The DISCOURSE Component

            A central, vital global component of the proposed framework is that of a platform for the discourse from which a new model for survival would emerge. It is based on the view that such a model will accommodate a wide variety of forms of practice and evolving experiments regarding governance, economics, production, social and cultural patterns and ways of life, within an overall framework of common sustainability principles and agreements aimed at nonviolent conflict resolution. That overall framework of agreements cannot be imposed top-down but must be the result of a wide participatory discourse, negotiated freely in a global platform that encourages and accommodates all ideas, concerns, visions to be brought into the discussion, brings the result of the discussion to bear on the decisions in a meaningful manner, and establishes effective safeguards to ensure that the agreements will be adhered to by all parties.

            It is recognized that organizations such as the UN are established and aimed at essentially the same general objectives. However, their effectiveness is limited by constraints resulting from their intrinsic structure (such as the UN being constituted of territorial nation-governments that themselves are being increasingly influenced by other non-territorial forces), still ineffective mechanisms for participation by all parties potentially affected by their eventual decisions, and above all a few major problems that afflict most if not all current government forms, but become supremely critical at the global level. These problems are:

-  The question of adequate representation of all concerns, interests and ideas in governance decision-making bodies, especially those of minority populations;  (representation via election according to majority vote do not meet this expectation); this can also be seen as

-  The problem of access to the forum and decision-making bodies, for all segments of society; this aspect is linked to

-  The problem of participation: one side of which is willingness to participate, often bemoaned as 'voter apathy' which may be in part caused by meaningful participation opportunities and voter perception of lack of access to the real decision-making levels,  in part, on the other side,  by lack of awareness, adequate information, education, and attitudes / values towards community involvement;

-  The missing linkage between the outcome (insights, preference expressions, even agreements) achieved in discussion and debate -- even assuming that all voices have adequate access -- and

-  The criteria applied for making decisions:  neither decisions made by hierarchical or dictatorial authority nor 'democratic' tools such as majority voting guarantee that discussion results are adequately reflected in the decision;

-  The means for ensuring that agreements, treaties, contracts, laws are adhered to. Traditional means for this are almost universally based on coercive sanctions, 'enforced' by the threat of application of force by an enforcement agency more powerful than any potential violator;  and finally:

- The control of power -- the question of how to ensure that the most powerful group or institution itself will not be tempted to abuse its power. The traditional tools for doing this at the level of nations -- elections, time limits, impeachment provisions, balance of power between different government branches etc. are reaching the limit of their effectiveness even at the national levels, are still incomplete at the global level, where they ultimately still rely on coercive sanctions (threat of violent force) which all too often results in military conflict, and prevents many nations from agreeing to endow such organizations as the UN with 'world government' authority and power.

The negotiation of global agreements for a sustainable economic model requires a global forum structured to adequately address these problems -- if not initially, but pursuing that objective as part of its mission.  Specifically, it should be designed to meet the following expectations:

   -    The platform should be open, encourage and facilitate wide participation and engagement in entering and presenting proposals for common agreements and actions, information in the form of questions, answers, evidence, arguments, and other concerns;

   -    The platform must provide adequate universal access to the forum;

   -    All contributions and information should be made easily accessible to all parties. This means

       a)  that it must provide translation of all contributions into all languages (both languages into other languages and  ‘translation’ of the many specialized vocabularies of disciplines and commercial ‘brand’ concepts and services that have developed especially in connection with new information technology and management  into ordinary languages; and

       b) provide adequate display of the essence of contributions and relationships (preferably in visual form) and concise format suitable for supporting the formation of opinions and decisions

  -     It should provide, or make efforts to develop, adequate measurements for the outcome and merit of discussion e.g. about proposals for common agreements, based on the quality of contributions, information, arguments (not just overall opinion polls which do not indicate whether they reflect uninformed sentiments, flawed information or good information and deliberation). Such measures can then serve as transparency benchmarks against which actual decision-making criteria can be compared (such as votes, if no better tools can be invented).

  -   The decision-making component of the platform should be designed to couple any decisions for agreements with provisions to ensure adherence to those agreements -- sanctions -- that do not require enforcement by threat or application of force or coercion, by a 'most powerful' enforcement agency. It should devote its attention and energy to develop new forms of sanctions that are automatically triggered by the very attempt or act of violation.

  -   To the extent that negotiation and decision-making activities within this platform involve positions or structures of power, a priority concern for the discourse (supported by research) should be the development of better forms of control of power, to prevent both abuse of power and corruption. This is a concern that applies to all societal organizations, especially also with regard to the power of private enterprise and its influence on governments but is supremely critical for global organizations and governance.

            Not all of these concerns can be resolved in the proposal for the discourse framework -- the larger  issues of sanctions, decision criteria, power control go beyond the task of organizing the discourse itself, but they must be raised and taken up by the discourse.

            The conceptual model for the proposed framework is the ‘argumentative model of planning’ (Rittel) with its support tools of ‘issue based information systems’ (IBIS) respectively ‘argumentative planning information systems’ (APIS), enhanced and implemented with current  information technology, techniques for display of the discourse (mapping) and for the development of evaluation of the merit of the discourse (merit, plausibility of arguments; >>… ).

The specific subsystems and process of the discourse are the following -- as shown in the diagram

STW UN DISCOURSE. Jpg

1.      The Discourse Agenda display showing the Proposals (for global agreements, projects,)  that have been entered, and the Topics that have been raised in the discussion.

         Examples of topics that have been raised in the course of the STW discussion, as they might appear on the agenda of such a global framework, are shown in the appendix …

2.     The 'Verbatim File'  for all contributions in the form in which they have been entered (for reference);

3.     The Translation service (shared with the Coordination component) whose function is to

         a)  translate contributions into other languages in the Verbatim file;

         b)  'translate' contributions containing discipline-specific vocabulary, acronyms ('discipline jargon') into language understandable to a wider audience.

4.    The Analysis Service

         a)  extract the essential information e.g. of proposals, arguments, evidence from contributions to 'condense' these to a concise format suitable for both convenient overview maps of the discourse, and eventual systematic evaluation; and file the resulting 'core content' into a condensed Proposal / Issue File structured according to proposals and topics;

         b)   consult with the Research component for supporting ongoing discourse with information either already available as a result of existing / past research, enlisting research specialists to contribute expert information, or engaging researchers to conduct ad-hoc investigations as appropriate to important discussions;

         c)  cross-reference the entries to the Verbatim file  (2)

5.      The Display Service which prepares visual overview diagrams (topic maps, issue maps, argument maps) for the respective proposal and topic discussions, regularly or continually updated,  displays these maps in suitable platform and media (web sited, TV public announcements, etc.) and files the maps in the Map file cross referenced to the Proposal / Issue File or in the topic pages of that file itself. It will also prepare the result of the following Evaluation Service  for display in the same way.

6.   The Evaluation Support Service.  This component will prepare the needed material for the systematic evaluation of proposals (proposal alternatives) and arguments for proposals that have been accepted by the appropriate bodies for decision or recommendation; distribute the worksheets for participants in the evaluation process, collect, compile and prepare the results for display by the Display Service.

7   Decision-making.  No recommendations are made at this time about the composition and structure of the decision-making body or entities that will be responsible for negotiating and deciding upon the acceptance of agreements; this could be the UN itself, a special new branch of the UN, an entirely different organization, or ad-hoc assemblies of agencies concerned with specific issues and topics.) The development of an effective mechanism to replace (or complement as an advisory service to) existing decision-making structures at the global level -- one that also addresses the concerns listed above about appropriate sanctions / provisions to ensure adherence to agreements as well as this about the control of power, must be seen as high priority items of the agenda of the overall discourse.  (The 'constitution' of this framework should provide for the evolutionary implementation of such provisions if these cannot be articled and included initially.)

8.     Software.  The STW discussion research indicates that a technology and software platform that would adequately serve all the required functions of this component does not yet exist.  There are software programs available on the market for several of the functions listed, but a program that fully supports and integrates all these functions into one overall easy to use platform remains to be developed.

Priority tasks for the Discourse component

      For an effective orchestration of the global discourse, the following tasks are seen as urgent:

-     Refinement of the proposed IBIS framework and its components and procedural provisions for the given purpose;

-      Development of a sturdy, comprehensive (software) platform that efficiently integrates the different parts and tasks of the discourse framework -- especially, the linking of the discussion component with the mapping and evaluation services.

 Diagram:  Discourse