If I Wanted Your Opinion, I'd Have Told You What It Was

All forms of government are failures to some extent. In ten thousand years of experimentation we have yet to come up with the 'definitive' system for running a community. The size of the community has changed, the technology, the language, the ethics have all changed, and still we have the same kind of problems. So, why do the various -'ocracies fail, and what is wrong with our current model?
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 Any system of government has certain underlying assumptions about the state of the world and the people in it. The system is then effective to the extent that those assumptions hold true when compared to the real world.
 

Monarchy generally makes the assumption that due to some quirk of fate, luck, birth, breeding or divine intervention the eldest son of the current monarch is the best person to run the country. In some instances throughout history this may even have been close to the truth and thus we get Augustus Caesar (author of the Pax Romana), the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (who tried to abolish slavery in 18th century) and so on. History has also given us some impressive failures. Either way though, this is far from a reliable source of long term rulership. 

Plutocracy (rule by the rich) makes the assumption that those successful in financial enterprise will be equal successful in political endeavours, oligarchy makes a similar assumption to monarchy, though allowing for a group rather then an individual, meritocracy (rule by the skilled, and the politically acceptable version of elitism) assumes it is possible to quantity and test for the aptitudes required to be a successful national leader. Each has problems when confronted with reality.

Thus we come to democracy - the current flavour of the month as far as global governments go. In the name of democracy the western world has embarked on some of the bloodiest conflicts in history, and then, its own affairs in order, we have begun to start wars elsewhere round the world in the sacred name of 'the people'. 

Before looking at any underlying assumptions a more specific context then simply 'democracy' needs to be established. We, in 21st century Britain, exist in what is alternatively called a constitutional monarchy or a representative democracy. I'm going to stick with the latter term since the former is something of a misnomer (we have neither a constitution nor a monarchy in the traditional sense of the term). 

For the sake of clarity the alternative type of democracy being discarded is 'direct democracy'. In a direct democracy decisions are made by the people without the use of intermediaries or elected officials. A group of survivors cut off from the rest of the world may function along the lines of a direct democracy - each member of the group having an equal say in the decisions made. In practise the size of modern communities has made direct democracy an effective impossibility - whether technology will one day deliver a solution to this remains to be seen, however, until it does this is as much a fairy tale style of government as the Artificial Intelligences of the Civilization games.

Given we are operating within a representative system, what then are our assumptions? (For the sake of this example and discussion I am going to assume the only decision made government is taxation and spending).

1. Voters (as individuals) have a rational and to some extent consistent opinion on how their government should raise and spend funds.
2. Voters (as individuals) will utilise their opinions (as established in assumption 1) when making voting decisions.
3. The community as a whole agrees to abide by the outcome of an election (though the exact method for determining the outcome may change - first past the post, proportional representation etc.)
4. The community as a whole agrees on the powers to be bestowed on the elected officials and to abide by the use of these powers within their proscribed limits.
5. Candidates will give fair representation to their intentions if elected, and will be to some extent consistent in these intentions if elected.
6. Voting power is consistent across group members.
7. Any individual is free to stand for election.
8. A member of the community would seek election if no existing candidate's intentions matched his own opinions.
9. No individual in the community will seek to influence the voting decision of another by methods deemed unreasonable by the community as a whole.
10. Once elected an official will not be subjected to pressure or influence to undertake an action, or make a decision, which would be contrary to his stated intentions prior to election.

I'm aware that this list is far from exhaustive, however, these seem to give a core around which a viable system of representative democracy could be established. If all of these assumptions held a vote would allow the people as a whole to choose one or more officials whose intentions are known and consistent to act within defined boundaries on behalf of the community. Victory in such an election would go to the candidate whose intentions are supported by a segment of the population pursuant to some agreed method of declaring victory. After the election all members of the community would then agree to abide by the decisions made by the elected officials and to support their decisions to the extent that they fall within the agreed scope of the official's mandate. 

Many of the assumptions above are not required for a democracy per sé but cause problems if removed (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8), the other two are fundamentally required to prevent a democratic failure (defined as a situation in which a member of the population does not have any input into the ruling of his or her community). To illustrate this consider a removal of assumption 6. Without this there is nothing stopping one voter (or a group of voters) having sufficient voting power to outweigh the rest of the community combined - in this situation anyone aside from the 'super voter' effectively has no control over the outcome of an election. Removal of 9 effectively opens the door to a theory-sanctioned return to a "stickocracy" (rule by the people with the biggest stick).

Having established some semblance of what we would like to see in a representative democratic process, how does our current predicament in the UK match up? As far as I can tell the only assumption which holds (and even then with the odd blemish) is number 9. At present it is, largely, frowned upon for political parties to threaten violence to those who don't vote for them (though we do accept the main parties criminalising various opinions and thereby influencing the ability of people to vote for candidates or groups representing those opinions). 

But what assumptions do we seem to make in our actual political system?

1. The full spectrum of opinion is adequately expressed by a small handful of existing political institutions.
2. A refusal to vote is a tacit endorsement of the winner of an election (whoever that may be).
3. The election of officials is simply a proxy mechanism for the election of quasi-corporate institutions (political parties).
4. Elected officials are agents of political parties and their 'success' or 'failure' is therefore a function of the perceived success or failure of the party itself.
5. The mandate of an elected official is determined by elected officials (or the entity they represent).
6. Transpose 3 from above.

These all seem to hold when compared to real-world politics. Elections are largely determined by the media image of a party to which a politician belongs, rather then any kind of individual action by the candidates themselves. Elections are not invalidated by low voter turn out, and there is no significant backlash to the lack of political diversity offered by a system dominated by two to three main parties. 

One of the stated roles of parliament is to act as a legislative body, and in this respect the government is itself responsible for determining the role of government, this seems to be accepted without any question of the legitimacy of a 'representative' body deciding its own function. 

It is not the assumptions above we should be worried about though - it is the absence of some of the assumptions originally made in my model of representative democracy. We no longer expect political parties or their agents to abide by the commitments they made prior to election, we do not expect freedom of entry into the political arena and we don't require voting power to be equal.  In effect we are happy to be ruled for four years at a time by a small group of individuals who we do not hold to any standard of accountability or consistency, who are free to expand or contract their own mandate, and who are influenced, if not actively controlled, by the unelected officials of a profit/power driven organisation which is closed to outside influences, is stacked high with vested interests and to which we have happily handed to the keys to the gates of representation. 

If this does not conform to your idealised notions of democracy then I encourage you to close your eyes and truly consider what influence you have had on any policy decision taken by a ruling party in your lifetime. Allow me to use my own experiences as a guide;

Years 0-18:  Ineligible to vote, hence, no influence. (Note the imposition of a minimum voting age direct contradicts assumption 6 from my own list.)

Year 18-23: Happily there was an election within 6 months of me turning 18. The party I voted for lost (i.e. did not secure an overall majority).  Now, under the assumptions in both 'real world' representative democracy, and the 'ideal' version, I have now agreed to abide by the election of whichever candidate won for my area. Fair enough - however my elected official was neither cabinet minister nor swing voter. To the best of my knowledge they abided by any whips issued during their time acting as my representative. As such they were only free to act as my representative where this either made no difference, or was not contrary to the intentions of a political parties elite. 

Year 23-present: New elections are held, and this time my party wins! Surely now I've had some impact on the decision making process? Unfortunately not. The 'whip' issue still stands. My representative is only free to influence a vote to the extent that they either defy a whip, or their intended action conforms to the party line. 

This should hopefully illustrate one of the last two issues I want to discuss here. The first is 'whips' the second is the actual role of a representative. 

For those who don't know political parties issue 'whips' prior to parliamentary votes. This is an instruction from party headquarters on how an MP should vote. Whips comes in three flavours (1 line, 2 line and 3 line). A one line whip is an indication of what a party's general policies would dictate, it is not considered binding. On 'one line whip' issues you could consider your representative to actually act on your behalf, unfortunately these are also likely to be inconsequential or uncontested issues. 'Two line whips' are stricter, and can generally be considered binding. If an MP wants to abstain or vote against a two line whip they have to agree with the party in advance. In practice this means that voting against a two line whip delivered from a party with a majority is a token gesture; permission would only be granted where the required outcome is obtained even taking into account the defection of a given individual. In effect your representative has no reasonably exercisable influence over the outcome of a two line whip. "Three line whips" are strict orders on how to vote. Failure to do so generally brings significant reprisals to the individual (contravening 'ideal' assumption 10).   Ironically the status given to three line whips means that some influence is potentially returned to a representative if the issue at hand is sufficiently contentious. Defying a three line whip is often considered 'news worthy' and where the policy at hand is largely unpopular reprisals against those defying a whip to vote with the general consensus could invite a significant media backlash. (This actually leads on to another point - the dominance of the media in modern politics, but this is a matter for another time). 

Overall then my representatives have had remarkably little, to no, influence on the decisions taken by my government over the course of my life.To me this does not smack of a functioning democratic process. 

The final point I want to address is the actual role of a representative. This isn't immediately obvious, and isn't explicitly stated in either of the assumption sets above. We aren't going to change the problems of a political system dominated by corporate-media mega-parties any time soon (if you get hold of £130 million and would like to do something about this please let me know), however, we might, just, be able to do something about the ambiguity around the role of an elected representative. 

It seems to boil down to two possibilities;

A.  A representative is there to present the views and opinions of their election group to the best of his/her abilities, and irrespective of his/her own opinions or views should these differ. The success of an elected official would be judged by how effectively they advocated the collectively agreed upon opinions of their constituency. 

B. A representative is there to act on their own opinions, judgement and initiative. They are elected because the people feel they have the most suitable set of attitudes, skills and experience to act in the best interests of the community. A representative of this type would be free to go against the opinions of their electorate (in effect the doctrine of 'just because I'm in the minority doesn't mean I'm wrong' would apply). Success would be determined by the outcomes the official delivers versus the expected outcomes other officials would have been able to deliver.

One of our key problems as a society at the moment is we (the people) think the answer should be option A, and then get offended when politicians do their own thing, but the politicians think the answer is option B - and that they have been endorsed by the people to follow their own ideas and opinions. 

Maybe if we actually sorted out what it is we want our representatives to be doing, we can then start looking at how we pick them.

/Z