Generation 2.0: not just a technological revolution, it’s a cultural revolution

I joined the Twitter community just a week ago. Although at first I was skeptical about this tool, the eye-opener blogposts on the political use of Twitter written by Jon Worth and Julien Frisch talked me into paying a little more attention to it. A couple of days later Bente Kalsnes's post on political geeks in Europe convinced me Twitter was something to consider seriously. Now I am hooked. The other day I was juggling as usual between the windows of Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and my RSS reader, to name but a few, when suddenly it hit me: ten years ago, none of that was part of my life, and of anybody’s either as a matter of fact.

When I was a teenager in the nineties, just a little more than ten years ago, we had no mobile phones, and hardly any personal computers. In France, we were still using the Minitel. Mobile phones only started to widespread when I went to university. Our teachers still hardly dared to ask to hand in typed papers instead of hand-written ones. Just a few of us actually owned a computer. Ten years later, we are all emailing, browsing the web, sending text messages on our mobile phones, having hundreds of friends on Facebook, posting our ideas on blogs, and participating in lively twittering micro-discussions with people we’ve never met. All that happened within 10 years, and it has profoundly changed our relationship to the world, and especially our relationship with the political sphere.

We are witnessing the beginning of a whole new era. The digital revolution will probably be seen in the history of the public space as the most significant milestone since the invention of movable type printing by Gutenberg in the 15^th century. Anyone can have access to any kind of information through a simple internet connection. Information has become a common good. It is not anymore a source of power only reserved for the educated. This is deeply changing the political equilibrium. Anyone can now influence the public debate rather easily, provided they are a little witty, and understand how to make a strategic use of web tools such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Information is not top-down anymore. Information comes from anywhere and from anyone. The public sphere is becoming more and more horizontal. This is having a huge impact on our democracies. For decades, political debates have been led by political parties, journalists, and intellectuals. Now anyone can voice their opinion on the web and get a lot of attention. There is no monopoly of the information anymore. We are just at the beginning of a new era. The tech people call it the digital society. The Commission officials call it the information society. I would call it the open society.

This evolution of society is causing a serious challenge to mainstream political parties. These organisations have heavy structures. The bigger they got, the most top-down they went in the way they operated internally. That doesn’t work anymore because thanks to the Internet revolution, the information is not the monopoly of the few. But mainstream political parties are so frozen in time in the way they operate that they have been having trouble integrating the Internet revolution. Of course, they all try and use the latest technologies, have fancy websites with all the coolest functionalities. However they haven’t managed to integrate the input these new functionalities bring in. They just don’t get it. It’s not a matter of integrating the new technologies. It’s a matter of understanding how much these technologies have created a whole new culture, a wide-open culture, based on the widespread availability of information and the possibility of all to feed the society with more.

This blogpost is just the beginning of a long series. I feel the topic of the open society is essential to understanding the changing political landscape we are witnessing. The success of the Greens in France, the election of the Pirate Party in Sweden, and all the talks on the free sharing of data on the Internet are just other indicators of that move towards a new type of society, which is leading to the necessity of thinking new ways of doing politics.

Photo 1: "Le" Minitel (groundbreaking French technology). Credits: Wikipedia Commons

Photo 2: Jump on the social media wagon. Credits: Matt Hamm on Flickr

Just a thought: what exactly is the European-added value in the Commission pushing for smoking bans?

The Commission is calling on member-states to all implement smoking bans in public places. The rationale for this action is to have healthier Europeans. Alright, I get it. Smoking is bad for you, we should all quit. However I can’t help but think: what does the EU has to do with this? What is the added-value to push this agenda forward to a European level? Honestly I really don’t see to what extent that issue is a European one. If citizens smoke and get sick from it, then it is a public health issue that concerns the social security systems, which are purely national. So, again why is the EU bothering? I understand that in the field of health, there is a need for European action to prevent the spread of viruses and epidemic diseases as they can easily cross borders. That is why this kind of policy makes sense at an EU level. But cigarette smoke doesn’t cross border, does it? Anyone has a clue why the Commission is pushing that idea forward? I am happy to debate about it and change my mind. For the moment, I think the smoking ban campaign is a good example of these policies that make little sense at a European level, and only have the negative effect of building on the image that “Brussels” is a dark force that imposes constraints on member states against their will. The EU has better things to do, don’t you think?

Photo credits: Mandolux on Flickr

A relevant, comprehensive and synthetic analysis of the European elections

I have found on the FEPS think-tank's website an analysis of the European elections that I think is quite relevant, relatively comprehensive, and remarkably synthetic, which is always a plus point. Click here to access the FEPS analysis.

The EPP is openly blackmailing the PES but apparently journalists don’t care

Wednesday at a press conference, the newly re-elected EPP group leader Joseph Daul said that his group was opened to any type of alliance for the European Parliament shared presidency deal. However Daul added that the EPP group would – of course- only make a deal with “people” who back the re-election of Barroso as Commission President at the EP first plenary session on July 15th. I am not sure if I understand why the EP presidency and the Commission presidency have to be connected. Journalists in the room didn’t ask this question though. This is a smart move from the EPP. Either the Socialists accept these conditions -thus risking to loose political clarity and to spur divisions among the PES, or they refuse -thus loosing the power the EP presidency seat gives. Smart move, indeed. Although this declaration sounds like a political bomb, none of the mainstream EU media picked up on it. From what I could see, only Europolitics made a story on it, but the article is not available for free. I haven’t seen anyone mentioning it on Twitter either. Strange thing. Joseph Daul said negotiations with political groups on the technical agreement would start next week. Let’s see what happens.

Update on June 27th:

EU bloggers have started picking up the story. See Jon Worth's "Schizophrenic socialists and poker playing conservatives" and the European Citizen's “PASD Strategy: Opposition or Office?”

Their views converge: the socialists would be better off refusing the EPP presidency deal, and positioning themselves clearly as the opposition party.

Update on June 29th

The press has started to pick up on the story. See Jean Quatremer's blog (in French) and New Europe's website, which even mentions the http://www.stop-barroso.eu/ and http://www.anyonebutbarroso.eu/ websites.

Tired of legislation and taxes? Head off to the libertarian paradise!

Thanks to Compass Youth for drawing my attention to this amazingly funny (and so true) video.

The good thing about a crisis is that it brings about change

The French PS is going through a severe crisis. Nobody denies it anymore. Everybody knows. It’s out there. It’s a fact. On a more positive note, let’s keep in mind that one has to reach the bottom of the swimming-pool so they can give a good kick and surface again. I hope that’s where we stand now.

In the aftermath of the European election defeat, French PS leaders have started the blame game. They all come up with their very own explanation of the reasons why we lost, and what needs to be done to recover. The views expressed are all different of course, and there is no common stance on the situation. That’s part of the issue. Some think the party should lean more towards the left, while others would like to see it closer to the centre. Some would like to bring all left-wing parties together; others wish the PS rather reasserted its specific identity. Some even go as far as saying the party should change its name –the most extremist advocating that the party is dead, and we should thus dissolve it. In short, it’s a big mess.

Amid this cacophony, one idea has emerged as quite unusually popular, and it is generating more and more interest among the activists. The French PS is seriously thinking about organising primaries to the presidential election, after the US model. The idea has the advantage of being both new to the French political debate and innovative, and above all it is surfing on the Obama wave. A very interesting report has been written on it by a PS group dedicated to brainstorming on the party’s renovation. I’ll get back to that in upcoming posts. The idea is certainly inspiring, and worth giving a lot of thought to. However it shouldn’t be a smoke screen over the deeper problems of the party. We should not put all our energy in this new project at the risk of not tackling the real issues. Yes, the PS is going through a serious crisis, and that new electoral gadget – as interesting as it may be – will not solve the root problems our movement is suffering from. Let’s not act in haste. Our defeats are the results of a disconnection between our party and our electorate. Our party has not managed to renew its identity according to society evolution. That’s what we have to work on.

For activists, the current situation is very difficult to live. The mood is bad, of course. We all are a little knocked out. But something tells me we are not far away from that moment when reaching the bottom of the swimming-pool, a good kick pulls you back to the surface, slowly but surely. What makes me feel like that is precisely the fact that we all agree our party is in trouble so we cannot shilly-shally any longer. Either we change or we die. All methods are allowed in this kind of decisive moment, and that is a good thing. People speak their mind out, volunteers multiply, and so do debates. We take a new look at problems, put prejudices aside, forget about the old recipes, and open up to all new ideas. So yes, at that moment, everything is possible. Stay tuned, coming up: fascinating times.

picture credits: jayhem @ flickr

Something of a déjà-vu: from the 2002 presidential election to the 2009 European elections

The European elections left me with a bitter taste of déjà-vu. After reading the terms some commentators are using to describe the disappointing scores of the European socialists –debacle, collapse, rout, disarray- another expression comes back to my mind… an expression I got familiar with 7 years ago under painful circumstances: ‘like a clap of thunder’. That was the title of a documentary on the then serving French PM Lionel Jospin while he was running for President. Reporters followed him during the last six weeks of his campaign, until the final clap of thunder: centre-right RPR Jacques Chirac was first, extreme-right FN Jean-Marie Le Pen was second with almost 20% of the votes, thus eliminating centre-left PS Lionel Jospin who only got 17.4% of the ballot. The French presidential election is in two rounds, only the two best candidates have access to the second round. This unfortunate event has been more of an electric shock than a clap of thunder to me, as it has been for a whole generation of young French people. I was studying political sciences in Grenoble back then. Like many, I didn’t vote. I was far away from my polling station in Paris. My parents were on holiday. They didn’t vote either, nor did my brother. For the very first time, none of my family members had voted, although we are a very civic family. We always vote. It is a matter of duty for us. Yes, I remember, it was holiday time. The Parisians had deserted the city. They figured they would come back to vote for the second round, which usually opposes the main centre-right candidate of the RPR/UDF to the main centre-left candidate of the PS. But that time so many of us assumed it would happen the usual way that the unthinkable actually occurred. The PS got dismissed. Even worse, the extreme-right overtook the PS. As millions of left-wingers, that terrified me. That’s when I decided to commit myself to politics.

Let’s see why the 2009 European elections remind me so much of the bitter memory of the 2002 French presidential election:

1. A favourable trend for the left. Jospin had done a good job. As a PM for 5 years – a record in France – he implemented significant progressive reforms such as the 35-hour week and the universal health insurance scheme. He was rather popular. The PS was strong, had a good track-record, and as such had quite a wide range of opportunity ahead of it, just as the PES member parties did this year. In the current context of economic crisis -when most European governments are right-wing led while the ones that used to vehemently advocate for free and undistorted markets are now using social-democratic recipes- centre-left parties should have been the front-runners of these elections. Newsweek ‘s headline even said « We Are All Socialists Now ». Yet most PES member parties suffered from a heavy defeat at the European elections.

2. Low turnout that mainly affects the left. It was holiday time in 2002. In 2009, the European elections took place during a bank holiday. The weather was nice. The result: record low turnout rates in both cases. In both cases too, there was a problem of clarity of what was at stake, and many actually wondered if there was a point in voting. In 2002, many thought it did not really matter to vote at the first round, as things were only getting serious at the second round anyway. As for the European elections, it is a well-known fact that what is at stake is not clearly visible. Voters don’t really understand what these elections are about. Moreover, low turnout rates have a more negative effect on the left than they do on the right. Right-wing voters are more disciplined and loyal. The elders, who always vote, tend to vote more for right-wing candidates while youngsters, who vote much less often, tend to vote for left-wing candidates.

3. A divided left-wing camp. In 2002 as in 2009, many left-wing voters voted for the Greens. Traditionally, at the first round of the presidential election, a significant fringe of PS voters are tempted to vote for the Greens, the Communist party or even further left, for some because the rhetoric of these parties is more attractive to them, for others because they want to send indications to the PS on what political line it should follow. First round, you vote as you please. Second round, you vote for the best realistic alternative. The European elections are like the first round of the French presidential election: the left-vote is divided. In 2002 as in 2009, left-wing parties preferred to attack each other, rather than attacking right-wing parties.

Lack of visibility of what was at stake, record low turnout levels, division of the left: like recipe like result, a tremendous defeat for the Socialist parties to the benefit of smaller left-wing formations. That’s just one way of looking at things, I know. It is not a comprehensive one. There are many other ways of analysing these elections. I plan on using different perspectives. After all, there is so much to say about these European elections.

Hungover

Yes, hungover. There is no other word to describe the way I have been feeling like since that terrible Sunday evening. There is so much to say. As usual, everybody has already started to analyse what happened and give their own explanation of the situation. Everybody thinks they're right, that their explanation is the right one. The truth is there is no simple reason, nor is there one single easily identifiable culprit. I have my own ideas on the reasons for this defeat, of course. Too many ideas, actually. I need to step back, recover from this hangover, and sort things out a little, so I can see the bigger picture. I will then analyse those reasons one by one, the ones that I instinctively feel are right, and the ones that others think are right. There is a lot of work to be done. But my motivation remains intact.

it's super Sunday!

Today 18 EU countries are voting to elect their representatives at the European Parliament. Tonight at 10, we will get the results from all 27 EU countries, and finally know what the European Parliament will look like for the next 5 years.

D+2: Cyprus, Italy, Latvia, Malta and Slovakia

Today is the third day of the European elections.

Citizens of Cyprus, Italy, Latvia, Malta and Slovakia are to cast their votes.

Good luck to all PES parties!