So Australia Day—or Invasion Day as some call it—has come and done with nary a comment about the nature of our democracy. Sure there was the updated-for-2019 sports grants fiasco, but that really focussed on the conduct of the previous Minister for Sport and her gerrymandering grants to sporting organisations. Invasion Day protagonists concentrated on the dispossession of the first peoples and the nation’s failure to come to terms with its past. But everyone seemed to be happy with the nature of our democracy, even those who felt abused by the government’s abject failure—over decades—on climate change. And this despite research findings that many people, especially the young, feel that democracy has run its course and maybe, just maybe, we would all be better off under some form of dictatorship, especially a benign one.
So what is wrong with democracy?
Democracy is said to be about governing for the people—us—and the people—us—having a say who does the governing. This say is in the form of a vote for those who do the governing. How that vote is conducted, and from whom we may choose, is open to interpretation and various options are practiced. Of course, people being perverse, not all the practices are comparable despite their designation as democratic.
Generally, there are four components to democracy: style of democracy, selection of candidates, selection of voters and selection of our representatives. (I know that the following] taxonomy is a simplification but it serves my purpose.)
Democratic styles are really about choices in the mechanisms by which we are governed. Who holds the ultimate power: presidents or parliament? Is there one chamber of representatives or two? Are ministers/secretaries of state for xxx drawn from those elected or are they appointed from outside the representatives? Are simple majorities required to pass legislation or are there quotas to be met? Can anyone establish a political party or are all parties approved by some authority? Is inappropriate behaviour by representatives tolerated or not?
Selection processes for candidates vary. Some candidates are allowed from only a single party, others from any party. Some would be representatives are nominated or at least vetted by the prevailing government, others buy their way onto the ballot. Still others fight it out behind the closed doors of political parties while others fight it out in public, at considerable expense, and undergo a pre-election election to see who will be finally on the ballot paper.
Selection of voters is equally varied. Compulsory voting or optional voting? Centralised registration of voters or decentralised and often politicised registration of voters? Exclusion of certain people for appropriate or inappropriate reasons or just because they have the wrong skin colour, ethnic background?
When it comes to selecting our preferred candidate variety is again on show. Paper or digital technologies using online services or on-site voting machines? First past the post or preferential—but which preferential system?—or the greatest number of votes takes the seat? Direct election or election via caucuses? Single stage elections or multi-stage elections? Three year election cycles or four or five? Anyone over 18 can vote, or maybe 21 or even 16?
Perversity at its best for the core organising principle of our lives! And all this before we get to the behaviour and performance of those we elect. No wonder people are disillusioned by politics and have little faith in our politicians.
But there is one form of democracy that is absent from this taxonomy. In my view it is the ultimate form of democracy. In the view of those in power—if they even acknowledge it—I am sure it is seen as the least supportive of their ‘right’ to govern and exercise power, either directly as a politician or indirectly through the lobbying and other means of influencing government policy and practice.
I call this form of democracy randomised democracy. It works like this.
No elections needed; much money saved, because our representatives are selected at random from the citizens of a country/state/province/county. Each selected politician serves for, say, two years after which they resume their life of anonymity with a decent, but not excessive, pension. Allow for human perversity and have stratified random sampling to ensure that each ethic/cultural/religious group has a voice proportional to their number within the citizenry. Either way every person has an equal opportunity to direct how the country advances.
Significant roles like president, prime minister and ministers of state are also randomly allocated to those selected.
Parliament/congress/duma/whatever is supported by an informed bureaucracy charged with actually running the country under the oversight of the representatives.
No political parties with their political/religious/cultural/zealous/nationalist ideologies and policies also means there is no associated legislative program. Legislation is based on evidence provided by committees of experts selected on merit (notwithstanding the recent scepticism of the benefits of merit). These committees support the bureaucracy as well.
One important role for the bureaucracy and these expert committees is to come up with a consensus on the desired future of the country. Significant input to this consensus would come from the parliament; after all they are a representative sample of the citizenry, unlike now.
To my knowledge, this form of democracy has never been attempted and is unlikely to ever be implemented; it is much too radical and simple yet complex. But I believe it needs to included in any discussion of democratic systems and considered decisions taken about its applicability. After all, it probably wouldn’t produce outcomes worse than those many of us now experience.
And it might actually work, perversity notwithstanding.
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