century have revolutionised our understanding of the world. Businesses, transport, communication, education and health have greatly profited from the developments of the new, connected world. The State has been left behind.

HOLACRACY

Jessica Colaco is an amazing entrepreneur and youth mentor. Her hugely successful iHub venture has become too small for her dreams. She is now turning her interests to other areas. She wants to propel fresh start-ups to the next level and see brilliant and young entrepreneurs succeed.

As with every youthful, engaged mind in Kenya, Jessica is intellectually restless in her search for possible ways to improve personal lives and society in general. She admires an emerging governance structure called Holacracy.

Holacracy is a distributed authority system. It is not a conventional top-down or bottom-up outfit. It integrates both approaches without relying on one head. In Holocracy:

• ‘Everyone becomes a leader of their roles and a follower of others,’. Everyone has full authority to fulfill his or her role and responsibility for it.

• Regular governance meetings structure and evolve how the work gets done. Everyone leaves with clarity on who is accountable for what, with what authority, and what constraints.

• In 'tactical meetings', every agenda item gets processed every meeting, and the focus is on next-actions. It also makes it difficult to hide – radical transparency shows all progress, or lack thereof

Holacracy is really a deep and radical form of devolution, where every one has a clear set of instructions and deliverables to account for.

Jessica’s business partner, Ngatia Muhoya, is equally fidgety and dynamic. He is a fan of Liquid Democracy.

LIQUID DEMOCRACY

Liquid democracy is not related to our Nairobi flooding week. I’m told estates have been rebranded. Now we have Umaji instead of Umoja, and South Sea, Wetlands, Imara Dam, Mud-araka and Kilinyeshewa.

Liquid democracy is really 'delegative democracy'. Bryan Ford, from Yale University, says that “delegative democracy attempts to make direct democracy scale, by allowing anyone who cannot participate directly in a particular vote to delegate their vote to someone they trust to participate and vote on their behalf.

Delegative democracy differs from representative democracy in the principle that each voter should have free, individual choice of their delegate — not just a choice among a restricted set of career politicians — just as we already make a free, individual choice of our friends.”

Ford also argues that “voters may choose to participate in some meetings directly, overriding their delegate’s choices in those meetings, and voters may revoke or change their delegation at any time.”

Software organisations in Germany have built platforms for delegation-based online discussion and deliberation, such as LiquidFeedback and Adhocracy.

VISA SYSTEM 'ANTIQUATED'

The point is that life is overtaking the traditional systems of organising governance. Some states are thinking outside the box and trying to catch up.

Cyberspace has made it possible for everyone to have more meaningful and direct participation; it's a matter of coding.

International, transnational and organised criminal networks are a lot more sophisticated nowadays so if the state is left behind, social sustainability and everyone’s security is compromised.

At a recent conference on security, Ndegwa Muhoro put across the visa problem with pristine clarity. He said that while he, the CID Director, needs to go from embassy to embassy to fill out dozens of visa requests, terrorists and criminals are just cheating the system; they seek no visa.

The visa system is one of the pieces of the old age that needs to be shed off, or at least washed in bleaching formula. The entire system is grounded on the need to “filter” out individuals based on preconceived notions of economic or political interests in the host country.

One of the arguments in support of immigration restrictions is based on security considerations. However, terrorists usually forge documents and passes. In addition, radicalisation does not necessarily live beyond borders.

FOCUS ON ACTUAL THREATS

The time has come to align bureaucratic processes to new technologies. It makes no sense to oblige a Cabinet Secretary, CID director, a Governor, a renowned CEO or a Vice Chancellor on official business to queue next to a tourist, a job seeker or a student to obtain a visa.

Inter-governmental collaboration and profiling can enhance monitoring services and exchange of data within intelligence structures. This may help immigration officers focus on actual threats without wasting precious time in processing all visas on equal grounds.

Visa processing is just an example of a specific system that needs reengineering, rethinking and repackaging.

Young entrepreneurs are not as oblivious to politics as many may think. They are simply defaced by analogue systems that are reluctant to change their ways to adopt the use of new technologies.

They find it hard identifying themselves with a governance system that is anchored in the past.

The problem is not Kenyan but a worldwide challenge.  Life and technology are moving faster than our traditional democracies.

Dr Franceschi is the dean of Strathmore Law School. [email protected], Twitter: @lgfranceschi