What is the difference between empirical politics and normative politics?

Answer 1

Interesting question. Here's a stab at an answer. NORMATIVE POLITICS to me sounds like politics as usual. Here in the U.S.A. that would mean the existing two party system of Reps and Dems, currently polarized into hostile ideological extremes of red and blue by financial elites that have literally usurped control of government at local, state and national levels. This elite's primary tool in so doing has been the televised election-eve attack ad. Since the advent of network TV in the 1960's, TV attack ads have skewed election outcomes and alienated Americans from politics. They have made American politics the perquisite of the rich. Today no one of modest means can run for political office without the blessing and dollars of the fat cats who control American politics.

Yet in recent years the attacks ads that sustain normative politics have backfired, with the result that normative politics in America today is on life support. Americans mistrust politicians and government is gridlocked. Every two years attack ads put billions of dollars into the coffers of TV networks, forcing incumbent politicians to spend up to a third of their taxpayer-paid work week just raising money to pay for them.

All this is NORMATIVE. Most Americans are aware of it and resent it but live with it as long as the system of wealth generation managed by the financial and political elites benefits most of us.

An EMPIRICAL POLITICS, on the other hand, doesn't exist at present. It's only a dream, a Jeffersonian dream. It would be non-partisan, issue-centered and solution-oriented. It would ground itself in the history of democracy and its seminal documents: the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Drawing on these documents, it would realize the promise of democracy from the standpoint of the individual citizen and his or her membership in local, state and national communities. An empirical politics would above all be committed to the concept and value of an educated citizenry. All citizens would have an informed voice in the decisions that affect their lives. Wealth generation would be a powerful force an empirical politics - there's no denying that, empirically, most folks want to make money - but the informed participation of citizens in an empirical politics would likely result in narrower income disparities between rich and poor than those seen under the existing normative political system. Finally, an empirical politics would make full use of modern interactive communications technologies order to realize itself.

Clearly my lefty leanings are showing here, but the issue-centered, solution-oriented dialogic formats of a non-partisan CIVIC MEDIA would enable right and left wingers to both compete and cooperate with each other in a joint, empirical search for the best solution to ANY specific problem affecting a community of any size.

For more, go to http://civicmediausa.wordpress.com/