Open Government

Chapter 13. Democracy, Under Everything

Sarah Schacht

Not everything is political, but increasingly, everyone is.

In a democratic country with a growing population, everything’s a resource, an allocation, a public good or ill. There was a time when some things just were, and I am barely old enough to remember that time. We now seem to live in a country that is wrestling between issues of scarcity and nimiety—in which we feel compelled to voice our concerns, complaints, and opinions. Not so long ago, there were simple things that weren’t political, such as school lunches, urban trees, and fish in the oceans. Now, even the most mundane elements of our world have causes, campaigns, and advocacy platforms (e.g., there has been an international movement, spearheaded by cooking guru Jamie Oliver, to make children’s lunches healthier and more sustainable).

Many Voices, Many Messages, One Government

Enabled by technology, our concerned voices are piling onto the democratic process in record numbers. But the underpinnings of the legislative process are weakening; accessible legislative information and healthy dialogues between citizens and legislators are difficult to come by. And while we view the bureaucratic process of building legislation as arcane, we rarely glimpse how anachronistic the technology within the process is—from minutes stored in microfiche to bills released online to the public days after they were available in person. The tools of our modern legislative process are old and ...