Which do you enjoy more: running away from something, or running towards something? We run away in fear, and towards in love and passion. As 2024’s super-election cycle continues, citizens all over the world are making those choices: are they running towards new governments, or are they rejecting the old?

With the year past the halfway point, the electoral ripples of those choices are spreading around the world. France swung one way — towards the right — then another, as voters turned out to push back against the first result. In the US, President Biden has made a last-minute decision not to accept his party’s nomination, meaning that we’ll see a choice between a returning former president — Trump — and a potentially new one, as the Democrats choose a new nominee.

Britain has a new government for the first time in 14 years, in a landslide result that even the winning party accepted was more a vote against the outgoing Conservative administration than a vote for the new Labour one.

That, though, is Labour’s opportunity. Can they turn a vote against the Tories into a vote for Labour over the next five years? Can they turn people who were running away into people running towards?

Re-energising the electorate

Despite the global consequences of some of this year’s elections, democratic participation is not always good. In the UK General Election, just 52% of the adult population voted. There is a malaise in our electoral system, a feeling of powerlessness and disengagement. How do we reverse that?

Jon Alexander, a speaker at NEXT24, thinks that we need a deeper reappraisal of the democratic system. We need, he suggests, to awaken active citizenship in people. Our societies have not prized that. Once we were subjects, subservient to the will of the monarch. And then, as we evolved democratic societies, we shifted to a narrative of citizens as consumers. Jon argues that the consumer narrative is fading:

Now the Consumer Story is failing. The Subject Story is resurgent. But at the same time, a new story — the Citizen Story — is taking shape across the world, and in every aspect of society. In the Citizen Story, we see ourselves as the creative, capable, caring creatures we are. We realise that all of us are smarter than any of us. We get involved.

So, how do we tell this Citizen Story? How do we engage people in the process at a deeper level than choosing — or not — to put a cross in a box every few years?

Citizens’ assemblies for nature

Well, there’s a great example from the UK.

Climate paralysis has been a marked feature of the debate on how to address the climate crisis. It feels too big and too threatening for individual action:

Too much climate anxiety can cause paralysis, preventing climate action. In this state, people can struggle to go to work or even socialize. They can experience panic attacks, insomnia, obsessive thinking and appetite changes. While individuals of all ages experience climate anxiety, more young people are reporting it, likely because of the profound impact climate change will have on their future and because they feel powerless to do anything about it. There must be a balance between sufficient anxiety to promote positive and urgent change in people’s behaviour, and not so much as to create paralysis.

But what if you could engage people in the solutions? Jon was instrumental in the creation of the UK’s People’s Plan for Nature, through the use of active engagement of citizens. This was an effort by various membership organisations and campaigning bodies in the conservation and climate space to speak together about what the UK needs to do to address the climate crisis, and the wholesale loss of biodiversity.

Why a “people’s plan”? They use Jon’s thinking, manifesting in the form of citizens’ assemblies, where ordinary people debated the issues, and came up with plans:

The citizens’ assembly process, which took place over four weekends over four months, then developed a set of recommendations, not just for national governments, but also local government, businesses, and even what community groups themselves could do.

So, rather than voting for politicians based on what they want to do, we invert the narrative and go to politicians with a plan. “We want you to do this for us. Will you?”

And then, potentially, we choose our politicians based on their alignment with the plans we’ve co-operated on.

The active Citizen

Those of you in the marketing world might be spotting some points of connection here. People who have participated in the process are likely to become advocates for its results. Just as a marketing goal is to turn consumers into brand advocates, these systems aim to turn residents into active, campaigning citizens. It, in theory, puts new energy into our democratic systems through greater participation.

The fact that we have moved from a subject narrative to a consumer one is proof that conceptual shifts can occur. And, in theory, digital is a technology that can allow these engaged citizenship approaches to happen. But it will not be easy to change such an established narrative. As Jon and his co-author of the book Citizens, Ariane Conrad, wrote for the BBC:

In order to realise the citizen future, we must neither accept what we are given as the only possibility, as subjects do; nor throw our toys from the pram when we do not like what is on offer, as consumers do. As citizens, we must propose, not just reject. We must establish a foundation of belief in one another. We must start from where we are, accept responsibility, and create meaningful opportunities for each other to contribute as we do so. We must step up, and step in. As the pioneering architect and designer Buckminster Fuller wrote: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, create a new model that makes the existing models obsolete.”

Picture by Red Dot | Unsplash.