(Māori) Kia ora koutou, everyone. I want to you today about democracy, about the struggles that it's experiencing, and the fact that all of us together in this room might be the solution. But before I get onto that, I want to take a little detour into the past.
(毛利語)各位好。 我今天想和你們討論民主, 討論它正面臨的挑戰, 還有這房間裡的我們 全都可能是其解方。 但在我們進到主題之前, 我想先繞點彎路,討論過去的事。
This is a picture from Athens, or more specifically, it's a picture of a place called the Pnyx, which is where, about two and a half thousand years ago, the ancient Greeks, the ancient Athenians, gathered to take all their major political decisions together. I say the ancient Athenians. In fact, it was only the men. Actually, it was only the free, resident, property-owning men. But with all those failings, it was still a revolutionary idea: that ordinary people were capable of dealing with the biggest issues of the time and didn't need to rely on a single supposedly superior ruler. It was, you know, it was a way of doing things, it was a political system. It was, you could say, a democratic technology appropriate to the time.
這是一張雅典的照片, 更精確地說,這是普尼克斯的照片, 大約兩千五百年前 古希臘人、古雅典人聚集於此, 共同做出重大的政治決定。 我說古雅典人, 但實際上只包括男人。 其實只有自由、定居、 擁有財產的男人。 但儘管有這些缺點, 這仍是個革命性的想法: 平民可以解決當時最重要的議題, 不必依賴一位高高在上的統治者。 你知道,這是一種做事情的方法, 這是一種政治體系, 你可以說這是一種適合 那個時代的民主制度。
Fast-forward to the 19th century when democracy was having another flourishing moment and the democratic technology that they were using then was representative democracy. The idea that you have to elect a bunch of people -- gentlemen, in the picture here, all gentlemen, at the time, of course -- you had to elect them to look after your best interests. And if you think about the conditions of the time, the fact that it was impossible to gather everybody together physically, and of course they didn’t have the means to gather everyone together virtually, it was again a kind of democratic technology appropriate to the time.
時間快轉到十九世紀, 民主來到另一個蓬勃發展的時機, 當時他們所使用的 民主制度是代議民主。 你必須選出一夥人—— 男人,在這張照片裡都是男人, 在那個時代是理所當然—— 你必須選出他們守護你的最佳利益。 如果你考慮到當時的情況, 不可能實體地聚集所有人, 當然也沒有虛擬地 聚集所有人的方法, 這又是一種適合 那個時代的民主制度。
Fast-forward again to the 21st century. And we're living through what's internationally known as the crisis of democracy. What I would call the crisis of representative democracy, the sense that people are falling out of love with this as a way of getting things done, that it's not fundamentally working. And we see this crisis take many forms in many different countries. So in the UK, you see a country that now at times looks almost ungovernable. In places like Hungary and Turkey, you see very frighteningly authoritarian leaders being elected. In places like New Zealand, we see it in the nearly one million people who could have voted at the last general election, but who chose not to.
再度快轉到二十一世紀。 全世界都知道我們生活於 民主的災難之中。 我稱之為代議民主的災難, 人們開始不愛用這個制度 把事情給完成, 認為這根本不可行。 我們看到這個災難 在各國有不同的形式。 在英國, 你看到一個國家有時幾乎無法治理。 在匈牙利和土耳其這些地方, 可怕的是專制的領導者被選了出來。 在紐西蘭, 我們看到將近一百萬人 可以在最近一次大選投票, 但他們決定不投。
Now these kinds of struggles, these sort of crises of democracy have many roots, of course, but for me, one of the biggest ones is that we haven't upgraded our democratic technology. We're still far too reliant on the systems that we inherited from the 19th and from the 20th century. And we know this because in survey after survey people tell us, they say, “We don’t think that we’re getting a fair share of decision-making power, decisions happen somewhere else." They say, “We don’t think the current systems and our government genuinely deliver on the common good, the interests that we share as citizens." They say, “We’re much less deferential than ever before, and we expect more than ever before, and we want more than ever before to be engaged in the big political decisions that affect us.” And they know that our systems of democracy have just not kept pace with either the expectations or the potential of the 21st century. And for me, what that suggests is that we need a really significant upgrade of our systems of democracy.
這些各種困難、 各種形式的民主災難 當然有很多根源, 但對我而言其中最重大的 是我們沒有升級民主制度。 我們目前仍太依賴繼承自 十九和二十世紀的制度。 我們知道這點, 因為在一次次調查中, 眾人告訴我們: 「我們不覺得我們有公平的決策權, 決定發生在其他地方。」 他們說:「我們不覺得 現在的體系和我們的政府 真的有實現共同利益, 也就是我們身為公民 應享有的利益。」 他們說:「我們比以前 更不畢恭畢敬, 我們比以前要求得更多, 我們比以前更想要 參與影響我們的重大政治決策。」 他們知道我們的民主體系跟不上 二十一世紀的期望和潛能。 對我而言,這代表我們需要 對民主體系進行顯著的升級。
That doesn't mean we throw out everything that's working about the current system, because we will always need representatives to carry out some of the complex work of running the modern world. But it does mean a bit more Athens and a bit less Victorian England. And it also means a big shift towards what's generally called everyday democracy. And it gets this name because it's about finding ways of bringing democracy closer to people, giving us more meaningful opportunities to be involved in it, giving us a sense that we're not just part of government on one day, every few years when we vote, but we're part of it every other day of the year.
這不代表我們要拋棄 現有體系中的一切, 因為我們永遠需要民意代表 執行現代世界某些複雜的工作。 但這確實代表要跟雅典更像一點, 少一點維多利亞時代的英國。 這也表示一大步轉移, 轉往所謂的日常民主。 其之所以得名, 是因為這是要找到方法, 讓人民離民主更近, 給我們更多有意義的機會參與其中, 讓我們感覺到我們不只在 數年一次的投票日是政府的一部分, 其他的每一天也都是。
Now that everyday democracy has two key qualities that I've seen prove their worth time and again, in the research that I've done. The first is participation because it's only if we as citizens, as much as possible, get involved in the decisions that affect us, that we'll actually get the kind of politics that we need, that we'll actually get our common good served. The second important quality is deliberation. And that's just a fancy way of saying high-quality public discussion, because its all very well people participating, but it's only when we come together and we listen to each other, we engage with the evidence, and reflect on our own views, that we genuinely bring to the surface the wisdom and the ideas that would otherwise remain scattered and isolated amongst us as a group. It's only then that the crowd really becomes smarter than the individual.
日常民主有兩項關鍵的特質, 根據我做過的研究, 我看見它們屢次證明其價值, 第一點是參與, 因為唯有身為公民的我們 盡可能地參與會影響我們的決策, 才能夠得到我們需要的政治生態, 才能夠實現我們的共同利益。 第二個重要的特質是商議。 這是高品質公共討論的花俏說法, 因為人們參與固然好, 但唯有我們聚在一起並互相傾聽, 舉出佐證,仔細地思考自己的意見, 我們才能確實地 將智慧和想法搬上檯面, 而非分散和孤立地處在 我們這個群體之中。 只有在這個時候群體 才會真正比個人聰明。
So if we ask what could this abstract idea, this everyday democracy actually look like in practice, the great thing is we don't even have to use our imaginations because these things are already happening in pockets around the world. One of my favorite quotes comes from the science fiction writer, William Gibson, who once said, "The future's already here, it's just unevenly spread." So what I want to do is share with you three things from this unevenly spread future that I'm really excited about in terms of upgrading the system of democracy that we work with. Three components of that potential democratic upgrade.
如果我們問說這個抽象的點子, 亦即日常民主實行起來會是如何, 好消息是我們不需要憑空想像, 因為這些事情已經發生於世界各地。 我最喜歡的名言之一來自 科幻小說作家威廉‧吉布森, 他曾說:「未來已經來了, 只是尚未均質地傳播至各處。」 我對這尚未均質傳播的未來很興奮, 所以我要和你們分享 與其相關的三件事情, 談論我們研究的民主升級。 潛在的民主升級的三個要素。
And the first of them is the citizens assembly. And the idea here is that a polling company is contracted by government to draw up, say, a hundred citizens who are perfectly representative of the country as a whole. So perfectly representative in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, income level and so on. And these people are brought together over a period of weekends or a week, paid for their time and asked to discuss an issue of crucial public importance. They're given training on how to discuss issues well with each other, which we'll all know of course, from our experiences of arguing online, if nowhere else, is not an ability that we're all born with innately, more’s the pity. In the citizens assembly, people are also put in front of evidence and the experts, and they're given time to discuss the issue deeply with their fellow citizens and come to a state of consensus recommendations. So these kinds of assemblies have been used in places like Canada, where they were used to draw up a new national action plan on mental health for the whole country. A citizens assembly was used recently in Melbourne to basically lay the foundation of a new 10-year financial plan for the whole city. So these assemblies can have real teeth, real weight.
第一個是公民議會。 這個點子是政府 和民調公司簽訂契約, 選出例如一百位公民, 使其完美地代表整個國家。 完美地代表各年齡、 姓別、種族、收入階級等。 將這些人聚在一起 幾個週末或一個星期, 支付他們酬勞, 請他們討論一個對公眾 至關重要的議題。 他們被訓練 如何好好地彼此討論議題, 從在網路上爭執的經驗, 我們當然都知道 若無處練習, 這不是我們與生俱來的能力, 很令人沮喪。 在公民議會中, 人們要提出證據或專家的說法, 他們會有時間與同胞 深入探討該議題, 達成一致的意見。 這種議會已經在加拿大獲得使用, 用來為整個國家草擬一份新的 心理健康的全國行動計畫。 最近公民議會也被使用於墨爾本, 為全市新的十年財政計畫奠定基礎。 所以這些議會可以 真的有實權和份量。
The second key element of the democratic upgrade: participatory budgeting. The idea here is that a local council or a city council takes its budget for spending on new buildings, new services, and says, we're going to put a chunk of this up for the public to decide, but only after you've argued the issues over carefully with each other. And so the process starts at the neighborhood level. You have people meeting together in community halls, in basketball courts, making the trade-offs, saying, "Well, are we going to spend that money on a new health center, or are we going to spend it on safety improvements to a local road?" People using their expertise in their own lives. Those discussions are then pushed up to the suburb or ward level, and then again, to the city level and in full view of the public, the public themselves makes the final allocation of that budget. And in the city where this all originated, Porto Alegre in Brazil, a place with about a million inhabitants, as many as 50,000 people get engaged in that process every year.
第二個民主升級的關鍵元素: 參與式預算。 這個點子是地方議會或市議會 拿出用在新建築和新服務的預算, 並說: 我們會把這一堆資金交由公眾決定, 但你們必須先彼此 謹慎地討論此議題。 這個過程從街坊鄰居的層級開始。 請人在社區大樓、籃球場一起開會, 達成妥協, 說:「我們要把錢花在新的健康中心 還是用來改善本地道路的安全性?」 人們發揮各自在生活中的專長。 這些討論接著會提升到 市郊或市區的層級, 然後再到市的層級, 最後經過整個公眾的檢視, 社會大眾自己決定預算的最終分配。 在參與式預算的發源地, 巴西的阿雷格里港, 其擁有大約一百萬名居民, 每年有五萬人可參與此過程。
The third element of the upgrade: online consensus forming. In Taiwan a few years ago, when Uber arrived on their shores, the government immediately launched an online discussion process using a piece of software called Polis, which is also coincidentally, or not coincidentally, what the ancient Athenians call themselves when they were making their collective decisions. And the way Polis works is it groups people together, and then using machine learning and a bunch of other techniques, it encourages good discussion amongst those participating. It allows them to put up proposals, which are then discussed, knocked back, refined, until they reach something like 80 percent consensus. And in the time, in this case, within about four weeks, this process had yielded six recommendations for how people wanted to see Uber regulated. And those, almost all of them, were immediately picked up by the government and accepted by Uber.
第三項升級的元素: 線上共識形成。 幾年前在臺灣, 優步叫車服務剛進入市場, 政府立即展開線上討論的過程, 利用一個叫 Polis 的軟體, 這也恰巧或不恰巧地是 古雅典人做出集體決定時的自稱。 Polis 的運作方式是 將人們組合在一起, 接著利用機器學習 和很多其他的技術, 鼓勵參與者進行良好的討論。 它允許人們提出提案, 然後獲得討論, 退回,修正, 直到達成百分之八十的共識。 在當時的這個例子,於大約四週內, 這個過程產生了六項提議, 反映人們希望如何管制優步。 那些建議幾乎全部立即被政府採用, 並獲得優步的接受。
Now I find these examples really inspiring. People sometimes ask me why I'm an optimist and a large part of the answer is these kinds of innovations, because I think they, you know, they're really show us that we can have a kind of politics which is deeply responsive to our needs as citizens, but which avoids the peril of the threats to human liberties, the threats to civil liberties that authoritarian populism descends into. They show us that even though we live in what looks like quite a dark time, there are things that act a bit like emergency lighting, guiding us towards something better. And although these are all ideas from the Western tradition, they can also be combined with, adapted by Indigenous traditions that also value turn-taking in speech and consensus decision-making. And the thread that binds all these traditions together is essentially a faith in other people. A faith in people's ability to handle difficult decisions, a faith in people's ability to come together and make political decisions intelligently. In the Polis example, we see that government can be agile and nimble in the face of tech disruption. In the participatory budgeting, we see that we can build systems that are disproportionately used by poor people and which deliver infrastructure that is better quality than the traditional systems. In citizens assemblies, the experts who observed them time and again, say that in those good conditions people's ability to listen to others, to engage with the evidence, and to shift from their entrenched views is consistently astounding.
我覺得這些案例非常鼓舞人心。 別人有時會問我為什麼這麼樂觀, 而答案很大一部分是因為這些創新, 因為你知道,我認為它們確實展現出 政治可以積極回應公民需求, 但避免侵害人類自由的危險, 不威脅公民自由, 不會跟專制的民粹主義者一樣。 它們呈現出即便我們 看似身處相當黑暗的時期, 有些事物卻如緊急照明一般, 指引我們往更好邁進。 雖然這些都是西方文化的想法, 但它們也可以和各地的 本土文化結合、調整, 只要其也重視讓各方輪流發言 並在做決定時取得共識。 能將各種文化繫在一起的絲線 本質上正是對他人的信心。 相信他人有能力處理困難的決定, 相信人類有能力聚在一起 並做出聰明的政治決策。 在 Polis 的案例中, 我們看見政府面對科技的變化 可以保持敏捷靈活。 從參與式預算 我們看見我們可以建立 不成比例地為貧民所用的系統, 建立比傳統方法的品質 更好的公共建設。 在公民議會, 常常參與的專家說 在這種良好的情況中, 人們一直有驚人的能力 聆聽他人、提出證據、 改變根深柢固的想法。
And that's a really, really hopeful finding, because, you know, I think we live at a time where you see right around the world, huge suspicion of other people, of other citizens, huge doubts about whether people are really able to bear the burden of decision-making that democracy places on them. But if you're worried, for instance, about whether a lot of people out there, you know, are misinformed or fallen prey to online propaganda, what better way to push back against that than by ensuring that they're placed in forums. Forums like the New England town hall meetings shown here. Forums where they have to come face-to-face with other people, or at least be in close virtual contact, where they have to justify their opinions, have to deal with the evidence, and are encouraged to step away from their prejudices.
這個發現十分讓人充滿希望, 因為我認為在我們生活的這個時代, 你可以看到在全世界 對其他人和其他公民高度懷疑, 高度質疑人們能否承擔 民主賦與的做決策的重擔。 但如果你擔心例如會不會有很多人 被線上宣傳誤導或欺騙, 阻止這件事情比較好的方式 是確保他們能參與公共論壇, 像新英格蘭鎮民會議的那種論壇。 這種論壇能讓人與人面對面, 或至少有接近的虛擬接觸, 在這裡他們必須為自己的意見辯證, 需要處理證據, 受到鼓勵去擺脫他們的成見。
The Canadian philosopher Joseph Heath says that rationality, our ability to make good decisions, isn't something that we achieve as individuals, if we achieve it at all. It's something we achieve in groups. Our best hope of rationality is each other. Or to put the thing a different way, the problem with democracy is not other people, it's not other citizens. The problem is the situations in which they -- in which we all -- have been asked to do our democratic work. The problem is the outdated democratic technology that we've all been forced to use. And so what these examples show to me, the reason I find them inspiring, is that I think they demonstrate that if you get the situations right, if you get the technology upgraded, then actually the things that we do when we come together as citizens can be astounding, and together, we really can build a form of democracy that's genuinely fit for the 21st century.
加拿大哲學家約瑟‧希斯說理性, 亦即我們做出好決定的能力, 不是可以靠個人達成的, 因為我們是一起決定。 理性是要在群體中實現的事物。 理性最大的希望就是你我彼此。 用另一個方式看, 民主的問題不是他人, 不是其他公民。 問題是他們——就是我們—— 被要求進行民主事務的情境。 問題是過時的民主技術, 我們全都被迫予以採用。 所以這些案例展現給我的、 令我受到鼓舞的原因 是我認為他們顯示出 如果你讓情境正確, 如果你讓民主升級, 那麼事實上我們以公民的身分 聚在一起時所做的事情 可以很驚人, 而且聚在一起,我們可以 建立一種民主的形式, 真正適合二十一世紀。
Thank you very much.
非常謝謝你們。
(Applause)
(掌聲)