The Future of Democracy

The Future of Democracy (Part 2): It is an evolutionary vital space that provides an identity to the members

February 9, 2015 in A) Country Archetypes & Scenarios / The Unicist Research Institute / Unicist Cobots tagged Countries evolution / Country Archetypes / Country Future Research / Future Research / Social Evolution / Social Scenario / The Ethics of Democracy / The Future of Democracy / The Unicist Research Institute / unicist anthropology / Unicist Confederation / Unicist Corporate University / Unicist Evolutionary Approach / Unicist Future Research Lab / Unicist Logical Approach by Peter Belohlavek

The reach of one’s globalization is defined by the limit of the pronoun “WE”…

The ethics of democracy is what introduces democratic behavior into the habits of a community.

It has to be considered that there exist no democracies in environments that are not driven by democratic habits.

This ethics is integrated by:

Conceptual democracy, which drives towards building a strong social capital.
Systemic democracy, which sustains the effectiveness of democratic actions.
People driven democracy, which is based on the efficacy of the participants.

The Ontogenetic Map of the Ethics of Democracy

The purpose of conceptual democracy is to live is an evolutionary vital space that provides an identity to the members.

This vital space is implicit in the archetype of a culture or institution. It is materialized in the social capital of a culture that empowers the relationships among the members building a growing synergy of actions.

It implies an alternation of the leadership in order to ensure that the institutional aspects prevail over personal beliefs and that the democracy does not degrade into authoritarianism or an anarchic authoritarianism.

The Maximal Strategy

The maximal strategy is based on a systemic democratic approach, which needs, at a first stage, the true commitment with consensus.

This requires that the environment have the necessary culture to develop a functional consensus that is not driven by manipulation.

After there is a true trend towards consensus, the effectiveness of actions needs to be promoted. This implies that democracy needs to have qualified “politicians” and an adequate organization of the State in order to provide the required effectiveness of actions.

The lack of effectiveness is what generates democratic alternation, but when the lack of effectiveness is structural, the culture evolves towards an anarchic authoritarianism.

Systemic democracy is sustained by the development of catalytic trade-offs that allow ensuring consensus while accelerating processes to empower effectiveness.

These trade-offs are the catalyst of the ethics of democracy. The building of catalytic trade-offs is the core activity of politicians, which requires having the knowledge of what is happening in an environment and what is possible to be achieved.

When the catalyst has been installed consensus becomes meaningful and the systemic democracy works and evolves.

The Minimum Strategy

The minimum strategy is supported by the efficacy of people to manage the evolution conflicts that are implicit in democracy. It begins with the acceptance of the need to deal with evolution conflicts in order to manage the adaptation process.

Once this has been accepted, the minimum strategy is based on the efficacy of people, which includes both the leaders and the participants.

“Efficacy” in a culture implies the functionality of the concept of “work”, the concept of “knowledge” and the concept of “justice” in order to foster equal opportunities for all.

This unavoidably generates evolution conflicts. These evolution conflicts, which are complementation conflicts, naturally generate collateral involution and power conflicts. This requires making entropy inhibiting trade-offs in order to avoid that the culture degrade into an environment where zero-sum confrontations prevail.

The adaptiveness of conceptual democracy has been assured when the evolution conflicts can be managed, and the ethics provides the rules for an evolutionary democracy.

Types and Levels of Ethics of Democracy

Five levels of democracy can be conceptually defined:

Individualistic democracy
Belonging group-based democracy
Elite-based democracy
Integration-based democracy
Adaptive democracy

First Level: Individualistic democracy

Individualistic democracy is based on the satisfaction of the materialistic needs of the participants. This democracy is individual leaders driven, because people do not rely on institutions. It is implicitly a submissive democracy, where the consensus exists when the materialistic needs are satisfied and, when not, individualists become opposers. Submissiveness is complemented with dominant attitudes where the individual needs of participants prevail over the common good.

Second Level: Belonging group-based democracy

The second level includes the first level, which implies that the individual needs are covered, but based on the limits established by the rules of the groups where individuals belong. This is the case, for example, of multi-minorities democracies where the consensus is based on the differentiated characteristics of each group. This level of democracy implies an adherence based democracy and the existence of the needs of individuals to belong to a group in order to participate and have a place in the community.

Third Level: Elite-based democracy

The third level includes the second level but includes the acceptance of reference groups, which lead a society. This elite-based democracy allows expanding the boundaries of the belonging group and is materialized in a debate-based democracy.

The core of the functionality of this level of ethics is that the different elite groups be within the limits of the evolution conflicts required to develop democracy but that the distance between the positions of such groups be narrow enough to avoid the annulment of each other in case of democratic alternation.

The existence of elites ensures the necessary stability given by an accepted establishment.

Fourth Level: Integration-based democracy

The fourth level includes the third level but also includes institutionalization as a driver towards evolution. The integration-based democracy implies an institutionalization that structures the integration. Institutions filter the incompatibilities and permit a smooth evolution towards effective consensus. This level is the most mature level of democracy and requires a fully functional justice in order to avoid that people behave beyond the limits of a democratic system. The institutions need to have transcendent goals in order to make this level work adequately

Fifth Level: Adaptive democracy

Adaptive democracy implies the integration of the four preceding levels according to the context of the members and the situation. It is a way to manage democracy fostering all its levels based on the archetypes of the individuals and institutions within the archetype of the country. It makes the different levels compatible in order to achieve the goals implicit in the archetype of the culture.

The Double Ethics of Countries and Institutions

Countries and institutions need to have two different ethical approaches in order to expand.

A cooperative ethics to deal with domestic relationships.
A competitive ethics to deal with third parties.

1) Cooperation, the Driver of Democracy

It has to be considered that democracy is a social system for adapted environments. All environments have adapted and over-adapted aspects, but the prevalence of adaptation is a condition for the evolution of democratic environments. Over-adaptation drives naturally towards dominance, submission and opposition, which hinder the existence of a democratic context.

The driver of a democratic system is the existence of cooperation among the members of the society, culture or institution.

Cooperation building is the driver of democracy. This implies that cooperation is basic to build an evolutionary democratic environment.

2) Competition is the Driver of the Relationships with the Environment

While cooperation is the driver for domestic activities, competition is the driver for those activities that countries or institutions develop beyond the boundaries of their entity. This needs to be understood in order to accept that all countries and institutions have two different ethics.

A cooperative ethics is used to deal with the domestic aspects and, on the other hand, a competitive ethics drives the external aspects. This is basic to allow the expansion of the wellbeing of cultures and needs to be accepted in order understand that democracy is not a magic solution for universal problems.

International relations become expansive when they are managed within the limits of sustainable globalization, which allows integrating the interests of the parts involved.

Peter Belohlavek

NOTE: The Unicist Research Institute was the pioneer in using the unicist logical approach in complexity science research and became a private global decentralized leading research organization in the field of human adaptive systems. It has an academic arm and a business arm.
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The Future of Democracy (Part 1): Understanding Social, Economic and Political Democracy

September 3, 2014 in A) Country Archetypes & Scenarios / The Unicist Research Institute / Unicist Cobots tagged Countries evolution / Country Archetypes / Future Research / Institutional Evolution / Levels of Democracy / Social Evolution / The Future of Democracy / The Nature of Democracy / The Unicist Research Institute / unicist anthropology / Unicist Evolutionary Approach / Unicist Future Research Lab / Unicist Theory of Evolution by Peter Belohlavek

Democracy is a social system that is based on the participation of the members of a society or institution in its government. Democracy is a system that has a natural structure, which includes mechanisms that drive its evolution or involution.

The reach of one’s globalization is defined by the limit of the pronoun “WE”…

To understand the nature of democracy it is necessary to define that democracy is a system to deal with the domestic aspects of a society or institution. It adopts many shapes depending on the environment. Civil, military and religious environments have different ways to achieve consensus and thus democracy behaves differently in each one of these environments.

Understanding the nature of a society implies integrating a social scenario that defines the structure of social behavior, an economic scenario that deals with their materialistic aspects and a political scenario that deals with the establishment and administration of the ideologies and rules the members have to follow in order to be accepted as part of the community.

Thus, democracy has three integrated structures that define it; democracy includes a social, an economic and a political democracy.

A democratic process necessarily begins with the existence of a social democracy. The principles of the French Revolution are an example of social democracy. “Liberty, equality and fraternity” represent those values that are implicit in democracy considering the characteristics of the French archetype.

Democracy is built upon the social democracy of a society or institution. The economic democracy is the materialization of the social democracy in an environment. The triadic structure is then completed by the political democracy, which sustains the social democracy avoiding that the economic democracy changes the nature of the social democracy that represents the archetype of the culture.

The constitution of a country is the materialization of the social democracy of its society and establishes its basic rules. This means that when countries change their Constitutions they are making a re-foundation, which necessarily implies the destruction of what exists, and the building of something new, which implies a change in their archetype.

Constitutions should only be amended in order to respect the nature of the culture.

The Ontogenetic Map of Democracy

Social democracy can be defined as the integration of cooperation, participation and competition. The principles of the French revolution – liberty, equality and fraternity – are an example of a conceptual structure of the social democracy of a culture.

Every culture has its archetype that implicitly defines the structure of the social democracy, which drives the democratic system. Cultures that have an archetype that is still in transition cannot establish a fully democratic environment, because their social democracy is unstable and changing.

The Maximal Strategy

A democratic system naturally evolves or involves. Its evolution is driven by its maximal strategy, which is given by the economic democracy. Economic democracy exists when the productive entities of the environment are owned through the participation of their clients. In this case, clients and shareholders are “one”.

Economic democracy implies that the stock market integrates clients with shareholders and the market regulates the benefits of the entrepreneurs who do not participate in the stock markets.

The values implicit in the economic democracy are redundant with the values of social democracy while “enterprising” drives competition to an institutionalized superior level. In an economic democracy, the concept of shareholdership is redundant with cooperation, while the actions of the clients are a way of participation.

Depending on its presence or absence, Enterprising can either be the catalyst or inhibitor of democracy. Democracy cannot evolve without an institutionalized economic activity. This institutionalization needs to include rules to manage both enterprising and entrepreneurial activities.

The Minimum Strategy

When social and economic democracies are given, the existence of a political democracy becomes necessary. Political democracy implies that governmental actions have consensus among the members of a society, that they are efficient in terms of fulfilling their expectancies and that the necessary trade-offs are made to ensure that consensus and efficiency become possible.

Consensus does not imply efficiency and vice-versa. Therefore, trade-offs are the necessary entropy inhibitor that allows developing political democracy.

The risk of this entropy inhibitor can be seen in two extreme situations: on the one hand, when trade-offs are not used, they work as political inhibitors and, on the other hand, when used in extreme conditions, they drive towards corruption.

Political democracy establishes the limits of actions of economic democracy in order to ensure the achievement of the goals that are implicit in social democracy. It requires, as a basic condition, the separation of governmental actions from State actions.

Governments are in the hands of politicians who necessarily tend to be focused on elections, which drive them naturally to satisfy the short-term needs of the voters. This drives political democracy towards the inefficiency of “following the needs of the participants” without integrating the long-term possibilities and the needs of the following generations.

State administration is in the hands of officers who need to be focused on fulfilling the goals established using the procedures of the administration. Their goal is to make the administration of the public affairs effective and provide the actions that ensure the long-term objectives of the cultures.

The State action needs to be trans-governmental, which means that it has to fulfill its goals beyond the circumstantial needs of a government. When governments invade the organization of the State, there is no possibility to develop an evolutionary democracy.

Types and Levels of Democracy

In the research on the nature of democracy, four levels of adaptive democracy have been discovered together with one over-adaptive level that deals with authoritarianism, which uses manipulative actions to achieve consensus.

The four levels are:

Authoritative role driven democracy
Public opinion driven democracy
Institution driven democracy
Participation driven democracy

First Level: Authoritative driven democracy

Democracy implies that people share a vital space and have a strong social capital and that there is a democratic alternation. The first level implies that people who have the necessary qualifications occupy the leading roles in a community. This level of democracy implies having a reliable system to ensure that those who achieve the role have the necessary talents to administrate the community’s interests. The role of the State organization is basic to ensure the effectiveness of this level.

Second Level: Public opinion driven democracy

This level includes the first level plus the characteristic that the public opinion prevails over the opinion of the politicians. It requires monitoring these opinions and making governmental actions transparent in order to allow people to understand what is happening. The weakness of public opinion is the long-term aspect of decisions, which is basically not considered in massive behavior. The role of the State organization limits the influence of public opinion to ensure the functionality of the administration in the long and short term.

Third level: Institution driven democracy

This level includes the second level plus the characteristic that the social, economic and political actions are institutionalized. It implies that the social, economic and political agents participate in the governmental decisions through the institutions they belong to. It implies a structural democratic organization of the political parties in order to ensure that the democratic alternation provide a structural approach to the public affairs. It implies that the gap between alternating parties is small enough to allow a transition that does not drive to the annulment of the decisions of preceding governments.

Fourth Level: Participation driven democracy

This level includes the third level plus the organization of the direct participation of people in all the aspects that deal with their need to have a real vital space where they can evolve. This participation implies that the leaders assume a full responsibility for representing the interests of the community in their proposals. This level drives cultures towards a superior level of influence in the environment. Thus, it requires that all the conditions to live in an evolutionary democracy be given.

Democracy cannot be Imported / Exported

Importing political democracy from more democratic cultures only drives to the corruption of the preexisting system and the installation of a dualistic democracy in order to avoid anarchy. As it was presented in the research, the dualistic democracy has two extreme alternatives: populist / leftist democracies and liberal / rightist democracies.

When democracy needs to be upgraded, it is necessary to begin by developing social democracy, which requires beginning with education.

Democracy implies freedom and freedom implies responsibility.

Based on social democracy, the next step to upgrade democracy is to install a superior level of economic democracy, which will then drive naturally towards the need of a political democracy. This implies a spiral step-by-step evolution that demands generations.

Peter Belohlavek