Abstract
This chapter brings to bear the research findings of this work onto the thesis that the “democracy paradox” of the missing link between growth and democracy is at the very roots of the “innovation paradox”, whereby the impact of the Internet revolution is still to unfold most of its potential to improve the well-being of citizens. It discusses the lessons learned on the ground about the concepts of knowledge democracy and smart participation as resolutive to reverse the trend of decline in Western democracies. The thesis is largely proven. The chapter underscores the relevance of the empirical cases of China and Italy for the scrutiny of the triangle of performance relationships: technological progress (TP), democratic participation (DP) and socio-economic growth, singling out China as the high scorer. It moves to profiling Australia, Estonia, Canada and Switzerland as laboratories of the democracy of the future because these liberal democracies perform better on the challenge of realizing richer forms of participation and innovation-driven growth. It then confirms from the findings that liberal democracy survives if it proceeds on the path to knowledge democracy, capturing the potential of technologies and reconnecting citizens with representative institutions. The chapter offers ten specific suggestions to contribute to a still too weak debate on the future of democracy and on the development of participatory mechanisms which would make institutions capable to adapt to and govern the mutation that technologies have triggered. Pointing out the limits of this empirical investigation and the need for expanded research, the chapter retraces Marco Polo’s voyage to the East and the reciprocal learning it brought through a silk road that needs to be rediscovered, and in closing it reaffirms the spirit of the West and makes an impassioned call for action to renew democracy in the era of the Internet.
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Notes
- 1.
We refer to Hegel and before him Fichte and Kant.
- 2.
No such luxury as with the 20 year long longitudinal study (1970–1990), even structured as a “panel study” of the implanting of the twenty Italian regional institutions into very different “territorial soils”, ranging from already highly developed Lombardy to highly underdeveloped Basilicata.
- 3.
Italy’s great poet Ugo Fosco inspired by his visit to the tombs of great Italians of the past, from Macchiavelli to Galileo, in Florence’s church of Santa Croce, in 1807 wrote the poem Sepolcri where he calls Italians “a egregie cose…” (to great things) that is to rise against foreign occupation and restore the integrity and greatness of the country.
- 4.
It is one of the most used decentralized platform running on a custom built blockchain operating smart contracts: it basically guaranteed that transactions are secure avoiding that this depends on some central administrator to be trusted (www.ethereum.org).
- 5.
Of the three small Baltic countries, EU member states, Estonia is not only the best economic performer but also the one which is complying more significantly with the EU recommendation on the issue of the protection of the rights of the Russian speaking minority.
- 6.
Amongst them, Professor Kelly Burns at Curtin University in Perth.
- 7.
Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane make, amongst them, 16 million of the 24 living in the country.
- 8.
To be noted is that innovation in modes of citizen engagement does not need to be new: some of these modes have been in place for a long time and in the cases of Australia or Switzerland not all of them were adopted to make those countries more “competitive”.
- 9.
There are even two of the 26 cantons—Glarus and Appenzell Ausserrhoden—of the Swiss Confederation where people vote in an assembly in the main town’s square (Landsgemeinde) by raising their hands. Of course, they are the two smallest cantons (respectively with a population of 40,000 and 16,000) of the 26 making the Federation and of a tradition which is so strong that until 1991 citizens were admitted to the poll by showing their ceremonial sword or the Swiss military sidearm (bayonet). Paradoxically, in one of the two cantons women were not admitted to vote until 1991.
- 10.
Temüjin also know as Genghis Khan did manage to create in his life time the largest contiguous empire in history. It was even larger than the one conquered by Alexander the Great three centuries BC.
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Grillo, F., Nanetti, R.Y. (2018). Knowledge Democracy as Key to Twenty-First Century. In: Democracy and Growth in the Twenty-first Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02014-9_5
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