Tag: Matthew Flinders
We need a deeper and more socially embedded kind of democracy based on active and engaged citizenship
What is the problem with democracy? That is the question that Matthew Flinders seeks to answer at a forthcoming 8-minute TEDx talk. In seeking to answer the question, he argues that we may actually have too much democracy, in the sense that recent years have seen the creation of a kind of damaging “hyper democracy” – […]
Election 2015: ‘Don’t vote, it just encourages the b**tards’
Public attitudes to political institutions, political processes, and politicians have become increasingly negative. What is to be done? Matthew Flinders writes that a radical option involves sustained engagement with the British public, and describes how citizens’ conventions could be used as an innovative new mechanism to solve practical political problems such as Lords reform. Similar PostsThe 2015 […]
We need ways of improving trust if we are to overcome the crisis of democracy
The latest data from the OECD shows that trust and confidence in liberal democratic governments has fallen to depressing new lows. However, the solutions the organisation offers are more of the same old ‘good governance’ accountability agenda that been touted since the 1990s. Matthew Wood asks whether we need more innovative ways of engaging the […]
Feral politics: searching for meaning in the 21st century
At the end of the party conference season, Matthew Flinders reflects on a ‘depressing display of the death of politics’, arguing that the parties failed to promote new ideas and offer fresh choices. He finds parallels in George Monbiot’s recent work on responding to ecological decline, and wonders whether ‘re-wilding’ politics could save the democratic […]
The constitutional mess that now undoubtedly exists demands urgent review and reform
Matthew Flinders finds that it is not that people don’t care about British politics and its constitutional arrangements but that they simply don’t understand where power lies or why.This has resulted from reforms having been implemented in a manner that is bereft of any underlying logic. There is an urgent need to look across the constitutional landscape in order […]
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