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Representative Government & Accountability
An interesting conversation developed around the idea of representative government and accountability on a previous post.
The basic argument went that democracy is a better form of government, because it provides for greater accountability of leaders on the part of their subjects. This is a pretty common idea that we’ve all heard often enough in history textbooks. I’d like to dissect it a little bit, and to do that, I’ll have to play Devil’s Advocate.
In one sense, you might be able to argue that feudalism offered 100% accountability because the land-owners were the ones making all the decisions about the administration of their land. Well, what about the serfs? Don’t they deserve a voice? In this system, they do not, because they don’t own land. They live on the land entirely at the good graces of the lord, and are in a sense his property.
Well, our system is a lot more advanced than that, right? Wrong! Originally, according to most state constitutions, the right to vote (ie, make decisions about the administration of the land) was restricted to male land-owners. It wasn’t until 1964 that our country actually achieved universal suffrage.
But universal suffrage, that’s an inarguably good thing, right? Doesn’t it mean that leaders are finally 100% accountable to the people? I know that’s what everybody says, but is it really true? In the feudal system, decisions on how to administer the land were made by those who owned the land. In our system, it’s made by those who live on the land. Our system allows the people affected by decisions to be the ones to make them. Or so the theory goes.
In actuality though, representative government puts the power of decision-making into the hands of proxy agents. When you vote, you’re attempting to decide who should be authorized to make decisions on your behalf. The great problem of representative government is still accountability. Once you’ve vested your authority into a representative, what recourse do you have when they make decisions which do not match the decisions you yourself would make? How do you know that they are basing decisions on the interests of the people who gave them authority? In turn, what if they have access to information which you yourself do not, and that’s the cause of the disparity of the decisions they make versus ones you would make? According to the system of representation, you have no real recourse. You’ve surrendered your authority and must abide by the decisions made on your behalf. Unless their decisions violate the laws of the land, you have only one option: vote them out of office at the appointed time. But what kind of option is this, really? If you replace one representative with another, you’re going to be faced with the same dilemmas as before: they will make different decisions on your behalf than you yourself would. When they do that, your only option is to replace them with yet another and so on.
Is this still better than a feudal lord making decisions without asking for the input of the serf? In what way? Isn’t the feudal lord equally likely or unlikely as the elected representative to make decisions which benefit his subjects? Further, why does it even make sense to ask what the serfs think is the best way to administer the land? Does the serf have as complete of an understanding of administrative affairs, internal politics and regional war strategy? Would you ask a random person off the street to perform brain surgery? Even worse, would you ask a team of random people off the street to perform brain surgery by voting at each step of the procedure? Maybe a better metaphor would be asking the person who needs brain surgery to perform the procedure on themselves. Why is that more crazy-sounding than asking random people off the street about how we should administer the country, and how we should operate in the world?
NOTE: Before you pull your pants off in a frenzy of righteous indignation, bear in mind that I’m simply probing these questions because they interest me. I’m not seeking to threaten your cultural identity by assaulting political beliefs that you may hold dear. I don’t necessarily subscribe to the viewpoints espoused by my questions, nor do I have a ready alternative system which solves any of these problems raised by them. The thing I’m really interested in is how and when is it acceptable to give other people power over you? I’ve explored it elsewhere from a more spiritual perspective and this is a continuation of that exploration, looking as always for the underlying principles. I’m trying to expose and dissolve assumptions that I’ve always taken for granted, as I find this to be a strong source of new creative energy and ideas.
- The Right to Remain Scared
- Open Society
- Hurricane Conspiracy & Government
- Fifth columnists
- “It’s on the government!”
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July 16th, 2005 at 8:43 pm
hmm i guess you’re right, the problems of representative democracy (aka representative republicanism) do resemble somewhat those of feudal aristocracy (and ‘royalism’). the supposed advantage of the representative system, i guess, would be that the constitutional form of the government, though not 100% democratic, is theoretically set up to ensure, structurally, that no one person or group gains too much power vis-a-vis the other branches (or interest groups, bureacracies, etc.) separation of powers, the common good, and the idea that sovereignty was derived from the will of the people, rather than bestowed as a sacred trust from god, used to be principles that politicians at least pretended to uphold. nowadays…well, you know.
July 16th, 2005 at 9:02 pm
Yeah, I like the idea that government can basically never be “good” or solve all these problems. The least you can do it seems is to set up a structure which sort of puts a dent in them, and operates with a certain number of fail-safes and devices which are designed to cripple it
July 16th, 2005 at 9:18 pm
i`m glad that there are those who are comfortable enough in thier own shoes to recognise that a democratic system is pretty much the same as a fuedal system, at the end of the day. once you stop watching t.v. and stop reading the newspapers and magazines then, after a while, comparisons such as the above start to make sense. robert j. ringer calls politicians demopublicans. one vote can make a difference……..but not likely. when you`re believing you`re making things up. belief begins when the facts run out. 180 degrees from all that shit is your life waiting to be lived.
July 16th, 2005 at 10:33 pm
and for those who believe that in November 1963 our elected government was overthrown by fascists, 1964 was a year too late.
July 16th, 2005 at 10:47 pm
Hm, that really is a good point, isn’t it? That we achieved universal suffrage around the same time that our elected government was forcibly removed… by a deranged lone gunman for wholly unconnected reasons, of course
July 17th, 2005 at 1:07 am
I find these ideas very interesting, because I’ve been recently very much intruiged by the traditionalist school, and they would consider the idea of representative democracy a perversion. It basicly insures rule by the corrupt, and perpetuates the idea that all people are equally qualified to make decisions on all matters which is clearly not true.
I’m remembering something someone told me once about american democracy: it was never intended to be one man/one vote system. if that were true there would still be seperate drinking fountains in some states and it would be legal to bash gays and lynch african americans in some places. the way the system was intended to work was that the people would elect representatives of the highest expectable level of moral and ethical development, and they would institute laws designed to bring everyone else up to that level. in practice most americans don’t live up to the standards set in the constitution, but the laws pull everyone that way.
that’s what’s dangerous about the current climate. It’s taken out the implicit moral center of gravity and replaced it with a extremely litteral form of democracy were red states rule the day.
July 17th, 2005 at 1:57 am
benevolent priest kings exist… monarchy used to be a good thing…
July 17th, 2005 at 4:30 am
i will stick with the old chesnut: democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.
July 17th, 2005 at 12:42 pm
“Talk democracy to these men and women, I tell them that they have the vote, and that theirs is the kingdom and the power and the glory. I say to them, ‘You are supreme: exercise your power.’ They say, ‘That’s right: tell us what to do’; and I tell them. I say, ‘Exercise your vote intelligently by voting for me.’ And they do. And that’s democracy; and a splendid thing it is too for putting the right men in the right place.”
- George Bernard Shaw, from the character Boanerges, in The Apple Cart
The reason that Plato wrote The Republic was because he saw in his day the same thing we have seen in ours, how democracy, to whatever extent it exists, inevitably ends up being manipulated and controlled by corrupt elites, like the ones who executed Socrates “for the good of the people”. He argued that a commonwealth ruled by philosophers trained in the arts of wisdom was the only realistic way to prevent domination by self-serving oligarchs. We, of course, have been taught the maxim “absolute power corrupts absolutely”, that even the most virtuous won’t be able to handle it if given too much control… but is this true, or is it just propaganda? I confess, this is what I’ve pretty much always believed, which is why I’ve been drawn to anarchism, but I might be wrong. Maybe rule by an aristocracy of really nice, smart guys and gals, with the masses having some ability to occasionally throw one out if they seem to be going over to the dark side, maybe this would be the best way to get a society organized around the principles of justice and sanity.
July 17th, 2005 at 4:37 pm
i’m actually rather amazed at the backward, reactionary political views that people will still entertain. wasn’t all this settled hundreds of years ago after, as the declartion of independence put it, “a long train of abuses and usurpations”? aristocracy? monarchy? noble priest-kings? jeebus krist! what do you think this is, a tolkien novel? what a bunch of vain, superstitious garbage. enjoy your slavery, slaves. your slavemasters will appreciate your hope and faith in them.
truer words were never spoken.
July 17th, 2005 at 4:43 pm
Well I don’t think anybody’s advocating slavery or aristocracy. I think what we’re saying is that we’re collectively pretty frustrated. What started out as a solid idea of government has been twisted and distorted into a point where everyone feels powerless in the face of some kind of evil onslaught. I think all we’re doing is airing our frustration and in that looking for alternatives and new ideas.
It’s definitely wild that some people are so fed up with the representative democracy that they might actually welcome a return to an autocratic regime. Kinda makes you wonder if this wasn’t just a big set-up… make our government so corrupt and so ineffectual and so out of touch with the people that we welcome a purge
July 17th, 2005 at 4:45 pm
yeah, me too…
July 17th, 2005 at 5:24 pm
well it does worry me that from a wholly justified critique of the problems of what’s become of representative (and direct) democracy, people are so easily willing to leap to a total rejection the very concept of democracy, straight into the arms of older, (imo) inherently corrupting systems. but yeah, i do understand the question as: where do we go from here?
July 17th, 2005 at 6:25 pm
I guess one of my big questions is: is democracy actually better or does it just make us feel better? Sometimes it seems like it’s only here to make us feel strong when we’re not. And what do we do when it doesn’t even make us feel better any more?
July 17th, 2005 at 8:58 pm
i’ve never been a big fan of large-scale, codified democracy. works great when you’re trying to decide what you want on pizza, but not so great when you’re trying to decide where to allocate taxes. plus, whenever i’d justify staying out past curfew because ‘all my friends did it,’ my mom always used to ask me, ‘if all your friends wanted to jump off a cliff, would you do that, too?’ in a democracy, you pretty much have to.
give me good old fashioned anarchism any day . . . .
July 17th, 2005 at 10:03 pm
Yeah, but at the same time, I’d like to see this work on as grand a scale as Our Capitalist Democracy(tm) does.
Chomsky seems to have anarchism as his ideal form of government, and he’s somebody who knows politics and political history decently well.
July 17th, 2005 at 10:18 pm
I think the whole point, Chiggles, is that it doesn’t work on a “grand scale”. There is no grand scale. What do we need a grand scale for? That’s why modern anarchist activism functions almost exclusively around “affinity groups” and “tribes” of people coming together.
This article about the “monkeysphere” I think raises a lot of questions that could be applied to the concepts of government and human interaction. It suggests that the optimal size of community groups based on characteristics of the brain is around 150.
July 17th, 2005 at 11:15 pm
Yeah, I understand there are limits to the size, for sure. What I’m curious about is, how much of what we’ve got going for us (whether you consider it beneficial or not) could we keep up, given that anarchism takes over.
I’m not quite sure how they can estimate on size of brain, to come up with a number that is likely to work out. Then again, I’m no scientist. I’ve been reading up on some anthropology and archaeology for a short while, and the numbers consistently run across for community size are around 25-50 (almost worldwide), going beyond this they are likely to split up into seperate tribes, and if getting much larger, will divide.
I will say that, if it were possible, I would (I feel) prefer the primitive lifestyle and community over the one which I now reside in. Knowing 25-50 people quite intimately, as opposed to dozens not as well, I’ll take the former. It may be a part of my lifestyle and upbringing that makes it so, but I don’t think I’m the only one who has difficulty with deeper connections between myself and others. Not to say I’d have a problem with 150 peoples, but I haven’t seen anthropological data supporting that size, so I wonder about it (and the reasoning behind the number).
July 17th, 2005 at 11:23 pm
Yeah I find it interestingtoo, though I don’t totally understand the scientific justification behind it. I would guess that the group of 150 would be made up of a sort of “council of tribes” - probably consisting of 4 or 5 groups in the 25-50 range coming together for genetic diversity, if for no other reason. It is sort of a tantalizing ideal
July 18th, 2005 at 8:52 am
forms of government reflect the evolutionary state of human culture/consciousness. Democracy is an improvement in that sense, but as human beings improve in the use of their minds, technology, and spirituality, government will change.
That’s why I don’t think politics is a very useful endeavor. Real change starts in the culture, especially in the spiritual/psychological realm.
Personally, I think Chomsky’s libetarian socialism makes the most sense as the future direction of human governance. Indeed, ask most people and that is the form of government they support. However, the current level of human development does not yet support the overthrow of the democratic capitalist regime.
Any revolution begins in the hearts and minds of the people - not in their immediate political choices.
July 18th, 2005 at 12:21 pm
there’s another issue to contemplate, too– that of the role of economics. the ‘democratic’ process is doomed to fail in any society where the economic structure supports any kind of reward for voting (ie corporate lobbyists in the us, bigger material benefits (apartments et al) in soviet russia, etc.
really, tho’, ‘democracy’ isn’t a method of governance, it’s a decision making process. and sometimes it fails to recognize that the minority can be right! s’why i’m so frightened of a direct democracy in this country. people! do you really want a direct democracy in a country where more people vote on the latest American Idol than in the presidential election? i am not a proponent of direct democracy for that reason . . . .
i have some more thots on it in this old post:
http://www.snant.com/fp/2004_06_27_archive.html#108870856653839944
July 18th, 2005 at 1:24 pm
yes, this is basically a Tolkien novel. more so than it is what the history books say….
2 of the last three presidents are bushes and you think this ISNT a monarchy, lololol
the Declaration of Independence also mentions the Indian “savages”, who by the way, had real democracy in the Americas for a long long time before any white men got here….. in fact, many of the Native Americans concepts of government were stolen along with their land… so that document is basically invalid from the get go…
another blatent misconception is that we actually even have a democracy (or are supposed to). what we have is called a constitutional republic…. far far different than democracy.. although it does involve a democratic process, Communism is more of a democracy than what we have….
the most absurd concept is that what we have is the best and cant be better… its definitely time for something new.
one
human?