eDemocracy and the Iraq war might seem like two subjects with not much to link them.
And I would normally have agreed, except that reading through the written submission to the Chilcot inquiry by Carne Ross (a former British diplomat based at the UN in New York amongst other places) prompted a few thoughts.
His document is, I think, the strongest and most convincing set of arguments against the Iraq war that I've read anywhere. The description of the lack of political will in making sanctions more effective is a point that is rarely heard and is well worth getting to grips with.
That aside, it was Ross's final few points where he talks about lessons to be learned that made me think about the links with eDemocracy. I'll quote them at length:
"[T]he prevailing culture of secrecy in government feeds upon and permits a culture of unaccountability and, sometimes, dishonesty. Before appearing here today, I was informed by the inquiry staff that I was not in public session to refer to or reveal the contents of classified documents which I reviewed in preparing my testimony. But I saw very little in any document that could not withstand the light of day. Few would dispute the requirement to protect certain intelligence sources, such as the technical methods of "signals intelligence". But a remarkably small amount of the relevant documents in this case require such protection. Most relate to the internal policymaking processes inside government, and as such deserve to be openly examined and released to the public, in whose name and with whose consent government operates. I therefore urge that with very limited exceptions, this inquiry coincide with the full release of documents relating to the Iraq war.
"More generally, much more needs to be done to open up government. I have reflected long and hard on my experience of policymaking on Iraq, Afghanistan and other subjects on which I worked. It is not plausible that such complex places and events can be arbitrated successfully and accurately by small groups of people, often far distant, discussing policy largely in secret. Yet the whole Whitehall foreign policy machine rests on such a premise – that the world can be successfully and accurately interpreted by such groups. The case of the '03 invasion, but also other cases, including the justified but misconceived invasion of Afghanistan suggest this conclusion. What is to be done instead? One answer is to establish much broader mechanisms to involve and consult outside expertise than currently exist. There might be standing forums of consultation academic experts, journalists, NGOs – above all those in the field who have an on-the-ground understanding of the local realities, an understanding woefully lacking in the preparation for the Iraq invasion, and indeed Afghanistan. Perhaps the public too, whose sons and daughters are sacrificed by government in the public's name, should be deliberately consulted at such moments. The Iraq war episode makes clear that there is no monopoly on wisdom.
"But would even this be enough if similar circumstances were to arise again? We can hope that for a generation at least, as for Suez, the Iraq war will serve as a lesson on how not to conduct policy. But what about thereafter? It seems that there is something more fundamental at work here, a state of mind and of attitude which is all too evident in the actions of the officials and ministers who conducted the war, and which is also embodied in the form of government and policymaking we see today. That is an unstated belief in the understanding and right of government to explain the world (Iraq and its threats) and deal with them, and generally without scrutiny. The evidence of the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath, and Afghanistan too, suggests that henceforward those engaged in such policymaking should do so with a greater humility to the complexity, intrinsic uncertainty and unknowability of such endeavours, and eschew forever the hubris that states, 'we know, we understand, trust us'."
The points here enlarge on a similarly interesting evidence session that Ross had with the Commons public administration select committee in 2009 when he said that "the world has actually got in some ways too complicated for the kind of policy-making system we have for it".
In another fascinating section of that evidence, he described the reports he was dispatching back to London when he was posted to Kabul.
"My views about Afghanistan became clear to me when I was posted to Kabul after the invasion, where it was clear we had a very, very limited understanding of what was going on. I was writing political reports back to London. I felt that I had no real expertise, no real knowledge to base those reports upon, and yet I was required to send these reports which have by their very aesthetics a kind of authoritativeness about them - from the Embassy in Kabul, this is what is going on in Afghanistan that you in London need to know - and I think a paradigm was built up about what the UK and allies could achieve in Afghanistan, which was wholly unrealistic in terms of building democracy."
Transparency and choice
It is not exactly a new revelation that poor quality information and overly-complex bureaucratic practices lead to bad policy-making.
But if that has always been the historical case then increasing sophistication in the range of available communications methods at least hold out the prospect that things could be a little better in the near future.
This issue is, though, about more than just what technologies are used to communicate - it is about how government is run and conducted, and perhaps more importantly, as Ross indicates, how government perceives itself.
His points about secrecy are interesting, particularly the suggestion that policy advice about the Iraq war can be released.
I've written some thoughts elsewhere about how engagement and the devolution of power are connected to legitimacy and responsibility.
But great that the Freedom of Information Act is, and promising as the government's pledges on open data are, there is still a gap in what the public is allowed to know about how they are governed.
We know that ministerial decisions involve trade-offs, that some things are considered and discarded, and no doubt generally for sound reasons.
But we are not allowed to know what the available alternatives were or why they were rejected.
The result of this is that nearly all political debate is framed in black and white, with the favoured decision 'good' and all the other options 'bad'.
This infantalises the debate, and hides from the public the subtleties of decision-making and the nature of the choices that have to be made.
A politician who really wanted to raise the level of political debate, and who felt confident in the choices they were making, would commit to publishing policy advice.
Networked policy-making
Ross's paper also prompts a few other thoughts, particularly in his suggestion that civil servants need to be more open to discussion with outside experts.
Is the world, with all its interconnections, now a more complicated place to understand than ever? I am not qualified to answer that question, though I suspect it is.
But there clearly is a need to do more to understand not just Donald Rumsfeld's 'unknown unknowns' but also (the point he missed) the 'unknown knowns' - things which parts of government know but which are not communicated to other officials who also need that information. This point runs into 'wisdom of crowds' issues, which I've looked at here.
Changed contexts
But the main point is surely Ross's criticism of "an unstated belief in the understanding and right of government to explain the world".
With the range and extent of information now available at the click of a button, via the internet or through media channels, governmental authority and its ability to define the context seems weaker now than it ever has been.
But there is still too much pretence that there are simple right and wrong answers to complex issues, which officials and ministers have carefully considered and come to the undeniably correct conclusion about.
This is, I think, where eDemocracy is related to the lessons to be learned from the Iraq war.
Michael Peart, in a 2007 paper for the e-Democracy Centre at Zurich University, suggested that:
e-Democracy consists of all electronic means of communication that enable/empower citizens in their efforts to hold rulers/politicians accountable for their actions in the public realm. Depending on the aspect of democracy being promoted, e-democracy can employ different techniques: (1) for increasing the transparency of the political process; (2) for enhancing the direct involvement and participation of citizens; and (3) improving the quality of opinion formation by opening new spaces of information and deliberation."
I've written more about definitions of eDemocracy here, but I think the main point is that as they continue to develop, recent trends in the use of technology to hold government to account will make Ross's ideal world a bit more of a reality.
And it is not just the technological links between rulers and ruled which is the context here, but also between members of the public who are now much more able to remain informed and develop 'horizontal' communication links between themselves which by-pass the government altogether.
So any government which thinks it can proceed on the present 'black and white' basis for policy-making is a government that does not understand the modern world. And if it does not understand this fundamental context, then its ability to generate optimum policy responses is open to doubt.
At the risk of concluding with a cliche, it is only when there is greater openness about the shades of grey in policy-making that government will have shown it fully understands the world in which it now operates.
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