Participatory Democracy - Classic or Dud?

Could you successively vote on bills to dredge a particular list of inland waterways, to appropriate exactly so much money for courts, and to define clean air regulations and grant tax breaks to abate air pollution from small engine devices, all in a single week and still feel certain you voted correctly?

this is a good point. Our current local mayor was elected on a platform of involving the people in decision making. We have just had our second referendum for this year (on a completely non internet basis) asking questions like "should the council commit funds to investigate the potential for adding flouride to the water supply?" "should the council eliminate the separate rural wards creating only one city ward?" "should the council undertake to soften the water supply?" (we have a crap water supply) and so on and such forth.

I am (of course) exceptionally well read and I don't think I know enough about these things to have an opinion. I doubt that most people do, so everyone just fires off whatever comes into their heads (chemicals in the water = bad) or what they heard the neighbour say and the decisions made are not good.

This is why we no longer have a free library system. Not because the council asked "do you want really good books and educational resources available to children for free?" but "do you want to spend your money supporting a library only 35% of ratepayers use?"

I think what started me thinking about this is a conviction that, in the UK at least, political parties reduce the "amount" of democracy in government. E-participation seems to offer some way of reducing the power of parties.

Arguments about lobbying and corruption apply just as readily to existing democractic systems don't they? The probability that a minority of the population would be actively involved in the process doesn't seem too different to what we already have, either.

A functioning government would need technocrats and civil servants, true. The elected representatives seem to me to be the most replacable element of the system.

But I also know that current politicians don't either... they just take it that if *their* minister has proposed something then it's in their interests to vote for it. So maybe this kind of thing would be replicated in a direct voting system, with people following the lead of politicians theyt support rather than actually making up their own minds. I think this is what happens in practice in direct voting systems (I am thinking of classical Athens and student union assemblies).

I also suspect that direct voting systems would see very low rates of participation. Again, I think this has been the actual experience with them, meaning that political decisions would be dominated by those with nothing better to do with their time than play the political game. I reckon this would weirdly be less democratic than current systems (in Europe, particularly).

Having said all that, the most famous historical direct democracy was one of the most successful states of its era, and provides an interesting example of how this kind of thing can actually work in practice (although it did disenfranchise women, resident foreigners, slaves, etc.).

And this would be different to our current form of democracy how?

This is the mayor who thinks the art gallery should fund proposed upgrades (to preserve and display paintings currently stacked in a basement) by selling some of those painting sitting around in the basement.

it just seems like everyone would have to take up too much of their time in political decision making. I also reckon that a lot of political issues are not readily reducible to the kind of questions that could be put to a mass electorate.

this is to some extent true - but isn't the opportunity to participate that is not taken up an improvement on never having the opportunity in the first place?

Participation is better viewed as a process rather than an end. The true end of government is governance. I would personally give priority to any process that provides an opportunity for good governance, as opposed to an opportunity for participation.

One can hypothesize that the best governance is always that where participation is the most complete, but that is an idealistic notion which should be tested against whatever facts one can bring to bear. Looking at history and at my society (USA) as it is currently formed, I suspect that in nations where the population runs into the tens of millions, full participatory democracy of the sort described in the OP would result in shitty governance.

anybody who has lived in california can tell you what a terrible idea this is

I would say that privileging governance over participation might result in all sorts of unpleasant possibilities. Privileging participation can be partly a recognition that all forms of governance are, at best, inequitable.

I'm less keen on the idea of super-participatory democracy as an idea, as about what our negative responses to it tell us about our attitudes to the systems we live in.

would say that privileging governance over participation might result in all sorts of unpleasant possibilities.

Obviously, the ideal form is that which excludes the largest number of unpleasant possibilities. Wide participation is needed to ensure that no segment of society is consistently handed the dirty end of the stick. One may say that, because some of a thing is good, more of it is always better, but my experience doesn't back this up.

what our negative responses to it tell us about our attitudes to the systems we live in.

I'll bite. What do you think it tells us?

anybody who has lived in california can tell you what a terrible idea this is

otm. big dud.

xpost

I think it suggests that ideas about equality and the sanctity of the democratic process maybe aren't that sincere even amongst people who'd self-define as liberal?

Or maybe that a Mexican Stand-off isn't really a form of government that one could whole-heartedly embrace and champion.

Equality? I am pretty up on the idea of equality before the law and on equal access to the political process, whatever that process might be. When equality is construed to require uniformity and conformity, I am less elated about it.

There is no accepted form for "the democratic process", but rather a large number of forms all characterized by widespread enfranchisement, but disagreeing on thousands of details, so I am not sure what it is that I am to consider as sanctified.

As I said earlier, the key difficulty is distribution of information. Every citizen has a good sense of their own direct personal interests, playing out within their own small sphere. But almost no one has a good grip on their stake in society, or how the details of laws will affect them indirectly, through social mechanisms.

Getting everyone involved in every detail of every decision will tend to leverage ignorance rather than knowlege. I could elaborate on this, but only if someone asks.

Yeah it's really the wrongest of wrong times in the week to be having this discussion. But I can't resist one thing: equality before the law, sure, but what is the law if not an expression of the will of the state? And in a state with unequally distributed power, doesn't equality before the law ring hollow?

representative democracy exists for a reason. california has a habit of throwing everything to the populace with it's initiative process, decisions that I frankly think are better suited to legislators than joe schmo. it's irresponsible and passing-the-blame to the voter when things don't work. this would be rampant with the system proposed here. Now, whether representative democracy works correctly is another issue, but the california ballot initiative process is how we wind up with shit like Prop 8

(oh, I guess someone up above said the same thing)

direct democracy is fucking horrible, for all the reasons outlined above. do not want. wealthy interest groups should not be able to buy a place on the ballot.

and the way these propositions (and ads for/against them) are written, they go out of their way prey on the uneducated general public's lack of political savvy and fear of change and hatred of paying taxes. here in l.a., the high school graduation rate is less than half... i don't want people with a 9th grade education voting on such complicated issues!

i agree with most of the arguments against pure participatory democracy suggested in the original post but, uh, let's not forget that the other extreme — pure representative democracy — is a pretty bad idea too. dick cheney snorting "so what?" on live tv after being told how many americans oppose the iraq war (or pundits who insist that a true statesman doesn't "pander to the polls") isn't much preferable to mob rule. citizen involvement is essential to the health of a democracy.

i don't want people with a 9th grade education voting on such complicated issues!

before people come after me for this, keep in mind that i don't want anyone in the general population voting on such complicated issues. elected/appointed officials are sleazy, but at least they have some vague idea of how government works.

how do you feel about jury trials, out of interest?

Whilst I agree that differences in education or intelligence can unbalance any democratic process, and that specialists in some senses know better, the counter-measures that a system of government might employ to check voter ignorance could well lead to a self-perpetuating aristocratic or technician class elected by people unqualified to accurately judge their merits or failings.

http://www.qwantz.com/archive/001339.html

This kind of sums up ILX for me.

A jury trial is an interesting contrast, because the problem of information is not nearly as prominent. Every member of the jury is exposed to the same information and they will differ only in how closely they were paying atention and on the construction they will place on it, bsed on diffeing life experience.

Secondly, in the jury room, the jury members are forced together in one place, free to argue, ask questions, make their own points to the other jurors and generally thrash out the case together.

This is in stark contrast to the totality of the electorate deciding how they will vote on any issue. They are not forced to all hear the same information or examine the same evidence, and usually cannot share their views with more than a few acquaintances out of the generality (oftentimes millions) of voters.

how do you feel about jury trials, out of interest?

it's a good system as long as the "jury of your peers" is balanced and isn't manipulated to select certain jurors with certain opinions.

i think that when it works as it should, it leads to some robust discussion of the case.

what aimless said, basically. (if i'm giving short answers, it's because i'm not feeling very well today.)

sorry, i didn't want that to sound like i was just trying to be a smartarse or catch someone out, it's a serious comparison on my part and i'm ambivalent about it myself. but i think the distinctions aimless draws are weak: saying jurors only differ in how much they are paying attention is saying a lot! juries are often expected to grasp concepts which are at least as complicated as political issues and i don't think it's out of line to suggest that at least some of the time people are having decisions made about their liberty by people who genuinely don't understand the issues. information isn't the problem as much as understanding.

but otoh, the sheer democratic value of juries tends to outweigh everything else imo - the alternative being an inevitable cabal of more-or-less self selecting people carving everything up for themselves. so i'm just wondering why that might not apply for political issues. i take the point about the disproportionate influence of the the wealthy, but that's the cast at the moment anyway.

*the case at the moment anyway

information isn't the problem as much as understanding.

If there is one thing people do by nature it is to try to understand what they experience. Since a courtroom is designed to exclude any and all distractions from what jurors are expected to pay attention to and to understand, I think the great majority of jurors do their best to understand the evidence and arguments they are given to evaluate.

If voters could be equally expected to sit through the same level of presentation of fact, with the same safeguards for excluding misinformation and allowing opposing sides full play for their contrary points of view, then I would have a similar level of confidence in the result of the voters's understanding of the issues.

I should also point out that the standard of agreement for juries is commonly 100%, but for most elections is only 50% + 1 vote. This, too, has an impact on the quality of the result.

ok, don't want to get into a massive derail here but the original point was that 50 per cent of californians have only a 9th grade education and that's not thought to be good enough to vote directly on the issues. but those same people will end up on juries - disproportionately so, if it's anything like the uk, because middle class professionals work the system to get exempted. whether or not you think they are trying to understand the issues, it was being assumed that their education made them unable to make proper judgements on policy, so how could they follow a complex fraud case, for instance?

plus, the fact that juries are required to produce a unanimous verdict upon pain of spending even longer doing something that bores them isn't necessarily going to make them a more carefully deliberative body than an electorate where a bare majority wins.

i think arguments against participatory democracy which rely on the electorate being in some way inadequate have to be dismissed because they are arguments against any form of democracy. if someone isn't fit to decide whether gay marriage is ok, they're not fit to choose between candidates presenting a complex profile of political opinions either. that's not to say that there aren't other reasons why it's bad.

WRT juries, it also should be pointed out that quite a lot is done by the judge and the system to manage jury trials to avoid such pitfalls, not to mention in some cases avoid them altogether through arbitration and the like (also states aren't required to have juries in civil trials).

WRT pure participatory democracy, it should be pointed out that 99% of legislation has nothing to do with hot-button issues like gay marriage. A guy with only a 9th grade education IS technically "well-informed" enough to vote on gay marriage -- it's more a question of whether any of us are well informed enough to vote on the finer points of budgets and appropriations and food labeling and foreign treaties and trade laws etc. etc. I mean legislation is a full-time job for legislators, and a lot of them have law and/or public administration degrees. There are lots of easy shots to take at what I'm saying here (monied interests, corrupt idiot politicians etc.), but there is a benefit to having professional lawmakers in a society as complex as ours. Ideally, representative democracy serves as a check on some of the flaws -- we have relatively decent public information and when enough bad information on a politician accumulates we have the power to throw him out. Hardly a perfect system, but pure participatory democracy is a fantasy.

My work currently involves me with the minutiae of legislation, and I agree that I cannot see anyone who does not have to bothering to pay any attentions to the finer details of lawmaking. I cannot see the committee stage of most Bills attracting any voters other than vested interests and cranks.

there's no substitute for a political assembly populated with honest, intelligent and idealistic representatives. quite why this is so difficult to achieve is another discussion entirely.