Those developments aside,your assessment that “he (Sarkozy) doesn’t consider the fact that markets may have triumphed precisely because our models of government and democracy are broken” is one I would needs a bit of explaining. His top-down regulatory ideas are a desire to reign in the unobstructed freedoms and fiefdoms that our broken democracy have brought about, and as such form a rather explicit acknowledgement of the broken nature of government policy as it stands. However it is broken within a democracy, as designed in its modern liberal form, that doesn’t translate smoothly as a meritocracy.

Two alternate paths have so far emerged as solutions.

The first, employed by Chavez & Morales in South America, has sought a rejection of free markets and democracy for central planning and whatever you might call that form of democracy. The results of this switch are far from certain, but so far show little tangible progress, and may in fact show a large regression, from the former free-market, democratic model.

The second, as developed by yourself, is one that would see a bottom-up approach to policy and governance supplement, if not replace, the current model. You refer to this as the introduction of “a self-organizing critical mass of people and organisations working in all sectors to initiate small experiments and social innovations that, under the right conditions, can mushroom into pervasive changes in societal behaviour.”

While I understand and applaud the theory and practice of these new social innovations, their applicability to broader areas of regulation, service delivery and governance remain an area of uncertainty for me.

We note that our current system of governance has been captured by special interests. So how might we navigate between the development of new “self-organized” causes that do the same? These groups still represent a very small percentage of citizens, the apathetic remain predominant. Moreover, these groups will not always represent purely altruistic values, or better yet, broader values that represent society as a whole. What will, or should, never change is that the State is tasked with placing society ahead of such interests.

These new models of vox populi should indeed become part of the governance structure, and when accompanied by a new model of government transparency, will be part of a new, and hopefully, more effective model of governance.

But … let us not forget that the role of government is to be both guardian and visionary.

Balancing those two roles with respect to this new, more representative governance model will not be easy. As Winston Churchill said, democracy is the worst form of government except all the others. Rebuilding that democracy doesn’t mean throwing out the State model, nor the democratic model. It means trying to find a more nuanced version that balances State power and private interests, while ensuring that political opportunism doesn’t lead the whole thing astray.

DH.