We often hear that we live a fluid political climate.
I already discussed how I do not see this as a momentary glitch in an otherwise sound political system, but rather as the natural consequence of our technological evolution; something that has not yet reached the tipping point too.
So what do we mean when we speak about political fluidity today? It is a concept related to how the electorate is mutable and their support to a leader or party is purely momentary, and could change at any time. While this was obviously always true to some degree, it is now becoming more true than ever.
Living in a society where Opinion Leaders were replaced by Influencers, and where their influence is as volatile as the number of “likes” they receive, means the leadership is shifting from the stronghold of a few trusted people to the realm of ideas.
Leadership of ideas will make political fluidity a systemic feature of our political system, where politicians will be spokespersons delegated to express the will of the population.
The shift from Senators and Deputies to spokespersons won’t be just a mere vocabulary update, but a complete change of political paradigm that will revolutionize our institutions as we know them.
If the population’s demand for fluidity will keep increasing, the only appropriate institutional response to would be limiting in time and scope the mandate we give to our spokespersons, so that the parliament could reflect more accurately the electorate’s will.
A spokesperson aware of the volatility of their mandate will essentially be dominated by the laws of a likeocracy, will cease being compelled to follow the political agenda of a party, as the only way to get a longer mandate will be to collect and maintain as many “likes” as possible (of course these aren’t literal social media “likes”, but more a direct-democracy device to express popular will).
One of the most delicate aspect to analyze is how to deal with international treaties, contracts and agreements whose validity relies on long term accountability and goes really poorly with the concepts of fluidity and volatility.
A revolutionized parliament with a revolutionized concept of political party is likely to have further consequences, not last, I believe we will abandon our current purely representative democracy, to move towards a more hybrid model that will include more elements of direct democracy.