Whatever you want from the political system, make architectural decisions that deliver that result directly
Any effect that is brought about as an accidental side effect of an unrelated architectural decision should be regraded as a flaw in the system.
In the world of software, where I work, there is the general rule that you have not fixed a bug if you only fix it by accident. Truly fixing the bug means understanding it at a deep level and making a change at a deep level, such that the problem can never recur. Merely making a bug rare is not the same as fixing it. You might think “Well, this bug has something to do with our connection to the database dying, so we will just reconnect to the database every time we need it.” That solves the problem, because now your code can connect to the database whenever it needs to, but you haven’t really fixed the bug, because you never even did the research to find out what was causing the bug, you simply implemented a workaround, one that will slow your software down. To save yourself time, you went with a simple fix, which isn’t the best fix. A real fix would mean finding out why the connection to the database kept dying.
We need to bring the discipline of engineers to the way we think about politics. Whatever the goal is, we need to think of an architecture that delivers a direct result.
The other day I wrote about gerrymandering. The essay provoked an active conversation on Hacker News.
Thomas H. Ptacek wrote:
One of the more infamous gerrymanders in the US is in Chicago — the notorious "earmuffs". You can just look at it and see that something's hinky.
But what's really happening there is that there are in fact very well-defined Latino neighborhoods in Chicago, and the earmuffs capture a bunch of them neatly: Pilsen, Little Village, Cicero, Belmont-Cragin. If you know Chicago, you know these places, and you also know what the boundary between, say, Belmont-Cragin and North Austin is like; however artificial it looks on a map, it is a real border. That these communities are where they are is also not purely happenstance: a lot of very unfortunate social engineering took place in the early-mid-20th century to put those neighborhoods (and all the other neighborhoods) where they are now.
That's not to defend gerrymandering writ large…
I’m uncertain what Ptacek’s concern is, but I took him to be suggesting that the gerrymandering was, in some sense, necessary to defend that (extended) neighborhood. Maybe he feels the neighborhood has a unique culture that needs to be protected by the political system, and therefore he feels that it is good that this district (for the House of Representatives) is drawn the way it is drawn.
But drawing such districts is a weak way of defending a neighborhood. At some point in the future, the lines might get drawn differently. Indeed, such lines are redrawn after every census, and at some point in the future a hostile political coalition might refuse to recognize the importance of this neighborhood. Also, does a representative in the House of Representatives actually have the power to defend the unique culture of this neighborhood?
Where possible, people should be encouraged to resolve their concerns at the appropriate level of the political system. The people of this neighborhood:
have their city concerns met when they participate in city elections,
and they have their regional concerns met when they participate in regional elections,
and they have their national concerns met when they participate in national elections.
Therefore perhaps all of this neighborhood’s unique concerns are already met, at the appropriate level of the political system. But if we decided that this neighborhood’s culture was so special, and deserved so much special protection, that the above was not good enough, then my suggestion would be that the neighborhood should incorporate as its own city. Instead of being a neighborhood in Chicago, it should be an independent city with its own elections. Then it has increased power over its future destiny. Either we feel that the city government does a good job of defending the unique culture of that neighborhood, or we should do something specific and direct to protect that neighborhood.
What if every town has historic neighborhoods with unique cultures that deserve to be protected?
Whatever the goal is, we should develop architecture that supports the goal directly. When we try to protect these neighborhoods, what are we really trying to protect? Do the people belong to a particular religion? A particular culture? Do they speak a unique language? Do they belong to a particular race?
If we want cultural representation, we can create a new branch of the national government, that allows people to identify as a particular culture, and then vote for members of that culture.
If we want religious representation, we can create a new branch of the national government, that allows people to identify as a particular religion, and then vote for members of that religion.
If we want racial representation, we can create a new branch of the national government, that allows people to identify as a particular race, and then vote for members of that race.
If we want language representation, we can create a new branch of the national government, that allows people to identify as speaking a particular language, and then vote for people who also speak that language.
The USA Occupation pursued a strategy like this when it implemented land reform in Japan 1946-1949, an astonishing success story that we will examine closely next month. The feudal lords had to elect other feudal lords, and the peasants had to elect peasants, to a local council that was responsible for implementing the land reform.
Again, the same rule we apply to software architecture should apply here. Whatever kind of representation we regard as important, we should approach the matter directly, and not try to achieve the effect accidentally, as the side effect of some other architectural decision.
Indeed, many of the problems we see in our political system are exactly because too many goals are being overloaded on too few institutions. If our political system was a legacy software app, and I was brought in as a consultant to clean it up, I would immediately suggest that a dramatic increase in both encapsulation and polymorphism was needed, and could only be achieved by introducing new branches of government.
If we actually introduced all of these new branches of government, we would end up with 6 or 7 legislatures. How would they all work together? As I suggested before, none of them should have any power, save for the power to appoint people to the committees, and all the real work should happen in those committees. Please see the essay, In our highly specialized and complex world, all real political power needs to move to specialized committees.
We do not need geographic districts that contribute to a larger assembly
Briefly, let’s return to the question of gerrymandering. A clean architecture suggests that every concern exists at some appropriate level of the political system. If you feel that the military should be stronger, that is clearly a national concern. If you are angry about a large pothole in the road just outside your house, that is clearly a local concern. Don’t go to City Hall and demand a bigger military. Don’t write to the President and demand that they fix the pothole near your house. Take each concern to the appropriate level of the system.
Your local government should handle your local concerns.
Your regional government should handle your regional concerns.
Your national government should handle your national concerns.
But likewise, we don’t need local districts that send representatives to some National Assembly. Your local government should handle your local concerns, you don’t need a national representative who also worries about your local concerns. See our essay Should our elections offer fine-grained representation of geographic units, or fine-grained representation of ideas?
Modern democracy is stagnant and stuck in the past. The basic architecture was designed in the 1700s and has not been updated much since then. Worldwide, authoritarian leaders are insisting that democracy is obsolete, and that they can do a better job of delivering results to their people. If we’re going to build a stronger version of democracy, we need to think clearly about its architecture, and we should strive to achieve a system where every result is the clear outcome of a powerful, clean, direct architectural decision.