How to fix democracy with one small tune-up

In the aftermath of probably the tensest US election in a lifetime, it seems pertinent to talk about democracy in general. There is little doubt that something is wrong with this system, and not just in US. In the last few decades, democracies all over the world seem to be going through an existential crisis, devolving into dictatorships, plunging into chaos of election streaks, becoming paralyzed by internal divisions, or failing altogether.

Some might say that democracy as such doesn’t work and can’t possibly work, but I disagree. If 20 years of studying political parties and 30 years of designing software systems have taught me anything, it is that democratic systems work surprisingly well, actually, it’s just that they suffer from poor maintenance and contain some small, but glaringly crucial design flaws or “bugs”, as the programmers say. And, as a programmer, I know for a fact that bugs can be fixed and what seemed to be hopelessly broken a moment ago, suddenly works perfectly.

So, let’s do some debugging, shall we?

Let’s start with the basics. Democracy is the rule of the people (ALL the people, not just the majority, but that another story). This means that the people set all the rules that govern their lives and make all the decisions. Ideally, this means that they all come together, discuss a given problem, listen to one another, assemble all the viewpoints and data, and come up with a solution that is most satisfying to everyone (at least as much as possible).

Now, obviously this can’t possibly work well in a group of millions of people, especially those who are too busy with their daily lives to discuss national problems, so we invented a representative democracy: the people don’t set the rules directly, but appoint a sufficiently small group of their representatives, the Parliament, to play stand-ins for the people as a full time job.

With all this in mind, a presidential democracy is clearly a bad idea, especially in US, where the President is explicitly defined to be as powerful as the entire Congress (the “co-equality” principle), if only because a single politician cannot represent all the people. At best, a president represents a majority of voters (which in itself is usually not a majority of the people), but more often than not a president is elected only by a plurality, and even that isn’t guaranteed (in 2016, a US president was “elected” by a 46-to-48 percent minority).

The Parliament, on the other hand, can easily represent vast majority of the people, if not nearly all of them, given the properly tuned election system. So, sticking to a proportional parliamentary democracy is clearly the right way to go. One problem is that the Parliament can’t enforce its own laws, both because it’s a large and diverse group of people who don’t have the cohesion, time or talent to run a n executive government, and because it’s a bad idea to give the same people legislative and executive power — that’s a breeding ground for dictators. Okay, not a problem — the Parliament can appoint a small and dedicated task force of likeminded professionals (the executive branch or the Cabinet), whose sole job is to implement the laws laid forward by the Parliament. And that is the most basic structure of a healthy and functional democracy (there’s much more to it, of course, but let’s start with that).

But wait, you say, most if not all parliamentary democracies are based on this very principle, yet many are inherently unstable, or get deadlocked constantly, or dive into authoritarianism, and sometimes even manage to do all three at the same time! A case in point is Israel, which lately has had elections twice a year, the government is completely paralyzed or falls apart (or both), yet there is also an “irreplaceable” prime minister who basically does what he wants and couldn’t care less about the democratic process or fair elections.

However, I contend that ALL these problems can be traced down to a single design flaw, which exists in every parliamentary democracy I know. This flaw is so minor as to seem almost inconsequential, but it is the “root of all evil”.

And here is the problem: the head of the executive branch (usually called “Prime Minister”) is required by law to be a politician! And not just any politician, but a member of Parliament, and often — a leader of a parliamentary faction, or, in the most egregious cases, a leader of the largest faction.

The more you think about it, the more insane this requirement should look, because Parliament members are the ones who “hire” the Prime Minister and define the job description and scope, while also being candidates for the job themselves! It doesn’t take a genius to predict what will happen — they will give a potential Prime Minister all the power they can think of and then fight each other for the privilege of being one. Indeed, a Prime Minister, who is technically an employee of the Parliament, usually has enough power to bend the Parliament to his (or, sometimes, her) will, including the power to dissolve the Parliament, which is a common cause for unscheduled elections and the resulting chaos. It’s like giving employees the power to fire their bosses. It’s all upside down!

Of course, before any of that can happen, a Prime Minister (“PM”) must get the approval of the Parliament (or at least its plurality). But that becomes problematic if the job is so lucrative that everyone wants it for themselves. So, a PM candidate must quite literally buy the parliamentary support with political promises or money, but most importantly, with Cabinet positions. As a result, we get a Cabinet, which is a bloated bunch of incompetent political hacks, whose first goal is to grab more power, while serving the Parliament and the people is a secondary goal at best. Moreover, since Cabinet members are typically the leaders of the parties that together comprise a majority of the Parliament, they basically control the Parliament and can do whatever they want, as long as they can agree with each other. If they can, then democracy becomes an illusion, with the Parliament serving as a rubber stamp for the executive branch. And if they can’t agree with each other, then the Cabinet is either paralyzed or breaks up, and either way, the next unscheduled election is just around the corner.

But what if we simply reverse the said requirement? What if a Prime Minister could NOT be a politician? I’m not talking about making a PM resign from Parliament after appointment — that will do absolutely nothing. No, a PM must be an “outsider”, a talented and competent administrator without any specific political agenda, who hasn’t been a politician or even a member of a party for a while (if ever), and whose sole task is to do what the people (via the Parliament) tell him to do.

In this case, the Parliament will have no incentive to give a PM more than the minimal authority required to run the executive branch, because they have nothing to gain from giving a PM more power, in fact they’d risk losing control over the situation if they did that. Under such conditions a PM should never conceivably become a dictator. If the Cabinet goes “rogue” and defies the Parliament, they just get fired on the spot, and a new, more agreeable Cabinet is recruited instead. Since the PM has no control over the Parliament and doesn’t have much power beyond administration, such event would barely constitute a political crisis, because it’s just not consequential enough who the PM is, and the Parliament — the main power of the land —is unaffected by the replacement of the Cabinet. At the same time, there is no basis for an in-cabinet gridlock, because the PM chooses likeminded ministers who he can get along with (if not, then he just fires them). A Cabinet like this would be naturally composed of the most professional, competent people money can hire. At least, there is no good reason why that shouldn’t be the case, especially if the Parliament has a say in the appointment of ministers in whatever way, and the only motivation of the Parliament is to have the most effective people to do their bidding.

All this might seem like a radical change, but remember — we only changed one small requirement and all the resulting effects just move us toward a democratic system of government the way it’s supposed to be, with the legislative and the executive powers separated, yet synchronized (as it’s supposed to be), and the Prime Minister being a servant rather than the master. Indeed, the very word “minister” means “servant” and it’s not an accident. To reiterate, there is really no rational reason why a PM must be a member of Parliament or have too much power — that’s just an artificial construct, invented by the greedy legislators, who wanted the job for themselves. Some could point to one rational and non-greedy reason — if anyone can be a PM, then millions will apply for the job and the Parliament will drown in applications. Personally, I doubt that will happen — who wants to be a servant with no political freedom even for a large salary? If anything, I’m slightly worried that there won’t be enough candidates. But all these problems can be easily calibrated by tweaking additional requirements for the job. A PM needs to be an administrator with demonstrated knowledge in governing and proven experience in running large organizations, right? So, job requirements may include some kind of a knowledge test and previous experience, e.g. being a mayor, a CEO of a large corporation/non-profit, high ranking military officer (all with suitable “cooling-off periods”, of course), etc. In worst case scenario, we can add an artificial quota on the number of candidates on a first-come-first-served basis. So, having too many candidates is not a problem.

But how can a neutered Prime Minister be an effective leader, you ask? The answer is — he CAN’T, and that’s precisely the point! A true democracy means that there is no single leader, nor should there be! “Leader” is an awful concept anyway. If you disagree, then use Google Translate to translate “leader” into German and prepare to be horrified. That being said, many people still confuse democracy with elective monarchy and an idea of not having a singular glorious Leader is frightening or even unfathomable to them. Moreover, they don’t just want any leader, but a charismatic and a good-looking one. No, seriously, I personally know people who honestly believe that appearance is the most important quality for an effective leader. Fortunately, parliamentary democracies already provide a potential solution for such people — an apolitical head of state, with little to no actual power, but having an important symbolic role of being the single greatest representative of the people as a whole. Well, at least in theory, but this theory seems to be working surprisingly well, particularly in Israel. So fine, let’s have a President to stand on top of the legislative and the executive branch, elected by the people to serve as the public face of the country. Since this role doesn’t carry much actual power (although it should be noticeably more than nothing), such a person could well be elected in what is essentially a popularity contest. It should satisfy the need of many people to have a good-looking and eloquent representative, and it will obscure the Prime Minister, further reducing the latter’s importance in the eyes of the public, thereby decreasing the already low chances of an authoritarian coup coming from the executive branch. To achieve that, only such President, not PM, may have the right to publicly address the people or the international community, even if the President doesn’t actually decide what to say. If only the appearance matters, then let it be for the appearance sake.

To recap: The most important thing we need to do to fix democracy is to deny executive power to the legislators, in effect making the executive branch professional and apolitical. The question is, would legislators agree to deny themselves the direct executive power? It won’t be easy to persuade them, but I believe that it’s not impossible either. After all, not having a dictator is in their best interest either, since most of them will never be one, and deep down they know it.

So, have we fixed democracy completely? Not yet. This was just one major bug and there are many others, particularly when it comes to the workings of the Parliament and the elections. We only made the necessary first step that will nevertheless allow us to fix other bugs as well. But that’s a story for another time.