Part II: An alternative to representative democracy? Here is a starting point…
PART II: What we could have…
We left it with a sketchy mapping of the current system of separation of power (here) between the executive, legislative and judicial branches. We also mentioned a few of the most obvious bridges between the three which ultimately questions their integrity and are indicative in some countries of the erosion of some basic principles of representative democracy.
Now we will consider an alternative based on the ‘Montesquieu system’. In reality there is no reason to stick to it and we could imagine a system with more or rather different forms of powers; with other branches of power or diffuse models based on actual and future needs; integrating principles with another level of control and freedom reflective of today’s complexity (see here on some possible principles).
The purpose in this part is actually to show that even with our limited experience of thinking about systematic alternatives it is not that difficult to get a sense of the vast field of possibilities lying ahead if we were to open our eyes and overcome our own mental barriers.
Let’s start with a few tools/methods:
Sortition (used by the Greeks and felt out of fashion as it did not fit the interest of the elites because too risky if you try to keep a tight control) — it means random selection. It is used in the selection of jury for instance or citizen to man election days. More recently it is also used with select participants to deliberative processes (see next) but while maintaining a representative sample of the population (socio, eco, geo, gender, age, etc).
Deliberation or deliberative processes — usually combined with sortition to select a representative sample of the population to deliberate on a specific issue and make recommendations. There are different methodologies that can be used to help educate the participants and to support them in the formulation of an informed decision. There are many examples that have demonstrated that the output of these citizen assemblies are often outperforming what elected bodies would have been able to produce in terms of how realistic but ambitious they are (and for good reasons that we won’t go into here).
Vetting process — are meant to ensure that candidates who consider themselves qualified to perform a certain function are assessed before being put into a sort of talent pool. Assessments can take many forms to guarantee that the candidates meet the technical requirements but also the psychological/emotional ones (assessment centers) in particular for functions with high degrees of responsibilities.
Shared governance/management — describes structures where individuals are given the responsibilities to decide within the roles or functions that they tasked themselves to perform on the basis of no-objection rule (rather than to seek consensus). Roles have been developed collectively and are interdependent, they create a complex webs with organic forms of hierarchy and the actual diffusion of power. A great description is available in Reinventing Organizations from Frederic Laloux and a good example is Holacracy.
With these four we should have enough for our purpose; so, let’s go back to our three branches of power and see what alternative we could propose.
Judicial power: vetting and sortition for the selection of judges among competent civil servants to reduce the risk of political uptake and ensure a healthy rotation within key positions.
Legislative power: sortition and deliberative assemblies — different mandates and roles and responsibilities combine with serious decentralization and a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches. Initiatives could come from citizens themselves through different platform meant to gauge interest in certain issues and facilitate participation (deliberative polling, online voting platforms, etc)
Executive power: vetting and sortition as well. And if you really need a few symbolic figures why not elect a couple. In terms of organization, a good dose of self-management and empowerment would do good to move from a pyramidal to an organic organizational structure. For instance, participatory budgets at the municipal level have been tested in many places.
That’s quite sketchy on purpose. It’s not up to me to come up with something on my own. It will require putting together the right experts with the right methods and tools to bring all the pieces together.
Of course building a new system raises many questions. Some of them are:
- Rule of Law — ensuring that it cannot as easily be compromised as under representative democracies where two of the three branches of power are more or less controlled by politicians who can use their position to weaken the judicial system.
- Minorities — preserving or promoting the rights of minorities which requires finding the balance between the dictate of minorities and the dictate of the majority.
- Executive order — moving away from the incarnation of power in a few individuals at the top of pyramid, while ensuring that the system is adaptive and efficient as well as highly accountable.
- State of emergency — maintaining the system even through difficult times by reducing the risks of going back to old practices (the search for a savior or current systems where one person can decide to engage the lives of a thousand people with little oversight.
- International negotiations — fitting into a system that mostly functions on realpolitik with some features of democratization (e.g. one country one vote in the UN General Assembly — not to say that it does not raise questions).
- Risk of public opinion manipulation — reducing the current levels of potential (and actual) manipulation of public opinion is indeed important but let’s not forget that the major problem right now is how easy it is for wealthy and powerful interest groups to manipulate elected representatives (how to make it harder to buy a million voters than a handful of decision-makers)
- Legislative system — designing a system that would remain flexible, allowing to reduce the tendency to produce a law for each new media buzz while ensuring citizen engagement and balancing the role of experts and politicians
- Hackers — building strong and transparent systems that reduce the impact of potential hacking. We are ready to trust online banking systems (the entire economy relies on IT) so why not consultation, negotiation, voting embracing the blockchain evolution.
Those are problems to solve. We need to take them seriously as challenges and look how they could be addressed while building a system that would meet a number of requirements or principles to better address current and future challenges.
My point is merely to show that there are alternative ways of looking at decision-making in democracies that do not require representation. That’s it. Since we know all the negative externalities that come with representation why don’t we give it a serious try; see if it holds together.
Foremost we are looking at a system that can perform better than what we currently have in particular in addressing some of our biggest challenges in terms of ecological, economic, social and spiritual gaps.
Again, this is just a start, the beginning of a revolution — sorry, I meant a conversation…
