Automatic Transcription, it can contains errors.
Introduction to Democracy X
Alessandro Oppo: Welcome to another episode of Democracy Narrators podcast. Our guest today is Bjørn Bedsted—sorry for any pronunciation errors—the International Director of Democracy X. Thank you for your time. As a first question, I would like to ask you: what is Democracy X, and could you tell us a little bit about the story behind it?
Bjørn Bedsted: Democracy X is a nonprofit private foundation working to find solutions for societal challenges like the development of technology in our society in a desirable direction, looking for solutions for how to deal with planetary boundaries, and then looking for ways to develop democracy with new innovative mechanisms.
It's a merger between what used to be a public institution back from the 1980s, the Danish Board of Technology, and a small company called Participation Denmark, which is much younger. So there's a different historical background in the organization. One is to give advice to policymakers on new developments in science and technology in combination with the promotion of deliberative democracy, but also in combination with mobilizing citizens and empowering them from below, so to speak, to take action, especially climate action.
Notable Projects
Alessandro: Is there any project that Democracy X is following, or any project that it has done in the past, that you think is relevant or something that can inspire?
Bjørn: If you take the area of deliberative democracy and citizen participation, we have been among the front runners internationally. We developed the first method for global citizen participation connected to the UN COPs on climate and biodiversity called World Wide Views.
World Wide Views was organized three times: in 2009 for the climate COP in Copenhagen, in 2012 for the biodiversity COP in Hyderabad, India, and in 2015 for the climate COP in Paris. The whole logic here was to see that there have been developments for making citizen participation connected to political decision-making at the local level, at the national level, and also for some years at the European level, especially in the area of research and innovation projects.
But as more policy-making is going global, the idea was to think of what kind of citizen participation method could link to these UN negotiations. World Wide Views was the answer we came up with at that time. It's a method for distributed citizen participation where at least 100 citizens in each participating country go through the same process on the same day, receive the same information, deliberate on the same questions, and vote on a set of questions with predefined answering options. The results are then fed into national policymaking and to the UN COPs.
AI and Civic Participation
Alessandro: I'm thinking about other kinds of software related to civic participation. In an actual interview, I've spoken with the creators of some Scandinavian software using AI. I think they have similar goals to your platform World Wide Views. But I'm thinking that a lot of times, that kind of software is related to a small scale, like a neighborhood or a company. Why do we have this kind of problem with environmental issues that require that all people agree entirely at the global scale? It's a very different scale. So I'm thinking, what are your impressions or opinions about that? And do you think that in the future, this kind of solution can in no way substitute for the institutions that have to deal with these kinds of problems? Would everything be decided by citizens, mediated by some software?
Bjørn: I don't know if at some stage something like that might be possible. I don't think it's desirable, and I don't think it's technically anywhere near making sense to put it forward as a proposal for governance. Having said that, I think AI opens up a lot of different opportunities for helping to facilitate public deliberation and citizen participation. But I think, as in most experiences with online versus face-to-face, it has to be in some kind of combination or constellation where both elements are included. How that might look like in the future—that's difficult to say right now, but there's a lot of room for innovation, I would say, at the moment for how to use AI in these processes.
Alessandro: Do you see any particular problems that these new solutions have to face to be effective? I mean, to mediate and to represent in some way what citizens want. Are there any issues you've identified related to civic participation?
Bjørn: I don't think this technology—AI technology—neither can nor should substitute real citizen participation, the same as I don't think it could or should substitute decision-making in government.
Alessandro: Sorry, I think the connection didn't work for twenty seconds. I was thinking not about using AI to substitute participation, but to facilitate it in some way. So if there is a conflict between two people with two different positions, AI can be used to show the different positions and eventually mediate between them.
Then I'm wondering, was there a particular moment in your life when you thought that something like Democracy X was necessary? Was there a situation that you observed—could be a conflict, could be something else related to politics—that made you think, "Okay, we need something new"?
Climate Change and Democratic Processes
Bjørn: Well, okay, it's a big question. I think we're still at an early wet stage when it comes to the big questions like climate change and green transition and staying within the planetary boundaries.
You need a lot of deliberation. There's a lot of knowledge about what is wrong, and a lot of knowledge about what could be done, but different solutions carry different trade-offs. So in order to have a just transition, you need a democratic transition as well. Those issues are very closely interconnected: green, just, and democratic transitions are all closely interconnected. I don't think that we would get a green transition at the speed we would like to see if we do not use deliberative mechanisms more extensively than we do at the moment.
Another area is innovation policy, which is hotly debated right now in Europe because of the pressure from the US in particular. There's a lot of doubt about what you could call the European model of innovation, namely to put up different regulations for what we don't want in terms of privacy, software data ownership, environmental side effects, and health hazards. All those rules we put up for industry and innovation might come under pressure right now. That's the new agenda that's being pushed by the pressure from the US.
I think that's a crucial moment for sticking to European values and being more assertive about having deliberations about the kind of future we want rather than liberating blind innovation and letting innovation power shoot in different directions without shaping the trajectory. We need more deliberations about the kind of future we want and don't want, and we need European innovation policy to stay within those boundaries. I think that should be the European innovation book.
On European Regulations
Alessandro: In relation to regulations, how do you think the approach should be to be effective?
Bjørn: I don't think Europe should be afraid of just being clearer about what it is we don't want. I think we're doing that already with the different laws we have. Of course, there might be rules that are silly and could be removed—there's always good idea to review bureaucracy and see what we can get rid of. But as a principle, I don't think we should limit our ambitions for what we don't want.
I think we can get better at thinking about what we do want. Rather than liberating innovation and letting innovators come up with ideas for the future, I think we as a collective should be better at defining the kind of future we would like to see, and innovation should be steered to a greater degree by that. I'm not talking about doing away with basic research, which is also a good thing, but I'm talking about our strategic priorities as a continent and talking more about what kind of future would we like to see.
Alessandro: That requires citizen participation.
Bjørn: Absolutely.
Personal Background
Alessandro: I really like the idea that civic participation will shape the future. Talking about the past, would you like to share something about your background? I mean professional background, but also starting from when you were a child, if there's something significant.
Bjørn: As a child and a young person, I never really knew what I wanted to do. I thought the whole world was a bit puzzling. I didn't know what future to look at or what to study. I accidentally studied anthropology and also accidentally stumbled across the Danish Board of Technology as a student position, and I sort of stayed in the same organization ever since.
That confusion about not knowing and not having a clear sense of direction as a young person also sort of translated into a sympathy for deliberative democracy. It was both confusion about what I wanted myself but also confusion about not having any truth. Being young and philosophical, you sort of reach the conclusion that there is no truth, and so on. But that kind of stuck with me.
If that is more or less the case—I mean, truth in the sense of what is the right thing to do, not truth in the sense of the facts, that's another discussion—but more truth in the sense of what is the right direction to go in? If nobody knows and nobody can say for sure what is the right way of finding out, I still think, despite all the criticism you can direct against Habermas's model for deliberative democracy, I haven't seen anyone come up with a better suggestion for how to proceed. Even those have been criticized for hiding power relations and that kind of thing, but show me a better model and I would be happy to collaborate. I haven't seen one. So that was one realization and one reason why I got interested in deliberative democracy and have stuck with it.
The other was a realization early on at the student job, stumbling on different subjects like chemicals in consumer products or GMOs or climate adaptation—different problems where I was thinking as a regular citizen back then, "Ah, someone has this under control." And then the realization that no one has. When you dive into some of these topics, you say, "Oh shit! Someone has to do something." So there's a lot of stuff that is simply not under control at all and requires societal solutions.
Alessandro: I was thinking that—I mean, you're a little bit older than me—but I also felt the same confusion that you had back then. I think it's something very common. I mean, our society is changing so fast. Something that was a job before may now not be a job anymore, or in some years it will disappear. People learn something, but then society changes, and everything is changing very fast. So I really feel this confusion too.
I'm curious about your background. You studied anthropology, so how did that impact you? How do you relate it with democracy? Because anthropologists study human beings and the way they interact with each other. Did you have any thoughts about that?
Anthropology and Global Democracy
Bjørn: It's probably more often indirect than direct. But being involved with global citizen participation and technology assessment, research, and innovation issues that have more and more global impact and where more decision-making is global in scale—the models you use in order to include citizens in decision-making, or to think about priorities in research and innovation, or to think about potential impacts from new developments in science and technology—you need to change your perspective.
For whom will these impacts come? How do you take them into consideration? One thing about deliberative democracy is also thinking about these citizen participation processes: are they essentially a Western construct? Should other parts of the world follow other types of models? That's an ongoing discussion in anthropology about whether cultural differences overshadow cultural similarities. This is a discussion in identity politics: are our differences more important than our similarities? That's a very familiar space for anthropology to navigate in.
My experience has been that with many of these citizen participation models, they are immediately understandable and sympathized with in very different cultural contexts. That doesn't mean that the precise implementation in different cultural settings or political settings won't differ to some degree, but the basic ideas—it's not necessarily just a Western construct. As long as someone else flags it, that's the more interesting point, I would say, rather than trying to invent a wholly different type of inclusion or participation process because you are situated in South America, Southeast Asia, China, or wherever.
Compensation for Civic Participation
Alessandro: I'm thinking now about civic participation and the fact that nowadays, policymakers are paid to make decisions for citizens. If we think about ancient Greece, ancient democracy—I mean, when they—just the people that were citizens, not women, not slaves—citizens were paid for the day they were not working. I'm wondering if it would be possible in the future to compensate people who are actively participating in civic decision-making?
Bjørn: I think it is becoming more and more normal to recognize that in citizen participation processes. I think one yardstick or one comparison is jury duty that most people know about, which is normal in many societies where you can be called upon for jury duty, and you get compensation for that. I think that comparison is fair and worth promoting.
It's not that at the moment we're being flooded by deliberative democracy or citizen participation processes. If that ever happens, we can start talking about it again, but for now, that's a reasonable way of thinking.
Alessandro: It's something that we probably both wish will happen in the future, though we don't know when.
Working with Institutions
Alessandro: I'm thinking about your collaboration with institutions. I saw that the Danish Board of Technology Foundation was doing a sort of consulting work for the Danish Minister of Science, Innovation, and Education, and then it changed its name to Democracy X. How is working with institutions from your experience? Do you think there is a knowledge gap between technicians and politicians on these kinds of topics that are quite new in a way and complex both to policymakers and the public? Is there still this gap?
Bjørn: I think my impression is that the gap is growing. It has something to do with speed, it has something to do with complexity, and it has something to do with the centralization and professionalization of the bureaucracy, governments, administration, where you get more and more professional decision-makers and fewer and fewer experts on topics.
When it comes to scientific knowledge, conditions are worse now than they were in the past. In the past, you had more people with deeper knowledge in the central administration about some of the topics that are confronting policymakers now. And that's a problem.
The mechanisms for including knowledge in decision-making processes are not very good. They could be better. Science advice is not functioning very well. It's too one-dimensional, it's too limited, and a big problem is that the capacity to request and use it, complemented with other types of knowledge from stakeholders and the views of citizens, for example, is almost nonexistent in public administration.
I think that's probably one of the reasons why you see more and more decisions and laws that are passed by politicians but don't really work in practice—they're not really implemented. I think that's a global development where you see more and more decisions being announced publicly, and you get the feeling that this has more to do with communication than with actual change and implementation. And I think this is one of the reasons.
Alessandro: I'm thinking that this reflects on citizens, as you said: speed, complexity, centralization, professionalization. I'm also thinking that academic studies are very specific—we just know one specific topic, it can be computer science, it can be whatever—and it's a sort of cultural problem. Many times I've thought that we are applying a sort of divide and conquer approach to knowledge, so that one person just does something very specific and does it very well, but then they lose completely the big picture. I'm thinking that the problem is probably in the educational system—if it should be more interdisciplinary? I like the interdisciplinary approach.
Bjørn: I don't know either. I think one of the reactions to these challenges is that you see more and more systems thinking in academia and attempts to look at societal developments as systems. That approach was growing out of climate modeling, and the whole idea of modeling the physical environment is transgressing into the social environment and political environment, and people try to build up models to see issues as systems. That's one answer. It always comes with the challenge that it's too crude to have model thinking for something so complex. It's obviously a challenge.
Defining Democracy
Alessandro: I'm thinking about democracy—the word "democracy" nowadays has a different meaning from the one it had in the past. I'm thinking about ancient Greek democracy, but also democracy is applied in different ways in every country. So what is democracy for you, and how would you describe it? There could be different kinds, and eventually also challenges about democracy as we know it right now, eventually associated with some kind of technology or software for decision-making.
Bjørn: I do think the biggest challenges to Western democracies or liberal democracy at the moment are the inability or lack of ability to deal with wicked problems on one side, and the erosion of democratic legitimacy in the democratic institutions and parties, combined with the challenge of autocracy and its attack on these institutions that have lost legitimacy, but also attack on the idea that there are facts and truths that we share but of course can discuss.
Alessandro: I'm thinking there are basically two ways in which technology can be integrated inside democracies. One is to look at the structure of democracy that exists right now and just implement solutions that make it work better, trying to simplify the actual processes but following them. That would be a way to modernize it. Then there is a different approach that is building completely new solutions, totally bottom-up, totally decentralized, or whatever. What do you think about these two solutions, one that is more linear and helps in reducing time?
Bjørn: Maybe my answer doesn't quite fit with your question, but let's try. Basically, no technology is only technical—it's always also political. So no matter what technical invention or solution you use for a problem, it's inherently political, meaning that it has trade-offs. It has benefits for something and someone, and it has detrimental effects for other things and someone else. So it's never only technical, it's always also political. I think that's one answer.
Alessandro: Yes, because my question was quite confused. As I said, in one way we can just simplify the actual processes of liberal Western democracies, and on the other side, we can change the system completely. But as you say, every technology—I would say everything, but especially technology—is very political. How a system is designed plays a lot into politics.
About Democracy X Organization
Alessandro: Getting back to Democracy X, it would be interesting to know how it works inside the organization. How many people are working there? How does it operate?
Bjørn: Forty to fifty people working on different issues. Some are working on the relationship between knowledge and democracy. Some are working on democratic innovation, both from the top-down, meaning opening governance spaces for citizen participation, but also from the bottom-up—self-organization and civic action processes.
There are people and teams working on the food system through the lens of the social tipping point framework to see how parts of the Danish food system can be improved or transitioned to a more sustainable model. There are people looking at AI and digitization to see how we can "take back control"—I think that was the Brexit slogan, something like that. There are people working on climate action, and people working on green neighborhood communities, self-organized neighborhood communities in Denmark. So it's some mix of several different issues, and then a lot of people are working on different sides of the same project.
Alessandro: What about their backgrounds? Is it mixed, hybrid in a way?
Bjørn: I think there might be a couple of people here with a background in natural science, but by far most people here have a background in social science—so sociologists, anthropologists, political analysts, etc.
Alessandro: That's interesting. I was wondering about their specific backgrounds in relation to what we were saying before.
Message to Others in the Field
Alessandro: I have a question: do you have a sort of message for other people who are working and experimenting with civic participation and democratic processes, who are actively researching new solutions?
Bjørn: I'd say, keep up the good work. There is one clear message: don't give up. Keep trying and collaborate—quite importantly, not only on single projects but also on looking for ways in which the common cause can be improved. Collaboration is important, and looking for actions the community can take together in order to improve the conditions for doing the individual work and the individual projects, whether that be in regulation or in capacity training or anything that can help promote and improve the frame conditions for their work.
Alessandro: I have another question that I forgot to ask before: are you facing any issues at Democracy X? Like, do you need some kind of skill, some kind of software, researcher, or something else?
Bjørn: I can't think of anything in particular. It's not like we're looking for something specifically right at the moment, no.
Conclusion
Alessandro: I've actually finished my questions, but if you'd like to add anything else that you think is important, or if you would like to ask a question, feel free.
Bjørn: No, I think I'm all right, thanks.
Alessandro: Thank you a lot for your time and for everything. It was very interesting.
Bjørn: Well, thank you for your interest and for going through the trouble of doing something like this. I appreciate it.
