Do we need a re-set in our democratic culture? We often tie ourselves in knots thinking that Northern Ireland is an exception to the rest of the world, but this week's guest on #CargoOfBricks Richard Wilson's experience is much broader and he thinks politicians are falling far short of current needs.


In it we cover...


Our Victorian ideas of how representative democracy works are being outrun by a connected electorate which is losing its patience with politicians who don't know how to listen. Accordingly, trust across political identities and ideologies of left and right is falling. Politicians need humility in order to balance the top-down flow of information and data from experts and simultaneously engage communities from the bottom up in order to resist the temptation to be definitive at a time when no one has the right answers to hand,. Engagement is not about technology, but how you use it. Communities are more stable than politics representatives need a long, not a short game. New platforms afford opportunities for using enabling language and open questions to bring issues to ordinary people in a digestible way.

If you would like to get involved in #TheReset, either as an individual or as part of an organisation, please do get in touch by emailing us at [email protected] with an idea for inclusion in a range of articles or events over September and October.


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