A new form of government - given that the current model is outdated -- Left-Wing Discussion

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Date Posted: Tue 2003-08-19 18:20:13
Author: arendt (reposting redeye from DU)
Subject: A new form of government - given that the current model is outdated
In reply to: arendt 's message, "NK government" on Mon 2003-06-02 19:30:46

Before I begin, two notes:

1. This has nothing to do with my constitution proposal. My proposal, while more modern than the current US constitution, is in no way a result of the ideas expressed below, if you take out Article 33 (Specialized Legislatures), which is really a patchwork over anything else.

2. The credit here, I think, goes to DUer arendt; his article on this, NK Government, is the first thing I've read on the topic, and Googling "NK Government" and "Specialized Legislature" yields nothing relevant to the topic. This post is to a large degree a footnote to arendt.

Anyway:

Before delving into arendt's - and my - ideas for a new form of government, I'll need to explain why there is a problem to be solved. The problem with the 18th century model of politics, i.e. checks and balances, and with its refinements (parliamentary system, for example), is that it is constructed for a sparsely-populated agricultural society. In such a society, there exist several important characteristics which have vanished with technological and social progress and which are crucial for the prevlanet form of democracy in the world:

1. Human knowledge was rather limited, so while there couldn't be any Renaissance Men anymore, people could still be reasonably informed about all political issues and concerns.
2. Countries had low populations, so there could be a single 200-member legislature with a reasonable voters-per-representatives (v/r) ratio; moreover, few people could vote so the ratio was made even better by excluding large chunks of the population - the poor, blacks, women - from the political process.
3. Agricultural communities meant that there was little interaction between communities, definitely little enough to allow local governments to exert most power.
4. The absence of large corporations and PACs meant that the only bodies that could sway politics were political parties, which were composed of like-minded individuals anyway.
5. Communications were very poor compared to today's, so locations of governmental bodies mattered; in order to prevent areas around capital cities, e.g. London and DC, from holding too much power, there had to be some decentralization.
6. People had mostly regional and local interests, so district systems such as Britain's made a lot of sense.

Compare that situation to today. Even with better technology, legislatures with more than about 200 members are dysfunctional; one of goobergunch's arguments against abolishing the Senate, actually, is that the House is way too large to function properly. And yet, 200 members means that every government with more than 20 million voters - and there are a lot of those - has a 6-digit v/r ratio. Socities have and do become more and more interdependent, so decentralization of authority has become less and less feasible. Local governments have given way to regional governments, which have given way to national governments, which are in the process of merging into superstates. Now, look at a superstate like the EU for a moment. They're planning a 700-member Parliament for it, which will of course function terribly. And even so, the ratio of people to representatives will be 600,000 to 1, which will roughly translate to 300,000 v/r given voter turnout.

Now, there are three more problems with applying 18th-century democracy to 21st-century civilization: complication, corporations, and the media. Complication is the natural result of intellectual progress: the more we know, the more we need to learn to keep up with intellectual advances. First-world governments have the advantage of being able to hire professional advisors, and thus become more complicated as humanity learns more, but the average person's knowledge progresses much less. Specialization in the academia makes people know more and more about less and less; hence, if the people are allowed to decide on everything, most such decisions will be uninformed (the same happens when general representatives do that, btw). Corporations are a second problem; they have the power to dictate to representatives what to do and which issues to care about. Legislatures thus tend to specialize according to the interest groups behind each representative (the European party system is more resilient to that because lobbies need to bribe entire parties, but the price is that there are many important issues that nobody cares about), but the people have no say about which issues they vote on. The media is the last problem and the most deeply-rooted one; sound bites, pundits, interest group voting (do you know how many conservative unionists vote Dem because that's what their union tells them to vote?), media that ignore the issue and works on the basis of "if it bleeds, it leads" - they all undermine the people's ability to choose the issues they vote on for themselves.

This is the problem. There are several solutions, all radical in one way or another. The most radical and reactionary is to reverse the trends of specialization and globalization and settle for a permanent state of small community governments; however, not only does it miss a horde of opportunities to progress, but also modern technology will help those local governments become local tyrannies, like the German states immediately following the 30 Years' War. Another, better solution is also radical, but it looks forward, not backward.

That solution is specialized legislatures - SL. The idea is this: let's say that Congress can be devolved into 100 SLs, each having legislative authority only on one issue - say, race relations, or religion. Each SL has 200 members, elected nationally on the basis of proportional representation. This way, people will be able to vote differently on different issues; libertarians will be able to vote conservatively on economic issues and liberally on social ones, etc. A party list system in Congress won't solve that because even with a fractured Congress there won't be any more than 10 parties, so no more than about 5 issues will be addressed.

SLs solve one problem, namely this of politicians choosing the issues that the voters will vote on. They don't solve others, however, including high v/r ratios, people having to be informed about a lot of things (how many of you can deeply understand and have informed opinions on 10 issues, let alone 100?), excessive federal power, and the majority oppressing the minority. By refining the concept, however, all can be eliminated. If people are restricted to voting for only the 5 SLs they consider the most important, then we'll have 500 million votes (100 million * 5 SLs) and 20,000 representatives, resulting in an excellent 25,000 v/r ratio.

Further, the Internet allows SLs to convene in different cities, so while DC will still be the capital of the central Congress and the White House, the SLs will have 50-70 capitals; NY will be the International Trade capital, Detroit will be the Transportation (or Land Transportation, if transportation is broken up) capital, and so on. The problem of the federal government having too much power sometimes and too little in other times won't vanish but will be reduced, because there might be a hierarchy: Congress can override SL laws, but only with a minimum debate time so the SLs still get enough leeway, and the people can by initiative or referendum override Congressional laws. Finally, the majority won't be able to oppress the minority so well because as long as the minority has a greater incentive to take over the relevant SL; generally speaking, since the oppressed generally has greater will to change the situation than the oppressor has to keep it as it is, SL choice will take care of some tyranny-of-the-majority problems.

To reiterate, the plan is to have two legislative bodies: Congress, unicameral or bicameral, and 200 SLs. Congress may override SL laws, but it has a minimum debating time for each law so that only SLs will be able to take care of administrative affairs. Each person may vote for only 5 SLs. There are considerable SLs' rights, but people choose their SLs while they don't choose states, so they have a choice (note: an SL's laws apply to everybody, not just those who voted in it). There are federal initiative, referendum, and recall provisions to ensure that SLs remain accountable to the people and that issues significant enough for everyone to care about are decided by everyone. Unlike the formulation of the democratic ideal of rule of the majority, the SL system features the rule of the majority of those who care on each issue; no more anti-choice laws passed only because the people vote against gun control and the party that opposes gun control also opposes abortion.

Moreover, there will still be regional legislatures, but with region boundaries that make sense more than the straight lines and rivers that form almost all state boundaries in the US. The system will be two-tiered, e.g. federal-state, but only the federal tier will have SLs, and the state/regional tier will probably create local authorities. The regional level will handle regional and to some degree local matters, with each region comprising of a few millions of people - say, 2-4 million in large rural areas that need to be broken up in order to prevent 2-million-sq.-km regions (northern Alaska is too sparsely populated for the state to be split), and 15-20 million in urban areas such as NY metro. The SL level will be a small step about the regional level; the SLs will be able to do all legislation, but won't be able to override regional law in every case. The federal level will be the top for the legislative system, with Congress being able to override most SL and regional laws. Finally, the people's initiative level will be able to override the federal level.

So... Does anybody have anything to say? Any objections? Any alternative solutions to the problem with 18th-century democracy? Any suggestions for SLs on the technical side, e.g. the 100 issues that will make the SLs?

Too long, I know...�

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Replies:

Updated version of NK-govt -- arendt, Tue 2003-08-19 18:21:43