Does Democracy Work?
One of the biggest misconceptions about democracy in the United States is that it doesn't work. In the idealized representative democracy, representatives translate the will of their constitutents into public policy (this is the "instructed delegate" model of representation). Well, to be more precise about it, there are a variety of ideal forms of democracy that theorists have proffered now and again, ranging from the Burkean "trustee" model to the "instructed delegate" model to the "responsible parties" model, but of these three, I believe that the delegate model fits most closely with what most Americans think of when they talk about representation.
And, as far as this normative model goes, we are doing much better than a lot of people like to believe. Study after study has found an enormous degree of congruence between the generic liberalism and conservatism of public opinion and the behavior of both representatives and governments as a whole. So, if one constructs a unidimensional left-right continuum, changes in the positions of constituencies on that spectrum usually correspond to changes in respresentative behavior and government output.
But, this congruence is not going to be consistent across classes of issues. It will be highest on issues with high public salience and low technical complexity, like civil rights or abortion or gun laws. These are issues which the public is generally aware of, generally cares about, and can fairly easily form an opinion about based on some underlying values. So, on these kinds of issues, democracy works, more or less.
However, on issues that are low in salience and high in technicality, the public is not likely to hold strong opinions, if any at all. With these kinds of issues, the very concept of representation doesn't make much sense; how can someone represent an opinion that doesn't exist? These are what Converse would call "non-attitudes." These types of issues are generally governed by a kabal of experts (the famous "iron triangle" or congressional committees, bureaucrats, and industry interest groups).
Here's my point to all this (other than just having something to write about); I believe we are entering a period where the biggest problems facing the country are extremely complex, and yet they are issues that also involve a lot of deeply held values. We are entering a period of high salience and high complexity. Now, partly, this is just the nature of the issues we face and the nature of our cultural divisions. But, on the other hand, I also believe that politicians have succeeded in making technical issues seem more ideological than they really should be.
Take global warming, for instance. Our collective choices about how to manage our natural resources are a mixture of ideological and technical concerns. On the ideological side, people just sincerely disagree about the value of natural beauty and the intrinsic "existence value" of certain habitats and species. Those are non-technical, normative, ideological differences that no amount of expertise can decide. On the other hand, we also need clean air and clean water and other resources to stay healthy and alive. How best to do that is not really an ideological question; it's a technical one. And it's a technical one that is extremely complicated, because earth systems are very, very complex!
I think what has happened is that people have been lured into these policy areas by their ideological content, but politicians have succeeded in transferring the salience of the ideological issues onto the technical components of the problems. So, with global warming, the purely scientific issue of what is causing the climate to change and what is likely to happen when it does has been turned into an ideological battle. An issue that really is better left up to experts has been put up for a vote by people who are woefully unqualified to pass judgment on it.
Democracy is pretty good when it comes to making collective choices about values. It more or less sucks at making technical and scientific choices. So, while democracy is technically working pretty well, representation wise, I'm afraid we're gonna end up representating ourselves into a shitstorm of obsolecense and failure.
posted by Joe @ 10:53 AM
21 Comments:
Democracy doesn't work because the one and only time people get to voice their opinion on something in a way that actually matters (voting) they are easily influenced by the same pressures that drive marketing and advertising (look, presentation, style, music, emotional rhetoric etc.) Just look at the two party's conventions every four years. It's like the Super Bowl of politics. These have nothing to do with reality or electing the best person for the job. Until we have an education system that values critical thinking skills above all else the crap train will keep running right on schedule, final stop: District of Columbia.
Hey Rob, thanks for the comment!
There's a lot packed in there, but I think the very short answer is that a lot of theorists think that these irrational factors sort of cancel out, because both sides do it. Basically, it's electoral "noise," and en masse, the randomness cancels out, and what's left is a coherent signal driven by rational people. Then again, not everyone buys this argument.
Also, there's an argument to be made on whether those irrational factors are really that irrational. It's at least plausible that they are a valid proxy for other, more substantive issue positions. You might think of this as "symbolic representation."
Also, it's not necessarily wrong for elites to try to persuade the public. There's nothing in normative democratic theory that says that the causal arrow between public opinion and policy can't go both ways.
Also, while it's true that voting is the major for political act for most people, there are other ways to express political preferences (campaigning, writing letters, blogging, etc).
Basically, I'm saying that your concerns are valid (and I share them), but there are some reasons to believe they aren't quite as worrisome as you think they are.
Oh, I should say the reason they don't buy the argument is because campaign advertising doesn't cause "random" error...it causes systematic error. When are errors are systematic rather than random, they don't cancel out.
Your assertion presupposes that there is some other method of government which is not also inherently crappy. You have too much faith in human institutions.
No problem. You write well, sir.
To your points: I think the one thing you're leaving out is that this "noise" causes rational people (I count myself among their ranks) to become jaded and disinterested in politics as a whole. With the entire establishment constantly in campaign mode the war to win the news day trumps all else. This is fed by our shortened attention spans as a people. No one remembers past last week. Mark my words, when Tiger starts hitting golf balls again and instead of slapping balls in other areas no one will remember a thing about this entire affair scandal situation. Look at Kobe. He cheated, but the dude kept winning. No one says anything. To quote "Patton", "Americans love a winner. They will not tolerate a loser." It's all about how well you say it, not what you're saying.
Without any context of history and people enabled by only reading things that agree with them on the Internet we have created a fractured society. No one speaks to each other. Everyone speaks at each other.
This atmosphere flushes out of the system many would would offer a more nuanced, fact-based viewpoint.
Is the problem really with "democracy" or with the aggregation effects that come with size? Details and nuance must be attenuated when crafting a message that has relevance to a mass audience and entities that are already organized at the national level(corporations, unions) will have always the strongest signal.
There are some problems that are best addressed at the federal level but many of the novel issues we're now facing may be best addressed in the smaller venue of state and local politics.
The very first definition that Merriam Webster gives for the word "democracy", Anonymous (if that's even your REAL name), goes as such:
"government by the people; especially : rule of the majority".
I'd say that's exactly what we have now. I won't argue that the majority rule. George Bush even got re-elected AFTER 50,999,897 voters were told their voices simply didn't matter. People will swallow anything if you present it right. It's sad to say, but I'd wager half of the population couldn't name more than five presidents. Stupid people are easier to control, which strangely doesn't sound like a problem to hear you tell it.
I agree that there are times when people need to be herded like the sheep they are towards an answer that will benefit them. I get that. What I'm against is the devious social engineering that plagues our political discourse and turns discussions into shouting contests. There is a great book that covers why we are so fractured called "The Big Sort" by Bill Bishop:
http://www.amazon.com/Big-Sort-Clustering-Like-Minded-American/dp/0547237723
Here's the basic premise as defined by the Publisher's Weekly review:
"Bishop contends that as Americans have moved over the past three decades, they have clustered in communities of sameness, among people with similar ways of life, beliefs, and in the end, politics. There are endless variations of this clustering—what Bishop dubs the Big Sort—as like-minded Americans self-segregate in states, cities—even neighborhoods."
This may not strike you as a problem, but it is for me. There's nothing inherently evil in corporations or unions or even democracy for that matter. What makes it corrupt are the people that operate them and the motives behind their actions. The "democracy" we have now is bought and paid for by a very small number of very wealthy corporations. These campaign contributions, the laws around which have just been further relaxed, are an investment to these corporations, same as everything else. They wouldn't give if they didn't want their money back.
Divide and conquer.
But aren't the factors you blame (stupidity, people liking people with similar perspective and values, rich having more influence than poor) for the failings of our current political system sort of immutable and common to all societies?
No because just like in Saddam's Iraq his iron fist kept the warring tribes in the land under control through consolidation of power through a single source, the fracturing of the mainstream media has caused every voice to be as valid as any other no matter how true the statements made are. At least when big media corporations delivered a message in the past it (theoretically) had to go through a series of fact checking and analysis to determine a story's validity and indeed its importance. Now people only have to look at what they want. That's why John Edwards' affairs steam up the headlines and not the abysmal state of our for-profit health care system. People don't care about boring icky stuff like that. They just want to hear about whether or not he's the baby daddy.
Political parties use this self-segregation to radicalize their own messages and eliminate the need for rational discourse, which is all I really want in the end.
So you actually believe an ideal, dispassionate form of journalism once existed; where at no point corporate interests or personal ideology ever put a thumb on the scales? Personally I hate the idea of someone determining what information is fit for my consumption.
Back to my original point: I think the poor state of political discourse has more to do with the nature of large organizations than any uniquely negative qualities of US citizens. People generally have a detailed understanding of the governance of their household. They probably have some detailed understanding of the issues affecting the communities they live in and probably even those unique to their state. For a country as large and diverse as ours national governance becomes for most a distant abstraction. Therefore if you agree with the premise that a healthy democracy requires an informed citizenry it only follows that most governance should occur where citizens are already informed. Federal governance is a crude instrument best left with a limited mission.
As far as political knowledge goes, people are much more familiar with national politics than state and local politics. Regarding "issues" per se, I think that's an empirical question that's gonna depend on what we mean by issues.
There are some issues (environmental regulation, for instance) that simply cannot be done on a state and local level, because the problems require large-scale, coordinated action. Air pollution from the coal plants in Indiana doesn't stay in Indiana; the externalities are felt nationally, and even internationally.
Also, if we are concerned about ensuring some degree of equality across the states (for instance, regarding civil rights), we need a national policy.
Finally, (and this is somewhat similar to the first point about externalities) the states will often face a collective action problem. Again, pollution is a useful example, though social service provision also applies. One state will have an incentive to cut services, or relax regulations, because mobile capital will flock to states with low taxes and light regulation (this is known as the "race to the bottom" theory).
For all those reasons, certain kinds of policies will be better pursued at a federal level.
I started out talking about representation and now I'm talking about federalism and externalities...how does that happen?
If people think they know more about national policy than state and local it's probably a function of the media that is readily available to them which is typically geared towards a national audience. For the most part though this is illusory. Your example regarding climate change is a good example. Virtually all coverage is limited to bromides and sensationalism.
By "issues" I meant problems. Specifically problems that directly concern individuals. Most people feel the effects of decisions meant to address things that affect their local schools, policing, and property taxes much more acutely than whatever may or may not come out of Washington. Consequently people have a much more informed and nuanced view of local policy because of their proximity and involvement with the problem.
I don't think anyone would seriously argue that protecting civil rights and enforcing environmental regulations are outside of the federal government's mission. Centrally disbursing free money to "save the economy" is probably another matter.
One other thing, there is nothing any government can do to prevent capital's natural flow towards governments with low taxation and regulation.
"I don't think anyone would seriously argue that protecting civil rights and enforcing environmental regulations are outside of the federal government's mission."
Unfortunately, a lot of people do precisely that.
Well you should have no trouble knocking down that straw man I guess.
With our current system of mostly centralized policy control and regulation have come high concentrations of political power and discretion over resource allocation, which in turn have brought proportional incentives to corruption and clientelism in the federal government. Voters have grown disenchanted with a bureaucratic regime which has seemed distant, and which seems bent on continuing to produce uniform outputs often unrelated to local needs and conditions.
Conceptually most decentralization schemes view the central government as a referee where minimum standards are enforced and interstate conflicts are arbitrated. By shifting access to political and economic resources to lower levels of government decisions would more frequently be made by those that have the most knowledge of local conditions and perceived greater influence in decision making would make for a more engaged and informed voter.
The benefits of this form of political organization are most clearly demonstrated by the mostly state run and funded Medicaid program relative to the federally funded and controlled Medicare.
http://www.cbpp.org/files/11-13-06health.pdf
"Between 2000 and 2004, Medicaid expenditures per beneficiary grew more slowly than expenditures per beneficiary in Medicare or private health insurance, as Figure 3 shows. (Aggregate Medicaid expenditures rose more quickly between 2000 and 2004 than in 2005 or 2006 because Medicaid enrollment was climbing during the economic downturn and the ensuing, initially weak recovery. In comparison, enrollment in Medicare changed little during that period, and private health coverage declined as employer-based insurance eroded.)
Because states pay a substantial fraction of Medicaid costs, they have strong incentives to hold Medicaid costs down. An analysis by economists at the Urban Institute estimated that it costs Medicaid about 30 percent less to cover an adult than it would cost if the same person were covered by private health insurance.6 In part, this is because Medicaid’s payment rates to health care providers are typically lower than those paid by Medicare or private health insurers. In addition, state Medicaid programs typically use an array of cost containment approaches, including managed care, disease management, utilization review, prospective payment systems and the substitution of generic prescription drugs for brand name drugs. Many of these cost containment initiatives were
pioneered as reforms in state Medicaid programs and have been adopted more aggressively in Medicaid than in Medicare or the private sector.7"
One man's strawman is another man's party platform.
Wow. You really believe that?
No, I just said it for fun. Please see the comment policy.
I see. Look, if you think I'm in violation of your guidelines I apologize. You raised some interesting points in your post that I think are very germane to the poor current state of national politics. I just find it troubling that you seem to be suggesting that a potential solution to serious, complex problems is to take power away from people and give it to a group of technocrats.
Disagreement is fine. Just be respectful about it. If you would like further guidelines about what I consider respectful and not respectful, send me an email: bloomingtonguy1@hotmail.com.
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