At 03:50 PM 3/22/2007, Juho wrote: >I'm trying to analyse the difference between parties and Free >Associations. The formal machinery calls established political >groupings of people "parties". They are clearly part of the >machinery. In most countries people are free to form new parties. >(Depending on the current political system they may have different >chances of becoming really influential parties.)
A Free Association is an interest group. You join if you are interested in the topic of the Association. A party is typically created by a group of people with a shared political agenda. This can't be a Free Association (unless it opens itself up to abandon, as a "party," its platform). Parties also typically collect resources and spend them according to the decisions of some executive body. FAs don't collect and spend money beyond the bare minimum necessary for the FA communication functions. However, note that an FA caucus can be quite equivalent to a political party. It may be associated with an actual party, but the FA and the party are strictly independent; the party and the caucus may share membership, though. A political party could have a DP structure, and it might decide to take on some of the other FA characteristics, but if it takes on all of them, it would be a bit strange to call it a party at all. However, there is Metaparty. http://metaparty.beyondpolitics.org This is Jan Kok's project. So far, very little happening. There is also the Boston Tea Party Free Association. The Boston Tea Party is an offshoot of the Libertarian Party; the associated FA is wide open.... >The Free associations that you described seem to differ from parties >roughly in that they have a very limited set of rules and are >therefore more "free" than the traditional parties. I noted at least >the following possible differences. >- one can't be expelled >- no permanent rules (only per meeting) >- no fees >- no power structure >- does not take positions of controversy >- members don't endorse anything (except the existence of the >association itself) >- members may be against the basic targets of the FA Just to make it clear, members can endorse anything they want, but they do not properly do so in the name of the Association. There is some kind of minimal "power structure," but it only addresses and controls the details of "meetings," which include mailing lists and wikis. If the membership structure is DP, or is otherwise rooted in a multiplicity of direct social contacts (as is the case in AA), if a meeting goes astray, the members who don't want to follow that path simply set up their own meeting. The saying in AA is that all it takes to start a meeting is a resentment and a coffee pot. AA grows in this way, meeting times expand, and there comes to be a great diversity of meetings. They are mostly connected by meeting lists and they may send a rep to Intergroup. My own experience wasn't in AA itself, I've never seen an AA business meeting, but in other programs, anyone can start a meeting, claim it is a meeting of the program, and it gets put on the meeting list. I've never seen any attempt to abuse this; I suppose if there was something egregious, Intergroup might do something about it. >A party with very relaxed rules could be a Free Association. Maybe >people are also free to choose whether to influence via FAs of more >formal parties and the system could support a mixture of these two. >(In this case FAs could be part of the "official machinery" (but only >lightly regulated if at all).) FAs and formal parties are quite different, but they can coexist; indeed, this is the plan. The FA is always more inclusive. FAs, however, can split and merge extremely easily. Something might start as what would become a caucus within a larger FA. For example, there has been a little bit of interest from some Democratic Party activists. What if a Democratic FA/DP organization started? Because of the Democratic in the name, there is a little bit of conflict with the FA definition, but if this association doesn't take positions beyond some kind of special invitation for Democrats to join, and the activity initially may focus on issues important to Democrats, the FA could broaden; but the name would have to change. More likely, the FA might attach to something like Metaparty. FAs exist to communicate, coordinate, and cooperate. In the end, what they produce is advice. Action is undertaken by the members. If action requires funding, the members who support the action put together whatever is necessary, which could include creating an organization for that function. They could use traditional structures for this, or they could use DP. Depends. Any traditional membership organization could, generally, profit from having an associated FA/DP organization. It advises the control structure of the membership organization, and it advises its own members how to act with respect to the traditional organization. Those who enjoy special power under the status quo might feel threatened by this, but if an organization is actually functioning according to the benefit of its members *as understood by the members, through trusted proxies*, it should have nothing to fear. Those who have special power before the FA might continue to have it afterwards. If they are trusted. >Hmm, maybe I'm trying to point out that the formality of the groups >(FA vs. party) is a flexible concept, and that some people might feel >that "controlling the government" is possible also by having rather >rigid parties that the voters can choose from (and trust that hey >will efficiently drive the policy that is written in their program). The problem is that this encourages and even requires polarization. Polarization is not the same as dialectical process; rather, the former becomes somewhat rigid. Remember, the basic concept here is how to create intelligent structures. The DP network actually follows, at least loosely, what happens in biological neural networks. Traditional structures, even when theoretically democratic, devolve into top-down, authoritarian structures, to varying degrees. And such structures are limited by the intelligence at the center. The ultimate example of this, of course, is dictatorship, which is severely limited, in the end, by the intelligence of the dictator. (Successful dictators use the distributed intelligence of their subjects; unfortunately the model is not stable, for such centralization falls into the hands of those who are not so skilful.) >[...] >It seems that what we are looking for is a political system that >allows people to influence and not get e.g. the feeling that whatever >way they vote, the professional politicians (and potentially also >lobbyists) will promote their own goals, never mind the voters, and >will never give anything more back to the voters/citizens than >promises. I'd call that a "working democracy". Free Associations >(="very free and informal parties") could be one tool in achieving >that but I think also formal parties, different political systems, >voting methods etc. can be used to achieve that. (Same with proxies >and "continuous elections".) Setting aside the possible uses of proxies within formal power structures -- which is actual practice in corporations and really ought to receive more attention -- "formal parties," if organized traditionally, have been tried over and over again. They are subject to certain hazards, and ultimately they succumb to them. But hope springs eternal.... hey, let's roll that stone up the hill again. Large-scale FAs have never existed, outside of the very narrow-focus examples of AA et al, because the organizational structures haven't been developed and used that could handle the scale. DP, I imagine, is the key. While it is certainly possible, and some people are working on it, for DP to be used in more traditional organizations, i.e., political parties (Demoex started with DP), the FA context seems to be relatively fail-safe. There is nothing that requires it to be the only effort undertaken. But it is so easy to set up an FA/DP organization, and the potential is so great, that I'd really suggest it. Problem is, very few people see the need for it. If they could see operating FA/DP organizations, many of them would understand. So there is a bootstrap problem. In any case, we are making baby steps. Sooner or later, this collection of small steps will start to walk. (The difference between an FA/DP organization and a simple ad-hoc loose association, such as this mailing list, will become apparent with time. FA/DP organizations should accumulate more weight, gradually, as people participate, move on, and leave behind a proxy. The proxy can bring them back in if and as needed. Other advantages appear as the organization grows. DP can create an organizational body, again, as needed.) ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
