Guest post: Democracy depends on deliberation
Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on More bags.
The trouble with Western democracies is that the people who stand for political office are commonly not themselves democrats. They prefer their own wills to prevail rather than those of the population-at-large. Some prize examples of elected anti-democrats spring readily to mind.
I always wondered what the purpose of a divided government was, why didn’t the founders set up a parliamentary system where the majority party holds the executive? The way it is, the executive branch can be hamstrung as it is about to be when the next U.S. government shutdown battle comes along (and Johnson will not make a deal like McCarthy did). But, when someone like Trump or Sanders comes along as a populist who promises to “fix things” and have a “people’s revolution,” we are far better off with a strong Congress that can say “hold on there. Not so fast.”
People don’t vote for who would be the best administrator as President in the U.S. They vote for who would be a Strong Leader and make the country over by will and inspiration, and that’s bad for democracy. In Minnesota, the Democrats had a weak opposition in the most recent session and passed through a cornucopia of liberal wetdreams (some of which I think are pretty good.) But the opposition had no fangs and the Democrats were able to label any opposing voices on issues as being the plaints of RW bigots, they were basically toothless. So, the trans sanctuary bills, and “anti-conversion” bills were passed with no dissent among the Democrats and the Republican objections were dismissed.
That’s what happens when demagogues rule, the groupthink takes over. If our governor had faced a legislature with at least one house on the opposition party, he would have had to listen to them. Instead, we become yes-men, and I am thankful that the governor doesn’t have the power to do as much as a president would. I may secretly give money to Republicans in the next election here, not because I like them, but because I think we need opposition in the government. Slow down, fight for the hard compromises, and make sure all of the people have some voice and not just the members of the majority party.
Democracy depends on deliberation, but power is more attractive to the voters.
No system of government is perfect, including democracy. I do think a well structured and functional democracy that is prized and valued by the population is the best of a bad bunch.
My understanding is that the US structure was very much a compromise between the Founders. The senate representation was designed to protect small States with low populations from the tyranny of popular expression by the bigger States. The President was largely intended to deal with foreign relations and be an internal figurehead with real power vested in Congress. The whole thing was supposed to function in the way educated and well-mannered gentlemen expected it to. Welcome to the modern world chaps!
I’d add that Americans tend to talk about ‘parliamentary’ governments as if they were one thing. They’re very much not. The means of election and representation has a huge impact on both the composition and functioning of the Parliament. First Past the Post and ranked systems tend to result in two-party systems. Proportional representation systems do tend to result in more women, minorities (in the wider definition), and parties in parliament. However, if the system is too open it results in fragmentation, chaos, instability. Too restrictive and it behaves much like FPP. Get it in the goldilocks zone and pretty much every Government will be a coalition where the ‘main’ party doesn’t have total control and there is always the risk of defeat on some issue. Again, not perfect, but better than FPP.
Regardless of which system is chosen, democracy’s function best when voters feel their voice is heard and valued, and where they respect the decisions and actions of the government, even if they disagree with it because the government can clearly articulate why they are making that choice. Voting has to be free, fair, and with an electorate structure and voting system that pretty much everyone agrees is as neutral as possible. On that latter point the US is failing miserably and has been for decades.
It is my understanding, although my reading of American history is a long way back, that the “founders” were afraid of anything at all that resembled the power of a monarch so they set up the Supreme Court, Congress and the Executive with sufficient power to function, but insufficient power to be dominant. It would always require at least two, sometimes all 3, to make momentous changes.
As to Rob above, having lived most of my life in Aus with a preferential voting system and a substantial portion in NZ under MMP, I think the Kiwis got it as close to perfection as possible, they just made the threshold a little too low. But our system of PV plus compulsory voting is a close second, far superior to FPP and electoral colleges.
Rev, I think I mostly agree. If the threshold was raised from the current 5% I don’t think I’d move it by much. I certainly wouldn’t lower it. I think one of the things that made our particular flavour of MMP successful is that it was designed by experts with input from politicians, rather than as a political process. Neither of our main parties particularly wanted it, but they felt obligated to offer the referendum. It passed largely because we’d just had a couple of decades of both parties demonstrating why unfettered FPP systems could be destructive.
I think one of the reasons NZ democracy functions as well as it does is because an independent commission is responsible for running the elections and that commission and all parties genuinely believe that voting should be as universal and as easy as possible. We have two weeks of early voting. You don’t have to vote in your enrolled electorate. You can register at the polls. Your details are sent to you months prior for checking. You receive a ‘quick vote’ card in the mail about three weeks prior to election day* that speeds up the process if you vote in your electorate. Polling stations are everywhere – I’ve never walked more than 1.5km to vote and I could have easy used several stations within 3km (urban area obviously). Postal voting is available. As a result queues are short, efficiency is high, atmosphere is relaxed.
* This year the quick vote cards were delayed, with 1.4 million being delivered just a week prior to the election, and after early voting had started. Al the parties were being critical of the delay because of concerns that some people may have felt they couldn’t vote without that card (not so). It was actually really good seeing the performance of the electoral commission being scrutinised.
Even here though, there are people who are questioning whether democracy is right and whether voting matters. Covid and related conspiracies certainly haven’t helped