Democracy: A National Research Priority!

by Jane Goodall

The Federal Government's recently released paper on developing national research priorities has been anxiously anticipated and even more anxiously received in some discipline areas. A Humanities and Social Sciences summit held in Canberra in July last year drew together a range of speakers to address the question of how research in these disciplines could be placed more prominently on the national agenda. The concern was warranted, in that when the funding priorities were nominated early this year, they confounded the capacity of even the most adventurous humanities or social science researchers to reinvent their work to fit any of the categories, which are:

nano- and bio-materials
genome/phenome research
complex/intelligence systems
photon science and technology

So now the excluded disciplines are rallying themselves again to make a concerted bid for a share of the funding cake. Last weekend, the second of a series of three national symposiums on Creative Arts research was held at the Victorian College of the Arts, under the innovative title Innovations. The format for these events looks like becoming something of a genre. "Key players" are invited to speak, individually or in panels, followed by questions from the floor. There is minimal opportunity for discussion: it's hard enough to fit all the scheduled talks into the timetable, and the audience are frequently reminded that their questions must be brief. Chairpersons survey the scattering of raised hands sceptically and concede there is time for "just one more" before the already pinched recess of the coffee break. The same key players recur on the platforms of one symposium after another.

In curious contrast to this mode of operation, the DEST paper on research priorities announces a widespread consultation process. An invitation for public comment on the paper is to be followed by the eliciting of more detailed discussion through the agency of a consultative panel. Of course, this may be just the requisite PR work to precede the announcement of a plan already set in concrete, but perhaps it would be strategically disingenuous to treat it as a genuine invitation. That might at least provoke some dynamic discussion about what should be the national priorities for research, based on concerns about the burning issues of our times, rather than about what might or might not "get up" in the current policy environment..

At last week-end's symposium the burning issue seemed to be the future of research in the discipline. No other burning issues got a look in. The resolution put to the delegates in the final session read:

Noting the important economic, cultural and social contribution of the arts, media and design fields in the national innovation system, this symposium proposes that National Research Priorities be established, in the first round, which maximise the opportunity for researchers in these fields to contribute at the thematic and discipline levels.

So the priority should be... for the arts, media and design to be included in the priority.
Ummm. It took all those key players all week-end to get to this?

A couple of hundred metres down the road, high over the roof of the Victorian Arts Centre, a group of aerialists called The Angels were in residence all weekend on a vertiginous arrangement of platforms, presenting a ten day schedule of performances dedicated to International Tolerance. They, at least, had an issue, and one to which they brought a genuine sense of urgency. Should be a research priority area, I thought: it's vitally important, interdisciplinary, global and complex. If it reduces any further, we'll be spending so much money on defense and detention there'll be nothing left for nano-materials or photon science. There is indeed something missing in the DEST document on priority setting, and missed by the parameters within which the whole exercise is set.

Priorities listed in the document for other countries are in a similarly technocratic vein. For example, the Dutch want to identify technologies of strategic importance to Dutch business and industry over the coming decade. France and the UK, ditto, though the UK adds a commitment to developing technologies to meet social and environment needs, which Japan also specifies. The European Union want to promote a user friendly information society. So why isn't the DEST paper titled "Developing National Priorities in Technological Research"? That would focus the issues more appropriately, including the issues of policy omission.

In this regard, it's worth making the point that the other countries listed for benchmarking and comparison - the USA, Japan, France, the European Union, the UK and the Netherlands - are all, as Margaret Thatcher would smilingly have pronounced with every syllable exactly articulated, "parliamentary democracies." Expensive technological research can only function in a political environment where high levels of security and prosperity can be relied on, and only democracies provide the kinds of conditions where sophisticated technologies can be developed and diversified for the public benefit.

Parliamentary democracies are what make the nations listed in the document key players on the global scene. But the very security they provide also breeds dreams, fictions and delusions of infinite progress. It is easy to start taking democracy itself for granted, as if it were something that must last forever and can need no maintenance. In the presentations I heard last weekend, I was reminded at times of Edward Albee's determination "to take a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen." That was back in 1961. The innovations craze is the latest version of peachy-keen syndrome, which it easily rivals in vacuity.

Democracy is in crisis, "nationally and internationally," to adopt a phrase beloved of the key players. The signs are everywhere. We are seeing the sudden rise of new parties with populist agendas, together with falling participation rates in elections. France and the Netherlands are still in shock from recent events that have shaken the political ground in ways no-one was predicting. Government by opinion poll is the name of the game in Australia and the USA, and opinion polls are governed by none of the stringent conditions required in official elections. Disputed election results are common and, as the 2000 election in America demonstrated, profoundly acrimonious. New "anti-terrorism" legislation breaches principles installed in national constitutions. The increase in numbers of refugees fleeing oppressive and violent political regimes to seek asylum in democratic countries is creating vocal popular resentment which in turn inspires government policies more and more resembling those of the regimes from which the refugees have tried to escape.

We need to make democracy a national research priority so that these situations can be addressed on the basis of detailed knowledge and analysis, and so that new strategies can be devised for addressing them. The research should be international in perspective, and should emphasise interdisciplinary, historical and cross-cultural approaches so as to widen the context in which we understand new pressures on democracy. All parties with representatives in Parliament could be called on to provide active support for it, and it could be a lot less expensive than the photon science.

The research might focus on a number of fronts, including:

Electorates, electoral processes and participation levels.
Indigenous populations, immigrant communities and minority language groups.
Asylum seekers and refugees.
Constitutional law.
Relationships between Government and the military.
Government and religious belief, including fundamentalism.
The influence of commercial corporations on national policy.
The goals and parameters of scientific research.
The voice of the people: talk-back media, modes of communication between political representatives and their constituencies, popular leaders, opinion polls.
Pleasure, leisure and humour in a free society.
Childhood.

The scope for creative arts research is obvious, in that artists have always led the way in finding strategies for opening up perspectives, and for generating new approaches to expression and communication. They also have a fine tradition of leading the way in passionate commitment to the kinds of values that come under threat when democracies go on the blink. Up there on the high wires arranged above the Victorian Arts Centre, the aerialist "Angles" are already demonstrating this.