 Yn ymlaen, yma'r ysgolwyddiad yw'r panell wedi cyfle i'r ysgolwyddiad yn ei ddweud, ac i'n rhai'r ffordd i'r ffordd i chi'n gwybod ymddangos i ysgolwyddiad yma ymddangos i gynnig yma. Oni, maen nhw'n ei wneud eich gweithio yn ymddangos i'r hyn. Mae Greig Pawer yn ymddangos yma, yw ymddangos i'r director cywblogiaeth mewn gwirioneddau y gofynan ar gyfer y tyniadau ymddangos yn y Tyniadau Ffrasgol. Mae gennym diolch yn ymddangos ystafellol ar y gŵr ymddangosol. Rwy'n meddwl i gael y dyfodol yn ymddangosol i'r cyfrifosol. Mae gennym i'r cyfrifosol i gyfrifosol i gydag ymddangosol yma. Felly, ydym yn ymddangosol i'r cyfrifosol i'r cyfrifosol i'r cyfrifosol i'r cyfrifosol. Ymlaen i rhaid i'r rhaid, profiad Nidirajor Gopal Jarl, gydych chi'r Fahala Unedig yn New Delhi. Rhaid i'r profiad o'r ddau'r hynny o'r swyddog yn Llor. Rhaid i'r bwysig i fynd i'r llif, i mwyaf o'r argynnu'r llif yn gweithgaredd, ac yn cyfnodol yng Nghymru, ac yn cyfnodol yng nghyrchu Nidirajor. Yn yr hyn i'r bwysig, Janet Boston, yng Nghaerwedd Llywodraeth yn ymddangos ar y brwyboedd ein biwydol yn ymdweithio, ac ydw i'r ffocws ar y cwmnodol ar gyfer ffocws, argynno cymdeithasol, atesau ar gyfnodol, ar yr Argyn a Llywodraeth, i ddim yn ymddangos ar gyfer ffocwsau ymddangos, i ddim yn ymddangos ar gyfer y Dymogresau, ac yn ymddangos ar gyfer y Dymogresau, ac ymlaen nhw'n galw'n yr hen i weld y cyfrifodyddau ar gyfer taethau badafion nôl hynny nad ymlaen nhw'n credu. Jeannus wedi allan nhw'n bod yn hynod gweithio'r edrych a'r hoffon maenwn cryyfaniaeth. Rwy'n meddwl gwaith o gydlwn gyfrifodolethnee Paeddon Fynaeth Fynghoroedd ym Mhwngylo iddyn nhw. Rydyn ni'n gweithio r便 bai chi fel ran y clyweddor gan nodi'r Cymru, Ieithaf ydych chi'n gyd am y Lleidwyr John Smith, yr hyn o'r ffordd i gwaith i gael o gwbl o ffordd i gweithio amlu i Lleidwyr. Genedde unig bydd yn gwyconi dros dechrau ond ar gyfer y ddechrau. So byddwn i'n gweithio ar gyfer y cychwyn i chi o ddweud, ac rydyn ni i mewn i'r ddweud o'r disgwsiau yn y cwyaeth a'i bwysig chi'n gweinio, ac ydyno'n pethau i gael y cwysbeth cwyddiadau? O'r drwsgwrt, gallwch chi'n mynd i'ch gweithio? Mae hyn yn rhan. Rhaid i'ch gyd. Ddod yn fawr, roedd. Felly rydyn ni'n dweud, roeddwn i'n golygu, yn yr ymddangos o'r gweinio, rydyn ni'n gweithio i'n gweithio i'r ddweud. But let me do it anyway and hopefully we can take the discussion forward beyond where we've already been. Til only a couple of years ago the energies of democrats were focused on strengthening or deepening of democracy in the global south. Now, suddenly, a series of events eloquently described just a few minutes ago by Baroness Amos, have, as she said rightly, turned the world upside down, and brought into question many of our settled assumptions, even complacent assumptions, about the triumphs of the gloriously pedigreed democracies of the global north, this one more than others. So, rather like Tolstoy's unhappy families, all democratic societies today seem to be unhappy in their own way. What appears to be the dark side of democracy is arguably just the fulfilment of democracy's logic, the democratising of democracy as it were. In the north we have protests, and someone alluded to that a minute ago, against the capture of democracy by elites, its deep links with capital, the hollow promise of political equality in the face of growing economic and social inequality. So, the new democratic project in the global north is about renewing the democratic ideal. In the younger democracies of the south, of various degrees of fragility, the challenges range from unstable transitions to democracy, and we've heard a little bit about some of those this morning, to lapses into authoritarianism, from the curse of poverty and ethnic conflict, to the curse of natural resources like oil. And the range of interventions in the south, whether these are to implant democratic institutions where they did not previously exist, or to breed life into existing but empty shells of democracy, ironically this entire range of interventions is aimed at strengthening precisely the institutions that have triggered disaffection and cynicism in the north. At the heart of both these projects is a worry, I think, about the representativeness of representative democracy. Across the world the reaction to the breakdown of representative democracy and its legitimacy deficit is finding expression in populism that claims to offer a purer, more genuine form of democracy. In the 1990s it is interesting the dissatisfaction with representative democracy found expression in more radical ideas like participatory democracy. Today we have a different battle on our hands to reinstate the value of representative democracy itself. Now, parliaments we know are institutional expressions of this principle of representative democracy and at this launch of the global research network on parliaments and people, I think it's also worth asking the question we know what parliaments are but who are the people. And representative democracy and populism offer very different answers to this question of who are the people. In a thin version of representative democracy, the classical sort of liberal view, the political equality of citizens is guaranteed but in a different blind way. A thicker version of representative democracy recognises diversity and strives to make elected legislatures reflective of this diversity so that the interests and preferences of minorities or women or other marginalised groups also find voice in law and policy. Populism by contrast appeals to an undifferentiated idea of the people whom it claims to represent in its homogenous entirety. The leader claims to be, as was just said about capitalists, the leader claims to be closer to the people and strives for a direct and unmediated relationship with the citizenry. Representative institutions, that is mediating institutions like elected legislatures are derided or even undermined. So populism is a sign of the breakdown of the connect between parliaments and people. Populism also reduces democracy to its foundational principle of raw numbers. Baroness Amos spoke a few minutes ago about democracy being reduced to elections. Populism reduces it even beyond that to the simple principle of majority rule. Democracy is about majority rule and not at all about the values typically associated with it, the values of equality, freedom, rights and justice. Now the dispute here is not only between representative democracy or populism or indeed any number of competing ideas of democracy. The question is, does anyone have a monopoly over the meaning of democracy? We know the perils of universalism. We accept that societies will be, as they say, differently democratic as they mould democracy to local conditions. And some of these local experiments like participatory budgeting or social audits have been immensely empowering, extremely inventive, very enabling. Nevertheless, in today's circumstances, might it be worth thinking about, whether, in the midst of all these different, if you like, vernaculars of democracy, we should strive to find a common core that we can define as substantively democratic. This has at least two aspects, if not more. We acknowledge the institutional, but much less often the normative. At the institutional level, the democratic project is about all the things that we've been speaking about today, creating or restoring the connect between parliaments and people, holding representatives accountable, fostering civic engagement in civil society, and working towards greater inclusion through descriptive representation but without losing sight of the more difficult goal of substantive representation. At the normative level, we need to perhaps recall the values associated with democracy. Valuing equality, a fundamental principle of democracy, would make us sensitive to the plight of minorities. Ideas of diversity would reaffirm our commitment to multiculturalism. The county and idea of hospitality to strangers would enable us to appreciate better our obligations to refugees. The idea of solidarity would sensitise us to the most morally abhorrent aspects of inequality, while fraternity would sensitise us to issues of climate change and intergenerational environmental justice. Democracy is always and everywhere a work in progress, but I think we are today in a moment that nudges us to think about whether the democratic idea has a common core. Are we going to be brave enough to try and attempt to have a stab at that core, a defining that core, one that, no matter where it travels, still speaks to a recognisable and estimable idea of democracy in which people as citizens have agency? Thank you very much. So, with a very different take on this debate, I'm going to ask Janet for her thoughts. Well, thank you for inviting me to participate today. When I was first asked, I wasn't at all sure that my experience as a film producer director was at all relevant. Yet, as I reflected, I realised that deepening democracy has been a theme which has run through most of my work and experience, as perhaps has the reconciliation between parliaments and people, although not so obviously. The first time I was struck by the power of film to directly influence public engagement was filming for Japanese TV news in Eastern Europe as the communist bloc collapsed. Interviewe after interviewe in country after country when asked why now declared it was the images from Channel Moon Square which have moved them to act. The fixes we were working with as we tried to put together the features on the first democratic elections were also shocked when asked if they could ask candidates to knock on people's doors in a certain way just as a film producer always wants. We can't, they struggle to explain. Why? It's the knock that reminds us of the secret police they explained. I tried to translate that into Japanese. Years later, I was making a film The Good Society which had two versions, one for BBC World, the other for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting at the turn of the millennia. We filmed in six different countries, including from the Yards in Jamaica where young people were breaking down gang culture to East London where Telco was bringing different faith groups together and then in Zimbabwe in Matavili land where a literacy project was using drama, poetry and art to develop grassroots democracy. Many of those interviewed wanted to be shot in silhouette because they were still so traumatised by the brutal massacres of the early 80s but the young people openly sang and wrote of their hope for change using metaphors to describe corruption and their dislike of Magaabi. I thought of them last week as he was finally toppled and felt that perhaps more could have been done to show the full impact of his policies. Yet what the people I filmed with wanted was to tell their stories their way, to be heard. For them, what was important was knowing their voice would go out to a large international audience via the BBC as well as at a conference and then possibly on local TV too. It's too easy to forget that just because people are economically poor or vulnerable or living in a remote location that they lack a sophisticated understanding of the power of an image and how they themselves might be portrayed. When I first worked with Professor Crue I was looking at how to challenge the way women in Africa were depicted and persuaded body shop founder Anita Roddick to visit a range of enterprises from micro to macro where she could share her experience with women across the continent and celebrate their achievements. I still remember carrying out the research and hearing the women clap with relief when I explained that what we were trying to do was to celebrate their achievements. Interestingly, it was one of our development colleagues who wasn't so happy. He was a man, particularly with a focus on women. He challenged me so often. I said, where are the men in the rural country areas? He then conceded, he couldn't point me to them. The need to ensure women are represented is obviously just as great today and in terms of deepening democracy, vital. It isn't just a battle to persuade the male village chief to stand aside for a woman. It's actually often the development worker who is the spokesman for the NGO refusing to stand aside for their younger female colleague who happens to be more articulate. The broader issue of representing people on the front line and how resilient they are with or without aid is one that continues to worry me. It's a wild leap, but perhaps it could explain why there is still a lack of public recognition of how many development projects or funding do actually work. For the Paris Climate Change Conference I produced a series of films for UNDP's Equator Initiative 2015 prize winners, all Indigenous peoples fighting to save their environment, combat climate change, protect biodiversity and campaign for their rights. Each community was battling incredible odds, in some cases facing death threats, yet their integrity came through within each film and while the top images may have set the scene with drought, burning forests or land grabbing, the overriding sense from each winner is of how communities have turned around desperate situations to those which are empowering and transferable. The reception in Paris was extraordinary with the best accolade from the communities themselves as they said the films with a highlight of their two weeks. I tried to find out why and they said it was because they could finally share their experiences both with each other and with a wider political audience. So why film? Despite the fact that I've always worked on ridiculously low budget, it is expensive when compared with the cost of a life-saving development project. But it does have the potential to reach huge numbers of people and if designed carefully it can target multiple audiences. For example following one broadcast being repurposed for educational use. In fact I recently discovered a series I made over a decade ago called Living with Disaster was still being used with students at UCL over a decade after it was made. Film can even prompt development innovation and transfer and can perhaps be relevant in this way to deepening democracy. As I discovered with a series I created and produced for several years which shared global solutions by combining film, online and backup support to share ideas about what can be done for a more sustainable world wherever you are. I've prompted the biggest audience reaction on BBC World and I'm currently looking at reviving the idea as the Paris Climate Change Conference revealed the need to keep telling stories about what works. More importantly perhaps with film is the need to build empathy across continents to understand for example with an issue like climate change that those most affected least deserve to see their coastlines eroded, fish stocks decimated, forests devastated and species threatened and that these people and communities are not waiting for aid yet are actively finding ways to tackle the problems which have accelerated at a pace they could never have imagined that they need recognition which gives them not just the chance to speak with their parliaments but within an international context that challenges exploitation particularly of the natural resources from which they depend for their very survival perhaps too that deepening democracy might involve creating respect for their indigenous rights and different legal structures as well as exposing exploitation by companies and governments who have managed to go under the radar partly as film used to be so expensive. Coming to Baroness Amos' point about accountability working with local people to record and film their experiences is a brilliant tool on lots of levels. The Rhione who featured in the Paris films are now armed with an array of modern digital weapons to guard their land and protect their livelihoods. These video warriors have reduced land clearances of the Amazon by 80%. Other communities in PNG and Guyana are using mobile apps to check land encroachment and in Guyana they're actually creating their own maps using drones so should everyone rush into making films. It's worth noting that there is a big difference between using film to record and document process and making a film with a strong narrative and a few strong characters who can tell their story in a compelling way. Often the hardest part of making a film is knowing what to leave out be it a picture or a piece of sync and it's where there are usually the most arguments if you're working with an agency or an NGO as the filmmaker will generally know what will appeal to the audience rather than to the minister. And generally what is interesting is that the minister is pretty much like the general audience. NGOs who think they can only get filmmakers in at the end of a project just to disseminate some results are missing lots of opportunities. Really exciting films get made when filmmakers are involved in inquiring about difficult issues and are involved in the research not just as an afterthought. Even more complex is to not only make films but to enable others to make films in countries where the industry is relatively new or to try to work with local crews. Whatever or however film is made it's power to project voice to multiple audiences local, national, regional and international is unique and is a tool all working to deepen democracy and create a more sustainable world cannot afford to ignore. If in doubt listen to what Liana Corrier said at the end of the Paris films she said we won't give up it's worth fighting for a better future. The effects of climate change are global now but we now have to globalise our solutions and ideas no matter if we live in an undeveloped country such as Honduras or in Europe we need to act now so that there will be a tomorrow. Thank you. So I think that point that Janet's just made about the need to engage filmmakers not just in the dissemination but also in the research from the beginning is going to be crucial to our project because of the grant making element that we're going to have to be able to make grants to national scholars which Emma will talk about a little bit after the break it's going to be crucial because that's what we want is we want to be able to bring together the arts and the cultural communities with the research and to be able to tell both research and tell the stories differently and Neraja is co-investigator with myself on the project and there are other colleagues Mandy and Christina working with Emma to message back So, from different perspective the practitioner, Greg No, you can sit, you're allowed Unlike my colleagues I'm just going to ramble for about five or six minutes in the hope that it makes sense Thank you to... Undersell yourself before you get there Yeah, set the bar low over the floor Thank you to to Emma for inviting me to do this I was saying to Emma earlier this is a personal interest to me partly because of my own personal trajectory as Ruth mentioned a long time ago now I was running the Parliament and Government programme at the Hansard Society and it spent four or five years up until about 2001 writing about how Parliament needed to be reformed from the Commons, the Reformer House of Lords and ran a commission at the Hansard Society chaired by Tony Newton and had the good and the great on it including Zainab Badawi In 2001 to his surprise and everybody else's Robin Cook became leader of the House Commons and needed two special advisers who knew something about Parliament and were also active enough in the Labour Party to be cunning and political as an advisor and this is a limited pool for me and a professor called Meg Russell who some of you may know ended up working for him up to the point he resigned over Iraq in 2003 and I continued I worked for Peter Hane until 2005 election which is when I set up Global Partners Governance which I'll come on to in a minute but that transition from having written about reform of Parliament to what I was talking about everything, it was so obvious what needed to change in Parliament it looks very different when you're inside Government actually trying to implement these things the transition from the quasi-academic world to the world of government was hugely complex what looks very easy and obvious from the outside looks hugely more complex when you're on the inside of government the big question often if you're trying to persuade Robin Cook to go into a cabinet meeting and persuade his colleagues that they should subject themselves to more scrutiny is what's in this for the government and it's a question that's often missed from the outside it was explained to me at the time when I first started working as a special adviser by a senior clerk not Liam, but somebody like Liam who said to me your job is to keep coming up with stupid ideas my job is to explain to you why they are stupid and that was sort of the relationship between the special advisers and the clerks and it took me I think three years to win an argument with a clerk over a pointed procedure and when I did I went out and got drunk because it was an amazing moment but there's a parallel that transition that personal transition I went through from thinking I knew what I was talking about to being in Government and then realising this is much more complex is similar to what's going on in the field we now work trying to support parliaments, political parties ministries in a number of different countries all of which are facing huge problems I mean over the last 12 years we've worked a lot in Iraq spent time in Libya in Egypt, Jordan Sudan, Tanzania, Rwanda all sorts of different places and if you are is anybody here from Difyd by the way? If you are I'm going to be rude about Difyd in a minute that's all just to warn you If you go to meetings of donor agencies now talking about the need to get institutions right to reform government there is that same sense of we know that politics matters we understand it, we get it actually we really understand politics actually they don't they really really don't at the launch of the world development report earlier this year which is focused on politics and the importance of politics to getting development and to getting institutional change somebody quizzed Rory Stuart the minister for Difyd who was on the platform and said well you know so what we get the politics matters tell us something new, no shit Sherlock and Rory Stuart his reply was withering and he said look the problem is all these people saying yes we get politics are exactly the people who know nothing about politics he said I didn't know anything about politics until I became a member of parliament about the complexity about the difficulty of getting policy made let alone then implementing this stuff and making sure it works and that's the challenge in this field now I think the virtue of this research network and the national researchers is that there is an innate understanding of some of those politics my experience of trying to get reform through the commons and the lords emphasise the importance of the personal perspective on change lots of international support is framed around very good principles of greater democracy representation greater scrutiny which are all unarguable however MPs don't define themselves like that they don't spend most of their time doing that MPs are not elected because of what they do inside parliament they are elected because of what they do outside parliament it's the constituency staff which actually determines whether they are re-elected or not or their relationship with their party and it was brought home to me in a conversation I had with a man called Salim Jaburi who was chair of the human rights committee in Iraq and is now speaker of the Iraqi parliament which is arguably the second most important political position in Iraq we worked with him for a long time with the human rights committee to try and get things working more effectively and get the human rights committee to achieve certain things he was absolutely brought into everything that we were doing and went away implementing this stuff and it was only about 18 months two years into working with him that he reflected to me in an idle conversation well of course this is only 10% of my time I had assumed that this was as important to him as it was to us this was one of the key parts of our project for him it was 10% of his time it was important to him but it wasn't that important the other political stuff, the party stuff that was the stuff which really absorbed him and was going to determine whether he had a successful political career or not and that sort of stuff I think we're pretty good at what we do and reasonably astute but it's very easy to miss that sort of stuff and it's that understanding of the small P and the big P politics which I think this network can fill a massive gap in the development field informing the way that development is done so it's more politically astute, more suitable to whatever environment but also understands that stuff which is implicit, which is innate which no matter how good international organisations are they will never understand the complexity of politics at the local level and that's why we need this network to exist I'm sort of as you probably said going out of things to say but I think the I was going to finish, I was going to try and crowbar in a quote from Marta Sen because it's always good to end by quoting Marta Sen but our approach to this sort of work and trying to understand it the reason I set up GPG in the first place was because I was quite struck by how badly most of the international support work to politicians was done because it seemed entirely apolitical but it also seemed to be less about what the people in other countries needed than about what we had to give them and there were templates there were institutional structures we understand your problem, what you need is this and there is still a degree of template fitting, the cookie cutter approaches as Tom Carrot calls it and I think one of the of a Marta Sen's quotes which has always stuck with me is that this sort of work is about enabling people to lead the sorts of life which they think are worth leading and that means if you are strengthening institutions you are strengthening the institutions so that people can achieve what they want to achieve not what you think they should be achieving it's about the contestation of democracy, it's about if you're setting up a democratic system then you have to accept the result of those elections if it is democratic and I think that's again one of the key things which this research network will help to fill and finish there Can I throw it open to the floor? I just want to ask one question to you I think it's perhaps to draw some of this together and I know it's something that you've thought about quite a lot through your work but I've been interested in Nurgers' take on it this whole business of the balance between local and national commitments and how members of Parliament prioritise their time how they look at their role and particularly in the ages you were referring to sort of you know now campaigns in terms of social media you've got digital warriors that MPs have got to respond so much to the new pressures that come through digital and that you talked about earlier Greg in terms of what you were seeing among MPs in Tanzania I was just wondering in terms of how MPs conduct their role and we particularly see it in the comparison between Bangladesh and Ethiopia where we're seeing through the research that MPs behave very differently in terms of that local national emphasis for their own particular political environment and how we think about members to think differently about what representative democracy means for them what kinds of incentives can we look to and levers can we look to to think differently about that about the balance between the local and national and what they focus on well again this is one of my areas of fascination over the last 25-30 years is the same as Emma's about what MPs do in constituencies and too much of the international approach the academic approach to politics says we shouldn't be doing this you should be legislating, you should be overseeing you should be scrutinising the budget but as I say that's not how MPs get elected the challenge in lots of the places in which we work is where you've got a new parliament you often have a very high turnover of members at each election 60, 70, 80% it's no good coming from the Westminster experience and trying to export what is happening here to those sorts of environments because a new MP here is absorbed into that culture quite quickly you're socialised into certain ways of being certain ways of behaving where you've got a new parliament that's a recent democratic culture and an 80% turnover that's almost impossible I mean you think about any organisation which employed 80% of its people on the same day you'd struggle with that but it's all the more problematic in parliaments because if you were in a school for example and you employed 80% of your teachers on the same day you know that they would at least have similar backgrounds, similar training they would have gone through a similar sort of process to the school to become a teacher and therefore they would also have some common bonds of commonality in a parliament it's the opposite what differentiates you from the other 80% in the parliament is probably stronger than what brings you together so people come with hugely different expectations about what the institution is for but also what their job is within the institution what do you do on a day to day basis and I think part of the problem is that a lot of the very well meaning international support to say induction programmes in UMPs is that they focus on completely the wrong things they tend to focus on the rules of parliament the theory of what a parliament should do and it's like the analogy that I use I will always revert to a football analogy if I possibly can and it is like taking on a team of people to play football and spending a week teaching them about the rules but not letting them touch your football if you know how parliament works that's useful but it doesn't make you a good politician it's not the same, you're learning the rules of the game but you're not learning how to play the game now very few induction programmes actually give MPs the skills they need to be effective politicians but they will teach them about the parliament and I think that's part of the problem and I think this is where some of the local dynamics if you're an MP the first thing you need to do is get re-elected so you need to work out what do I need to do to get re-elected in a constituency system you'll need to be aware of what voters are expecting you to do you'll need to know what your party is expecting you to do and I think that level of understanding is held at the local level in a way that international people coming in will never understand Nedra, is there any debate in India about the role of members the kinds of discussions we've been having here today there isn't really a debate about that but let me respond to the question I'm interested MPs are first and last soldiers of the party and not servants of the people right the whole process of getting what we call a ticket I don't know whether you have a similar term to contest elections is a very very fractious one money plays a very big role in it so political financing is extremely important you have to put in money to even literally buy the chance to contest from your political party and if your political party doesn't give it to you you go party shopping so ideology counts for much less and the desire to contest elections on a known party banner counts for more then you raise the money to contest the election which is why our present parliament today is the most plutocratic parliament we've ever had from the time of independence so it is a large number of people who are wealthy who have paid to first get the right to contest or to get the ticket to contest and then to become candidates and then to actually get elected so the people on the other hand are sort of more or less cannon fodder here you work out the caste arithmetic you work out the community arithmetic and all of these other things and you sort of get elected but campaign financing poll financing is a very very big issue on that we have a debate but that is one question on which all political parties across the board resist transparency so with all the other reforms we've had in recent in the last couple of years campaign finance has not been touched and that's the root of all the problems okay so I'm going to throw it open to the floor for questions for our panellists coming at this debate about deepening democracy from very different directions different experiences so questions about their experiences are things they've said today things Valerie Amell said today we'll usually just like to throw into the debate to take it on further okay any takers got a gentleman down here anybody else we're doing better than Valerie already sorry? we're doing better than Valerie already anyone else you might not do so well you might regret this just just thinking around that last lot of discussion there and thinking the context of democracy and how that translates on the basis that when a person works so hard whether it's for financial reasons or whether it's for some ideology once they get there they have to let the people hear what they want to hear and that these days has begun to translate itself into misinformation and we only have to look in this country with Brexit and how misinformation around for or against ended up in a mess we see in the US how you feed certain things into the people and it now has the products of its own doing and there's so many dangerous things around people because instead of having informed information to make a decision alright there is the internet so you can search things but there are certain parts of it that you don't know Westminster is very much a closed shop so to be able to find everything how do we create a channel for the communities to be able to be more informed or maybe we are and the next question is from Christina just at the back there thank you it's a question specific to Janet one of the things that I'm really excited about this network is the fact that we come from different disciplines anthropology, political science etc but one of the things I really like about it is the use of the arts in terms of promoting democracy promoting the engagement between parliament and people and it's one of the things I'm really looking forward to see what sort of projects we get and what sort of ideas come and I wanted to say a little bit more from your experience what works in terms of projects because I imagine it's not necessarily something that people get just like that they might think it's different things so in terms of reactions to the people but also then on the other side of the network and also the link it says to make as MPs ministers and what works what tips would you give in terms of if we advising artists and scholars working together what advice would you give okay so we take those two first so fake news influence of social media is social media expanding the opportunity for discourse on politics because it's drawing in new different younger groups causing us problems because it's creating the ability in effect for whys for things that are not true to be disseminated at the speed of light Greg what's your thoughts I knew you were going to come to me on that in terms of I was looking at the ceiling hoping it's not going to ask me that that's such a it's a very important question it's almost unanswerable I'm not sure it's clearly played a big part in America in Europe over the last few years I'm not sure I don't know enough about how that dynamic is playing itself in other countries I think the bigger I guess my personal and I speak solely as a personal reflection rather than one of the research but I think my concern about the way in which social media is playing a part in political campaigns is that they they tend to be an echo chamber you tend to if you're using twitter or facebook or whatever you're tending to go to people who agree with you anyway and you're hearing your own views reflected back to you more loudly in the days where people used to buy newspapers you could not avoid stuff which you weren't actually that interested in but at least you knew it was going on social media you're getting a channel of stuff which is solely for you and you're missing out all sorts of other stuff which is going on in the world which again is probably just reinforcing your own view the whole stuff about misinformation it's a massive massive problem and I've got no answer to that at all my assumption is that in politics in history you see the pendulum swing back and forth and there's a certain point at which people will just get you know twitter it seems to me has probably in famous last words twitter seems to have gone over its peak because it's got so nasty, so acerbic people will drift away from it and find something else as a route to finding out information and you have to hope that what we're seeing now this populist drift over the last sort of few years there will be a swing back at some point in the next decade as people start to see through some of the people who they voted for in the last couple of years what I think we shouldn't lose sight of is what I was saying earlier about the stuff you see in certain African countries and how the prevalence of smartphones is opening up all sorts of new opportunities and I mentioned that every Tanzania and MP that we've met they never respond to email as my colleague will testify to you try and email them and they just don't respond WhatsApp they get back to you quite quickly and it's a way of them picking up on quite an honest discussion amongst groups of citizens in their electoral area and understanding what is being said watching this first hand distance but also being able to insert their voice into that conversation as and when they want to the question is whether then if they're not my concern is then the expectation of citizens as to what their MPs should be doing in terms of that engagement in social media and whether that becomes another you know problem that MPs have to bear there is a a central tension here on the one hand social media democratises it provides possibilities for average citizens to express themselves and to express their political views so that is the democratising side for which it was welcomed you also have the other side that parties at least in India have social media cells which actually farm out they contract the services of companies which do the tweeting and then the retweeting and one journalist has actually recently written a book on this which shows and there's an analysis been done of the countries from where these retweets are coming so there's Thailand there's Kazakhstan, there's a bunch of other countries and all the retweets are coming from there they're drafted centrally in let's say New Delhi and then the click activists as they are called who paid click activists simply keep clicking and retweeting it's the same message with the same grammatical errors very often and there's three or four messages put out on every subject so that now every party does the same thing so MPs aren't actually tweeting themselves it is a social media cell and then these other sort of like advertising agencies some kinds of agencies who run these campaigns the net effect is echo chamber yes but it is polarising it is creating forms of political discourse which are polarising it's this extreme or that extreme there's nothing in the middle so you will not in on political issues in India if you scan Twitter I do it very regularly I scan it and it's you will not find with sort of middle of the road liberal positions being articulated it's always extremes and that is one problem with social media I think Janet Christine asked for your views on tips for the project team and members of the network about how we can best make use of the links with the arts what works what can we do? I think the most important thing is to start talking to people working in the arts and across different forms of culture right from the beginning to not assume that your research may not be interesting from the beginning one of the most frustrating things when I was working full time in development trying to communicate messages was that people would come to me and say we can't tell you anything about this project until we've proven it's been a success and you'd be saying actually the best story could be that it's not a success and that's not to say that you shouldn't then get further funding it's to say that actually people like to know whether they're the people who have had the project that developed with them or the people who invested in it what the lessons are right from the beginning but it is complicated you haven't got a lot of time you might be trying to appeal to artists or producers who are also equally fraught for time so I think you need to look at how you involve them quite carefully for me what's really important is actually starting with the people you're researching and working with and asking them how they would like their story to be told do they want their story to be told do they want what you're finding you know to come out and I mean I'm thinking that what's extraordinary is that most people do and most people want their voice to come out there and just trying to think about this subject in terms of the parliament side of it what I think is quite interesting looking at what I've been doing is that often personally I've been helping create a space for people to talk to parliament where they really thought they had absolutely no route to get to parliament and so I think that's what could be very exciting for you in the network is to identify issues that local people want to express that otherwise they just wouldn't have a chance to voice and then to work out how to do that My question is for Professor Neraja Thank you for your discussion Sorry I can barely hear you Speak up a little bit I was fascinated by what you said and the number of points you raised in particular your points on who is the people citizens need agency and that democracy has been reduced to the election I agree with all your points on an ideological level I was wondering what you thought about the current state of democracy and its outreach within India In recent times India has been hailed as an exemplary democracy in south and there is often been criticism as to how far that can really extend to the billion plus people that live there and whether in fact democracy has really just been reduced to the votes for a number of them or whether they do actually are actually able to enjoy the benefits of engaging in democratic society so if you could shed some light on that that would be appreciated That question you would need a book to answer that question So my friend the writer called India a 50-50 democracy so it's 50% not and 50% democratic but on a more serious note if it was service delivery or success in poverty reduction that we were looking at as ways in which people use the franchise to get to improve their lives then clearly it is not a huge success because otherwise we wouldn't have such a large proportion of people below the poverty line on the other hand we have had over the last close to 70 years we have had some phenomenal examples of civic engagement in various forms whether it's social movements or social audit experiments and so forth so it's both sorts of things you have had on the ground social movements which have been empowering you have had almost a revolution not realized fully and as it should be but the sort of basis for it is present for the most part 50% reservation for women which has in many parts of the country been extremely empowering so there have been lots of positives but on the whole I think the story still remains one of people being empowered only by the vote and the vote not going far enough if you are at all familiar with the Maoist conflict in central India watch a film called Newton it's just called Newton it's about a man whose parents named him Newton and he's an election officer and goes to this tribal area to conduct an election just watch that film and then you get a sense of the sort of despondency even about the act of voting but on the other hand the people of India have voted to throw out a government that imposed a national emergency in 77 but the vote of course varies on the whole I take your point that elections and democracy is more about the vote than it is about any substantive outcomes with the qualifier as I said before that there are and have been lots of examples it's a very large country but lots of areas where there have been examples of a more vigorous democracy being practised can we hear anybody else we've got time for a 4 or 2 more can you just wait for the microphone it's going to be difficult to put up great it strikes me again as we were talking this morning that it does seem to be also a problem of political parties what is a political party for the Indian example Bangladesh where you've got completely divided parties that hold the whole country to ransom or Ethiopia where it's basically a one party state and Burma where they don't have political parties yet but no political parties I just wonder if somehow part of the crisis is an absence of a vigorous ideological visionary political parties that actually have policies to debate and whether in part of this part of this local research indigenous research can be around what kind of why do people go into politics why do they become MPs and what is it because as you say it's not really the work they do in terms of legislation and stuff and that's not why they become MPs so what is it why do they decide to become MPs and I would imagine that a lot of them are driven by a desire for a better life for themselves and their families and hopefully beyond that for their country I just wonder if each of you with your experiences in different countries and working in government I mean what is it why do people seem to change once they get into power right oh you're going to come I was hoping for a few more minutes to think about that I think these are critical issues I think in terms of what are parties for the political parties that we have in western Europe in America are a reflection of the cleavages in society at the end of the 19th century and there was a clear acknowledgement at that time that if you wanted to change your own material circumstances the best way to do it was to form a political party trade union movement and try and get control of the leaves of power that's not the same anymore it's not quite clear what problem parties are the solution to and I think the problem is what if you don't have parties you need some way of aggregating public opinion if you believe in representative democracy and I firmly do then you need something to aggregate popular opinion the problem is that in lots of places where well meaning efforts at political support have been directed towards strengthening political parties it's completely the wrong thing to do because in countries where parties form around different parts of identity whereas in Europe it was around past interests if you go to many countries those main points of identity are around ethnicity or tribe or sect or religion and the parties actually serve to emphasise those sorts of divisions in places where the point of the parliament should be to alleviate them so the other main type of party that's causing a problem is one which is dominant and in order to get on you need to be a member of the political party it's a source of patronage and corruption and you can see this in a number of the countries that I know in Africa a number of parties which conform to that that sort of model Francis Fukuyama's book on political order and political decay the Oranges of Political Order in that he points out that if the economy if you cannot rely on economic development if the economy is tanking if there are economic prospects of the economy if there are opportunities there for entrepreneurship entrepreneurs go into politics because that's a way of them serving their own best interests there is scope to get access to resources to patronage to improve your own political personal economic circumstances in a way that's not available in the private sector because the private sector isn't strong enough there's something in that what I'm not entirely sure but yeah yeah so I mean one of the problems with our political parties is not simply you know not having debates about policy which they are short on but broadly speaking you know what sort of ideological frame they have adopted and followed however the traffic that occurs in the real world between one party and another when you see people who have worked for years in one party then switch to another suggest that that ideological hold is actually not so strong but one of the problems that has dogged all political parties in India is the lack of democracy within parties we don't have the sort of structures that I think exist for instance in this country so yeah the lack of inner party democracy sound like a very Soviet word doesn't it the lack of inner party democracy is a serious problem ideology is less of a problem but there is a certain flexibility about ideology simply because at some level particularly the present moment parties are constantly searching for a message that they can put out that does not sound stale and old and can manage to get popular support in the election so yeah I mean there's one other point I had in mind but I forgot maybe I'll come back to that yeah I mean I've got two sort of reflections one is that from the work I've done really from the grassroots level and particularly looking at the equator initiative award winners for the Paris climate change conference what struck me was that out of 21 different initiatives driven by local people they were all I mean I'd say at least a third of them had managed to challenge laws that shouldn't have you know you shouldn't have been able to break through so somehow we were having an impact at a local level in terms of changing legal structures and then at an international level as well and so I don't know the scope of all of your research but I think what's really interesting is looking at how those kind of grassroots initiatives can facilitate change which is somehow going through parties I mean they all clearly spoke about how they would look at the different stakeholders and target audiences and work away through that and not be put off extraordinary I mean the other reflection I've got is that I'm from the John Smith trust in terms of why people go into politics we used to have leaders from the Soviet Union and the Middle East coming to this country to study democracy I have to sound quite glad I'm not running that organisation anymore because I'm not quite sure what I would say a lot of the time but I think that one has to assume that most people going into politics well certainly those people I met tend to come from a position where they have a belief that they want to change something for the better you have to start from that and then what happens I don't know I think I think most people quite a lot of people do stick to why they've gone into politics but often that isn't a story that's told so actually in terms of the research what might be interesting is actually to find examples of politicians who have stuck to where they've come from rather than look for the people who kind of not because I think that actually if you talk to a lot of MPs they are still re-elected and elected and elected because if they understand the local constituency and they respond to the local constituency No John, you can write the question though I remember what it was that I need to respond to which was why do people enter politics so I think there are a very large number of people in India who would genuinely want to be in politics for the best reasons of public service but those people generally find it hard to get an entry into political parties because they can't afford to pay their way and the plutocrats tend to control parties party again it comes back to party finance and the extent to which big capital is enmeshed with this process and that's the least transparent part of it so it is a case of self-interest and what economists call rent seeking and the possibilities of rent seeking but that's the monopoly that's the attribute of those people who exercise a monopoly over political parties and over their finances whereas there are lots of people the current chief minister of Delhi who started the party whose name translates as common man's party was a former tax official who then went into this anti-corruption movement thing he's presently the chief minister and he is truly animated by there are lots of other problems with his way of doing politics serious problems but he is genuinely he's a sort of populist at one level but he is genuinely animated by the idea of the public service and there are lots of people like that but the entry barriers are very very formidable okay I can see on the hands unfortunately we are running out of time so if we're going to get the next the final session in but that final session is dedicated to sort of further discussion and debate so if you haven't got your question you'll be able to ask it then also can speak to our panellists over the coffee break one of the things I think we are as a project are going to have to grapple with is this whole concept looking forward of what is success going to look like for our project and we've had a very broad ranging really interesting discussion coming at the issue of democracy and how we might deepen it how we might reform it coming at it from very different perspectives but just in terms of what success might look like changing the concept of democracy changing the concept of what the people are and what's the point of political parties why are people going into politics so just a few things for us to grapple with and kinds of issues we've come across this panel party shopping digital warriors and I think Newton the election official is going to have quite a few hits on YouTube tonight because everybody is looking at it so right can I ask you to thank our panellists very much for a really interesting discussion and then after that tea and coffee break 15 minutes by that clock up there we can be back in our seats for five past four ladies and gentlemen remind joining me to thank our panellists thank you