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Can citizens keep steering and correcting the people they elect — without having to spend their lives supervising them?
Serbia’s Student List won a parliamentary majority. The student organisers have practised decision-making collectively under extreme pressure, chosen other people – experts – to serve, and intend to hold them to account. I find that wonderfully hopeful – it’s one of the most striking democratic experiments since Occupy, with a nod to Sudan and Rojava.
I recently spent several years partly based in Novi Sad, Serbia, so this feels close to home. Today marks two years since the station canopy collapse there, which killed 16 people. The demand for accountability that brought people together then still needs to be met. And they’ve promised justice, not reprisals.
The FT describes students rotating meeting chairs, sharing responsibility, choosing candidates through university assemblies. A movement with enough independence to challenge the people it helped elect, representatives with enough authority to act, could give us something worth learning from. Especially if participation becomes available to people who never joined a student plenum. Can they make these relationship work in government?
https://lnkd.in/e8UkdcBs
They don’t need or want my advice, but as they prepare to form a government, I hope they’ll give that practice some lasting foundations:
– Give ministers clear authority to act, with published responsibilities, decisions, and regular public questioning. Some choices need speed. People should still be able to find out who decided, why, and how to challenge it.
– Make independent scrutiny work against the new government too. They’re already asking public servants to preserve evidence of possible wrongdoing. That’s a promising start. Follow through with open contracts, fair appointments, and investigators free to pursue wrongdoing wherever it leads. Protect the people who bring unwelcome information.
– Continue to widen participation beyond universities. Professional expertise will matter; so will citizens’ knowledge of how public services actually work. Include people who voted against them. A parent working shifts should have a usable way to influence a decision without attending a five-hour meeting. Give people a public answer, and show what changes as a result.
– Choose a few early improvements people can verify. Publish infrastructure inspections and repair schedules. Make it easier to get an appointment, a medicine, or a straight answer from a public office. Let staff and citizens identify what’s failing, and give them scope to fix it. Be explicit about what will take longer.
And let the students return to their lives. Rotate the work of scrutiny, share it with others, keep it independent of government. Their achievement deserves arrangements that don’t require the same people to remain permanently exhausted.
From the outside, the movement is a black box – they invite those of us interested to visit and talk to them – but, dare I say it, might they offer a cybernetic form of government?
