Demos

Democracy in International Organizations: a Supranational Approach.

Posted on by Susanna Cafaro

2013TitleMap-IOPublic opinion’s demand for democracy at a global level has significantly increased in the last decade, due to the number of global challenges affecting humanity as a whole and the growing feeling of transnational interconnectedness generated by the internet. Unfortunately, international organizations are not (yet) equipped for democratic participation of individuals as they are basically intergovernmental.

An institutional formula for global democracy doesn’t exist yet and it’s time to invent it, reframing the very notion of democracy for this space which is not the familiar nation state we know since the Westphalian order.

Of course, we cannot imagine simply transferring what works at the national level – institutions and procedures – given the variety and complexity of organizations at international level. Moreover, we should consider the intrinsically difference of legal orders grounded on the membership of States instead of individuals, where even the basic principle of equality doesn’t fit.

The approach I suggest is grounded in a constructivist method: after deconstructing democracy in three basic components— legitimacy, accountability and inclusiveness—it is possible to reassemble them originally with the aim of their progressive strengthening.

This method will allow a realistic assessment of the level of democracy in international organizations and it will help promoting institutional reforms in line with the expectations of democracy in the global civil society.

A fundamental shift will occur from the typical intergovernmental model towards a more supranational one—as improving legitimacy, accountability, and inclusiveness naturally implies an increasing relationship between individuals and international organizations. The existence of a direct correlation between the role of individuals (or if you prefer of a demos) and the level of democracy appears to me a crucial topic.

I explain more about my reflections on this topic in this article, just released by The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Global Studies

The Global Vote

Posted on by Susanna Cafaro

If you go to The Global Vote, you can pick an election, wherever in the world, and express your vote.

For sure, I will vote on Brexit and on American presidential elections and next year for the French ones…  Why? Because they affect me deeply, even if I live in Italy!

Why should we care about who runs the other countries?

Because to make the world work, we need a world of good leaders. Leaders who consider the needs of every man, woman, child and animal on the planet, not just their own voters.

We, the rest of the world, will achieve this aim by reminding each candidate that we’re here, we care, and we’re watching. We need them to do the right thing for their own country and for the whole of humanity, if they are elected.

By asking each candidate about their international intentions, election after election, that question will eventually become accepted as part of the normal election process for any Head of State or Head of Government. No leader will be able to stand for election unless they have a clear policy for their country’s role in the world and a vision of how they will co-operate and collaborate with other leaders and other populations.

Letting leaders know that we are watching them and evaluating them, we’ll make them pay more attention to the impact they have not just on their country, but on the world.

 The more people vote, the more impact this project will have. Can I ask you to spread the www.globalvote.org link around your own friends, family and networks?

With your help, one country at a time, we can build a world of good leaders. 

This is another great initiative by Simon Anholt, creator of the Good Country Project.

No Man is an Island

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

John Donne

Why Is Supranational Democracy so Difficult to Imagine?

Posted on by Susanna Cafaro

The inadequate attention that international organizations’ statutes  give to legitimacy, accountability and inclusiveness hails from the limited role that IOs played at the beginning of their history and from the subsequent scarce attention to democracy in a setting different from the national state.

In today’s different international context, it is worthwhile to challenge the unsurmountable hurdles stemming from the use of the word “democratic” in connection with an international organization.

Even though there isn’t a generally accepted theory of democracy – or more broadly of supranational democracy – in international organizations, we can examine the possible portability of the individual elements that make up this notion from the state level – for which they were originally created – to the international level. This is the experiment I’m almost obsessed about.

However, two kinds of difficulties arise from the fact that we are not considering a community of individuals, but of nations.

The first obstacle is the difficult applicability of the principle of equality, inherent in the notion of democracy. It is based on the concept of equal dignity for all human beings which leads to ignore and even amend the differences that give some people a “birth right” to succeed. All states are sovereign and therefore equal inside the international community, but this principle is nothing but a fictio. Far from wanting to ignore or minimize the differences, the international community focuses upon the preservation of the status quo, which is attenuated only by the shared goal of the sustainable development and protection of fundamental rights. Even when all the countries will get, as we hope, to share similar levels of prosperity, they would be far from equal. Too many facets help mark the differences: the size of territories, populations and economies, as well as the control over natural resources and the weapon supply.

As a consequence, several organizations agree on the principle that states are differently represented to reflect their different situations. Other ones simply ignore their substantial difference, but special provisions or practices make some States more equals than others.

Important scholar studies try to offer solutions to this dilemma, but there isn’t any adequate diffusion and sedimentation of shared assessments. The reflection on the subject has followed two clearly distinct lines: the statism theory, which sees international democracy as the result of the joint action of the states, as essential building blocks; and the doctrine inspired by cosmopolitanism and transnationality, which is based on the assumption of a global demos.

Even if an international organization achieved the perfect representation of all its members and was thus fully legitimate to act, we couldn’t conclude that it was also, indirectly, fully representative of their citizens. In fact, if some of its member states weren’t democratic, or only partly democratic, they wouldn’t be representative of all their citizens. According to the Democracy Index 2015 of the Economist Intelligence Unit, only 20 countries out of 167 are full democracies.

Such a lack of legitimacy is inevitably reflected on the state’s opinions and stands in the institutions of the IO it is part of and on the overall credibility of the institutions themselves. This is a difficult legal dilemma, that can only be solved if the organizations require their members to be democratic – as the European Union does (even if it should keep a closer eye on their evolutions). It is obvious that in organizations with a universal membership the issue must be labeled as “non permanently solvable”and shelved.

There is so a good point for the cosmopolitan approach: only building on some kind of legitimacy driven directly from the global demos we can overcome the “states obstacles” which are their inequality and their imperfect democratic representation.

Even so, the imperfect representativeness that we assume as inevitable, could be compensated by accountability, which can be fully obtained at the supranational level also by designing and experimenting new legal and institutional forms.

International organizations are not really equipped for substancial legitimacy as they are not for full accountability. New channels and tools need to be imagined to provide that their decisions and lines of actions reflect the values and the will of the people.We need new and fresh ideas, in line with the reality (and the technology) of an interconnected society. 

Unfortunately, we are now accessing the realm of imagination, and here there are two more powerful obstacles.

The first one is the power of the status quo: the resistance of political and economic elites, the power of traditions and cultural heritages and the trite old say “it has always been so”.

The second obstacle lies in the fact that economic and legal minds are not really educated to work with imagination, at least not on a big scale. It’s easy to imagine a new interpretation of a rule or a new financial product, but what about a whole new system? Do we feel really empowered to do that?

We hear almost every day that challenging the status quo, working with imagination, “disrupting” are the new frontiers for entrepreneurs and marketers, but this is also true for those who want to prove themselves on institutional engineering… and maybe change the world, for the better.

A Democracy Index for International Organization?

Posted on by Susanna Cafaro

Democracy indexes are usually for states.

They are designed to assess trends and  level of democracy inside countries.

Democracy is never a yes or no, or maybe it may be a clear no, but never a clear and final yes.  Democracy standards evolve, societal challenges require a continuous update of democratic tools and indicators and citizens should never stop to claim for better and more efficient participatory and accountability tools. Democracy is a work in progress.

Let’s have a look at same of these democracy indexes:

The Economist Intelligence Unit Index of Democracy compiles an annual ranking of countries by democracy level. The index is based on 60 indicators grouped in five different categories measuring electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, government role, political participation and cultural participation.

The Index distinguishes between full democracies and flawed ones, hybrid and authoritarian regimes on the basis of their scores within each category. In 2015, democracies appear to be complete in only 20 of the 167 countries surveyed!

Other interesting indexes and measurements are on other sites, such as the Democracy Barometer, whose theoretical basis is in this chart:

quality_en

Many other indexes and rankings deserve a mention. The Bertelsmann Transformations Index on the political and economic development assesses the status of countries in transition, while the Bertelsmann Sustainable Governance Index refers instead to the OECD countries. The Democracy Ranking is based on political and socioeconomic factors; the Democratic Audit, focuses on UK; the Freedom House: Freedom in the World Reports is developed by the American NGO “Freedom House”; the Global Democracy Ranking measures the quality of democracy freedom & other characteristics of the political system) plus the performance of the non-political dimensions  (gender, economy, knowledge, health, and the environment); Polity classifies political systems on a scale between the two extremes autocracy and democracy; the Polyarchy Dataset is based on Robert Dahl’s concept of polyarchy as the Vanhanen’s Index of Democracy; the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project reports aggregate and individual governance indicators for 215 economies;  the V•Dem ratings on 11 different democracy components  for all countries worldwide from 1900 onwards; the Unified Democracy Scores combines measures from 12 other democracy measures (among others Freedom House, Polity, Polyarchy, Vanhanen).

Other ways to measure democracy level may involve the respect of human rights (see among others Amnesty International – Human Rights Reports, or HDR – Human Development Reports (UNDP), or transparency (as Transparency International: Corruption Perception Index (CPI), Global Corruption Barometer (GCB) und Bribe Payers’ Index (BPI)) or the freedom of press and media (as Freedom House). Please note that the list is not complete!

Even if the theoretical approach and the data sets may differ, all these indexes and rankings have something in common: they all refer to states. These parameters can only be used to a limited extent when evaluating an international organization.

There are some good reasons for that: first of all they measure the efficiency of representative democracy, i.e. the electoral system (are there free elections? do all individuals enjoy voting rights? is the electoral process transparent? and so on…)

Second, many indicators refer to human rights and quality of legislation (freedom of press, judicial rights, gender equality, access to education, et cetera).

Finally, some of them evaluate the economic environment: economic freedoms, free competition, inequality.

All of them, so, assume the existence of a demos and a territory of reference and a government responsible for them. They are definitely useful to inform us on how things work, how they evolve over time and how they can be improved.

But still, I think that we miss an important tile in the mosaic of our democratic rights. What if the decisions which have an impact on our rights do not originate from states, but instead from the UN, the IMF, the Eurogroup? Are still the states to blame? and if so, what can we do to address the issue? The Greek crisis offered a powerful example, but should we speak of the UN Security Council listing potential terrorists without any respect for their defence rights?

I have spent some time reflecting on possible indicators to measure democracy in international organizations, once again to assess how things work, how they evolve over time and how they can be improved. The main difference with democracy indicators for states is that they concern only the relationship between citizens and a governance system.

Here is my concept tree:

supranational democracy chart

What I came up with, is a chart based on three core indicators: legitimacy, accountability and inclusion. All the three may , in turn, be split into different substantial elements, in order to explore possible improvements. Only through a prismatic factorization of each of them in their multiple meanings is possible a real assessment of the existing democratic toools as well as a verification of what is really missing.

There is a close relationship between democratic legitimacy, accountability and inclusiveness; several tools serve more than one of these values (you’ll see repetitions in the chart) and transparency serves them all.

What seems interesting to me is that this chart imagined for international organizations works very well for any kind of organization expected to be democratic (even if not all the yellow elements – the practical tools –  would apply, or we could imagine other ones).

 I don’t know how to convert these elements in numeric values in order to build an index, but I’d like very much to join a team to imagine one.

I’m open to suggestions!

 

COP21: A Global Community at Work

Posted on by Susanna Cafaro

In the supranational democracy I imagine, every citizen is a global citizen. But not every citizen is an engaged global citizen and not every engaged one is committed to the same cause.

There are so many issues and so many front lines to engage on and we do not have all the same priorities, so it’s quite natural to me that everybody will (and already does) choose what is really dear to his/her heart, what really matters for her.

We are going to join our community, to commit to our cause with like-minded individuals. That’s the best way to make a difference.

I imagine supranational democracy as a galaxy of global institutions and fora, each having its own community of committed citizens to dialogue with, to draw legitimacy from, to hold them accountable. Overlapping global communities will push for the global public goods we all need.

We have in front of us a powerful example.

In COP21 we see a global community committed to stop climate change: national delegations, international organizations and a wide gathering of committed people – businessmen and investors, NGOs’ activists, scientists and experts, representatives of local communities and of indigenous peoples – all involved in one huge debate, at different levels.

The global demos in the making is something different from the nation we have experienced in the past 3 -4 centuries. What makes us stand together as humanity is an idea of common good which will involve us on a voluntary basis in different processes and priorities.

For this reason I think that it is unilkely that we are going to see a global parliament in the future and  -even if I would be the first to support such an evolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations- it wouldn’t respond fully to our need of democracy because of the distance from the electoral body and the (inevitably) small number of representatives.

What would really make shorter the distance between real people and global institutions would be assemblies or gatherings committed to specific topics: humain rights, sustainable debelopment, equality, fair finance, health and so on. Each of them is already prefigured in a global debate among committed people and each debate is already going on somewhere, somehow.

Encouraging these debates and offering them an institutional space  would make them visible and transparent, would enhance  their effectiveness and fuel productive outcomes.

We hope to  remember one day the COP21 as a turning point in stopping climate change. We could also remember it as a big experiment of global debate, at so many different levels, among members of a global community.

We are all French, we are all Europeans.

Posted on by Susanna Cafaro

candle

After the tragic events in Paris on Friday evening, we Europeans were all under shock. From Italy to Sweden, from Greece to Portugal, we grieved and lightened candles and prayed. We all knew that Paris was a symbolic place (how powerful): the attack was brought against our core values,  the values of a democratic, liberal society, based on the rule of law and the respect of fundamental rights, free, multicultural, sexually-liberated, open.

The freedom of speech, of religion, of circulation are suddenly at risk and we know that we have to fight a new kind of struggle (of war, if you want) – totally different from the previous ones – the war to keep our societies open, because if we react in the old-fashioned style with  closure and protectionism and hate, if we step back from liberty of speech and religion, the enemy has already won.

It’s not an easy task. The immigration emergency, the rise of populism and the risk of extreme right political parties taking advantage of what has happened is definitely high. The point is that our states have partially failed in making us feel safe and, at the same time, open. We can observe decaying national identities as here and there states failed the challenge of integration; moreover the worsening of economic conditions favored urban subcultures and rebellions of the excluded ones. Jihadists grown up and living in Europe are a very bad symptom of our societies’ health status.

We must roll up our sleeves and rebuild trust in our values, which are the very fabric of our identity.

We felt all Europeans after the Paris tragedy, we recalled what makes us stand together against terror, let’s start from there. Let’s work on our European identity, which shouldn’t surface only in the bad moments, but help us overcome the failure of states with its motto “united in diversity”, able to comprise all of our populations, all of the honest migrants who came here for a better living and are ready and willing to respect our values.

Of course, any reaction, military, political and diplomatic should be likewise European. To be as symbolic and significant as the aberrant acts which injured Paris, heart of Europe.

The Double Face of Identity

Posted on by Susanna Cafaro

How many identities do you have?

My personal experience is: the more you have, the better. 

Let me give you my personal example:

I don’t think I have a strong local identity. Maybe it’s the fact that my parents didn’t grow up in the same town where I was born. Or it’s that I’m not able to speak properly its dialect. It’s also possible that my town doesn’t cultivate a strong identity itself: criticizing Brindisi (Italy) is a much-practiced sport among its citizens. It’s a pity: it’s a nice place with a marvelous harbor and some 30 centuries of history surfacing here and there.

I don’t have a strong national identity either. I don’t know if it comes from my father passionately criticizing all the Italian governments, one after the other since I can remember. Or the fact that we don’t get particularly emotional over football matches…

Don’t get me wrong: I love my town and I love my country. But this doesn’t prevent me from looking at them critically. Or to love other places and other countries.

I suppose this helped me to develop further identities.

For instance, a strong identity as a human being (maybe encouraged by a childhood populated by cats, dogs… even snails).

For example, a European identity when I discovered as a teenager that some brave men had started to integrate the continent as a reaction to the second world war. A continent which has, historically, a cultural identity of its own.

And, later on, a sense of belonging to a global community, when I understood how many global problems need to be tackled jointly by all states and citizens (and usually they are not!).

Moreover, I have  – as all of you – a number of other definitions applicable: I’m a woman, I’m a daughter and I’m a mother, I’m a professor and a researcher, I’m a reader and I’m a writer, I’m a traveller and a seeker and so on… Identities more or less relevant, but all true. Which make me part of communities of human beings who share with me traits, interests, needs, passions.

Exclusive or dominant identities are – conversely- dangerous. 

People dominated by an exclusive identity – be it national, ethnic, religious or any other – assume it is a divide. The world is composed by “us” and “them”.

It’s the source of all conflicts, the negation of what makes us similar, emphasizing the differences.

I cannot say that identity is a bad word. It’s important to have roots, as long as it does not prevent our trunk to grow upwards and our branches to expand in many directions.

But using identity as a trench is the result of fear for whatever is different. And invoking limiting identities as a reason for political choices is a way to spread fear (and sometimes hatred).

It’s easy to recognize a fanatic approach, but sometimes even a shortsighted populist approach just plays the same dangerous game.

Stay alerted!

Ecology of Social Systems

Posted on by Susanna Cafaro

Some days ago I was speaking with my friend Sargon from the Bretton Woods Project and he came out with this idea of the ecology of the social systems. We liked it and tried to elaborate a bit.

Just like a natural environment a democratic social system has different subjects playing different roles. There are authorities, in charge for the realisation of one or more common goals (safety, education, health, acceptable living standards, sanitation, financial stability, and so on…). There are individuals, chosing or legitimizing in different ways such authorities. There are social bodies mediating among  the two sides: political parties, NGOs, trade unions, each of them with its specific role, duties, expectations. There are entrepreneurs and companies, producing goods, offering services, creating jobs.

All these form a kind of ecosystem, which should be in balance.

Similarly to what happens in a natural ecosystem, there are natural enemies (or better natural antagonists).  To same extent the conflict is physiological and even healthy: without it, imbalances would produce authoritarian systems, anarchy, or implosion, all kinds of decay.
The same happens in the global arena: international organizations interact with transnational civil society and -at times- suffer for violent critics and even demonstrations which may be healthy if aimed at improving human rights or correcting an authoritarian approach.

We could have the impression, at times, that it is nothing but a huge role-play, or we could claim that some cathegories of subjects are good and other bad. It would be a mistaken perspective. The real villains are those willing to kill the system -i.e. the balance- not those playing their part in it.

All the Roles of Civil Society (Supranational Democracy Applied)

Posted on by Susanna Cafaro

It is a little-acknowledged truth that civil society plays today a significant role in several important international organizations.

While the legitimacy of international organizations (IOs) is still based on the conferral of competences and participation by member states, their accountability is somehow  enhanced by an increasing dialogue with civil society and every year new inclusive processes are launched to involve in consultations NGOs and other non-statual actors.

Of course, not all the IOs are evolving in this direction and among the evolving ones the pace may differ, but when this happens in big organizations as the UN, the UNDP, the World Bank – and on big issues such as climate change or post 2015 development agenda – the phenomenon deserves a serious analysis.

What exactly is happening in these important  organizations? What role does civil society play? Is it up to the task?

Let’s take a closer look.

The roles that civil society can play are various. The first and typical one is a role of watchdog: they observe, evaluate and – if necessary – raise public concern about any misconduct or abuse of power. In this role, many NGOs have significantly contributed to transparency, giving voice to a need of information which is the first step in order to watch and evaluate. Several IOs have accepted the challenge of opening up, a progress which has to be credited to the efforts of civil society. In this role NGOs enhance accountability.

A more sophisticate – formal or informal- role is the one of advisors. The choices of international organizations may be legitimate ones, may even be inspired by the best intentions. Still, often, other solutions are possible, with better outcomes or a more desirable social impact. The mere fact that a solution doesn’t come from a top- down approach but  stems from a dialectical process makes it more politically acceptable. Of course, proposals and suggestions from NGOs don’t find an easy way through the complex machinery of the IOs decisional process. Often, they are nothing more than messages in a bottle, but still…

The more civil society is able to participate in decisions, the more it strengthens the democratic legitimacy of an organization, adding elements of supranationality to their decision making process.

A third role of civil society is giving voice to “those who are not in the room”: minorities, people living in extreme poverty or impaired by a lack of literacy. In this role, civil society may tell unconfortable truths and raise awareness, it is maybe the most precious role of all, serving social inclusion.

Now, the second question  naturally arises: are non-governamental organizations up to the task?

Are, themselves, legitimate, accountable, inclusive?

It is impossible to give universal or definitive answers: every NGO is an organization of its own kind. Possible answers come from the transparency of their inner decisional process, their budget (especially their financing), their tools and ways of acting. Decisional and budget autonomy is the dividing line between real and fake NGOs (the so-called GONGOs, serving the interests of some undemocratic government).

Moreover, civil society cannot, in any way, be considered as a spokesman or as an interpreter of a global population or, more precisely a global “demos”, whose very existence is extremely controversial in doctrine. NGOs represent just their members, citizens engaged and active on the global stage. We can only wish that their number will increase over time.

Let’s give some examples of this increasing role of civil society:

The non-governmental organizations (NGOs) interacting with the UN Economic and Social Committee grew exponentially in the last decade both in number and participation: in 1946 member NGOs were 41; in 1992 more than 700, in 2011 more than 3400. Specific websites have been set to interact with civil society and collect their opinions on several topics.

Specific polls and meetings are dedicate to interact on important issues, such as the post-2015 sustainable development goals.

During the  IMF/World bank annual and spring meetings, a civil society policy forum gives to NGOs the opportunity to interact among them and a specific meeting – the Town hall meeting – allows them to engage directly with the president of the Bank and the managing director of the IMF. Other, more restricted, consultations and meetings happen during the year and they have contributed significantly to increase transparency in the two organizations (especially in the Bank). Moreover, development projects on the grounds may involve local civil society.

The UNDP Civil Society Advisory Committee was created in 2000 as a formal mechanism for dialogue between civil society representatives and UNDP’s senior management on key issues of policy and strategy. UNDP regularly invites civil society representatives to engage on current development issues as they are key actors in development and participatory governance.

Although these processes should not be overestimated, they cannot be dismissed as “democratic embellishments”, because they are in fact enabling the emergence of supranational polities.

Looking at the same phenomenon from the NGOs’ side, we can only welcome the increasing awareness of citizens engaged in global processes.

A good example is provided by the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that trains and supports local teams of citizen volunteers to become policy advisors to their own elected legislators. The organizations is active in many countries and in all the 5 continents, it is actually building an open network aimed at monitoring and enhancing the work of governments to achieve decarbonization, so to have a say in the next United Nations Frame Convention on Climate Change in Paris in December 2015.

The campaign name is “Pathway to Paris“. It is an interesting lab of participatory democracy and I suggest you keep an eye on it.

Being a Global Citizen (or The “Demos” Problem)

Posted on by Susanna Cafaro

The two components of the word democracy are “demos” and “kratia”, in ancient greek: people and power/authority.

The authority existing -in greater or lesser degree- in international organisations is nowadays indisputable, but to have it exercised in the interest of the people, or legitimized by the people we need…. the people!

And therein lies the problem.

Many excellent scholars tried to build theories to frame global democracy: transnational democracy, cosmopolitan democracy, post-modern democracy. An important contribution was offered by legal theories such as global constitutionalism and global administrative law but….still nobody recognizes as certain the existence of a global population, a “demos” giving to these theories a necessary factual substrate.

There are several good reasons to explain why the very existence of a global demos is still controversial: the dubious legal capacity of individuals in international law; the distances; the deep cultural and linguistic gaps. A people is made so by a number of common features: cultural, linguistic, religious; it is the product of a common history and of shared values and traditions; it shares a sense of belonging. This is what we study at school and, later on, at university.

But is it still so?

I think I am a global citizen. If you are reading this post, chances are that you are too.

The social fabric is rapidly evolving, what has held true ten years ago -or even one year ago- no longer corresponds to reality.

Two indicators are essential to tell you if you are part of the emerging global demos:

1) you feel a citizen of the world, a human being inside humanity. Internet and social networks allow you to connect to people living in different countries, cultures, mindsets. The low cost travelling companies, the decrease in communication costs and the sharing economy had an impact on your life, encouraging your mobility and your opennes to new experiences and people.

2) you know that what happens in other areas of the world affects your reality, be it for good or for bad. You care about global problems and global public goods, you sign global petitions and get involved in global discussions, you visit websites as Avaaz or change.org, maybe you even join some NGO operating globally.

We are still a minority right now. Too many obstacles prevent most of the citizens to be global citizens: poverty, digital and cultural divide, ideology. But the number is growing. Daily.

For this reason, those who mantain that a global demos is still missing are right, but stating the contrary is not entirely wrong. There is a global demos in the making. And we are part of it.

Somebody saw this coming, some time ago 🙂