This is the last in a six article series. All six articles have now been published:
- A New Proposal For A Practical Democracy Built On Public Agreement
- The Flaws In Our Existing Voting Machinery
- Creating A More Democratic Process By Correcting Existing Flaws
- The Mechanics Behind A New Election System
- A New Way To Encourage Political Participation By Design
- Practical Democracy: The Next Step In The Evolution Of Democracy
We’ve been examining our political circumstances and devising a different way of achieving government of the people, by the people, for the people. Now, we’ll put it all together.
Understanding the Process
I. The Concept
Practical Democracy springs from the knowledge that some people are better advocates of the public interest than others. In Beyond Adversary Democracy[1], Jane Mansbridge, speaking of a small community in Vermont, says, “When interests are similar, citizens do not need equal power to protect their individual interests; they only need to persuade their wisest, cleverest, most virtuous, and most experienced citizens to spend their time solving town problems in the best interests of everyone.”[2]
The fundamental challenge of democracy is to find those “wisest, cleverest, most virtuous, and most experienced citizens” and empower them as our representatives. PD does that by giving every member of the electorate the right to be a candidate and the ability to influence the selection process, while ensuring that no individual or group has an advantage over others.
PD makes no attempt to alter the structure of government. It simply changes the way we select our representatives. We have the venues for resolving adversarial issues in our legislatures and councils. However, since the solutions that flow from those assemblies cannot be better than the people who craft them, PD lets the electorate agree on the individuals they believe will resolve adversarial issues in the public interest.
People’s interests change over time. To achieve satisfaction, these changing attitudes must be given voice and reflected in the results of each election. The PD process lets particular interests attract supporters to their cause and elevate their most effective advocates during each electoral cycle. Advocates of those interests can proclaim their ideas and encourage discussion of their concepts. Some will be accepted, in whole or in part, as they are shown to be in the common interest of the community.
Democracy’s dilemma is to find those individuals whose self-interest encourages them to seek advancement and whose commitment to the public interest makes them acceptable to their peers. Such persons cannot be identified by partisan groups seeking to advance their own interests. They can only be identified by agreement among the people themselves.
II. Why Practical Democracy Works
Practical Democracy gives the people a way to select Mansbridge’s “wisest, cleverest, most virtuous, and most experienced citizens”. At each level, voters deliberate in small groups, where “… face-to-face contact increases the perception of likeness, encourages decision making by consensus, and perhaps even enhances equality of status.”[3]
Academic studies have shown the value of deliberation in small groups. The PD process builds on these phenomena. It lets people with differing views deliberate and seek consensus on political issues. When triad members are selected to advance, those selected are the persons the group agrees best represent its perspectives. This necessarily adds a bias toward the common interest.
PD works because it atomizes the electorate into thousands, or, in larger communities, millions of very small groups. Each provides a slight bias toward the common interest. As the levels advance, the cumulative effect of this small bias overwhelms special interests seeking their private gain. It leads, inexorably, to the selection of representatives who advocate the will of the community.
III. Summary
The described process provides the sorting and selecting mechanism required to implement Jane Mansbridge’s “Selection Model” of Political Representation.[4] It yields self-motivated representatives whose gyroscopes are aligned with the objectives of the people who select them. It lets the people advance the individuals they agree have the qualities necessary to resolve public issues into ever-more deliberative groups to work out solutions from broadly differing perspectives.
PD focuses on selecting representatives who will resolve adversarial encounters to the advantage of the commonweal. During the process, participants necessarily consider both common and conflicting interests, and, because PD is intrinsically bidirectional, it gives advocates of conflicting interests a continuing voice.
At the same time, it encourages the absorption of diverse interests, reducing them to their essential element: their effect on the participants in the electoral process. There are no platforms, there is no ideology. The only question is, which participants are the most attuned to the needs of the community and have the qualities required to advocate the common good.
IV. Implementation
It is hard to achieve democracy because true democracy has no champions. It offers no rewards for individuals or vested interests; it gives no individual or group an advantage over others. Hence, it offers no incentive for power-seeking individuals or groups to advocate its adoption.
The best chance for something like the Practical Democracy concept to develop will be if it is adopted in a small community where the people want to improve their government. There are considerable efforts, particularly in Europe, to eliminate the evils of party politics. In May of 2015, the people of Frome in the U.K. rejected all party candidates and elected an independent city government.[5] This was an extremely important move because it showed that the party system is vulnerable.
The weakness is that candidates for public office are selected by a group of Independents rather than by the people themselves. Practical Democracy corrects that flaw by letting the people participate in the selection process to the full extent of each individual’s desire and ability.
In the United States, the dissatisfaction with the existing electoral system is widespread. Several communities have tried different electoral methods in recent years in an attempt to correct the evils of the two-party system. The methods they tried were all party-based processes, hence, top-down, and they were all rejected by the people.
The Practical Democracy concept should be more appealing. It lets the people, themselves, agree on the issues they want addressed and the individuals best suited to address them. It replaces the destructiveness of divisive politics with the incredible power of political leadership based on agreement.
Conclusion
Practical Democracy is an electoral process through which the people actively participate in the conduct of, and impress their moral sense on, their government. It creates a unique merger of self-interest and the public interest. It completes more quickly and with less public distraction than existing systems, however large the electorate.
We have no shortage of competent, talented individuals among us. The PD process gives us the machinery to sift through all of us to find the individuals with the qualities needed to address and resolve contemporary public concerns. It lets the public discuss substantive matters – with a purpose. It gives participants time for deliberation and an opportunity to understand the rationale for the positions of others.
PD is a bottom-up process that lets every member of the community participate to the full extent of each individual’s desire and ability. It ensures that the people who advance to positions of political leadership are examined, carefully and repeatedly, before their peers agree to advance them.
The process corrects the flaws in the present system.
- It eliminates money from politics,
- it incorporates partisanship without letting partisans control the process,
- it completes more quickly than our present system,
- it functions without political campaigns or the marketing of candidates,
- it enables and encourages dialogue and deliberation on political issues among the electorate,
- it lets the people change their representatives as they see fit,
- it is a bottom-up arrangement that lets every member of the community influence political decisions to the full extent of each individual’s desire and ability,
- it ensures that candidates for public office are examined carefully before they are elected, and
- it builds on agreement by the members of the electorate rather than on confrontation.
That is the essence of a democratic political process. PD is the next step in the gradual evolution of democracy.
Footnotes:
- Beyond Adversary Democracy, Jane J. Mansbridge, The University of Chicago Press, 1980
- Beyond Adversary Democracy, p. 88
- Beyond Adversary Democracy, p. 33
- Jane Mansbridge, A “Selection Model” of Political Representation
- How Flatpack Democracy beat the old parties in the People’s Republic of Frome, The Guardian
Go back to see the first article in this series, “A New Proposal For A Practical Democracy Built On Public Agreement“.
Wilhelm Greifenstein says
Fred
Thank you for the link, it is informative though I like the map on the Participedia site as a representative of our times. It is nice to see other people recognize our problem of a failed representative government. I can see from your site that you could be seen as an extremely partisan voter; I do not see much middle ground there.
* Candidates for public office cannot mount a viable campaign without party sponsorship.
Would this statement describe how The Donald got to the office, I have yet to see what party he is part of. He seems to wally along in his own direction with lukewarm support from some Republicans. I also do not believe AOC had any party support other than the last party they held in the bar where she worked.
It offers no rewards for individuals or vested interests
How are representatives to be paid, reimbursed for travel and per diem expenses, health care and retirement???
Candidates are not chosen for their integrity. Quite the contrary, they are chosen after they demonstrate their willingness and ability to dissemble, to obfuscate and to mislead the electorate. They are chosen when they prove they will renounce principle and sacrifice honor for the benefit of their party.
That is quite a mouthful, is it your opinion that McCain, Al Franken, Bernie Sanders, Mark Warner, Dianne Feinstein, Mitt Romney, Doug LaMalfa, John Garamendi, John Garamendi, John Kerry are all people who would do what you are saying above? I would say that is a pretty broad brush and that in many cases lacks merit but to each his own as I know there are a whole bunch that do fit your description.
that the US is more an oligarchy than a democracy
That has been my observation for a long time.
• it completes more quickly than our present system
I do not follow the reasoning here, to me it seems that it will lengthen the process when you consider the gathering together and then the argument time until people are finally accepted. I really do not see how you will have all the small meetings and getting the whole thing organized without a staff unless reverse osmosis can be applied somehow.
• it lets the people change their representatives as they see fit,
There must be terms of office otherwise you will be inviting continual re-call every time the chosen representative hiccups.
I think you should make up a detailed schematic that shows the way the system actually would work with how the districts would be formed, what or how would a meeting of the people take place and how many would elect a representative. How the representative would be compensated for their work and travel. Where would the representatives gather to debate, live, vote? Who would operate and maintain all the infrastructure for this?
Will this new system be for the nation’s Congress or are you proposing a whole new system for the president and senate? There are a few details that are not clear.
You have not set out how you will overcome the Elvis factor where large numbers of people hear a certain new voice and they are ready to follow it off a cliff if that is where it leads them. This new voice speaks to the representatives and their constituents and proposes free health care, or free hot dogs if they will support Elvis’s plan to make things better, let’s change the system so Elvis can be here forever. You are old enough to have seen this so many times.
Centuries ago, Plato thought democracy could not work because ‘ordinary people’ are ‘too easily swayed by the emotional and deceptive rhetoric of ambitious politicians’. He failed to note that some folks are more easily swayed than others and that some individuals are not swayed at all.
I think Plato hit the nail on the head and did not fail to notice anything. Nothing has happened since Plato’s time to change anything he said. Yes, some folks are more easily swayed and will remain so. And yes, some are not swayed at all, but you do not allow for the percentages of who does what.
The percentage of people who are swayed 65%
The percentage who are either swayed or not swayed who don’t do anything 25%
The percentage who are not swayed at all and are voting 10%
Yes we can not predict exactly how all the people will in real life act on their duty to vote but I have been involved in way to many political meetings, ad hoc committees, planning groups and sessions to ever believe that a consensus or outcome is ever easy to arrive at and predicting what any group will do in the end is ever something that will occur as planned is just idle dreams.
Many of your ideas have the flaw that to make them work consistently without some strong leader making changes to them will require a dictator of some kind who has absolute power like a referee to overrule or even penalize any group that vary from the prescribed debate and vote format and choose to follow the influences of another strong leader wanting the people to vote in his plan. Then you have the votes of the representatives once they gather together to vote as a nation.
You mention some computer experience, I always loved the old computer rule that one does not hear much anymore, KISS (keep it simple stupid) which I apply with “if it is not broken don’t” fix it. My thought which no one seems to be ready to buy into is to go back to each representative represents 30,000 people. The system remains the same with an adjustment of the house of Congress being large enough to seat 5,000 representatives or so. A lot of representatives but less than you get at a pro basketball game, it is new and innovative and requires thinking to get the perspective of the size in a country of 300,000,000 as not being such a big thing.
In any event thanks for the link it has been interesting.
Your 81 year old correspondent.
Wilhelm Greifenstein
Wilhelm Greifenstein says
Sorry the italics did not work.
Fred Gohlke says
Thank you, very much, for your thoughtful comments, Wilhelm.
I’m studying them and hope to respond tomorrow.
Fred
Fred Gohlke says
Good Morning, Wilhelm Greifenstein
You see me “as an extremely partisan voter”, but I’m not sure what you mean by that. I do, indeed, hold strong opinions, but, they are more non-partisan than partisan. Although I recognize the value of partisanship, I strongly oppose political systems that vest power in partisans.
The reason the Practical Democracy process completes more quickly than our present system is described in section 5, “A New Way To Encourage Political Participation By Design”. Each triad reports its choice in 5 days and next level triads are arranged every week. As a result, even a state with 22 million people will complete the process in about 12 weeks. In the present system, the ballyhoo started about 22 months before the 2020 election, subjecting the entire nation to an unending torrent of manipulative nonsense.
[I see there is an error in section 5 which says that, in a state with 22 million people the process will complete in 145 days. That should be 84 days. I don’t know how to fix the error.]
The way PD lets the people change their representatives as they see fit is that they choose the candidates during each election process, always starting with a fresh arrangement of minds. In the present system, parties continually re-nominate their incumbent office-holders, no matter how tarnished.
You should note that the PD process makes no attempt to change the structure of the government. It simply changes the way candidates for public office are chosen.
At the lower levels, the triads can meet in the private homes of the assigned members or, on request, in school rooms or other space provided by the local government. At the more advanced levels, when the process is applied beyond local government, the issue of transportation and accommodation will certainly arise and provision must be made to cover these costs by the communities that implement the process. As suggested in the text, the process should be adopted initially in a village or town and allowed to expand as the details are worked out and the concept is proven worthy.
You’re right. I’ve seen what you call “the Elvis factor”, although I’m more inclined to think of it as “the WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) factor”. As a matter of fact, it’s one of the reasons for designing a process built on agreement among small groups of people. I’ve found, as I’m sure you have, that the mass manipulation of people through the media is much less effective with small groups who are able (and have been shown) to examine the issue more rationally.
Your evaluation of Plato’s opinion is certainly accurate in a party-controlled political system where the people can be manipulated by mass media, where the people’s only option is to support a candidate put forth by a political party seeking power. It is completely inaccurate in a democratic political system where the participants have an opportunity to think for themselves.
In your attempt to show the percentage of people who are not swayed swayed by the emotional and deceptive rhetoric of ambitious politicians, you missed the most important point: Our political leaders, the public office-holders, constitute about one-fifth of one percent of the people eligible to hold office (0.21%). In other words, there are about two office-holders per thousand eligible people. We don’t need a lot of people who think for themselves, but we do need to find the ones who can. That can’t be done by letting political parties tell us who we can vote for.
You mentioned your involvement in a variety of party activities which puts you closer to the center of power than the vast majority of folks, so your preference for party-based systems is not surprising. For those of us on the outside, though, a process that lets us influence to choice of candidates for public office is appealing.
You note the difficulty of finding consensus in the groups you attended. Given the likely size of those groups, that’s not surprising. The PD process is built around groups of three people for the specific purpose of eliminating this difficulty. The rationale for the group size is provided in section 3 of the material you read.
Your comments about a dictator are unworthy of response, but I’ll give you one, anyway. The PD process arranges for three motivated individuals to compete with each other for advancement. Such a process will only advance individuals who are persuasive enough to convince their competitors that they can be trusted to advance the common good.
I’m familiar with the KISS principle. Practical Democracy embodies it. If we are to have “government of the people, by the people”, what could be simpler than asking the people what they want their government to do and who they think best able to to those things?
And, now, I’m off to see what’s happening with that monument to party politics, The Mueller Report.
Fred Gohlke