Direct Democracy is Flawed - can we fix it using Chinese food, late night comedy shows, and digital technology?
I have to admit to being conflicted about direct democracy.
I have been ever since getting in an argument with my sister’s (now ex-) boyfriend, a Winston Peters fanatic, who argued that Winston is awesome because he supports having more referendums in New Zealand, and that’s a good thing because it allows the voice of the people to be heard.
Now, that immediately made me wary of referendums. If Peters supports them, then surely they are — well, maybe not tools of the devil — but at least tools of egotistical politicians who are prepared to sacrifice good governance for personal gain.
OK, so I admit that it’s not especially rational to become anti-referendums just because someone I don’t like someone who supports them.
But, in my defence, it did lead me to the realisation that there are some things about representative democracy that work really well. Under representative democracy, we, the People (or at least the citizens and permanent residents over the age of 18), delegate the hard work of understanding the implications of political decisions to our parliamentary representatives. As flawed as politicians may be, they are professionals. (Even if we don’t like to admit it, and even if some of them don’t act that way).
And, they are supported by a cadre of highly educated and experienced policy professionals who have the job of analysing the issues and providing advice to our representatives based on that analysis.
For the rest of us however, our jobs are to fix IT systems, or make coffee, or milk cows, or drive buses. To get the time and the information and the skills we need to understand the details and the implications of proposed legislation, on top of our day (or night) jobs and having a life, is just too much (Reedy & Wells 2010, Chadwick 2006).
And this has real impacts. Reedy & Wells (2010) give the example of Proposition 13 in California which permanently capped property taxes at a maximum of 1 percent of the property’s value. That resulted in reduced tax revenue which has resulted in reduced spending on education. I bet the people who put the proposition forward didn’t advertise that.
And Brexit.
And proposals are all or nothing: there is no room for compromise of the sort that can occur in legislative negotiation i.e. when we leave it to the professionals.
I don’t think my sister’s ex-boyfriend understood any of the downsides of giving major decisions to uninformed (even if well-intentioned) citizens. In fact, I suspect he, and millions of other New Zealanders, don’t actually understand how representative democracy and the infrastructure that supports it, actually works.
So, let’s cancel direct democracy
If only.
But, as Reedy and Wells (2010) point out: “Direct democracy is not going anywhere any time soon” (p. 172)
Which is a bit of a shit really.
But, on the other hand, it is true that our representative democracy professionals — both the politicians and their policy advisors — don’t always get it right. They can get in their own information bubble just as much as the rest of us, and this can make it harder for our representatives to hear our voices (Davis 2010).
Which leads to trouble.
And, to let you into a secret, there have been some positive examples of direct democracy, or, at least, outcomes that I personally agree with (but don’t ever tell my sister’s ex-boyfriend).
So maybe it does actually have a place. And, if it’s here to stay, and if it can (sometimes) produce good results, maybe I should change the way I think about it.
Perhaps the best question to ask is whether digital technologies can improve direct democracy.
Understand what we are voting on
If you’re at a Chinese restaurant and you can’t understand the menu, you’re going to want to know a bit more about each option before you order. If you just guess, you might end up with the eye-ball soup when you really wanted the egg foo-young.
Same for voting. You have to understand what you’ll get if you chose one option or the other. Which means you need access to information.
Here’s some poll data from the Pew Institute on sources of information that Americans found most useful for the 2016 election:
Digital technology like social media, websites, and email are all in there, although others like podcasts, blogs, and YouTube haven’t (yet) shown up.
But then, I haven’t seen live TV or read a paper version of a newspaper in a long time. For me, it’s all about TV on demand and digital subscriptions, because they are so much more convenient.
And that is enabled by the internet.
It seems to me that digital technologies play a crucial role in providing information to voters. That’s through providing online access to traditional media as well as providing new channels that didn’t previously exist.
That means the internet is a bit like Google translate — it can help us understand the names of the dishes on the menu in the Chinese restaurant.
But only if you actually bother to look it up. Google Translate only works if you use it, and same for using the internet to find information. As Papacharissi (2010) points out, the internet can’t actually make people interested in politics.
So, what can make people interested in politics? And interested enough to find out what they’re voting on?
Let’s laugh more
No, seriously. Let’s laugh more.
3% of the American population trusted late night comedy as an information source about the 2016 election.
That’s not huge but it is interesting. Because if anything can get people interested in politics, then it’s laughing at politicians.
And politics and politicians lend themselves to satire, whether that’s by mainstream TV, or YouTube, or bloggers, or websites, or magazines, or cartoons, or streaming services. And the internet provides new opportunities for satirists to get their comedy (and their insights) out into the world.
Getting more people interested in politics — now that’s good for democracy.
Satire is a bit like putting photos of food on the menu, whetting people’s appetite, so to speak. It draws people’s attention and gets them interested in something new. It helps them branch out beyond the Chicken Fried Rice. Maybe they’ll try Peking Duck and find they quite like it.
Accessing different points of view
Of course, all that access to information may not help if you’re only getting information from one perspective.
One of the advantages of the internet is that it increases the number of voices, and the framing of issues is no completely longer controlled by the political and media elite (Brundidge and Rice, 2010), which is a good think when it comes to understanding implications of proposals. So that’s got to help, even if “Issue-based websites” are sitting down there at 2%, below late night comedy.
But how many people actually bother accessing different points of view? The research show that at least some people actually research alternative views and information on political views before they vote, and that the internet is one of the sources they use (for example, Reedy & Wells 2010, Mossberger 2010, Brundidge & Rice, 2010).
So digital technology can certainly help some people understand what they are voting on.
Maybe they’ll read a the entire menu before making a decision about what to order.
Understand the implications
But even if you do your research, how do you really find out about the full implications of what you’re voting for?
Referendums don’t necessarily come with any sort of research into implications or policy analysis at all.
How can anyone — even someone who is information rich, time rich, and highly motivated to research before they vote — actually come to an informed decision about how to vote if there is no in-depth analysis of the implications?
And that’s one of the things that bugs me about direct democracy — you can’t make quality decisions if you don’t have quality information.
But, for the sake of this blog, I’ll wave my magic wand and create consultation and analysis processes for referendums. Let’s make it just like representative democracy, where legislation is open to public consultation and scrutiny.
In that case, let’s use digital technology to make it easier for people to make either written or oral submissions, regardless of where they are in the country. Now that I can support.
Then, let’s get a group of professional policy analysts to assess options and present a range of perspectives, like the way that the Pre-Life Testing information was presented, with a range of perspectives to consider.
Or, if there is too much distrust of officials (even though they are professionals), there’s also the option of using a citizen panel to listen to experts and to assess the impacts, like they do in Oregon (Ercan et.al 2019).
Then the full analysis should be made available in as many ways as possible, including using digital technology.
That’s like being given a full — and independently verified — list of the actual ingredients of each dish on the menu, and having that made publicly available. Then you know for sure whether any of the dishes have eye balls in them.
How to amend the proposals as a result of consultation and analysis
This is where — as far as I can see — direct democracy meets its match.
I don’t see an easy way to have direct involvement in negotiating changes to a referendum. Not even using digital technology.
Deliberative processes, include online deliberative processes, can help us understand and frame and advance discussion on issues, and that’s all beneficial and not to be undervalued.
But unless they can be scaled to involve all voters (or, at least, all interested voters), they aren’t direct democracy.
Conclusion
So, here’s my recommendation to fix direct democracy:
1. Encourage use of a wide variety of media, including a range of digital technology, so that people can be informed on what they are voting on.
2. Add a consultation process, enabled by digital technology, to properly research the impact of proposals.
3. Add an analysis process to assess the implications, understand the range of viewpoints, and produce unbiased summaries, and make that available through as many channels as possible, including digital.
4. And, most importantly, encourage satire so more people get interested in politics.
I’m not convinced that’s enough to fix direct democracy — or for me to ever agree with my sister’s ex-boyfriend — but it’s a start.
References
J. Brundidge and R. E. Rice (2010), “Political engagement online: Do the information rich get richer and the like-minded more similar?,” In Papacharissi, Z (Ed), Routledge handbook of Internet politics (pp. 160–172). New York: Routledge.
Chadwick, A (2006). Community, Deliberation, and Participation: E-democracy. In Chadwick A. (ed) Internet politics; states, citizens, and new communication technologies (pp 83–113). New York: Oxford University Press.
Davis, A. (2010). New media and fat democracy: the paradox of online participation. New Media & Society, 12(5), 745–761.
Ercan S., Hendriks C., & Dryzek J.(2019) Public deliberation in an era of communicative plenty. In Policy and Politics, 47, 19–36.
Mossberger, K (2010), Toward digital citizenship: addressing inequality in the information age. In Papacharissi, Z (Ed), Routledge handbook of Internet politics (pp 173–185). New York: Routledge.
Papacharissi, Z (2010). The virtual sphere 2.0: the internet, the public sphere, and beyond. In Chadwick, A., & Howard, P.N. (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics (pp 230–245). New York: Routledge.
Reedy, J., & Wells, C. (2010). Information, the internet, and direct democracy. In Chadwick, A., & Howard, P.N. (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics (pp. 157–172). New York: Routledge.
