2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
Traditional structures are disintegrating and no longer offer comfort to politicians. The latest 'industrial revolution' poses very different challenges from those they understand. Further, we have educated our Western workforces to a level sufficient for them, at least, to recognise that these new challenges exist; no matter how much the politicians might have wished otherwise.
The most obvious outcome, where these power structures are inevitably at the focus of the various revolutions, is that the traditional structures - overcome by the forces of change - are being torn apart. The symptoms are already to be seen around us, and around the world; not least in the marked instability in voting patterns.
Driven, at least in part, by the changes wrought by the latest industrial revolution, a parallel political revolution is sweeping the globe - communism was just its first victim. Although it is not yet clear the exact form they will take, almost all nations will experience massive shifts in political power.
Most futurologists have by now recognised the changes in society which are sweeping the globe. Few, though, record the scale of the changes taking place in the political arena - these are less obvious and more recent in origin.
Kooiman & Van Vliet suggest "Since the mid-1970s the spectre of ungovernability has haunted the modern state. Citizens realise that the bureaucratic state delivering goods and services has not fulfilled its promises."
The Chatham House Forum suggests that "One of the central ideas at the close of the twentieth century is that of self-organization. Many agents, be they plants and animals in an ecology system, or economic actors in a marketplace, tend to assemble themselves into stable systems." The political viewpoint is perhaps more evident when it adds "Human societies have relied heavily upon self-assembling systems, such as markets. Our worst political experiments have been those which attempted to design social structures from the top down..."
Charles Leadbeater simply says "Politics is dead. There are no big ideas...Political culture is confrontational without being creative...Personalised invective is offered as a substitute for argument." Eric Hobbsbawm perhaps makes the definitive statement about recent political developments "The history of the twenty years after 1973 is that of a world which lost its bearings and slid into instability and crisis...Until the USSR had collapsed entirely, the global nature of the crisis was not recognized, let alone admitted in the developed non-communist regions."
Martin Woollacott states that "Above all, the containment of future dangers has, without our quite noticing it, gradually become the main business of government." And he widens the perspective to include "Whole scientific establishments concern themselves with the prediction of risks. Newspapers and television on some days seem concerned with little else".
Fintan O'Toole suggests "What characterises our approach to the Millennium is that the ideologies of both left and right are in trouble...the rise of Green thinking has drawn attention to the physical limits on progress and to the very real prospect that [it] could lead to oblivion." The Economist[a] also highlights the problems faced by the opposing ideologies, though it ascribes them to more complex causes, pointing out that "...voters in established democracies are showing signs of an increasing readiness to desert the familiar parties of old...for years, political parties in old democracies have been struggling...In America, as in other countries, society has been growing less cohesive, more granulated. Education, switching jobs and moving up the class ladder have made people less inclined to take their politics from their parents and are more inclined to form, and change, their own political opinions."Peter Drucker[b], for instance, comments that "...the events of 1989 and 1990 were more than just the end of an era; they signified the end of one kind of history...250 years that were dominated by a secular religion - I have called it the belief in the salvation by society." Campiglio & Hammond even suggest "...that future historians will date the effective ending [of the 20th century] not from the year 1999 or 2000, but to 1989 and the end of the Cold War."
Brian Beedham[c] offers one explanation "...the effect of the fading of ideology is that political parties are losing their old power...In post-cold-war politics the parties can no longer claim to be carrying banners inscribed with the name of a great idea that unites a whole segment of humanity."
Fred Bergsten - director of the Institute for International Economics - suggests that "The death of [communist] command economics...and with it the simplistic notion that there was some pure alternative called 'capitalism', cleared the way for the real debates..." He goes on to ask "Which elements from each [competing] version of 'capitalism' should be melded together to form the most effective economic system? Must democracy precede or coincide with economic liberalisation (as most westerners believe) or can economic reform come first, with political reform deferred for some time (as most Asians believe)?" The Economist[a] adds the important footnote that "In the absence of its competitor [communism], the consequence is a weakening of ideology in general."
15 May 2003
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