Political Parties: A Possible Disruption Model

Avoiding talk of politics means giving up on a society's desire for prosperity. This post steers clear of traditional political ideas and only sets out to apply the digital transformation model to one more sector, and one that is especially in crisis: The political party industry.

[Originally published on my blog under the title "How to disrupt the political party industry"]

Introduction / Questions for discussion

• Shouldn't politics be understood as the art of managing public affairs through the delegation of citizens' votes, and not as the political party industry? Politics, understood that way, is necessary. Perhaps not so much the business model of today's political parties. (Politics as the management of public affairs)
• Why have more than 2/3 of the current ministers never paid Social Security contributions from a private company, and why do 40% of them historically end up working in a private company once they leave politics? (The private and the public: before and after)
• Why has politics turned nowadays into a communications machine that promotes “divide and conquer”, and whose result has been a society that is increasingly polarised and less cohesive? (Polarisation strategy as an endemic ill)
• Hasn't civil society been the great victim (and, at an individual level, also co-responsible) of the polarisation strategies of a political industry increasingly removed from its role as public servant to civil society (the demand-side view) and increasingly focused on the successful management of election periods (the supply-side view)? (The Trump model as the grotesque farce of the politics industry)
• Why have we got used, in Spain, to none of the political party leaders scoring above 5 in the CIS surveys, and why do we let them stand for election? Would we allow a professional rated below 5 out of 10 to manage our public interests? (Periodic Satisfaction Indicators, or NPS in politics)
• Why do we allow today's politics to be the art of getting in the picture as a measure of performance? Is it not possible to break the toxic connection between political parties and the media (more politicians with technical training and fewer politicians trained as journalists)? (Professionalising the management of public affairs)
• Electoral laws and the local and regional entrenchment of certain political parties have become the distribution model of the political industry; can that distribution model be disrupted the way a fintech disrupts banking? (Disrupting the model of geographic reach)
• Why do we approve political management through our vote in successive election periods instead of judging that management on the basis of indicators and results? Can we penalise the systematic failure to deliver electoral programmes, making their delivery answerable to independent oversight bodies and based on general-interest indicators tracked publicly, periodically and transparently? (Performance indicators in politics)
• Why do we allow poorly qualified professionals to manage public budgets as a reward for a lifetime of loyalty and party membership? Shouldn't a minister be a professional with proven skills in the field of management they lead? (Professionalising public managers)
• Aren't abstention and the blank ballot (even a vote for parties with no likely parliamentary representation) symptoms of discontent and of a lack of representation on the part of the political class? Why do we allow abstention to be judged as apathy on the part of civil society? (Surfacing dissatisfaction indicators)
• Why are the opinion polls doctored by the political industry worth more than the daily opinion shown on the street or on social media? Social networks have been key to the rise of certain players who set out to disrupt the political industry and who have turned into traditional political players and the main drivers of polarisation as a new way of doing politics in order to neutralise the effect of the traditional parties' geographic reach (Citizen participation beyond the controversy on social media, or sentiment measurement as a sub-construct of an NPS in politics)

Is it possible to disrupt the politics industry as it is conceived today? I don't mean to be naïve, I only mean to use the methodology for understanding the transformation of any sector and apply it to the political industry (or to the model for directing and managing public affairs).

Ideas for disrupting the political party industry

Translating the 8 transformation vectors of any sector to the politics industry, these would be the axes:

1. Business model review: A sense of unity and the search for consensus on performance indicators.
2. Leveraging technology: A new digital politics
3. Use of data: data-driven politics
4. Omnichannel Strategy: Disrupting the distribution model of today's political industry
5. Mindset change: Halting polarisation
6. Government model: A new governance model for politics
7. New organisational model: Agile Politics
8. Government as a Platform: A platform model to transform politics

https://youtu.be/RapxRjmEbY4

1.- Business model review: A sense of unity and the search for performance indicators

• Redefine the politics industry, moving from the re-election of an industry's professionals in 4-year election periods to citizens' daily satisfaction on strategic common-good indicators built on a dialectic of consensus. (Politics from the demand-side view and not from the supply side)
• Search for narratives that unite the extremes, and spell out those narratives or communication exercises whose only aim is to divide (constructive dissent)
• Build consensus and unity on the issues that concern us as civil society: Healthcare, Tourism, Education, Digital Transformation, Sustainability, Prosperity (pillars of consensus)
• Define strategic country indicators on these consensus blocks and hand their transparent tracking and periodic publication to independent bodies (Performance indicators)
• Not allow narratives from politicians that fuel polarisation on these core axes of consensus, and avoid polarising dialectics on social media and messaging systems (penalise the conflict-seeker by not reacting)
• Create conversations and discussion groups at community level through debates between people holding apparently opposing positions (e.g. Our Recipe for Unity • Sharing Food, the Universal Language)

2.- Leveraging technology: A new digital politics

• Creation of data architectures that enable public and private collaboration as a lever for national differentiation
• Promotion of remote representation systems and of systems to validate certain decisions beyond election periods
• The mobile phone as the device for connection and for encouraging citizen participation
• Blockchain as the technological basis of trust for certain processes (tax information, interoperable data systems, sovereign identity management systems)
• Artificial intelligence as a basis for differentiating public activity and as a lever for creating talent.

3.- Use of data: data-driven politics

• Creation of a set of strategic national indicators on the consensus blocks. Measurement, tracking and periodic publication
• Interoperable personal data wallets held by citizens (civil society), governed under blockchain models and connected to public and private bodies (data, votes and purchase decisions).
• Data as a lever for transparency in political action and for civil society's management of that political action.
• Autonomy and professionalisation of the agencies and bodies that audit and measure the performance of political action
• Promotion of fact-checking agencies across the whole political spectrum. (Fake news and disinformation )

4.- Omnichannel Strategy: Disrupting the distribution model of today's political industry

• Neutralisation of the traditional advantages that established political parties hold through their local and provincial bases, perhaps by redefining the electoral map and reviewing the D’Hondt method to reward 1 person - 1 vote
• Promotion of remote work to geographically offset the challenge of depopulated rural Spain.
• Review the system of powers held by the Autonomous Communities (the geographic distribution model of the political industry) on matters of national / global importance: Education, Healthcare, Digital Transformation, Sustainability.

5.- Mindset change: Halting polarisation

• Inspiration from influencers to build discernment about polarising discourse and early detection of polarisation strategies.
• Real-time interventions to halt polarisation as an individual act of responsibility (cutting off fake news, memes that ridicule)
• Encourage investigative journalism to surface the political parties' meme factories.
• Citizen participation in dialogues that allow dissent as part of the thriving conversation of a mature civil society.

6.- Government model: A new governance model for politics

• Promotion of popular consultations through digital channels (e-voting)
• Build a system where the “voter experience” is sought as a priority (e.g. If casting a vote were the same as sending a WhatsApp message, would 100% of the population vote?
• Review of the regulator's role in order to generate national competitiveness (taxation in the digital age, traceability of spending as a tax base, labour regulation in remote work environments and harmonisation for remote work environments at a global level)

7.- New organisational model: Agile Politics

• Review of the citizen participation model towards a more agile one, avoiding the supremacy of election periods as a fallacy of stability.
• Review of the management policies of public administrations in order to generate more agile and participatory management systems.
• Accelerate the Ideation, creation and execution cycles of public services in order to encourage “Minimum Viable Services” that are optimised through the lens of civil society's feedback (voters' NPS)

8.- Government as a Platform: A platform strategy to disrupt the political industry

• Creation of citizen platforms with representation from civil society and from academic and business authorities in order to reinvent politics beyond today's political parties.
• Representation of citizen platforms on the oversight and audit bodies of today's political parties (No politicians on the Court of Auditors)
• Interoperable data architectures that allow information to be exploited to generate public-private collaboration opportunities and country differentiation based on Artificial Intelligence.

Challenges for a new politics: Questions to answer

• How do we turn digitalisation into a national advantage?
• Is it possible to turn Spain into the perfect country to live in and work remotely from? Instead of “Sun and Beach”, “Sun and Talent”.
• How do we regulate the protection of the most vulnerable in a digitalised society?
• How do we regulate the concept of workers' rights at country level in a global context of remote workers?
• Is it possible to surface the shadow economy through the digital traceability of payments?
• How do we redefine a fairer tax system in which both income and spending have been disrupted by the arrival of blockchain? Can income and/or payments in cryptocurrencies be taxed?
• Is it possible to create a personalised indirect tax on spending for individuals, taking advantage of the individual traceability of payment methods, to replace direct taxes? Is a similar system possible for companies? What would the impact be on public revenue?

These 8 vectors represent the right side and the left side of the brain of any organisation and, together, they aim to surface the need to produce ambidextrous leaders as the most resilient model of leadership in Politics for contexts of high uncertainty and maximum volatility. Why not apply them in the common interest? Why not apply them to the management of the greatest of the common assets we handle in an economy: Politics?

As Bill Gates used to say back in 1994:

“Banking is necessary, banks are not”. [Silence].

Sources of inspiration

• How to Disrupt Toxic Politics and Bridge Political Divides - How to Disrupt Toxic Politics and Bridge Political Divides | The Communications Network
• Bridging or Breaking? The Stories We Tell Will Create the Future We Inhabit — john a. powell
• El 40% de los ministros de la Democracia se ha pasado a una gran empresa (40% of the ministers of the democratic era have moved on to a large company)
• https://www.libremercado.com/2019-11-08/pedro-sanchez-16-de-sus-17-ministros-no-han-trabajado-nunca-empresa-privada-1276647602/
• https://www.bernardocrespo.com/necesidad-exponencial-de-cambio-disruption-as-a-service/
• Despejar el Crecimiento de la Ecuación • Bernardo Crespo (Solving the Equation for Growth)
• Una Sencilla Deconstrucción de la Transformación Digital • Bernardo Crespo (A Simple Deconstruction of Digital Transformation)
• Study no. 3313. MARCH 2021 BAROMETER: http://datos.cis.es/webFtp/fileGetter.jsp?dwld=Es3313marMT_A.pdf