Super-Smart Democracies

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* eBook: Super-Smart Democracies: Dissolving Neoliberalism, Elitism, and Managerialism. By Roy Madron.

URL = http://www.super-smart-democracies.co.uk/

Conceptual Quote

Roy Madron:

"Super-Smart Democracies will emerge when the people, the systems leaders and the technical professionals learn how to use ensembles of participative, soft-systems and cybernetic processes to co-create increasingly just, sustainable and super-smart communities, organisations, enterprises, municipalities, services and states." (https://medium.com/@ROY_MADRON/getting-the-hang-of-super-smart-democracies-723e3829dcd)

Description

"It is not enough for 21st Century democracies to have moved beyong Elitism, Managerialism and Neoliberalism. They will also have to be ‘Super-Smart’ in dealing with a vast agenda of complex ‘wicked problems‘. Traditional command and control approaches will not tame corporate power, reduce inequality, improve education, housing, health care, pensions, transport, and other public services, protect human rights, and so on. Still less are they capable of dealing with the unprecedented ecological challenges we are now facing: global warming, population growth, deforestation, species depletion. rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and so on.

This book proposes how the human family can undo the moral, ecological and social damage caused by elitism, manageralism and neoliberalism. It outlines a journey through which our societies can learn how to co-create increasingly just, sustainable and super-smart communities, organisations, enterprises, services and states.

Above all, it insists that it will be impossible for the human family to achieve such a radical transformation, unless we re-think and re-invent our democracies.

All the current models of democracy are based upon Madison’s demand for the protection of ‘the opulent’, Schumpeter’s ‘theory of competing elites’ and Lippman’s requirements for the ‘engineering of consent’.

These highly centralised, top-down, command-and-control models are profoundly anti-democratic. They are purposefully designed to exclude the vast majority of citizens from any meaningful role in the key decisions taken by their governments. However, if our societies are ever to learn how to coexist symbiotically with the natural world, every citizen will have to be able to take part in the decision-making processs that will make radical changes to their ways of living.

In re-inventing democracy, citizens, their leaders and their technical professionals will have to learn how to use ensembles of ‘Super-Smarts’, problem-posing dialogues, management cybernetics , participative system-change processes, to arrive at a shared understanding of the changes they will have to make. (http://www.super-smart-democracies.co.uk/synopsis_rescuing_democracy/#more-255)

Contents

The book comprises,

Foreword: Introducing the Combatants

Part 1: Learning from the Neoliberal Thought-Collective

Part 2: Elitism vs Democracy

Part 3: Managerialism vs Management

Part 4: The Political Implications

Part 5: Challenging the Dominant Paradigm

Part 6: The Super- Smart Democracies Paradigm.

Part 7: The Super-Smarts Community.

Afterword: The Dropping of the Pennies.


Characteristics

Roy Madron:

"Super-Smart Model of democracy as a candidate for that ‘Alternative Theory of Everything.

Its key elements are:

CO-EXISTING SYMBIOTICALLY with the natural world

Agreeing upon SHARED PURPOSES AND PRINCIPLES.

Understanding and using SOFT-SYSTEMS AND COMPLEXITY THINKING

Understanding and using MANAGEMENT CYBERNETICS, and THE VIABLE SYSTEMS MODEL.

Understanding and using PARTICIPATORY SYSTEM-CHANGE PROCESSES

Understanding and using PAULO FREIRE’S PROBLEM-POSING DIALOGUES

Identifying and supporting LIBERATING SYSTEMS LEADERS."

(http://www.super-smart-democracies.co.uk/neoliberalism-monbiot-and-the-alternatives/)

...

"Without an ensemble of those very different Super-Smarts, the re-invention of democracy will fail because, “A revolution that is not more technically proficient and more effective than the regime it supplants is lost.” If however, democracy can be successfully re-invented, in a few decades we will see the emergence of a global network of complex, adaptive socio-technical-ecological systems that are,

  • Enduring in purposes and principles
  • Powered from the periphery, unified from the core
  • Equitable in the distribution of power, rights, responsibilities, and rewards
  • Linked by fluid webs of cooperation and competition
  • Compatible with the human spirit and the biosphere"

(http://www.super-smart-democracies.co.uk/synopsis_rescuing_democracy/#more-255)


More information

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