TEDGlobal 2014
Pia Mancini: How to upgrade democracy for the Internet era
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Pia Mancini and her colleagues want to upgrade democracy in Argentina and beyond. Through their open-source mobile platform they want to bring citizens inside the legislative process, and run candidates who will listen to what they say.
Pia Mancini - Democracy activist
Using software to inspire public debate and enable voter engagement, Pia Mancini hopes to upgrade modern democracy in Argentina and beyond. Full bio
Using software to inspire public debate and enable voter engagement, Pia Mancini hopes to upgrade modern democracy in Argentina and beyond. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:12
I have the feeling that we can all agree
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that we're moving towards a new
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model of the state and society.
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But, we're absolutely clueless as to what this is
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or what it should be.
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It seems like we need to have
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a conversation about democracy
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in our day and age.
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Let's think about it this way:
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We are 21st-century citizens, doing our
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very, very best to interact with 19th century-designed
institutions
institutions
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that are based on an information technology of the 15th century.
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Let's have a look at some of the
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characteristics of this system.
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First of all, it's designed for an information technology
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that's over 500 years old.
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And the best possible system
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that could be designed for it
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is one where the few make daily decisions
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in the name of the many.
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And the many get to vote once every
couple of years.
couple of years.
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In the second place, the costs of
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participating in this system are
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incredibly high.
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You either have to have a fair
bit of money
bit of money
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and influence, or you have to devote your entire
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life to politics.
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You have to become a party member
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and slowly start working up the ranks
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until maybe, one day, you'll get
to sit at a table
to sit at a table
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where a decision is being made.
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And last but not least,
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the language of the system —
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it's incredibly cryptic.
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It's done for lawyers, by lawyers,
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and no one else can understand.
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So, it's a system where we can
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choose our authorities,
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but we are completely left out on how
those authorities
those authorities
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reach their decisions.
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So, in a day where a new information technology
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allows us to participate globally
in any conversation,
in any conversation,
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our barriers of information are completely lowered
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and we can, more than ever before,
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express our desires and our concerns.
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Our political system remains the same
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for the past 200 years
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and expects us to be contented with being
simply passive recipients
simply passive recipients
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of a monologue.
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So, it's really not surprising that
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this kind of system is only able to produce
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two kinds of results:
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silence or noise.
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Silence, in terms of citizens not engaging,
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simply not wanting to participate.
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There's this commonplace
[idea] that I truly, truly dislike,
[idea] that I truly, truly dislike,
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and it's this idea that we citizens are naturally
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apathetic. That we shun commitment.
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But, can you really blame us
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for not jumping at the opportunity of going
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to the middle of the city in the middle
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of a working day to attend, physically,
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a public hearing that has no impact
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whatsoever?
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Conflict is bound to happen between a system
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that no longer represents, nor has any dialogue capacity,
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and citizens that are increasingly used
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to representing themselves.
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And, then we find noise:
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Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico
Italy, France, Spain, the United States,
Italy, France, Spain, the United States,
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they're all democracies.
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Their citizens have access to
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the ballot boxes. But they still feel the need,
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they need to take to the streets in order
to be heard.
to be heard.
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To me, it seems like the 18th-century
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slogan that was the basis for the formation
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of our modern democracies, "No taxation
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without representation,"
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can now be updated to "No representation
without a conversation."
without a conversation."
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We want our seat at the table.
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And rightly so.
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But in order to be part of this conversation,
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we need to know what we want to do next,
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because political action is being able
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to move from agitation
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to construction.
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My generation has been incredibly good at
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using new networks and technologies
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to organize protests,
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protests that were able to successfully
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impose agendas,
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roll back extremely pernicious legislation,
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and even overthrow authoritarian governments.
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And we should be immensely
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proud of this.
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But, we also must admit that we
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haven't been good at using those
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same networks and technologies
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to successfully articulate an alternative
to what we're seeing
to what we're seeing
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and find the consensus and build
the alliances that are needed
the alliances that are needed
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to make it happen.
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And so the risk that we face
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is that we can create these huge power vacuums
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that will very quickly get filled up by de facto
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powers, like the military or highly
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motivated and already organized groups
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that generally lie on the extremes.
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But our democracy is neither
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just a matter of voting once every
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couple of years.
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But it's not either the ability to bring millions
onto the streets.
onto the streets.
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So the question I'd like to raise here,
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and I do believe it's the most important
question we need to answer,
question we need to answer,
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is this one:
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If Internet is the new printing press,
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then what is democracy for the Internet era?
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What institutions do we want to build
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for the 21st-century society?
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I don't have the answer, just in case.
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I don't think anyone does.
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But I truly believe we can't afford
to ignore this question anymore.
to ignore this question anymore.
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So, I'd like to share our experience
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and what we've learned so far
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and hopefully contribute two cents
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to this conversation.
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Two years ago, with a group of friends
from Argentina,
from Argentina,
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we started thinking, "how can
we get our representatives,
we get our representatives,
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our elected representatives,
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to represent us?"
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Marshall McLuhan once said that politics
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is solving today's problems with yesterday's tools.
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So the question that motivated us was,
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can we try and solve some of today's problems
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with the tools that we use every single
day of our lives?
day of our lives?
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Our first approach was to design and develop
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a piece of software called DemocracyOS.
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DemocracyOS is an open-source web application
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that is designed to become a bridge
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between citizens and their elected representatives
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to make it easier for us to participate
from our everyday lives.
from our everyday lives.
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So first of all, you can get informed so every new
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project that gets introduced in Congress
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gets immediately translated and explained
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in plain language on this platform.
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But we all know that social change
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is not going to come from just knowing
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more information,
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but from doing something with it.
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So better access to information
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should lead to a conversation
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about what we're going to do next,
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and DemocracyOS allows for that.
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Because we believe that democracy is
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not just a matter of stacking up
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preferences, one on top of each other,
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but that our healthy and robust public debate
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should be, once again, one of its fundamental values.
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So DemocracyOS is about persuading
and being persuaded.
and being persuaded.
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It's about reaching a consensus
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as much as finding a proper way
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of channeling our disagreement.
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And finally, you can vote
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how you would like your elected
representative to vote.
representative to vote.
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And if you do not feel comfortable
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voting on a certain issue,
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you can always delegate your vote
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to someone else, allowing
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for a dynamic and emerging social leadership.
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It suddenly became very easy for us
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to simply compare these results
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with how our representatives were
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voting in Congress.
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But, it also became very evident that
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technology was not going to do the trick.
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What we needed to do to was to find
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actors that were able to
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grab this distributed knowledge
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in society and use it to make better
and more fair decisions.
and more fair decisions.
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So we reached out to traditional political parties
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and we offered them DemocracyOS.
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We said, "Look, here you have a platform
that you can use to build
that you can use to build
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a two-way conversation with your constituencies."
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And yes, we failed.
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We failed big time.
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We were sent to play
outside like little kids.
outside like little kids.
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Amongst other things, we were called naive.
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And I must be honest: I think, in hindsight, we were.
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Because the challenges that we face, they're not
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technological, they're cultural.
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Political parties were never willing
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to change the way they make their decisions.
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So it suddenly became a bit obvious
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that if we wanted to move forward
with this idea,
with this idea,
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we needed to do it ourselves.
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And so we took quite a leap of faith,
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and in August last year, we founded
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our own political party,
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El Partido de la Red,
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or the Net Party, in the city of
Buenos Aires.
Buenos Aires.
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And taking an even bigger leap of faith,
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we ran for elections in October last year
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with this idea:
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if we want a seat in Congress,
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our candidate, our representatives
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were always going to vote according to
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what citizens decided on DemocracyOS.
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Every single project that got introduced
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in Congress, we were going vote
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according to what citizens decided
on an online platform.
on an online platform.
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It was our way of hacking the political system.
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We understood that if we wanted
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to become part of the conversation,
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to have a seat at the table,
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we needed to become valid stakeholders,
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and the only way of doing it is to play by the
system rules.
system rules.
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But we were hacking it in the sense that
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we were radically changing the way a political party
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makes its decisions.
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For the first time, we were making our decisions
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together with those who we were
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affecting directly by those decisions.
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It was a very, very bold move for a two-month-old party
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in the city of Buenos Aires.
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But it got attention.
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We got 22,000 votes, that's 1.2 percent of the votes,
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and we came in second for the local options.
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So, even if that wasn't enough to win a
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seat in Congress, it was enough
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for us to become part of the conversation,
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to the extent that next month,
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Congress, as an institution, is launching
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for the first time in Argentina's history,
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a DemocracyOS to discuss,
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with the citizens, three pieces of legislation:
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two on urban transportation and
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one on the use of public space.
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Of course, our elected representatives are not
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saying, "Yes, we're going to vote
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according to what citizens decide,"
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but they're willing to try.
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They're willing to open up a new space
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for citizen engagement and hopefully
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they'll be willing to listen as well.
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Our political system can be transformed,
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and not by subverting it, by destroying it,
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but by rewiring it with the tools that
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Internet affords us now.
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But a real challenge is to find, to design
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to create, to empower those connectors
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that are able to innovate, to transform
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noise and silence into signal
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and finally bring our democracies
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to the 21st century.
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I'm not saying it's easy.
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But in our experience, we actually stand a chance
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of making it work.
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And in my heart, it's most definitely
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worth trying.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Pia Mancini - Democracy activistUsing software to inspire public debate and enable voter engagement, Pia Mancini hopes to upgrade modern democracy in Argentina and beyond.
Why you should listen
After a disappointing brush with traditional political parties in Argentina, Pia Mancini realized that the existing democracy was disconnected from its citizens -- and that no one was likely to fix it.
In response, Mancini helped launch Democracy OS, an open-source mobile platform designed to provide Argentine citizens with immediate input into the legislative process. To promote it, she helped found the Partido de la Red, a new party running candidates committed to legislate only as directed by constituents using online tools for participation.
More profile about the speakerIn response, Mancini helped launch Democracy OS, an open-source mobile platform designed to provide Argentine citizens with immediate input into the legislative process. To promote it, she helped found the Partido de la Red, a new party running candidates committed to legislate only as directed by constituents using online tools for participation.
Pia Mancini | Speaker | TED.com