The recent debt ceiling disaster, which shaped up to be the battle of Dumb and Dumber vs. the Dumbest of All, was an embarrassing example of our dysfunctional democracy, in which our leaders "compromised" their way to a disastrous deal that made everyone unhappy.
But there is another way. After their solvency crisis, the peaceful, well-educated and admittedly homogeneous citizens of Iceland took to the streets to defy an IMF-dictated solvency plan. Then they did something even more extraordinary. They crowd-sourced a new constitution.
"To write the new constitution, the people of Iceland elected twenty-five citizens from among 522 adults not belonging to any political party but recommended by at least thirty citizens. This document was not the work of a handful of politicians, but was written on the Internet. The constituent’s meetings are streamed on-line, and citizens can send their comments and suggestions, witnessing the document as it takes shape. The constitution that eventually emerges from this participatory democratic process will be submitted to parliament for approval after the next elections."
Certainly Iceland, a tiny country of people who are all related to each other, is a special case. But the land of Bjork's experiment in using technology to promote transparency, civic engagment and democracy itself is exciting, and it offers a vision of how democracy might actually move out of the smoke-filled back rooms and into the future. The constitution, unanimously approved by the commission, has now been submitted to Parliament for approval.
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