Regaining our futures: how to build democracies with foresight

Summary

"The lecture at the LSE European Institute focused on the pressing need for democracies to adopt long-term strategies, emphasizing foresight to combat the erosion of democratic agency. Presenters Abby Inis, Albina As Manavar, and Calypso Nicolades delved into the paradox of democratic time—it being rich in resources yet poor in future orientation. The discussion highlighted the growing precarity in capitalist democracies, the need for socially responsible rule, and the potential of democracies when equipped with anticipatory governance. The challenges of modernity's complexity, economic insecurity, and the impact of technology were also explored, along with innovative democratic solutions like citizens assemblies and democratic foresight."

Highlights

• The session emphasized the contrast between current democratic practices and the necessary foresight for a sustainable future. 🌱
• Participants discussed how a shrink in collective time due to emergency politics impacts long-term decisions. 🔄
• The rise of far-right politics is linked to growing economic insecurity and people's search for stability. 📉
• Proposals for strengthening democracy included aligning responsibilities with resources and fostering anticipatory governance. 🗳️
• Technological advancements challenge democracies but also offer tools for better civic engagement. 🤖

Key Takeaways

• Democracies need to embrace long-term thinking and foresight to thrive. 🌍
• Current democratic practices are short-sighted, focusing on immediate concerns over long-term strategies. ⏳
• Precarity in societies is not just about job security but affects a multitude of social aspects, leading to disempowerment. 💼
• Citizens assemblies and innovative democratic practices can foster deeper civic engagement and responsibility. 🤝
• Technology, while a tool, can either connect or isolate us depending on its use. 🖥️

Overview

In a thought-provoking session at the LSE European Institute, the conversation highlighted the critical junction at which modern democracies stand: rich in resources and intelligence, yet floundering in future planning. Speakers Abby Inis, Albina As Manavar, and Calypso Nicolades examined the dichotomy of democratic time, urging for strategies that mesh present needs with future foresights.

Albina As Manavar and Calypso Nicolades tackled the complex socio-political landscape, discussing the pervasive issue of precarity in capitalist democracies and the potential for empowering societies through policies that align responsibilities with available resources. Their dialogue underscored the transformative power of socially responsible governance that anticipates future challenges rather than reactions to crises.

Calypso Nicolades chimed in on the importance of not only addressing the symptoms of democratic backsliding but also revolutionizing democratic institutions through innovations like citizens assemblies and democratic participatory foresight. The role of technology was debated, emphasizing that its responsible use could either bridge communities or lead to increased societal disconnection.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Housekeeping The chapter titled 'Introduction and Housekeeping' begins with a speaker welcoming the audience to a hybrid event focused on building democracies with foresight. The speaker, Abby Inis, identifies themselves as an associate professor at the European Institute at LSE and expresses their delight at being joined by another professor. The setting described is a lecture theater reminiscent of a tennis match, and the speaker makes a note to pay attention to audience questions.
• 01:30 - 04:30: Introduction of Speakers The chapter titled "Introduction of Speakers" begins with the organization of the event and some housekeeping announcements by the host. The host requests the audience to silence their phones to maintain a peaceful background for the recording, which will be turned into a podcast. The speakers, Albina as Manavar and Calypso Nicolades, are introduced by name, but further introduction details are not provided in the provided transcript. The chapter seems to set the stage for the main event by ensuring the audience knows the importance of the recording's quality.
• 04:30 - 09:00: Democracy and Foresight This chapter focuses on how questions will be managed during the event, highlighting the integration of both online and in-person question-and-answer sessions. The speaker emphasizes the importance of signaling when questions will be taken and mentions the use of a specific hashtag for social media engagement.
• 09:00 - 15:00: The Paradox of Democratic Time The chapter explores the challenges faced by modern societies in formulating and implementing long-term strategies. Despite the growing need for long-term perspectives, there seems to be a paradoxical decline in the ability to generate and apply them effectively.
• 15:00 - 25:00: Mass Precarization and Political Economy The chapter discusses the intersection of democracy and capitalism, emphasizing the unique perspectives of the speakers who are both theorists and practitioners. Professor Albana Asanavar, noted for her expertise in political and social sciences, contributes her insights. The conversation likely explores themes of political economy and mass precarization within the framework of democratic capitalism.
• 25:00 - 33:30: Democratically Responsive vs Socially Responsible Rule The chapter discusses the contrast between democratically responsive and socially responsible rule. It references a senior fellow at Bard College, who is involved in a radical critical theories circle and has founded a journal called 'Emancipations'. This fellow has achieved recognition for her scholarship, notably receiving the Michael Harrington Award from the American Political Science Association, exemplifying how academic work can impact society.
• 33:30 - 45:00: The Role of Citizens Assemblies and Democratic Innovations The chapter explores the significance of citizens' assemblies and democratic innovations in striving for an improved world. It highlights the role of social scientists and discusses Professor Calypso Nicolides’ extensive experience. She has not only served as an advisor to the European Parliament but currently chairs global affairs at the European University Institute in Florence. Here, she leads the EY Democracy Forum, focusing on transnational governance.
• 45:00 - 51:00: Potential of Technology and AI The chapter "Potential of Technology and AI" introduces Calypso, who is currently on leave from Oxford. She has previously served as a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and at EKL National Administration in Paris. Calypso has an extensive advisory background, contributing to the Greek, Dutch, and UK governments, as well as advising the European Parliament, European Commission, OECD, and UNAD.
• 51:00 - 57:00: Youth and the Future The event titled 'Youth and the Future' featured a structured debate with speeches and comments. The session began with Albania speaking for half an hour, followed by Calypso, who provided a 10-minute commentary. Afterward, the floor was opened for discussion, allowing the audience to engage and ask questions. Participants were encouraged to take notes and prepare questions during the presentations. Alana expressed gratitude and enthusiasm for the opportunity to discuss the topic.
• 57:00 - 66:00: Failures of Economic Orthodoxy The chapter discusses the distinction between future-oriented policy and policy with foresight, emphasizing the implications of these approaches on current governance and future outcomes.
• 66:00 - 75:00: Role of Indignation and Technology in Societal Change The chapter discusses the importance of foresight in shaping the future without being bound by rigid utopian ideals. It suggests that societal change should not be pursued in a dogmatic, doctrinal manner. The speaker reflects on personal experiences growing up in Bulgaria, a society that prioritized sacrificing the present for a promised brighter future.
• 75:00 - 85:00: AI and Democracy The chapter introduces a collaborative project between the narrator and Calypso Nikolitis focusing on 'democracy with foresight.' Before delving into the specifics of the project called Calypso, the speaker provides some background information on their joint research.
• 85:00 - 94:02: Closing Remarks and Audience Questions The chapter titled 'Closing Remarks and Audience Questions' focuses on the complexities faced by European policymakers, particularly regarding the paradox of losing democratic agency in democratic societies. This issue highlights how individuals in democratic nations, who are inherently brought up to value democracy, ironically find themselves losing a sense of influence and control within their own systems. The speaker reflects on these concerns and possibly addresses questions from the audience relating to these themes and other topics discussed in the broader conversation.

Regaining our futures: how to build democracies with foresight Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Right, good evening everyone. Um, I'd forgotten what this lecture theater was like. It's slightly like being in a tennis match. So, uh, I'll try and notice any hands that go up in the question time. So, um, welcome to, uh, this hybrid event on how to build democracies with foresight. Uh, my name is Abby Inis. I'm an associate professor here at the European Institute at the LSE and I'm really delighted uh this evening to be joined by uh professor
• 00:30 - 01:00 Albina as Manavar and uh Calypso Nicolades. Now before I introduce them properly, I need to do a little bit of housekeeping. um namely to ask you to put your phones on silent uh if you wouldn't mind because this event is being recorded and we're hoping to put this up as a podcast so you'll appreciate uh the kind of the peaceful background will be incredibly helpful. Um there will be an opportunity of
• 01:00 - 01:30 course to put your questions to the speakers and um because we're both online and present here I'm going to try and take a combination of questions both from online uh uh audience uh members as well as people here. So obviously I'll signal when that's um going to happen. Um, for those of you on social media, the hashtag for this event is
• 01:30 - 02:00 LEI. And that brings us uh to the substance which is that it's really hard to think of another period in kind of recent history when uh the world has been kind of more in need of long-term perspective and long-term strategies and seemingly less capable of generating them and applying them. And so to help us try and understand that paradox of
• 02:00 - 02:30 democratic time uh we have two speakers who I think are unusually well qualified to uh speak to this because they're not just both theorists of democracy and of uh democratic capitalism um but also significantly practitioners because they've both acted as policy advisers. Uh so professor Albana Asanavar to my right is professor of political and social science at City University. Uh
• 02:30 - 03:00 also a senior fellow at Bard College. She's also co-director of a radical critical theories circle and founder and co-editor of the journal Emancipations. She's won numerous very prestigious book awards, but I think one of the most uh significant is uh the Michael Harrington Award to the American Political Science Association uh which cited the book saying it's an example of how scholarship can be used
• 03:00 - 03:30 in the struggle for a better world which I think any social scientist would be you know pretty happy to have uh rendered in their name. She's also been an advisor to the European Parliament to the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs. Uh, Professor Calypso Nicolades is chair in global affairs at the school of transnational uh, governance at the European University Institute in Florence where she convenes the EY democracy forum.
• 03:30 - 04:00 Good evening, uh, Calypso. Um she's currently on leave from Oxford but she's also been a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and at the EKL National Administration in Paris. Uh she has also been a policy adviser across an amazing number of institutions. Uh she has advised both the Greek, the Dutch and UK governments, the European Parliament, the European Commission, the OECD and UNAD. So we
• 04:00 - 04:30 have a very nice dynamic structure for this evening. So, Albania is going to speak for 30 minutes. Calypso is then going to comment for a further 10 and then we're going to open it up. So, um please take notes as you listen, put down questions that occur to you because we'll get to you pretty quickly. Thank you very much, Alana. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Um Abby, uh very happy to be here. very anxious to talk about the
• 04:30 - 05:00 difference between future oriented policy and policy with foresight. Well, currently across the ocean, the US president has kind of crushed these two moments together, the present and the future uh as he is crafting the uh future American greatness uh with a chainsaw right now. So what does it mean to orient our present day policy towards
• 05:00 - 05:30 the future with the foresight rather than rather than uh as as um Jonathan White once put it disciplining the future through some fixed utopia and pursuing it in a um pedantic uh doctrinal way. Uh, as some of you know, I grew up in a society in my native Bulgaria where we had to sacrifice the present for a bright future. And this is
• 05:30 - 06:00 really not the project I'm going to be presenting here, not a version of that. Uh, so democracy with foresight. But before you know I I I dig into the substance of uh the project Calypso uh and I are developing, let me give you a little bit of the of the backstory or the kitchen uh of of our um research together. Now, uh, Calypsion Nikolitis and I have
• 06:00 - 06:30 been, uh, working for a while on transformative European policy. Um, and most recently, we have been particularly troubled by um, the paradoxical loss of democratic agency in democratic societies. Because now Democrats, you know, the ordinary people living in democracies who are socialized to value democracy, that's who I call
• 06:30 - 07:00 democrats, the democrats through free and fair elections are putting democracy on its deathbed as electoral support for the farright is growing across Europe and across the liberal democracies at large. So until um recently we worked on on these issues separately and from quite different perspectives. I approached the matter through a critique of uh contemporary
• 07:00 - 07:30 capitalism which brought me to the depressing conclusion very depressing skepticism about the capacity of democracies to self-correct of capitalist democracies to self-correct and of the EU to live up to its own devoued commitments. Now, Calypso's perspective and and and path has been different. Uh you you probably know her as a scholar who has
• 07:30 - 08:00 worked for 15 years at least on what she calls sustainable integration. Um but for most of us uh she is one of the most encouraable uh democratic optimists who ever lived. So she kept her faith while I was getting more and more skeptical or even pessimistic about our democracies. She kept her faith that we just uh have to do democracy differently,
• 08:00 - 08:30 more creatively. Now, two years ago, the European Trade Union Institute asked us to co-author uh a chapter uh a piece of writing on um how Europe could pull off socially sustainable transition. And so one skeptic, one optimist, we we we came together to work on this topic which evolved into um a project
• 08:30 - 09:00 hopefully a book um on what Calypso has called democracy with foresight. So what do you get when you put together a a skeptic and an optimist? Um this our collaboration you can imagine we did we we disagreed a lot. Uh but these are skeptic and an optimist who value each other's
• 09:00 - 09:30 perspectives and take each other's insights seriously. So what it has produced I think is a sort of um I would call it a critical realist uh viewpoint on on the contemporary um conundrum historical juncture. That means for us we steer away um from wishful thinking. We are not trying to prescribe phil felicitus scenarios for
• 09:30 - 10:00 uh Europe's future but instead focus on articulating the conditions that might enable democrats to think big again about the kind of society they want to inhabit or the kind and the the kind of future worth fighting for. So we are very happy to present this project. It's a it's a it's a work in progress. uh there are lots of
• 10:00 - 10:30 uh loose ends still of course and we are very happy to present this here because um LC's uh European Institute has uh ex exactly battles with these issues and also we have been uh very much affect um influenced by um the work of Jonathan White on um you know h how to open up uh the possibility for for uh European democracies or for democracies is to
• 10:30 - 11:00 think the future again and we tackle some of the concrete implications of his analysis. Okay. So here's the project. Our point of entry is the following contradiction. What we call the paradox of democratic time. It goes something like this. In the early 21st century, European societies, but also generally western
• 11:00 - 11:30 democracies are at the height of their affluence. We're rich. Scientific brilliance. Our scientists know how to clean debris from space. And institutional sophistication. We have long traditions of democratic um of of of robust democratic institutions. Yet this society's capacity to navigate the future has dramatically eroded since
• 11:30 - 12:00 the turn of this century. Sure, it has been uh the hallmark of democratic politics to sacrifice to tend to sacrifice long-term and global policy commitments to short-term and local concerns. simply people like to live better. Now um we cannot expect any different. Um this is the the the infamous presentism of
• 12:00 - 12:30 democracies that um uh you know is an acknowledged flaw weakness of democracy. It's penchant uh for the present and the local because people simply live here and now. Um as Jonathan White has very powerfully uh pointed out in his recent work um democracies are also future oriented and it's a comm cumulative project pursuit over time but this is
• 12:30 - 13:00 always anchored in the present and oriented towards the future. Now, moreover, the post-war era witnessed an unprecedented rise in future oriented institutions uh both domestically and internationally from the welfare state to international organizations such as the UN and the transnational entity that is the European Union. Now take the U the EU commission.
• 13:00 - 13:30 It is a powerful decisional body that is not democratically elected. It has therefore an exceptional capacity for thinking long term because it is it it escapes the presentism. What Calypso has called the silver lining of the EU's democracy deficit. So democ we all know about democracy deficit that decisional bodies of the EU
• 13:30 - 14:00 such as commission are not democratically elected you know and they have so much power but calypso has pointed there is the silver lining to that because they can take care of the long view. Such institutions being embedded in an ecosystem of democratic practices and procedures are meant to harness another feature of democracies that are very important um in our understanding of democracy. And this is the
• 14:00 - 14:30 fact that as compared to other types of societies, democ democracies are uniquely capable of garnering collective intelligence. That is the experiential intelligence of ordinary people. What Aristotle used to pray as the fonesises as practical wisdom. To this adds another peculiarity of contemporary European
• 14:30 - 15:00 democracies. The unprecedented high level of education, information, and awareness. Our societies have never been so educated as now, so well informed. And surveys actually show that most people are aware of the need for acting long-term of taking care of future of the planet. For instance, uh the great majority of citizens do
• 15:00 - 15:30 care about climate change and support global social justice. So it's not like they don't care and don't know. And yet even as our democracies are nowadays more capable than ever of pursuing grand political ambitions and they have formulated those ambitions. Uh as Claus once uh noted um I I really like that um
• 15:30 - 16:00 observation. We all know what needs to be done. And so our democracies have the capacity to anchor their present into a better future. That would be democracy with foresight. But they keep chaining their future to an anxious present. So this is you know the paradox of democratic time. That is our entry point.
• 16:00 - 16:30 So the decisional process in contemporary democracies is marked by a clash between on the one hand grand political ambitions that surpass paroial concerns which as I said is backed up bit with a real capacity to deliver. But on the other hand political choices tend to be increasingly paroquial. So we argue that times are changing in contradictory ways.
• 16:30 - 17:00 Collective time is shrinking again under the dictat of emergency politics and the pressure of competitiveness in the global market. So all kinds of crisis but also the pressures of competitiveness while at the very same time the need to act long term has never been so pressing and so universally acknowledged. Our democracies we we like
• 17:00 - 17:30 to say are afflicted by a myopic tunnel vision. So a combination of two afflictions uh tunnel vision or narrow and myopia. Of course the eternal flow of democracy the presentism is accentuated by the ubiquity of the instantaneous. We have instantaneous production, global
• 17:30 - 18:00 media, technological revolutions. And this ubiquitous immediacy narrows the horizon of people who are already trapped in the tyranny of the present marked by rising inequality, insecurity, discrimination, etc. So but on the other hand the awareness is growing as I said of the need for urgent action long term.
• 18:00 - 18:30 Now one popular explanation of this conundrum, this you know tension has been um the proliferation of emergencies nowadays as the complexity of modern societies [Music] um make naturally uh these societies um ungovernable somehow. you know public health emergencies now defense
• 18:30 - 19:00 emergencies uh the so-called poly crisis as Jonathan White has pointed out short- termism emerges because policy is reactive autocracy is emerges from emerges from the need to crisis manage to act fast it's logical we add to that that that is true but we add to that a different source of short- termism the indogenous the internal demand for short-term termism and
• 19:00 - 19:30 autocracy within democratic societies. Why do people actually want this? As it is shown in elections, the anti-democratic and anti-liberal type of agency that is being developed within our societies. We believe uh this is you know our direction of research our focus if you wish that at the root of this
• 19:30 - 20:00 conundrum is a particular combination between political economy and institutional infrastructure in contemporary democracies or rather a negative dynamic between the political institutions and the political economy of contemporary modernity which seems to affect democracy. es more acutely than autocratic regimes. So let me first say a few cover
• 20:00 - 20:30 uh the political economy bit of this. The paradox of democratic time has much to do with the phenomenon of mass precarization. and the political economy of what I have described in my work as precarity capitalism, mass precarization, not just the precarity of the uh of those on
• 20:30 - 21:00 temporary jobs and and the poorest people, but the precarity of the masses uh of of the multitude was something that Pierre Bour noticed already in the '9s in a speech. He never um never analyzed that but you know he noted it that there is this tendency currently a handful of of people um are focused on studying precarity uh uh while the majority uh of scholars are focused on
• 21:00 - 21:30 inequality. So people like uh um Paultolites and I uh believe that um what deeply afflicts our uh societies is uh indeed precarity. So we we have not simply now what guy standing has called a precarious class. We have a precarious multitude. The economic insecurity is increasing for the majority of people as
• 21:30 - 22:00 our livelihoods, our jobs, our careers, our pensions, our investments. So all the ways in which we provide for the necessities of life have become deeply insecure. So this is true for the poor and the rich, young and old, highly skilled or not. It is true even for those who have stable job contracts because work pressures are so high that the anxieties ruin their mental health
• 22:00 - 22:30 and people cannot maintain that employment. At the same time, many especially the young cannot even get their first job. So they're long-term unemployed which is another form of procarity. So while inequality is much discussed, economic insecurity is the invisible disease that is ruining our societies. Now to clarify uh a little bit further
• 22:30 - 23:00 this diagnosis about the political economy of contemporary democracies. Um in my analysis of precarity I see it not just as a stable as a as a state of uncertainty and actually I would say uncertainty is good. Who wants certainty? uh but a peculiar condition of disempowerment which is rooted in the insecurity of livelihoods and that um disempowerment
• 23:00 - 23:30 is experienced by individuals as incapacity to cope and by societies as incapacity to withstand adversity and to govern themselves as we saw in the case of the uh covid pandemic. In other words, we feel if we feel we can cope with uncertainty, we are not precarious. So, as I noted in my last
• 23:30 - 24:00 book, Capitalism on Edge, mass precarity or ubiquitous procarity is politically generated. It is not just a feature of current day modernity. It is not a matter of the complexity of modern life. And that's very important because if we know what policies create precarity, we can do something about that. Okay. Since the turn of the century, just to to cut the long story
• 24:00 - 24:30 short to pinpoint which uh policies are the culprit of this epidemic of precarity as I like to put it. Now since about year 2000 competitiveness not competition competitiveness in the global integrated market became the top policy priority. It was written for instance the first time emerged that word in uh the Lisbon treaty that pledged to make Europe the most competitive economy uh Europe the
• 24:30 - 25:00 EU the most competitive economy in um uh by 2020. So this competitiveness in the global market um as it became top policy priority in its name um center left and center right governments equally started slashing both social spending and job stability because they needed nimble economies um for the sake of you know businesses
• 25:00 - 25:30 that can compete in the world but also you know with sweetheart deals for the most competitive companies. So a plethora of of policies that I have analyzed but competitiveness is is this um uh very what is driving the rest. So nowadays uh this has actually the European Union has doubled down on competitiveness. We have the competitiveness compass that all the
• 25:30 - 26:00 policies is being judged through this compass. Uh and in the name of competitiveness, the EU is mutilating its most progressive policies such as the green deal, uh the AI uh liability directive, the due diligence directive. Um so what gets sacrificed again and again are job stability, investment in public services and care for the environment.
• 26:00 - 26:30 One, let me tell you about one political technique, a very curious political technique in generating procarity and this is individual responsibilization or making individuals and societies responsibles for things actually they cannot deliver and this is done very often in the name of democracy as if you you give more responsibilities to people you know you're you're helping democracies there is this kind of thinking so governments
• 26:30 - 27:00 increasingly offload their responsibilities on us. Um, we're expected to manage our own well-being, our health, education, employability, safeguarding the environment. You know the story. At EU level, the European Commission is asking governments to do more for social policy, which sounds great, very progressive, but at the same time, it is asking them to cut social
• 27:00 - 27:30 spending. And now we are diverting uh regional development funds into rearmament. And so as we are asked to do more with less, we feel we cannot cope because while our responsibilities increase, we don't have the resources, be it time, skills, money to fulfill those responsibilities to find a job, be great at that job, raise a family, and on top of that be informed and engaged
• 27:30 - 28:00 citizens. So this misalignment between responsibilities and resources is disempowering and is the main engine of procarity for all. This grave situation, as bad as it is, is rapidly getting worse with the current arms race as the European Commission has announced that is going to boost defense spending by 800 billion over the next four years without any
• 28:00 - 28:30 public consultation. And I believe this is the death sentence for green and social justice. Remember the most polluting human activity is war and also in order to have markets for goods there must be consumption. How do we consume armament through war? This is the logic in capitalist societies. So the consequences of mass
• 28:30 - 29:00 procarity are devastating. I'm I'm moving on towards this point about uh political agency. Precarity does not simply generate consent and mistrust because uh uh sorry discontent and mistrust because discontent mistrust can be um rather an engine of progressive uh social change and can nurture solidarities but procarity works in a different way. One
• 29:00 - 29:30 of the most dangerous features of mass procarity is that it is politically debilitating. It leaves us without time or energy or or even the belief, the headsp space to engage in politics to act and have an impact. In other words, to be thinking and acting political agents. On the one hand, people feel disempowered and exhausted, but on the
• 29:30 - 30:00 other, they long for stability and security because procarity makes you value more stability and security. That is why they're willing to support strong men as they lack agency. Of course, they're seeking for very strong agency elsewhere. strong men who promise to provide this fast stability without bordering with the rule of law and the lengthy process of democratic consultation. So the more politically impotent disempowered people feel and
• 30:00 - 30:30 again due to specific policies the more they demand powerful leaders to provide security with an iron fist. This is how we have our societies have turn or our governments have replaced the rule of law with a rule of law enforcement. Even centrist governments have done that by popular demand. By popular demand that is the
• 30:30 - 31:00 the really worrying thing. Another outcome of ubiquitous procarity is that it undermines solidarities as everyone is focused on their own social and economic survival. Instead of solidarities, procarity fosters competition for victimhood or what I I I like to call victimhood Olympics among disadvantaged and disempowered groups because the claim to be a victim
• 31:00 - 31:30 nowadays secures access to ever diminished resources. Remember responsibilities are growing. We don't have the means. So we need shortcuts to these resources. Uh but in this victimhood Olympics, one group of victims fights another group of victims as enemies instead of seeking together the causes of their suffering and demanding accountability from those who are
• 31:30 - 32:00 responsible, seeking out the culprits. It is not surprising then that anti-democratic forces rise to power through the very channels of democratic politics. Free and fair elections with a political economy that generates massive insecurity that fosters both frustration with the political establishment and fear of change because we want stabilization when we're unstable.
• 32:00 - 32:30 Democratic elections do what they're supposed to do, translate personal anxieties into politics, hence the farright rebellion across democracies. So anxious societies in in other words produce anxious democrats who propel to power autocrats that crush our freedoms and bring democracy to its deathbed. And this situation cannot be remedied simply with more democracy as a
• 32:30 - 33:00 lot of democratic theorists would tell you because the familiar mechanisms of democracy, elections, referenda, even increased uh representation of workers on company boards cannot you know override the anxieties that the political economy of precarization creates. Okay. Why are our available mechanisms
• 33:00 - 33:30 so futile especially elections? I think we think that it is because when we cast our vote we act alone and where when when we are alone we feel the most precarious. So we give vote you know the vote expresses our worst fears. So we will be seeking solutions in that
• 33:30 - 34:00 direction. We seek solutions Calypso Nuclearis and I um at the intersection between political economy and democratic institutions. So in order to articulate this junction where the two meet we use a distinction between democratically responsive and and socially responsible style of rule. So this would we hope to help us articulate the difference between future just
• 34:00 - 34:30 future oriented policy and policy with foresight. Okay. So to repeat democratically responsive you know what it is. You know farright policies, politics are democratically responsive. Yeah. They respond to the immediate concern of people and socially responsible rule. Now, democratically responsive style of
• 34:30 - 35:00 rule is one that is done that responds to people's concerns but without regard for the broader or longer term impact of the adopted policies. So um what is the difference with socially responsible rule? It is one that is responsive in a different way to a broadest possible way
• 35:00 - 35:30 by including its remmits publics that may be absent or invisible now uh publics that may not be even human but by their state by their the way they treat them they act as a bell weather for the wider parameters of our well-being. So we argue that we need systematically to equip our democracies with democratic foresight,
• 35:30 - 36:00 meaning socially responsible um rule. In short, the mass appropriation of our horizon scanning. As we said, democracies are able to to harvest these practice-based intuitions in people to achieve shared goals. So our hypothesis is in order to achieve this you know lofty goal we need both a
• 36:00 - 36:30 new formula for the political economy of modern democracies and new institutional mechanisms that bridge end of the world concerns with end of the month concerns. Now to be sure lots of work um has been done on future
• 36:30 - 37:00 studies. Governments are increasingly building up capacities for strategic foresight not least through incipient national minister ministries for the future. Um but this capacity is you know uh concerns you know closed scientific and bureaucratic entities. Of late the EU started
• 37:00 - 37:30 seriously to invest in anticipatory governance through its so-called better regulation toolbox in order to move from a broadly reactive to strategic policy culture. You know that sounds great but that engagement remains reserved to close and technocratic institutional settings such as the commission foresight task force competence center
• 37:30 - 38:00 foresight etc. We interested in a democratic path of anticipatory governance. There are such attempts. The Finnish Parliament has set up its committee for the future in 1993, making it one of the first parliamentary bodies in the world dedicated to future studies. Um so many fixes have been proposed for
• 38:00 - 38:30 the crisis of democracy but the collective import the democratic import of anticipation has been largely left out of these discussions as if the presentism of democracy was a fatality. So we do not I've been convinced by Calypso's optimism not to treat this as a fatality and try to do something about
• 38:30 - 39:00 it. Um what helps us articulate that anticipatory capacity for democracy is a certain ontology or vision of democracy of of of pluralism in democracy. um that I have suggested I have not even checked with Calypso how to call that I'll call it simultaneous pluralism so we have heard often that democratic
• 39:00 - 39:30 society is pluralistic because there's a plurality of interests but actually there is more to more plurality than that um each of us has a plurality of interest you know I'm a mother I'm an academic uh I am um you know um a citizen. So I'm interested I I have short-term and long interests. So within each of us there's a tension between the long term and the
• 39:30 - 40:00 short term. And the issue is how can we what kind of democratic institutions what kind of policies especially social and economic policies can help in each of us prioritize the longer term over the parochial. the the longer term and the broader perspective over the long the the longer the the shorter and the paroquial one. So how can the paradox of democratic time be resolved? Um am I
• 40:00 - 40:30 going very how how long have I been? A little bit over half over. Okay. So I'm coming down to um our proposals. So I can stop here or I can tell you how we propose to solve the issues. I guess you'll let me go. Uh I want to know now. So how can the paradox of democratic time be
• 40:30 - 41:00 resolved? We claim that we need to focus neither on technocratic capacity for planning nor on devising visions of the future. So we think in terms of enabling conditions, helping democrats to think big again and we advanced three proposals just
• 41:00 - 41:30 three. So as I said reactionary politics is driven by procarity. Now first first proposal concerns the political economy. Uh but uncertainty and insecurity is not the problem. The disempowerment through incapacity to cope is the problem. The misalignment between responsibilities and resources, skills, time, money to carry out these responsibilities. So the answer is empowerment through aligning
• 41:30 - 42:00 very carefully responsibility and power at all levels of governance at all spheres of action. So aligning responsibilities and resources not resilience. So we have to steer away ward off the the terribly wasteful state of affairs where those who will be held responsible for delivering on the long
• 42:00 - 42:30 term are not the ones who have the power to do so as is currently they say. So um in that sense the narrative of inclusive prosperity around which economic policy is is being crafted is populist because considering the high co financial cost of the green transition people know that they will have to sacrifice their economic well-being.
• 42:30 - 43:00 That's why people are not buying it. inclusive prosperity. People are not stupid. So we need to replace the promises of prosperity with that of economic stability. So we explore ways to reshape our political economy around the idea of voluntary employment flexibility which would equip citizens with both economic security and
• 43:00 - 43:30 time free for political and social engagement. If we all work less, of course, we'll have less, but it will be a stable wealth that will allow us to to think about the future, to project, you know, to have plans because without uh stability, you cannot plan no matter how rich you are. And
• 43:30 - 44:00 then in terms of so the third proposal we explore various democratic innovations and ask under what conditions these could be generalized. We start with citizens assemblies connected with direct democracy and we actually experimenting this now uh with calypso with a project called the democratic odyssey. So, special citizens assemblies that are designed in such a
• 44:00 - 44:30 way as to to harness the creative and critical emancipatory potential of antagonistic conflicts by directing citizens attentions towards the common roots of their conflicting grievances and then allocating helping citizens allocate political responsibility to the to those who have actually generated you know the the harm that they suffer. So designed in this
• 44:30 - 45:00 way citizens assemblies avoid the shortsightedness of other forms of democratic input such as elections and public consultations. We are now conducting pilot runs of a project for a permanent people's EU assembly. We had two runs in Athens and in Florence. The next one in May uh is in um
• 45:00 - 45:30 Vienna. Another trajectory of experimentation with democratic institutions um is around the Aalypso's idea of the democratic panopticon that is designing you know people surveillance of the decision makers. So turning the panopticon inside out. So those who are making the decisions feel at all times observed and maybe Calypso will say more
• 45:30 - 46:00 about that. This is um really her idea. So there are many other such uh democratic innovations which can be thought of as constituting the third democratic transformation after the ancient cities and national parliaments which are its core is about really making good on the paradox of democratic time. Now I will um pass over to Calypso to maybe clarify
• 46:00 - 46:30 a few things on that. Fantastic. Thank you very much. That's a very good set of provocations to lead us into the next uh speaker. For those online, we're just tuning back into Calypso. There we go. Um yes, thank you Abby and thank you for um welcoming me at LSC's European Institute that has so often been so
• 46:30 - 47:00 hospitable to me. So I'm only um excited to to actually join you sadly virtually from from um from Florence and I am very eager to um hear the discussion. So I'll just um comment on a couple of one. First of all on what's at stake after all in the place where Jonathan has presented his book, brilliant book, it there's no convincing to be had. But um I think the formulation that Jonathan
• 47:00 - 47:30 offers in his book about democracy as a belief in the openness of the future um really speaks to our moment right now where what is Trump what is Netanyahu and the huge um upheaval that we're seeing in this in this moment. Um what is it then? a closing of future and indeed yes hope perhaps hope o over optimism uh as Albina was was saying means that
• 47:30 - 48:00 somehow those who are pushing back the protest that we are seeing uh whether in in in Turkey or Israel or anywhere else around the world right now is about a vision of democracy that is in spite of it all we are keeping faith in the future. And so the the question we're all asking indeed um against this finite time, how do you open time is and we're the what
• 48:00 - 48:30 Albina just discussed um in great detail is okay, how does democracy's long-term credential um pan out and in in what form what are the variations around this theme? Maybe in this in this additional remark we could keep in mind the example of the green new deal and the creeping reversal that has happened both the Greek the new deal at the EU level at national level at all sorts of level the pressures of lobby not just the new deal
• 48:30 - 49:00 but on the due diligence directive and um global all sorts of transnational governance um agreement that are are increasingly uh put in question and I think that what we can see is what is illustrated here um in terms of the solution is that u a number of points one is yes the be all and end all of democracy is to starts with accountability when we're talking about
• 49:00 - 49:30 representative democracy accountability so for delivering um delivering in time but what we see today is that Um, if you have accountability, if you have a simple democratic panopticon, first of all, it's hard to obtain for people to know that the resources are invested in the long term, but without empowerment to act upon them, uh, it it doesn't go very far. Then the
• 49:30 - 50:00 second point is that ownership, real ownership, visible ownership is what lends efficiency to to these policies. the the and indeed um account because it does lead lead to accountability in different time frame time frame and above all the ownership of all the trade-offs that we discuss in democracy. Democracy is not a harmonious process but it's about the the social ownership of the trade-offs that are involved in
• 50:00 - 50:30 acting in the long term. Now part of the issue is that we have lived indeed in this times of crisis uh emergency politics and that we need instead continuous governance and the the democratic institution are able to provide slow yes that is the drawback of democracy slow but continuous governance and if we believe in the political economy of precarity that Albina discussed in great
• 50:30 - 51:00 detail what people uh who are not able to continuously be involved in is that they need continuous infrastructures to be involved in democratic process uh when they can and when it's possible. So if we have um crisis management through different modes of participatory involvement then these involvement should not be in moments of crisis. They need to be continuous. they need to be
• 51:00 - 51:30 through an ecosystem of participation. And this is why when we discuss democracy for the long term, we need to look at ongoing um connections and ecosystem between yes representative democracy, but those are moments, temporary moments of democracy supplemented by um various other forms of participation. Um and the crucial point here is that
• 51:30 - 52:00 the name of the game is the is capture is pushing against capture. Capture of the state, capture of resources, extraction, um capture by elites who colonize the future and what are the mechanisms that push back against his capture. So that's really the what we explore in the book and then we discuss different uh indeed innovations that do that. Um, and Albina has already alluded to them, and I'd be
• 52:00 - 52:30 very happy to um to expand in the Q&A, but I didn't want to take more than four minutes because I see that time is running out and we need to to hear the discussion. Thank you so much, Calypso. That was a really wonderfully um succinct setup, but I think raising this question of capture is also a an important and interesting one. So if I'll open it straight up to the I definitely have a few questions but let me open it
• 52:30 - 53:00 straight up to the floor and to uh friends online. Uh I'll take questions in probably rounds of three. So if you have a question it would be lovely to know who you are if you are happy to identify yourself tell us your name any affiliation you have any questions from the audience. So I can hear. Thank you very much. And there's a raving mic about to come your way. Fabulous. If you can hear me. I My name
• 53:00 - 53:30 is Ena Feniza. I am um amongst other things chair of the European Center for Populism Studies where I met Albena um and a former vice chair of the human rights committee in the European Parliament. And so it's a lovely to see Calypso who was my classmate at the Kennedy School a very very long time ago. Um I have a a very quick comment and two very quick questions. I promise the comment and um uh please forgive me
• 53:30 - 54:00 that I beg to differ on the the the democratic deficit of the the European Commission but maybe that is a a topic for another time. The qu question question one for the the pessimist amongst us um is whether it's too late for democracy to recover. We've seen um as you rightly say probably the zenid of of dem liberal democracies around the turn of the century now apparently back at the level of 1986 or so in terms of global population backsliding and
• 54:00 - 54:30 autocratization. What does that mean? Where does that process actually stop and is it going to be uh stopped? And the other question I thought it was really really interesting that you talked about um realigning um responsibility and and and power to in decision making and and and yes I think citizens assemblies are wonderful but we already have local authorities right we have localism so maybe if bringing power back to the local level and I'm I'm a local
• 54:30 - 55:00 politician here in London I can tell you we definitely need more resources um if you gave more of that decision making power to the smallest um bodies or or uh entities in our democratic societies. Would that maybe make a positive difference? Thank you. Fantastic. Thank you very much and thank you for making those questions not statements. We'll say very much appreciating that. Uh any other questions for this first round?
• 55:00 - 55:30 You might still be thinking do we have a question online perhaps as well or not yet? Uh, sir, would you like to go ahead go? There we go. Oh, I'm a slow learner. Sorry. Um, evening. Thank you so much for both your presentations. Uh, my name is Yuim Vonhalas. I'm the chairman of Tuesday Club um a regular round table on geopolitics and geocconomics here in London. Um my question to you is you
• 55:30 - 56:00 briefly came up with a term of society our economies have become too complex complexity as an issue against democracy. Could you evolve or deep dive on that a bit further please? Thank you. Fantastic. I think what I'd like to do here is Calypso, would you like to speak to those questions and then I'll turn to Albina as well.
• 56:00 - 56:30 Calypso, could you hear those questions? Of course. Yes, absolutely. And hello. My god, it takes us back to a very um long time ago. Um which shows that time is not is not an objective thing. and and um and when you of course we are we all follow the es and flows of democracy and the waves of of democracy but um I'd like to I would make two points. One is that indeed um
• 56:30 - 57:00 democratic backsliding um is reversible to a great extent. We've seen it in Poland. Reversibility comes from an array of actors starting with civil society, starting with people who seek an open future, who seek to um uh a self-determination and the intrinsic value of democracy um as well as of course what they think it can deliver for them. Um and so I'm
• 57:00 - 57:30 I'm not as pessimistic as as as you imply and indeed yes civil society but often um uh of course ourselves uh universities places of knowledge uh businesses often also see the intrinsic value of um open systems um at least some businesses um civil servants as opposed to bureaucrats actors
• 57:30 - 58:00 Uh and indeed we have some issues with us about the state versus corporate power. Where is power? Those who see that um indeed uh where power is hugely fragmented in our societies they it needs to be accountable dispersed but accountable. Um and so I think that and of course this is reversible in our societies that have experienced democracy in people's memories. Um but
• 58:00 - 58:30 if you also think of what we can call the democratic geopolitics, the geopolitics of democracy, a lot of thinking is is is to be done now on whether um um citizens in China believe that their regime promises the long term. Why don't they invest in their savings in banks? Uh but uh they put them under the mattress. Do we really believe that um that citizens in
• 58:30 - 59:00 autocracy are better placed and believe that their governments are better placed to deliver um um the the future whether it's climate, AI, new technologies, security, etc. Um and there's been very interesting polling on this front which I think is is leaves it very open. Um now the second bit of the question is about localism and I think that when we speak increasingly these days we talk about
• 59:00 - 59:30 the fact that um all of these democratic innovations that we debate are really start with the local and are more credible locally. And in that may be true, but what matters is really a a time when we are considering translocal uh connections, translocal mutuality as well as transmodal combining modes, combining levels. Um and it's this complexity. It's the complexity of
• 59:30 - 60:00 democratic organization itself that we need to consider even if localism uh is a very fundamental part of the story. Fantastic. Thank you very much. Yes, Arena. Um about um is it too late? I think that now publics are experimenting with uh affiliations with the far right. It's an exper it's a
• 60:00 - 60:30 moment of experimentation. It depends how the alternative forces will respond. Um there are so many ideas. I have advised for two decades now that um uh we focus on on fighting procarity rather than just inequality and there is not actually work done on that. Um so there are ideas um for a changing course of economic
• 60:30 - 61:00 policy that can address people's concerns and I think then then people will withdraw their support to reactionary politics. uh we we need to give them a plausible alternative. Not not this what I call the populism of the center, you know, to to promise things uh uh that no um you know reasonable person would would just uh accept at face value such as
• 61:00 - 61:30 inclusive prosperity. Uh we're past that point. So as as to as to going local um yeah the European Union has this wonderful principle of subsidiarity. So do what you can do locally and then go up from there. But um I don't want to romanticize that very much because look what Trump is is doing now. is exactly his narrative of of
• 61:30 - 62:00 cutting federal government and and transferring the responsibility down to um states. So closer to the to the people um the idea is actually to allocate the right type of policy to the right level where where they're the most efficient and it makes sense and then to have the uh mechanisms of accountability. So um yeah uh subsidiarity I would say you know and
• 62:00 - 62:30 and aligning at each level responsibility with resources the complexity you know there is do we live in the risk society really is this a matter of the complexity of modernity I don't know what I know is that there have been specific policies that have created insecurity and we need to override those policies, you know,
• 62:30 - 63:00 um rather than blaming that insecurity on the growing complexity of modernity. So that that's the only point I want to make. Okay, I think that's it. More questions if there's a Yes, do I need to this again. Do I do identify yourself if you're comfortable with that? Um hello. Um my name is Dora.
• 63:00 - 63:30 Hello. Um my name is Dora. Um my background is in political philosophy. So I suppose my question kind of comes from that angle. But I suppose my question also comes from the angle of being a young person. Um I think that um and I guess a lot of research in psychology as well shows that for a lot of young people their idea of the future is not perhaps just that it's bleak but maybe even I would suggest that it does
• 63:30 - 64:00 not exist. You know, when you look at research into the kind of infantilization or kind of delayed adulthood um phenomenon, you know, the fact that for young people, all of these milestones that are traditionally considered to be the hallmarks of adulthood, such as getting on the property ladder or having a kind of stable career and income, etc., are happening later and later and actually perhaps for some for some young people are just simply not happening. I guess my my question is kind of do we think
• 64:00 - 64:30 that the future still exists as an onlogical category for young people and do we think that perhaps part of the work that needs to be done from an institutional level and a policy level has to also be to convince young people that um the future is not just something worth fighting for but actually still actually exists. Thank you very much. If ever there was a more damning testament to our contemporary politics, I think it may be that phenomena. So, thank you very much
• 64:30 - 65:00 for articulating that. Uh, Calypso again, would you like to come in there? I obviously um when so many young people um decide that they they don't want to have children not just because of what the future will do to these potential
• 65:00 - 65:30 kids but what those kids would do to the future of a habitable planet. So it goes in both direction. Um indeed this is the ultimate ontological sense in which the future um doesn't exist. And it's and and so this angst that you're talking about is not just a an a cohort effect an effect due to age. Of course there's always been the effect
• 65:30 - 66:00 of age of of unknown future angst about the future. But really th this this cohort this moment in time um never before has there been such um sense of anxiety towards the future and it's fascinating and and so scary that it translates into a disillusionment about the structure that fail to offer this future and if it's democracy then we're not going to do democracy.
• 66:00 - 66:30 Um but what I see in response in many places uh around the world is that um if the response is not pure despair and separation of oneself from the collective uh enterprise then there is a lot of of movements that have to do with um creating informal public goods, local public goods, local um um self-empowerment, whether we're talking
• 66:30 - 67:00 about housing communities, energy communities, uh, education communities. Um, and maybe this is back to the question of localism, but there is so many different new and innovative ways that also this young generation finds in trying to reclaim that future that it doesn't uh believe anymore. What we see is that it just refuses increasingly to delegate the response to
• 67:00 - 67:30 this uh deep ontological anxiety. And that's what we need to build on when we talk about um democracy with foresight because these communities um of course are concerned about the here and now but in a in conversation that constantly link it to this ontological question Dora. So that's what I find fascinating in these kind of self-empowered movement and for instance
• 67:30 - 68:00 when we had um the last conversations in the democratic odyssey with you know randomly selected ordinary citizens they they imagined how these communities could exist and have democratic debates and then connect with one another and only little by little bring those who are supposed to have the levers of power whether it's representative of the state corporations um and the likes. Um and but set an agenda. So reverse inclusiveness, not
• 68:00 - 68:30 just demand and plead for inclusiveness, not just demand and plead for, you know, the radicality of sunlight and transparency of how power is used and our resources are used, but um owning the conversation and then bringing in those with power. So I see rays of hope in that kind of emerge from from such um despair. Thank you very much Alina. Um so you're asking about the future as
• 68:30 - 69:00 an onlogical category. I'm not convinced that the future has disappeared from the horizon of the young. If I look at um surveys, you know, striking young people are worried about poverty in old age. This is the the one of the most striking things I I discovered when I was looking at the reasons for uh youth support of the farright in
• 69:00 - 69:30 Germany. So they project they see a future, but this is a future of of of being worse than their parents. So I wonder though and you you have to tell me is it lack of future or is it fear of social sliding? Is it because our societies have it so good that young the next generation is afraid they're not going to live as well as their parents or is it a really incapacity to
• 69:30 - 70:00 to plan for the future because you're so insecure now that you need certain you know certainty stability in order to be able to project from now to tomorrow and to day after to plan to buy a house to so I I I don't know I I see different different data that suggests different things and um I wonder yeah it's a it's a good good question how young people
• 70:00 - 70:30 see the future. I might abuse chair's privilege and jump in with a a question. Um really I want to make quite an abstract point and then really specify it which is I wonder how much the crisis in being able to imagine the future comes from the sort of failure of high modernist understandings of our power not least in relation to nature. So the 20th century is a long 20th century of
• 70:30 - 71:00 beliefs in mastery o through technology and over nature and that we can somehow overcome radical uncertainty so that we can make a prosperous efficient and always resilient society and clearly that's failing across multiple fronts. and and there's a particular manifestation of that I think which is the primacy of neocclassical economics in the west in the last sort of 40 to 50
• 71:00 - 71:30 years which works it doesn't work in historical time it's it's a formal axiomatic deductive economics that works in logical time often using mathematical formalism and it thinks in terms of machine models of the economy and in that sense it's no less a misadventure in high modernism than Stalinist economics. It's just a different coordinating mechanism, right? They're both sciences in the allocation of
• 71:30 - 72:00 things rather than political economic philosophies that seek to manage human flourishing in an inescapably uncertain and imperfectable world. So, one of the things that keeps striking me about generations of economists both at the commission, across the EU, across national governments in Europe and beyond, not least the US, is that we've been doubling down on this machine model of the economy. If it's not working, it's
• 72:00 - 72:30 because we haven't done enough of it. We we've had 40 to 50 years of an economics in which we're expecting people to conform to an economic blueprint rather than thinking in terms of what do people need? What are they representing to us as democratic institutions? How do we respond to that? So, we've been expecting societies to conform. They've been failing to conform as inescapably they must because we
• 72:30 - 73:00 don't we're not able to create a machine world and that's created a world of unanticipated consequences grotesque caricatures of the political economies that were promised and of a a sort of collapse in legitimacy for our our sort of status quo. But then what next? How do we change that? So at this point, not least because Calypso was talking about problems of state capture and you're talking about this, you know, the kind of technocracy, the sort of how do you
• 73:00 - 73:30 escape technocratic understandings of what's going on? Would it be enough at this point to change economic orthodoxies to open it up to analytical pluralism to admit that the existing orthodoxies have failed and failed kind of ontologically and epistemologically? It's not just kind of mild technocratic failures. They fail utterly. They are a misrepresentation of what's possible. Or is capture too extensive at this point? Could
• 73:30 - 74:00 ideas shift to interests at this point? And what would it take to instigate that shift, do you think? This is a huge question, but you know, we're dealing with huge. Yeah. Yeah. So have a have a crack at that. Okay. Um so in a way you're talking about the the capture of of scientific thought by neocclassical economics. Yes. Um and there have been breakthroughs. There has always been a strand you know of
• 74:00 - 74:30 non-orththodox economists. But uh now I would uh defer you to the the latest book of uh James Galbreight um where he proposes to to to shift the whole paradigm um towards thinking from the perspective of entropy. You know he says that entropy is actually uh a more fruitful category to understand human societies than equilibrium because neocclassical economics thinks in terms of equilibrium promises this assumes this equilibria. So human focused
• 74:30 - 75:00 economics would approach the whole thing from the idea of entropy. Um so I this is not my field. I would defer you to uh to to uh James Greight's last book as an example of this kind of novel thinking of of breakthrough. Um and and actually that would be very consistent with ecological economics which is often drawn on uh the ideas of entropy and the
• 75:00 - 75:30 biohysical uh world. Uh Calypso maybe you want to speak particularly to the or I could ask you to speak particularly to uh the ideas of the social democratic left as well in Europe in terms of kind of new economic thinking. Where do you see economic thinking that seems to transcend the boundaries of these debates that have not allowed us to escape uh our pessimism, you know, our lack of future? Where do you see those kind of new economic ideas breaking
• 75:30 - 76:00 through having any success? It's interesting that you speak of the social democrat be social democratic left because part of the uh feature of our times and we back to Dora's question also connecting it with the new generation is that um at at least the new generation tends to see the challenges of planetary politics which have to do with the long-term and the anthroposine as not through the prism of
• 76:00 - 76:30 ideologies to the extent that we look at old isms. They are about do they serve? What do they do to this agenda? But they're not the first prism. So that that's one first point about um about ideology. The the second is that of course the left has all the social democratic left has long um um critiqued the extractive quality of capitalism extractive from the value of labor but also extract increasingly the ecological
• 76:30 - 77:00 left has turned to uh extraction from from the resources of of the of the earth. And so I think that the the thinking beyond extraction um is is has a long pedigree and what we're doing these days is is really rethinking and reexpanding our conversation about um the the global
• 77:00 - 77:30 transnational characteristic of extraction that it's not just extraction where you are where you vote where you decide if you vote for a social democ Democratic party, but indeed extraction that is carried out in your name as a consumer around the earth. And this is why new generations tend to have such big movements of solidarity um against capitalist extractions on whether it's a rare rare earth, rare resources or um fossil fuel, it's set in
• 77:30 - 78:00 Uganda or Nigeria or wherever. and at the cost not only of the planet's um biodiversity but uh the livelihood of local people etc. So this interconnectedness of um of both the harms and the resistance to the harms of of late uh financial capitalism, you know, is is really very pregnant. And one of the sources of of inspiration at
• 78:00 - 78:30 least from the most kind of um from many of the parts of the ecological movement has to do with indigenous thinking where we start to understand that um so much of uh of of the resources that what is considered by capitalism whether it's the planet or whether it's labor is um thought as a resource for capitalism to be extracted as
• 78:30 - 79:00 opposed to a source, a source of life. So indigenous thinking is about changing our imagination about resources into sources. Um I find that um this kind of thinking has not entirely made its way into social democratic or um um debates. um that we are very much caught up still with how you know reform of capitalism
• 79:00 - 79:30 should be through um change incentives, price mechanisms, bans, the role of the state versus um the private sector. All of these are very important questions because at the end of the day, we're not talking about revolutions, are we? We might, but uh we're not talking about once and for all transitions. we're talking about continuous incremental change and if that's the case all of these subdebates um in the field matter
• 79:30 - 80:00 but unless until we understand um for a translation would be that you know what is Amazon uh um how come Amazon the corporation is valued at billions and Amazon the oxygen of the the the lungs of the earth is valued at nothing un unless and until you um lay bare its um its surfaces. So un unless and until we can inverse this
• 80:00 - 80:30 equation at the global level and um where are we going and this is oh I think the Wi-Fi has frozen in some way. Um, Calypso, that was a fully coherent answer. So, I might um sort of stop you there and move to I what I believe is an online question. So, Louise, do you want to tell us what that is? Yeah, we have a few actually. Uh, but I'll start with uh
• 80:30 - 81:00 Is she back? No. Uh, with Yapra. Um, I'm going to read it. Thank you for this fantastic discussion. I am Yapraoy from the European Institute. I am the chair in contemporary Turkish studies and I have two quick questions. Where do you see the potential of dangers of technology in all of this? Perhaps in in the case of the democratic panopticon, should we look for ways to use new new digital technologies and social media to
• 81:00 - 81:30 connect and seek the roots of our common problems or do some of these technologies makes us feel more alone and precarious? Second question is you talked about anxiety. Have you considered anger as another important consequence of insecurity and people turning to strong men? Fantastic. Thank you very much. Great. Well, definitely anger is um is uh an offspring
• 81:30 - 82:00 of anxiety. uh for for for some people and I believe maybe for most people it is disempowering but so anger can be good can be good because it shows that at least we feel we have agency and we entitled to an alternative rather than putting up. And the danger is that the normalization of procarity and and of
• 82:00 - 82:30 believing that there is no chance that you can change anything. That is the real danger. What you know uh how did I put it? You know the the the debilitating aspect of precarization is more dangerous than the anger. The anger we need anger. Um, so technology and digital technologies I I personally believe uh and I I'm not sure where Calypso stands on that that technology is what you make out of it. It's a tool.
• 82:30 - 83:00 It's a tool to connect or to disconnect. So uh I wouldn't blame technologies uh for for um the you know the the social evils uh but the way it is used the way it is regulated or not so the the issue is elsewhere. Thank you very much Calypso happy to have you back. Are you did you hear the question on technology? No no I I lost
• 83:00 - 83:30 you. I don't know what happened but it it went off but I'm sure that Adina has addressed it so I'm happy to take another question. Thank you very much. I think we've got time for one last one which is perfect. Thank you. Um hello. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, great. Uh I'm Jonathan. I'm studying here doing a masters in public policy and I have a question related more to technology to the short long-termist discussion and um to the discourse in the field you operate in. So I'm personally pretty um
• 83:30 - 84:00 scared of the impacts AI can have on our democracies. Be it through um the erosion of uh public epistemics, be it through unemployment, be it through automation and resulting um gradual disempowerment for example. So my question would be within your field do you think there's currently discourse on that? Do you think this discourse is increasing? Are funds going towards research there? Um yeah, how do you see the future there?
• 84:00 - 84:30 Thank you very much. Okay. Uh shall I go first and then uh so let's take uh automation through AI. It is so scary because we have been made to depend on a paid job to satisfy our needs. If we have a political economy that that that provides you know the essentials of life without dependent on paying employment we wouldn't be threatened by technology loss of jobs. So I would blame the
• 84:30 - 85:00 political economy that has increasingly cut all the you know resources for public spending has made uh reliance on good health care uh dependent on private um uh funds uh rather than technology itself. Um, so that's my short answer to this. Thank you, Calypso. Like all the issues we discuss, they're always there's always a dark side and a bright side.
• 85:00 - 85:30 And and I think that um when we talk about the long term, we are at the end of the day, yes, we're projecting where yes, we're expanding um um extrapolating on trends, but at the end of the day, it's about our democratic imagination and it's about how we can think that collectively uh we can conjure up futures um that we can live with um and maybe more. And so AI of course is full of fears and that's what your question
• 85:30 - 86:00 Jonathan you know um expressed and it it it's the fear of displacement um indeed um Alena spoke to it. But in the in democratic term um the idea that somehow we could have AI machines discussing with one another al algorithm we could have our own democratic avatar voting for us internalizing our preferences and then um MP's avatars and governments mostly by um through um AI
• 86:00 - 86:30 decision making and a lot of it will happen. So the question that we're all all our societies are asking is how much control can we keep we are envisaging a future that is cybernetic citizenship and of course the future is almost with us in China with the social credit system and the idea that what government is about and government for the long term is aggregating preferences that can
• 86:30 - 87:00 be expressed through all sorts of behaviors that will be voted pluses or minuses by algorithms. Um, and these are societies that tend to that will eventually externalize value the value decisions that are made in democracy through this cyber cybernetic um uh citizenship rather than the foundation of democracy which is to have internalized values of other regardingness, values of uh
• 87:00 - 87:30 dignity, collective dignity and indeed of political freedom. So AI to the extent that it's a a mechanism for aggregating surveillance, control, aggregation, numbers, um individual by numbers in society. Um an alternative way of aggregating preferences is extremely scary. And if we combine it with the quantum leap, the
• 87:30 - 88:00 the future quantum revolution of quantum computing put together with AI, those who will control these technologies will could control our lives. And so what the EU is trying to do with our democratic imagination is to ask in in a relatively feeble way for the moment, okay, what can we do now? How can we backward engineering to put ourselves on a different path? whatever will happen with China or the the mirror effect of
• 88:00 - 88:30 surveillance capitalism and surveillance democracy in the US from corporate corporations. So yes, it we are in a Europe that is trying to kind of tread a third way between these two alternative um technological controls which will erase democratic leeway and freedom. Now the approach of AI and democracy in the EU is to have different types of risk to have different types of regulation but regulation is always too
• 88:30 - 89:00 late. So to me um yes we need to continue to ask whether our our state machineries our corporate governance can do this but we also want to work on our societal capacity. This is why a lot of what we're talking about in democratic democracy with foresight is about the dispersion of a culture in schools, in enterprises, in neighborhoods, in um local governments, in transnational
• 89:00 - 89:30 governance, and translocalism everywhere of people's grapping grappling with imagining these futures and asking how we can reverse engineer them. It has to do with um our own capacity to um to feel in control of our life. You know, you Harry would say you just meditate twice a day and you won't be captured by AI. Um I'm not sure that's enough. Um it's about using AI,
• 89:30 - 90:00 familiarizing with with ourselves with AI so that we can use it as a good way to aggregate preferences. In fact, we've been playing with this in our own democratic odyssey experiment. You we know the examples of Taiwan and many other examples around the world where um you know with the police uh AI algorithm we have we're using another one called talk to the city. We're experimenting with AI algorithm that actually are transparent enough that they do for us
• 90:00 - 90:30 what we can call democracy at scale. uh really having lots and lots of people debating stuff and it leading somewhere because AI is helping us to do that. So there are many different other aspects um of the the better angels of our nature and how we can figure out ways of using technology better. I think we have to continue to push for corporations uh like Meta and Google and others to be
• 90:30 - 91:00 governed by communities that um um learn to control the impact of AI on what they do. Um and there's really extremely interesting experiments in that way. Um and I could go on and on. The point is to weigh the scales on the side of a of a democratic use of AI. And it's a huge challenge. So um and the challenge is really up to that um this future
• 91:00 - 91:30 generation of ours that Dora was um t talking about. Frankly, wow. This is a future you need to grasp. This is a long-term challenge you need to grasp. Um, and I would add on the side of the hopefulness that what AI is giving us today in the world is what we could call planetary sapiens. Our capacity as humanity to kind of know the planet, know every bit and pieces of biological
• 91:30 - 92:00 uh chemical um, etc. realities of this planet and what creates the dynamics of the system and climate change and biodiversity depletion. We have this this planetary sapience and the reason we have it is through the combination of huge data models uh AI quantum computing in these technologies together. So the question is whether with this planetary
• 92:00 - 92:30 sapience we're going to be able to transform it into planetary wisdom. Can artificial intelligence lead to hum human intelligence um in what we're going to do about this data. So that's the that's the path of hope and that is the path of owning the future against it being colonized by very foolish decision we might make today. Thank you so much. I'm afraid we're we've slightly gone over time. So
• 92:30 - 93:00 attempt just to draw it together. What comes out of this conversation is how much is at stake and also how much jeopardy there is that there's a a dark trajectory and a much lighter trajectory. Um and but in the light of trajectory, what you hear is a chance to reinject meaning into democratic politics, to take it away from technocratic uh tinkering and to
• 93:00 - 93:30 re-mbbed democracy in uh a much better uh society, a much better represented society with a much stronger voice. And and that's also about getting away from the technocratic idea that change comes from the top. uh that uh groups below the state can change the social facts on the ground by organizing with each other through different corporate forms through different financial forms and that what you've told us is that all of those things are emerging. So the question then becomes about scale and when
• 93:30 - 94:00 politics starts to when party politics as it were starts to take on those changed facts. So uh Leger Koshikovski the Polish philosopher in the 80s wrote a book called the metaphysical horror uh so we haven't always been less pessimistic than we sorry than we are now. Um in which he pointed out that it was better to teeter on the brink of the metaphysical horror with your eyes wide open than to live in flatout denial of
• 94:00 - 94:30 it of its existence. So on that happy note, uh let me thank the speakers so much for two incredibly engaging presentations and to all of you for coming and asking really uh very pertinent and provoking questions. Thank you very much.