Competing Oz-ocracies and the corruption of democracy

Much political decision-making is processed through adhocracy, a system of temporary expedients such as committees or reviews or enquiries. These either involve interested parties, and are designed to give the appearance of legitimacy to deals already done, or involve intransigent opponents and sundry 'experts', and are designed to waste time, create chaos and give legitimacy to deals already done.

The role of the media, in terms of the standards of reporting, the ethics of journalistic news gathering and the concentration of ownership (notably, Murdochracy), has long been of concern to champions of proper democracy. The word 'mediacracy', meaning government by the media, has been around at least since 2003. But mediacracy has two angles. It can mean a system in which politicians stop thinking and begin listening exclusively to the media (or 'focus groups' who mirror it) regarding what the important issues are and what policies should be pursued. Here the lobbyocracy and the mediacracy serve one another well.

On the other hand, mediacracy also results when governments attempt to 'use' media to enhance their role in society and media come to represent 'the people'.This works both ways. Governments manipulate the media, but are at the same time being manipulated. Moral principles and political integrity are subordinated to popularity and survival, and people are dominated by artificial and usually inequitable policies. The attempts to broaden political participation through twitter-ocracy are very encouraging, but fighting fire with fire often just creates a bigger fire. In any case, most of the 'followme@twitter' types aren't worth following very far.

In the last three or four years, particularly in America, Europe and Australia, sharper criticism has also been aimed at the corrosive consequences of an increasingly powerful lobbyocracy. Some see it as 'democracy perverted by Big Money', others portray an existential contest - Democracy versus Lobbyocracy. The sheer number of lobbyists involved, the resources of the major and minor lobbies, the blatant success of their strategies, certainly make a mockery of informed public debate and rational political participation. And the lobbies aren't all money grubbing; the power and influence of the pro-Israeli and Christian Zionist lobbies are legendary. A whiff of aspirations towards theocracy is often discernible.

The spawning of 'ocracies' in general and their 'Oz-ocracy' versions should be of particular concern to supporters of civil liberties, human rights, international humanitarian law and peace with justice. All these parasitic ocracies serve their own interests exclusively, to the detriment of the common good. They take advantage of democracy to subvert its essentially egalitarian and communitarian character; common wealth is pillaged for private gain.