Democracy - bad for government?

Sand

I remember a long, long, long while ago a thread on boards where the issue came up whether it was better to have panels of experts running things, or purely democratically elected representitives. At the time i remember coming down quite heavily on the side of democracy, not because it would mean better government as such, but because if people want to vote for lousy government, then they deserve lousy government - with power comes responsibility and all that.

Recently ive been reading The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad by Fareed Zaharia - editor of newsweek whose articles can often be summed up simply as common sense. Its a good read, and well worth getting.

In it, Zakaria identifies democracy as a result of liberty, but not the creator of it. He compares the economic and social track record and prospects of liberal dictatorships such as China, South Korea, Taiwan and so on to the illiberal democracies of Africa, Russia, South and Central America. More interestingly he argues that though people in the developed world are better off than ever before they are increasingly unhappy with their governments and their politicians. In the American case specifically he argues that the more Congress has opened up its voting procedures and tried to estimate public opinion through polls and statistics the less and less respect the voters have for them.

Minority special interest groups and lobbyists can now know which way senators and representitives vote and thus can punish or reward them. Anti Cuban lobbyists control US foreign policy on Cuba because they care most passionately about it, and whilst the majority of Americans couldnt care less about Cuba, that means they arent going to get up in arms about the Cuban policy either. Politicians are afraid to provide leadership in case their poll numbers are hit and instead follow the estimate of the public mood.

He compares that with institutions for which public respect and faith has remained high - the military, the federal reserve and so on and argues that these demonstrate that people have more respect for undemocratic yet liberal institutions that operate in the national interest, rather than in the interest of being re-elected. That provide leadership, rather than seek it.

Cutting it extremely short, he makes a persuasive case for elites who are removed from the democratic process, to be setting policy within certain guidelines in some key areas such as enviromental policy, health care and tax policy - with democratic legislatures able to either accept or reject their proposals, but without being able to make their own ammendments. The independance of Central Banks in setting the interest rates in such a fashion are already an unqualified success. These expert bodies/elites would be tasked with creating the best policy, rather than the electorally most palatable policy - such as radiotherapy unit in every hamlet across Ireland for example - whilst the legislature would be able to act as a check on policies that would be too much too soon.

It kind of grates on my principles that idiots deserve each other, but is such a roll back of democracy possible today, or even desirable. Is it better to trust an expert group to set the best policy, or is it better to simply get the most popular watered down compromise conceived by people whose prime aim is to get re-elected? Would what works for the Central Bank for the Health Service?

Ive got to say Im leaning towards experimentation with expert groups - the more control of the economy that has been taken from the Dail the better our economy has become. And given the quality of politician Ireland is blessed with, anything which limits their power to **** up Ireland has to be given a shot.

simu

It kind of grates on my principles that idiots deserve each other, but is such a roll back of democracy possible today, or even desirable. Is it better to trust an expert group to set the best policy, or is it better to simply get the most popular watered down compromise conceived by people whose prime aim is to get re-elected? Would what works for the Central Bank for the Health Service?

It seems like a good idea when you look at how woefully the government deals with certain issues. Politicians seem far too focused on short-term effects. An example, I was reading about a proposed amendment to the national monuments bill in the Irish Times today - the idea is that if this is passed, it will be up to the Minister for the Environment how much protection national monuments are to receive and s/he'll be able to give permission for destruction of such monuments if deemed necessary (after they've been excavated but I'd rather have monuments still standing in fields than catalogued in museums).

To me, this seems to be a very short-term view. There's nearly always a way of carrying out developments without destroying or endangering monuments if you plan carefully. So, you'd think that if an expert group was in charge of environmental issues, they'd have more of an appreciation for the value of the country's monuments than a politician who doesn't want to be seen as holding back economic development.

Then again, I'm not sure. No matter what sort of group of people you pick to make decisions, you can't rule out corruption or stupidity or adherence to an ideology that constricts the ideas its adherents are willing to accept.

DadaKopf

You assume that technocrats aren't political themselves. It's a dangerous lie to imagine that technocrats can act apolitically.

Zakaria identifies democracy as a result of liberty, but not the creator of it. He compares the economic and social track record and prospects of liberal dictatorships such as China, South Korea, Taiwan and so on to the illiberal democracies of Africa, Russia, South and Central America.

Interesting that, here, 'liberty' most likely refers to forms of communitarianism that stress collective social and economic rights over Western forms that are based on individual property, civil and political rights. Although it has to be said that the most innovative experiments with democracy come from Latin America.

Sleepy

imho, the best possible form of government would be one akin to how these boards are run: benevolant dictatorship. Unfortunately, as we know, there are few (in any) practical examples of this working.

Democracy allow unqualified people to run a large enterprise (the state being governed) withoug providing any of the necessary training to the poor muppets elected. These unqualified elected representatives are usually elected by people unqualified to make a decision about whom would best serve them in government (as they don't understand the job they're "hiring" their representative to do).

Essentially, until only those qualified to vote, can vote and only those capable of running a country can be elected to government you will have imperfect (and in our own case, disasterous) government of the state.

DadaKopf

Except for the fact that publicly elected ministers, who call the shots, are constantly fed information and are informed by a team of civil servants who *are* experts in their area.

Therefore, the parliament acts as just one democratic oversight body that oversees the activities of technocrats who devise policy.

As sand says, the issue is the quality of our politicians. If you have a rotten society, you have rotten politicians. At the same time, if you have a rotten society, you can have rotten civil servants.

I think the running assumption is that all human beings are succeptible to corruption and that civil servants act as an insulated, apolitical body that keep the wheels of government running, crucially at times of transition. However, like I said, it's dangerous to assume that civil servants can be apolitical - especially visible within the trade unions.

I think we should just accept the fact that politics, democratic politics, is a dirty game in which the objective is to demand the kind of government, or system of governance, that we want. I think sand seems to think this situation should be avoided. To me, it makes it all the more pressing that we, as a society, work out what the hell we want out of ourselves and go and get it.

chewy

but whats the motivation for these technocrats to do the "right" thing?

dada said politicians are already advised by experts /civil servants, but thy quickly turn to bureucrats or bown envelope-o-crats... sure anr't all these city managers experts, former civil engineers are something like that? abd they constantly ignore commonsense

DadaKopf

Technocrats tell themselves they're doing the 'rationally objective' thing. By objective, they mean 'correct', which they interpret as "right", within a context of overall allegiance to the system, the nation, their role in the hierarchy etc. Their motivation are these things, their own sense of importance and, I guess, their pay package.

Because of the amount of public oversight in this country, our system is mostly non-corrupt, but in developing regions, it's the opposite. Civil servants are just as political as politicians. You could say they're 'more human'.

The Beer Baron

What's increasingly happening is that society is becoming more and more caught up in a cycle where the media and government are dumbing down society and society is voting for the people they most relate to- dumbasses. Hence we've somehow got into this political quagmire whereby the morons rule the world- how did that happen?

I'm all in favour of "Enlightened Despotism", but then who choses the despot or what happens if you don't agree with him/her.
Whilst I do like the idea of, like our Seanad, of candidates being sponsored by acadamia I feel our Seanad's pretty damn ineffective.

tbh I think economists should run the economy.
egologists/biologists/enviromentalists our enviroment.
All of whom should be accountable to the people.

I'm not against liberty but democracy has run aground.
The majority of humanity isn't always right now is it?
Public opinion more so. I seem to think as plebes like dogs who chew everything but don't know that they're chewing something that'll kill them, or children who like to stick their hands in electrical sockets- the electorate are the same hence the mess we're all in. And government, at least those behind the scenes, old government, companies, the media- they all know this.

Look at the great bastion of democracy the US and you'll
see a police state ruled by fear, look @ europe and you see a rather slapdash approach to unity with new countries countries cajoled into joining a bugeoning economic power that has nothing much to do with democracy and all to do with elitism.

Still, who cares right? Most people are more interested in their appearance, their material posessions, their car, their house, their kids their team...
When you have an "unjust" war like Iraq the outcry we've all seen.
When we have another one next year, well, there'll still be outcry.
Have five or six they're passé.
And so the common man's apathy will be reflected in how he votes.
Less we tell him something new, something else to fire his rather limited imagination, this is the bad guy, we're the good guys, we care about your wishes...

Democracy is wearing pretty thin, Bush's election was democratic- apparently, we voted against the Nice Treaty but hey! When push came to shove the "democratic" government decided they knew best. The war in Iraq was joined by Australia, Britain and other coalition countries by leaders disobeying the will of the majority. And now I see our constitution raped further by an outside force as our citizens, our police force and our armed forces are all given ultimatums from on high- the message is clear- your not as important as this one man who isn't even Irish.
That's democracy in the 21st century.

You want to know where it goes next?
Turn on your TV and watch big bull**** brother.
There's the future of politics right there.
The T&A party- vote for the blondest bitch and we'll go to war anyway.

Please, somebody, communists, fascists, military juntas I don't care- somebody, anybody please take the power away from the moronic masses.
Ideally though, somebody who'll listen, somebody who'll care.

PH01

I remember having this same conversation in a pub once when I was a student. A daft conversation really.
Democracy isn't perfect, but it's the best there is.

bonkey

Originally posted by The Beer Baron
tbh I think economists should run the economy.
egologists/biologists/enviromentalists our enviroment.
All of whom should be accountable to the people.

Thats all well and good, but firstly it assumes that these people want the responsibility. Secondly, it doesn't deal with how you manage the crossover points - you know, like what is good for the ecology may be bad for the economy and vice versa.

If all you have are entrenched literati in each area, how will anyone ever come to agreement?

The majority of humanity isn't always right now is it?

Depends on how you define what constitutes "right".

Look at the great bastion of democracy the US

People keep saying the US is a great bastion of democracy, and I just don't see it. Its a great champion of democracy, and (in fairness) its been around for quite a while, but its hardly the finest example.

The Swiss system, for example, is based on the US one, and is - in my experience - unparallelled. Its far from ideal, but I've yet to see a better system, and it's not one that fills me with dread for the future in this nation.

Still, who cares right?

WEll, thats the fundamental problem with democracy, isn't it. Its supposed to be rule of, by, and for the people. But its really rule of the people, by and for those who actually care enough to get involved one way or the other.

Democracy is wearing pretty thin,

I would disagree. Democracy is fundamentally flawed in that it depends on humans to make it work, and in that it is no different to any other form of government.

However, it is the system which is least resistant to corruption that we have currently come up with.

And now I see our constitution raped further

Good for you. If a majority felt the same as you, and cared enough they could do something. Under other systems of government, they would still get shafted and not even have that possibility.

So your complaint isn't about the failure of the system, but rather by the failure of the people to care.

You want to know where it goes next?

Where we democratically choose to take it.

There's the future of politics right there.
The T&A party- vote for the blondest bitch and we'll go to war anyway.

The Italians have had some "T&A" candidates elected who more or less swung the vote for exactly the reason you'd imagine. Strangely enough, they haven't brought about the downfall of the nation, nor even become notorious as the biggest problem in Italian politics.

Please, somebody, communists, fascists, military juntas I don't care- somebody, anybody please take the power away from the moronic masses.

Because popular opinion isn't good enough. It has to be popular with you instead, right?

Ideally though, somebody who'll listen, somebody who'll care.

Again - the assumption I seem to get here is that if you don't agree with it, its because they are wrong and they don't care.

jc

earwicker

Originally posted by bonkey

However, it is the system which is least resistant to corruption that we have currently come up with.

jc

Did you mean most resistant?

chewy

so what do the swiss do the america doesn't is it cos its a small country.... and is not a physical threat to anyone.. but i presume it is a large econmically

bonkey

Originally posted by chewy
so what do the swiss do the america doesn't

Some major changes :

1) There is no single head of state. There is a council of 7, each of whom has a responsibility for a specific area (bit like Ministers). They rotate the nominal Presidency between them, but it carries no power that I am aware of. This prevents a situation where an indivudual can abuse the system by reaching a position of power.

2) Virtually every significant change made to legislation, policy, and even expenditure gets decided by referendum.

is it cos its a small country.... and is not a physical threat to anyone.. but i presume it is a large econmically

None of these really affect the operation of a democracy. The first one may have in times past (e.g. when the US system was created), but in modern times it has nothing to do with anything.

jc

bonkey

Originally posted by earwicker
Did you mean most resistant?

Yes.

Well, I meant to write "least susceptible", but its the same thing.

jc

Sand

I think some people may have taken the ball and run all the way out of the stadium with it to be honest.

The idea being floated was that certain key policy areas where panels of experts ( how youd define such is a good argument in the offing ) would be given guidelines - such as for example, a budget and what theyre required to do ( Draw up a policy to ensure Ireland meets its Kyoto commitment, youve got 250 million euro a year to play with ). They would go away and provide a plan on how to accomplish this. This would be then presented to the legislature and they would either accept or reject it, without ammendment.

The last part is important because it would eliminate the Jackie-Healy Rae types who act as County Councillors at large rather than TDs. Zakaria stressed the importance of that by giving the example of how the deal to close 31 US military bases at the end of the Cold War was accomplished. Every senator agreed bases needed to be closed to save money in the new peace, but none of them wanted their "local" base to be closed. So a non-partizan committee decided which bases would be closed and it was presented as a yes or no decision to the senate and passed.

Its also important to stress that this was only floated for certain policy areas - not as the norm. This system is already in operation to some degree when you consider the independance of Central Banks, and the success of their independance. The Central Bank can easily affect politics should it choose as it stands. If the Fed Reserve is a Bush fan, then it loosens the money supply well before the election, fueling growth and making people feel richer when it comes to voting, a gain for Bush. Afterwards the money supply has to be tightened again and there is economic pain but the Central Bank has accomplished its political objective. This can happen now, so instead of asking how *would* we stop technocrats affecting politics, the question is how *do* we stop technocrats affecting politics.

My suggestions would be to bar any of these experts from ever holding political office, or of being a member of a political party or of accepting any donation whatsoever ( ban politicians as well from accepting donations of any nautre as well but thats another issue ).

Dada mentioned that politicians are already advised by experts. Thats true, but thats all they are - advised. they can accept or reject their reccomendations as they see fit, usually in the light of political realities. An example would be health reform. An panel of experts delivered a report ( I forget the name but it was quite recent and has caused a lot of trouble ) that called for dramatic overhaul of the health service. The opposition has immediately sprung up around local communities who are losing "their" health facilities, leading to a political backlash against the report and reform. Every dog on the street knows that the health service needs to be reformed. Everyone knows that its not a case of more money - the FF-PD government has, for whatever reason, given more money to the health service than any government ever has before and yet the problems remain. But at the end of the day, no one wants to reform the health serive if it means they lose a radiotherpy unit in Waterford , which another poster recently explained caused the FF collapse there. With Ff desperate to turn things around I guess the health reform will go onto the backburner in favour of throwing more money at the thing.

So we have the people saying we want a better health service. We have the experts saying, Okay, well this is how we can build a better health service. We then have the people shouting " Why are you closing our local hospitals!!!!" We then have the local TDs and politicians attacking the reform of the health service, because it would be political suicide not to. So inevitable compromises and watering down will occur and well get a slightly improved health service with no doubt a host of unforseen problems attached. So democracy hampers good government.

If we hand over policy making to these expert panels on certain issues, they can make good policy without the need to listen to democracy. This doesnt mean that the democratic representitives lose their influence - if a policy is so bad it can be rejected, and the finance minister retains control of the real power in government, the budget. But it does cut down the political gamesmanship intefereing with formulating good policy in key areas.

An example that simu raised would be the power that our democratically elected ministers are taking upon themselves with regard to monuments. Who here seriously trusts a politician to set policy that will protect national heritage as well as a committed non-democratic group of experts would? I dont, for one.

And as a side note - The USA was never created as a great bastion of democracy, but rather as a democratic republic. The founders of the US actually feared democracy as being illiberal and eroding the freedoms of people. Hence the quaint concept of the electoral college, of 2 senators per state regardless of size - all these are checks on unfettered democracy. People look back to Athens as a great democracy, and it is, but as Zakaria noted it executed people by popular vote for what they thought. The lesson being that democracy isnt the same as freedom.

spongebob

A simpler solution to the Healy Rae problem is to

1. Reduce the number of TD's to a more sustainable and logical 120
2. Make all constituencies 10 seaters....that means more democratic than at present because 9% of the vote gets you a seat , anywhere in Ireland .

I disagree with the technocratic approach because Sand has not described a suitable oversight mechanism for the technocrats.

Technocracy in extremis gave us the Death Camp system in WW2 . The Technocrats were set a problem...that of disposing of millions of human beings according to a system they were to devise and operate. They did it really well as history has shown.

M

The Corinthian

Originally posted by Muck
Technocracy in extremis gave us the Death Camp system in WW2 . The Technocrats were set a problem...that of disposing of millions of human beings according to a system they were to devise and operate. They did it really well as history has shown.

And here was I thinking that it was Nazi ideology and hierarchy that gave us the Death Camp system and that the technocrats (if that’s what you want to call them) simply implemented it.

spongebob

The idealogues needed the technocrats Corinthian .

Anyway, I prefer dirty oul democracy because you can simply kick the bastards out ......although maybe not in America

M

The Corinthian

Originally posted by Muck
The idealogues needed the technocrats Corinthian .

I still don’t see your logic of “technocrats are bad because they implemented the death camps”. You described not a technocracy, but a civil service to another form of government, and if one is debating the merits of technocracy, then you can hardly use an example that was not a technocracy as a criticism of it.

spongebob

I use it as an argument for not putting the implementers in charge of overall policy.

I strongly dislike systems which have an inbuilt imperative to resist democratic oversight. Bad as democracy can be , we have not come up with a better system.

'pure' technocracy would be yet another mistake.

M

The Corinthian

Originally posted by Muck
I use it as an argument for not putting the implementers in charge of overall policy.

One set of civil servants did bad things, ergo as civil servants are capable of doing bad things then we should not ever trust them with power. Thus in keeping with your logic and example, the Nazis came to power as a result of democratic election and we should not elect any more politicians as they cannot be trusted not to become like the Nazis.

There are plenty of arguments against a technocracy, but yours is not one of them.

Sand

Muck do you believe its wrong that experts and not democratically elected representitives control the Central Bank? Do you believe it is better we go back to the days when the Dail controlled the interest rates and the Irish punt was routinely devalued to cover up the cracks on generations of bad economic policy?

What you need to recognise is that we already use just this sort of arrangement to form good good policy with regards to interest rates - were simply extending it slightly to certain policy areas. Whether the policy will be carried out or not is the decision of the representitives. Whether the policy will be funded or not is the decision of the government. We simply cut out the the politicians, who are not experts, from actually crafting the policy. The politicians then decide whether they can agree or not agree with the policy, but they cannot alter the policy - which is vital to stop gombeen deal making and NIMBYism. Its the best of both worlds. Each side of the policy making acts as a check on the other. Giving more power to the experts in the Central Bank has been a great success. Why not test other fields as well?

Sure, its not wholly democratic, but when you think about it, democracy is only a tool to achieve good government. If we receive better government by letting the experts create the policy and the politicians evaluate it then why not experiment?

simu

So, say we did this in Ireland - which policy areas should be put under expert control? Environment, roads, heritage, social welfare...? How would you pick the experts? Would they have a full time job doing this or would they just work as consultants? How would these experts be monitored? By peer review or what?

Steveire

You're on to something there lads. I had a conversation about this with a friend after too few pints. I put that ideally, i'd like a leadership of few people who could be trusted to make the right decisions.

I think the biggest issue is that no-one can be trusted like that and NO-one can be trusted by everyone.

I believe that there is too little power divided among far too many people. In my experience, people in 'power' spend so much time trying to get each others allegiance that they don't get around to making the right decisions on the issues.

Anyway, that's my vague rant out of the way.

cheeers.

monument

Democracy isn't perfect, but it's the best there is.

Sorry, what?

What 'democracy' isn't perfect?

What 'democracy' is the best there is? [EDIT answer: the Swiss system]

The Swiss system, for example, is based on the US one, and is - in my experience - unparallelled. Its far from ideal, but I've yet to see a better system, and it's not one that fills me with dread for the future in this nation.

I've just read a bit about it... one way ticket to Switzerland, please!

We were slightly pointing in that direction, but the powers taken away from local government were a u-turn.

Please, somebody, communists, fascists, military juntas I don't care- somebody, anybody please take the power away from the moronic masses.

That statement has a slight hint of fascism. Anyway, it looks as if the masses are “moronic” because you don’t agree with them.

The Corinthian

Originally posted by monument
That statement has a slight hint of fascism. Anyway, it looks as if the masses are “moronic” because you don’t agree with them.

Why do people assume that if someone is either undemocratic or authoritarian, then they must be Fascist?

Of course Communism could never be like that... Either ignorance or stupidity – don’t know which.

monument

Originally posted by The Corinthian
Why do people assume that if someone is either undemocratic or authoritarian, then they must be Fascist?

That was a error on my part. Maybe fascist was just the first think that came to mind - how childish of me.


I resent that the 'masses' were called “moronic” because of their views are different to the original poster’s views, and more-so because the flaws of democracy outlined in the original post, most of which can be blamed on deeply flawed, and very undemocratic, democratic systems.

I think a large problem with most democracies is that they are not very democratic, while democracy is talked about as if ever country which has democratic elements are full democracies.

As if, democracy is some kind of world standard, or word of God, that can never be improved.