2013年4月7日日曜日

Can India become a great power?





Cover article of this week was India. As concerns India, we tend to focus on its economy. However this article focuses on its security and foreign policy. They point out its lack of a strategic culture and outdated philosophy of non-alignance. "A great power" does not mean economic power but means political power for its region. To be a great power or not to be, that is a choice by itself. But the West clearly expect India to be concerned on its region's peacemaking.  

Additional article I chose this week was from International about politics and IT.

International: Participatory politics
Processing power
The internet helps politician listen better to their electors. If they want to
My interest:
1.        What does “digital politics” mean?
One of my friends is an activist on opening the election campaign on the internet. His opinion is reasonable so the government is trying to open election activities on the internet from this summer. But things just like putting camera in parliaments do not embody the future politics. What is it to be “digital” in politics?
2.        How to make crowd of citizens produce consensus that actually works?
The article points out the limit of crowd politics[1]. Crowd of citizens are good at tabling proposals and voting on them but not good at hard negotiation. How to use crowd power to built “a Death star” (=achieve an attractive but difficult job)?

Summary:
1.        e-petitionse-請願)success case 
Germany
“LiquidFeedback” è Local people have developed and submitted recommendations to their councilors via website.
Finland
Successful e-petitions brings about a parliamentary vote
America
“We the people” è 34,000 people implored the government to start building a death star and an officer responded to them.

2.        Criticism of e-petitions
Too unambitious / rarely enable users to discuss issues ore fine-tune their demands
“Successful politics is not about finding people who agree with you. It is about making difficult decisions without killing each other.”
The idea of writing legislation collaboratly using “wiki” software is unsuccessful.

3.        Other ideas to make digital politics successful
(1) Writing regulation (2) Setting budgeting priorities (3) Revising constitution to be adopted an open approach (4) Securing transparency (5) Providing websites and apps (6) Focusing on poor, old and disabled people



[1] I got a related book “なめらかな社会とその敵” written by 鈴木健. I don’t have read it now but the concept “Divicracy=dividual democracy(分人民主主義)” sounds attractive.

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