Does our salvation lie in decentralisation, as proposed by Geert Noels of Econopolis in these columns, or in transferring our sovereignty to Europe? Rather, both together, thanks to the participation and trust of many players. Here’s why.
Did you know that the Economist Intelligence Unit classified Belgium as an “imperfect democracy” in its latest Democracy Index published at the beginning of the month?(1) You’re excused: the French-language Belgian press didn’t mention it. Yet there is cause for alarm. Far behind Botswana and Cape Verde, the Kingdom is ranked 32nd out of 167 countries, with a meagre democratic score of 7.78 out of 10. Admittedly, North Korea, last in the ranking, is still a long way off. But it doesn’t seem to bother anyone that our country has been slipping steadily down the rankings for the past 11 years, apart from a jump of a tenth of a point this year.
In this context, the question of the effectiveness of power at local, national and European level is essential. But it is not in itself the transfer of powers from the top to the bottom that is the answer to our problems and the public’s mistrust, it is how we combine the bottom and the top, and everything that goes with it.
Restoring confidence requires participation
To better understand this, compare our inglorious ranking with another recent publication that has also gone unnoticed, the Edelman(2) “trust barometer”. An annual global study presented in mid-February, the 2018 edition reveals that, for the sixth year running, trust in governments, but also in businesses, NGOs and the media is in serious decline in Europe. “Our democracy is flawed and trust is at half mast, nothing new under the sun”, you might think? But ignoring the underlying reasons for this persistent decline is a recipe for misdiagnosis.
A growing number of European citizens feel that democracy is no longer able to meet their needs, and this distrust is growing at all levels of governance(3). However, when asked whether they would prefer a “technocratic”, “authoritarian” or “participatory” government, the vast majority in Europe choose participation, while a majority in Eastern Europe prefer an authoritarian regime.
It is to this hope for participation that we must respond. As the Edelman Group concludes, “to rebuild trust and restore faith in the system, institutions need to move away from their traditional roles and work towards a more integrated model that puts people at the heart of the system and responds to their fears”.
In fact, this need for participation is what earned Belgium such a mixed score in the Democracy Index, since in terms of political participation, Belgium was just average (5/10), and barely better in terms of civic culture (6.88/10).
Put all levels of authority in the position of innovation champions
Another recent survey in Denmark showed that innovation in the public sector originates and spreads between different levels of government(4). The first worldwide statistics on public innovation, it revealed that four out of five new ideas come from active cooperation between different public players, with businesses, citizens, universities and civil society, in that order.
Far from a unilateral top-down transfer of power, or blind faith in the bottom-up citizenry, the lesson to be drawn from all this is that the alternative to the authoritarian and populist temptation, the way out of the debate on the appropriate place of sovereignty, is to open up the entire political system to greater participation. This is the way to build trust, legitimacy and effectiveness.
Of course, the local level is a privileged place for innovation, but if we strip the higher levels of their prerogatives, and in particular of their ability to link together innovations and deploy them ‘at scale’, then we run the risk of reinventing the world of islands of innovation that brilliant city-states such as Venice or Florence once had, open to the world but accumulating wealth at their centre.
Take the performance of our education systems as an example of how salvation will not come from Antwerp, Brussels, Flanders or Finland alone, but from cooperation between all these levels, including an active role for the European Union.
In China, unlike in the rest of the world, confidence in the government is rising sharply. 84% of those questioned are satisfied with their government, compared with 33% in France and 46% in Sweden, for example. Let’s respond to people’s appetite for participation, for more innovation, before we fight the wrong battle and create an appetite for “strong” national regimes.
(1) Democracy Index 2017
(2) 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer – Global Report
(3) According to the World Values Survey
(4) Public Sector Innovation Barometer, Center for Offentlig Innovation
Originally published in L’Echo
Author: Stephen Boucher
