Democracy for Realists, Part 10 of 19
Many rituals of the legislature are obsolete and they limit democracy. If idealists were strategic, we could implement new processes that would allow for real reform.
Again, the benefits of democracy have been well-documented. Amartya Sen (whose work we will review this coming February) won a Nobel Prize for showing that people in democracies do not suffer from famine. People in democracies are better protected against disease, are more likely to be vaccinated against common childhood illnesses, and tend to have better educations provided by their governments. In the long run, democracies tend to experience more economic growth than non-democracies, though at any given time there might be a non-democracy that is growing very fast. One study has shown that men are taller in democracies.
And yet, there is substantial evidence that many voters do not care much about politics, do not understand the issues, do not want to engage in study of the issues, and often sabotage their own interests. These voters might be a minority, but they are a large enough minority that they impact the outcome of elections. (See previous essays.)
So the benefits of democracy probably don’t come from the voters. The benefits must come from structural factors, such as the voting itself, the transfer of power among different political parties, the ability of the political parties to funnel the frustrations of the people into productive channels (rather than resorting to civil war), the ability of newspapers and media to mediate the conflicts among the most powerful interests, making the tensions transparent so that they can be better managed, or possibly the benefits of democracy arise from the free and unfettered activity of the most important professions, such as lawyers and health professionals and religious leaders and the accountants, plus other sources of accountability for money. As we noted in a previous essay, those democracies that have frequent changes in power among parties tend to have less corruption than those democracies where one party has held power for several decades in a row, so the mere transfer of power among parties seems to limit corruption (and this is true even when the leaders of all parties are known to be corrupt!)
Whatever the reason, we should be wary of efforts to weaken the political parties, since their power might be one of the central benefits of democracy. And yet the USA has, for most of its history, suffered a populist slant to its politics that have weakened parties and favored more direct forms of democracy. Reformers have meant well, but they have not considered how their idealism might be sabotaged by real world factors, such as the influence of television. Especially in the modern era, “direct democracy” has meant “democracy by television” and it is won by whoever has the money to advertise on television. We’ve seen this multiple times with direct referendums in California.
There is some kind of odd blindness on the part of progressive reformers, in that they continue to advocate for reforms that actually make the situation worse. Despite the damage done by government-by-television, the idealists of democracy continue to push for an extension of direct democracy.
Democracy for Realists, 2016
Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government
By Christopher H. Achen & Larry M. Bartels
Page 61-64
The convention system was considered suitably “democratic” for some 80 years following its adoption, until it was superseded by “the most radical of all the party reforms adopted in the whole course of American history” (Ranney 1975, 121), the direct primary. The direct primary represented an unprecedented attempt to impose the folk theory of democracy on the nominating process. In making the adoption of the direct primary a centerpiece of his 1900 Wisconsin gubernatorial campaign, Robert La Follette appealed to “the sovereign right that each citizen shall for himself exercise his choice by direct vote, without the intervention or interference of any political agency.” “No longer,” La Follette promised, “will there stand between the voter and the official a political machine with a complicated system of caucuses and conventions, by the easy manipulation of which it thwarts the will of the voter and rules official conduct” (quoted by Ranney 1975, 124-125). La Follette was eventually the 1924 Progressive candidate for president, but the anti-party spirit of that movement is already apparent in these remarks two dozen years earlier. As Key (1942, 373-374) put is, “The advocates of the direct primary had a simple faith in democracy; they thought that if the people, the rank and file of the party membership, only were given an opportunity to express their will through some such mechanism as the direct primary, candidates would be selected who would be devoted to the interests of the people as a whole.”
Some canny political scientists were immediately skeptical. For example, Henry Jones Ford (1909, 2) noted that
“One continually hears the declaration that the direct primary will take power from the politicians and give it to the people. This is pure nonsense. Politics has been, is, and always will be carried on by politicians, just as art is carried on by artists, engineering by engineers, business by businessmen. All that the direct primary, or any other political reform, can do is to affect the character of the politicians by altering the conditions that govern political activity, thus determining its extent and quality. The direct primary may take advantage and opportunity from one set of politicians and confer them upon another set, but politicians there will always be so long as there is politics.”
Also:
Page 73-74
A century after the wave of Progressive Era reforms, more than 20 U.S. states have had substantial experience with direct democracy in action. What light does that experience shed on the virtues and pitfalls of “pure democracy”?
One key question is whether the establishment of initiative and referendum procedures has, in fact, shifted power from political elites and special interests to ordinary citizens, as Progressive Era reformers had hoped. From the start, skeptics claimed that “what the initiative really does is to transfer that function [of framing laws] from official lawmakers to non-official lawmakers. But such a non-official lawmaker, being self-appointed and extra-constitutional, occupies an irresponsible position very similar to that of the party machine boss who holds no public office” (Hollingsworth 1912, 38).
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Concerns about behind-the-scenes influence in the initiative process have recurred throughout the century-long history of direct democracy in the American states. For example, V. O. Key, Jr. and Winston Crouch (1939, cited by de Grazia 1951, 157) observed of California in the 1930s that “the initiators of propositions have usually been pressure organizations representing interests – commercial, industrial, financial, religious, political – which have been unable to persuade the legislature to follow a particular line of action.” In a 2000 book titled Democracy Derailed, political journalist David Broder similarly argued that “wealthy individuals and special interests...have learned all too well how to subvert the process to their own purposes” (Broder 2000, 243). “Though derived from a reform favored by Populists and Progressives as a cure for special-interest influence,” Broder wrote (2000, 1, 167), “this method of lawmaking has become the favored tool of millionaires and interest groups that use their wealth to achieve their own policy goals – a lucrative business for a new set of political entrepreneurs….What was striking to me as I traveled the initiative states was the discovery that so many of the measures had been designed by a handful of people and were being sold with their dollars. Whether their motivations were financial or ideological, they had mounted this Populist warhorse and were riding it hell-for-leather to achieve their own purposes.”
The frustrations of the idealists continues to increase the more they feel that true reform is almost within their grasp, yet unattainable for mysterious reasons. What might those mysterious reasons be? Perhaps this mysterious force is the backroom deals made by unethical politicians, and so if their power was reduced, then real reform would be possible?
But the idealists don’t often think through how a reform might actually happen. When an idealist is elected to office, and learns about the real mechanics of pushing through an actual reform, if they then try to educate their fellow idealists, then their fellow idealists will denounce them for being a sell-out who has been co-opted by the system.
Imagine the idealist who actually runs for office. They notice that a particular category of business was, 100 years ago, granted an exemption from a particular tax, back when the world was a different place. Nowadays, the original reasons for that tax exemption are long gone. The idealist asks “Why shouldn’t this category of business pay the same taxes as all other businesses?” So they run for office and they win. But once in office, they face 2 battles that will take some time to outflank:
1. that category of business is vehement in defending their special tax exempt status
2. even in the idealists own political party, people feel there are 100 other issues that have more urgency, and so a vote on that particular tax exemption is delayed, then delayed again, then delayed again. The party leaders continually say “We have higher priorities during this session.” The idealist runs out of time and has to run for office again. Luckily they win a second time. What they’ve learned is that they have to vote in favor of a lot of bills that they don’t really care about, but in doing so they are building up favors, so that one day they will have the political capital to force their party to vote on the tax exemption, which is their personal number 1 highest priority. Building up favors takes some years, so the idealist has to run for office again, and perhaps again, before they finally have enough influence that they can force a vote on the issue that first caused them to run for office, many years earlier.
That struggle to slowly acquire favors and influence is largely invisible to those idealists who never run for office. From their point of view, every time they elect an idealist, the idealist then becomes a sellout who waits many years before taking action on the issue that is their number 1 top priority. The idealists who never run for office then think that the solution to the problem is to allow direct elections via referendums, so then they won’t be betrayed by some idealist who promises one thing but then does nothing in office. But then, when the issue becomes a referendum, the category of business that is lucky enough to enjoy this special tax exemption mobilizes heaven and hell to fight the reform, and after many millions of dollars have been spent on television and online advertisements, the public is frightened into voting against the reform.
The idealists are then bitter and are left feeling that there is no way to defeat the entrenched power of the status quo.
And yet, there is a road not taken, that might be obvious to the idealist who got elected but, for some reason, is never obvious to the idealists who do not run for office. It is simply this: we could make it easier for newly elected politicians to acquire political capital. In fact, we could alter the law so they are granted this political capital automatically.
How might that work? Well, what are 2 of the most important things that a politician might want to spend political capital on?
1. control when a vote happens, that is, control the agenda
2. control the actual wording of the bill
Our current ideas of what a legislature should look like, and act like, developed during the 1600s and 1700s. These ideas are woefully out of date and need to be modernized.
What are some old fashioned ideas about a legislature that made sense in the 1700s?
1. the legislators should meet in a room with each other
2. the legislators should give speeches, which should be recorded in some kind of official record
3. the legislators should be allowed to ask each other questions, with the answers becoming part of an official record (in Britain, the weekly Prime Minister Questions)
4. the legislature should have a chairman
5. the chairman should recognize someone before they speak to the chamber
6. once a legislator has been recognized by the chairman, the legislator can propose a law
7. the law must be seconded by some other legislator
8. the chairman can allow time for debate and amendments
9. the proposed law can be amended while it is being considered
10. depending on the legislature, the chairman can call the vote via their own power, or a legislator must move to end debate and call the vote
11. the period of debate and amendment might vary from a day to several months
Of these 11 ideas, we can get rid of all of them. They are all obsolete. A modern legislature might organize along these lines:
1. The legislature never meets.
2. The debate happens in books, newspapers, television appearances, live streaming on YouTube, speeches given at churches and universities, plus any other venue where people should want to discuss political issues. The debate does not happen in a particular room.
3. The chairman is replaced by a non-partisan secretary who has no power, they have obligations specified in law, which they must follow exactly. The process of holding a vote is detailed in law, the secretary simply shepherds the important documents from one part of the process to the next part of the process, ensuring that every legislator is kept abreast of each new development.
4. Any legislator, at any time, can send a bill to the secretary. The bill does not need to be seconded and the legislature does not need to be in session. The secretary has 72 hours to notify the other legislators, or their staff, that a bill is now under consideration. There might be several hundred bills in motion at once; it is up to the secretary and the various staffs to ensue that the legislators are aware of the progress of each bill.
5. The secretary might have a large staff to help manage the movement of several hundred simultaneous bills.
6. No amendments are allowed, but the legislator who proposed a bill can always withdraw it and re-propose it, if they find that some tweak to the bill will attract a few more votes. Withdrawing the bill and re-proposing it starts the process over again, from the beginning.
7. Every bill is under consideration for 180 days or till it acquires “yes” votes from an absolute majority of the assembly. If it has not acquired an absolute majority after 180 days, then it dies automatically. As a courtesy, 72 hours before the end of voting the secretary can check with the staff of any legislator who has not yet recorded a view, to ask, “Voting will end in 3 days, did you mean to vote for this?”
8. It is a meaningless gesture, but for purely symbolic reasons, a legislator should be allowed to vote “no” if they wish and have that recorded as part of the official vote. Keep in mind that the bill requires an absolute majority of the assembly to pass, so any legislator who does nothing is effectively voting “no.” They don’t actually have to vote “no” to kill the bill, but they can if they wish. Also, since this legislature never meets in person, obviously there is no meaningful reason for a legislator to vote “present.”
This is just one of many ideas that pragmatic idealists might want to consider. The point is this allows someone who is newly elected to propose a bill and get a vote on it; the newly elected idealist does not need to waste year after year building up favors. It certainly is true that they might need to build up political capital to get an absolute majority to vote for their bill, but this new system would remove some of the roadblocks, in particular the ability of the chairman or the party leadership to block consideration of a bill. Also, this establishes as a norm that many bills might be considered simultaneously, so the old excuse of “We have higher priorities for this session” would no longer be valid.
The absolute cost of voting on a bill would be reduced, so the amount of political capital needed to get something done would be reduced. The legislature would be able to get more done, in an absolute sense. It would be unfettered, more active, and more able to act as a real check on the power of the executive branch.
If such reforms were combined with longer terms in office, such that elected politicians knew they had many more years in front of them, then the elected idealists could spend more time getting stuff done while wasting less time running for re-election or acquiring favors. Or, to take this line of thought to its logical conclusion, if the legislators were elected for a single very long term (elsewhere we talked about terms of 15 or 20 years) then they would never have to worry about re-election, they could simply focus their time in office on getting things done.
The point is, if idealists thought about how they might help those idealists who get elected, they should think strategically of the reforms that would make it easier to get votes on the idealist agenda.
But instead of doing this, many idealists go in the other direction and think “We can get what we want if we simply do an end-run around the legislature.” They then initiate a referendum process that is won by whoever can spend the most on television advertising and social media advertising, and this often defeats the idealist agenda.
In short, the unelected idealists are not strategic in their thinking. And the same mistakes of reasoning recur, generation after generation, century after century, so apparently the mistake is driven by some deep cultural assumptions that will be difficult to change (as we wrote about in the previous essays). But these cultural assumptions do need to change.