XXI. "Direct" Democracy's Erosion of Representative Democracy--and the Republic

I'm an Independent--a real Independent--and a fan of David Brooks. We part ways on some issues, of course, but I tend to agree with much that he writes. But I've never agreed with him more than I do with his recent column in the NYT. It's about the problem of America's drift toward "direct" or plebiscite democracy--simple majority rule, by any other name--and away from properly functioning elected leadership roles in a representative democracy. Mr. Brooks:

The United States, as you know, was founded as a republic, not simply as a democracy. The distinction has been lost over the past few decades, but it is an important one. The believers in a democracy have unlimited faith in the character and judgment of the people and believe that political institutions should be responsive to their desires. The believers in a republic have large but limited faith in the character and judgment of the people and erect institutions and barriers to improve that character and guide that judgment.  

America's founders were republicans [small "r"]. This was not simply elitism, a matter of some rich men distrusting the masses. This was a belief that ran through society and derived from an understanding of history...The first citizens of this country erected institutions to protect themselves from their own shortcomings. We're familiar with some of them: the system of checks and balances, the Senate, etc. More important, they believed, was public spiritedness — a system of habits and attitudes that would check egotism and self-indulgence.  

[T]he meaning of the phrase "public spiritedness" has flipped since the 18th century. Now we think a public-spirited person is somebody with passionate opinions about public matters, one who signs petitions and becomes an activist for a cause. In its original sense, it meant the opposite[:]...curbing one's passions and moderating one's opinions in order to achieve a large consensus that will ensure domestic tranquility. Instead of self-expression, it meant self-restraint. It was best exemplified in the person of George Washington.  

Over the years, the democratic [small "d"] values have swamped the republican ones. We're now impatient with any institution that stands in the way of the popular will, regarding it as undemocratic and illegitimate. Politicians see it as their duty to serve voters in the way a business serves its customers. The customer is always right... 

We no longer have a leadership class — of the sort that existed as late as the Truman and Eisenhower administrations — that believes that governing means finding an equilibrium between different economic interests and a balance between political factions. Instead, we have the politics of solipsism. The political culture encourages politicians and activists to imagine that the country's problems would be solved if other people's interests and values magically disappeared.  

The democratic triumph has created a nation that runs up huge debt and is increasingly incapable of finding a balance between competing interests. Today, the country faces three intertwined economic challenges. We have to make the welfare state fiscally sustainable. We have to do it in a way that preserves the economic dynamism in the country — that provides incentives for creative destruction. We also have to do it in a way that preserves social cohesion — that reduces the growing economic and lifestyle gaps between the educated and less educated.  

These three goals are in tension with one another, but to prosper America has to address all three at the same time. 

Voters will have to embrace institutional arrangements that restrain their desire to spend on themselves right now. Political leaders will have to find ways to moderate solipsistic tribalism and come up with tax and welfare state reforms that balance economic dynamism and social cohesion.  

--"The Politics of Solipsism," by David Brooks, The New York Times (5.5.11)

Representative democracy as an established form of government is, then, still relatively new, historically speaking. At its best, it can be a progressive, idealistic, and effective form of government--depending on the country's philosophical, legal and cultural foundations, their values and goals for government and society. But its more clear-minded critics have warned from the beginning that democracy in its simplest form--plebiscite or "direct" democracy--suffers from serious flaws. They did not, could not, embrace the notion of simple majority rule, decision making by the direct vote of citizens, a process that as often as not fails to reflect either wisdom or fairness.

Depending on the nature of its social and economic constituencies, direct democracy can easily devolve into a class, ethnic, religious, or ideological majority imposing their will on the minority until there results political instability, even rebellion. And more, that majority, especially if it were those with less wealth than a substantial minority, can vote themselves more and more of everything wanted until it bankrupts the body politick altogether. Those, among others, were human and structural weaknesses that had to be controlled, or at least contained. And our system of complementary governmental roles with inherent checks and balances has gone a long way to control for that. But the last line of defense has always been--and must be--the discipline of the elected representative to protect the essential characteristic of his role as leader-statesman.

Most people appear to miss or misunderstand this point; their history or civics courses just didn't stress enough this distinction about a properly functioning republic based on popular election of leader-statesmen. It was James Madison, an architect and draftsman of our Constitution and the Bill of Rights, an author of the Federalist papers, and President of the United States--as well as other early thinkers on democracy--who warned of the dangers of plebiscite democracy. As today's leaders abdicate their roles and duties, we move more, faster in that direction. Mr. Madison:

Pure democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. 

[And further:] The effect of [a representative democracy is] to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. 

---The Federalist Paper No. 10, Publius (James Madison)**

And England's estimable, ever vigilant and thoughtful Edmund Burke offered the following reflection making the same point:

 Certainly, Gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a Representative, to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion high respect; their business unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and, above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But, his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you; to any man, or to any sett of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the Law and the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your Representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. 

--"Speech to the Electors of Bristol," Edmund Burke (3 Nov. 1774), Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, 1:446--48 (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854--56)

President Eisenhower and Edmund Burke embraced the same view on the imperative of a compromising spirit in leadership:

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. 

--Edmund Burke

People talk about the middle of the road as though it were unacceptable. Actually, all human problems, excepting morals, come into the gray areas. Things are not all black and white. There have to be compromises. The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters. 

--President Dwight D. Eisenhower 

It is hard not to see some of the warned-against weaknesses of direct democracy playing their part in the crisis levels of our national and local debt. It is sad and dispiriting, but so very human, to observe the demands from every income level or political orientation that someone else bear the costly burden of recovery--including the cost of essential reform to necessary public goods, human services, and retirement and health programs. And, of course, no group sees the need or fairness in raising their taxes, and that prominently includes high income folks: "Oh no, not us, we must keep our money and consumption to contribute to economic growth." Among other dispiriting aspects are the bankruptcy-threatening levels of public retirement and healthcare obligations blithely agreed to by politicians for peace and votes from state and municipal public employees. And a concomitant darkening of the larger economic picture is provided by the uncomfortable dominance of China as financier of our irresponsibly distended national debt.

And then there are the ills of state government, which in many ways are succumbing to the same temptations and failures of direct democracy in various forms. The Economist recently ran a Leaders piece and a Special Section on the perils of "extreme democracy," focusing on California as the poster child for irresponsible, unaccountable state government and the abdication of elected leadership to increasing direct, referendum democracy.

CALIFORNIA is once again nearing the end of its fiscal year with a huge budget hole and no hope of a deal to plug it, as its constitution requires. Other American states also have problems, thanks to the struggling economy. But California cannot pass timely budgets even in good years, which is one reason why its credit rating has, in one generation, fallen from one of the best to the absolute worst among the 50 states. How can a place which has so much going for it—from its diversity and natural beauty to its unsurpassed talent clusters in Silicon Valley and Hollywood—be so poorly governed?  

It is tempting to accuse those doing the governing. The legislators, hyperpartisan and usually deadlocked, are a pretty rum bunch. The governor, Jerry Brown, who also led the state between 1975 and 1983, has (like his predecessors) struggled to make the executive branch work. But as our special report this week argues, the main culprit has been direct democracy: recalls, in which Californians fire elected officials in mid-term; referendums, in which they can reject acts of their legislature; and especially initiatives, in which the voters write their own rules. Since 1978, when Proposition 13 lowered property-tax rates, hundreds of initiatives have been approved on subjects from education to the regulation of chicken coops. 

This citizen legislature has caused chaos. Many initiatives have either limited taxes or mandated spending, making it even harder to balance the budget. Some are so ill-thought-out that they achieve the opposite of their intent: for all its small-government pretensions, Proposition 13 ended up centralising California's finances, shifting them from local to state government. Rather than being the curb on elites that they were supposed to be, ballot initiatives have become a tool of special interests, with lobbyists and extremists bankrolling laws that are often bewildering in their complexity and obscure in their ramifications. And they have impoverished the state's representative government. Who would want to sit in a legislature where 70-90% of the budget has already been allocated?  

They paved paradise and put up a voting booth 

This has been a tragedy for California, but it matters far beyond the state's borders. Around half of America's states and an increasing number of countries have direct democracy in some form (article). Next month Britain will have its first referendum for years (on whether to change its voting system), and there is talk of voter recalls for aberrant MPs. The European Union has just introduced the first supranational initiative process. With technology making it ever easier to hold referendums and Western voters ever more angry with their politicians, direct democracy could be on the march. 

And why not? There is, after all, a successful model: in Switzerland direct democracy goes back to the Middle Ages at the local level and to the 19th century at the federal. This mixture of direct and representative democracy seems to work well. Surely it is just a case of California (which explicitly borrowed the Swiss model) executing a good idea poorly? 

Not entirely. Very few people, least of all this newspaper, want to ban direct democracy. Indeed, in some cases referendums are good things: they are a way of holding a legislature to account. In California reforms to curb gerrymandering and non-partisan primaries, both improvements, have recently been introduced by initiatives; and they were pushed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, a governor elected through the recall process. But there is a strong case for proceeding with caution, especially when it comes to allowing people to circumvent a legislature with citizen-made legislation.  

The debate about the merits of representative and direct democracy goes back to ancient times. To simplify a little, the Athenians favoured pure democracy ("people rule", though in fact oligarchs often had the last word); the Romans chose a republic, as a "public thing", where representatives could make trade-offs for the common good and were accountable for the sum of their achievements. America's Founding Fathers, especially James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, backed the Romans. Indeed, in their guise of "Publius" in the "Federalist Papers", Madison and Hamilton warn against the dangerous "passions" of the mob and the threat of "minority factions" (ie, special interests) seizing the democratic process. 

Proper democracy is far more than a perpetual ballot process. It must include deliberation, mature institutions and checks and balances such as those in the American constitution. Ironically, California imported direct democracy almost a century ago as a "safety valve" in case government should become corrupt. The process began to malfunction only relatively recently. With Proposition 13, it stopped being a valve and instead became almost the entire engine.  

You don't know what you've got till it's gone 

All this provides both a hope and a worry. The hope is that California can right itself. Already there is talk of reform—though ironically the best hope of it may be through initiatives, since the push for a constitutional convention died last year for lack of money. There is talk, too, of restoring power and credibility to the legislature, the heart of any representative democracy. That could be done by increasing its unusually small numbers, and making term limits less onerous. 

More important, direct democracy must revert to being a safety valve, not the engine. Initiatives should be far harder to introduce. They should be shorter and simpler, so that voters can actually understand them. They should state what they cost, and where that money is to come from. And, if successful, initiatives must be subject to amendment by the legislature. Those would be good principles to apply to referendums, too. 

The worry is that the Western world is slowly drifting in the opposite direction. Concern over globalisation means government is unpopular and populism is on the rise. Europeans may snigger at the bizarre mess those crazy Californians have voted themselves into. But how many voters in Europe would resist the lure of a ballot initiative against immigration? Or against mosque-building? Or lower taxes? What has gone wrong in California could all too easily go wrong elsewhere. 

---"The perils of extreme democracy: California offers a warning to voters all over the world," The Economist (4.23.11)

We can be grateful that in their practical wisdom, the founding fathers crafted a representative democracy to lead us, a republic that contemplated that it's elected representatives were to be as much statesmen representing the nation's interests as representatives of the narrower interests of particular, often provincial constituencies. All would be popularly elected, but there would be a balancing of powers and representative roles among the executive function and a bicameral legislature to prioritize and balance the representation of those tiered constituencies. 

That "balance of powers" has been largely effective. And if our representative democracy has sometimes been an uneven and rocky road of political, economic, and social turns and changes, we've come out of each challenge a stronger, better government, a stronger, better society and nation. On the whole, it has functioned well enough to accommodate the development of the most stable, advanced and generous social democracy, and the most robust, productive market economy, in the history of the world.

But now things have changed. The wrong turns, errors, protracted delays or failures to act--our political irresponsibility, abdication of leadership roles, and dysfunction--are now more widespread, more irresponsibly accepted than ever before, and they are subject to finer tolerances as the global community and economy is less forgiving.

As much or more than any other time in our history, our two dominant political parties have now become internally dominated by the most extreme elements of their constituencies. This is particularly true of the Republican party and its resurgent, now dominant right wing, and their cousins, the Tea Party. Where once, both parties united behind the executive on matters of global importance, that is no longer the case. Where there was often compromise on legislation and matters clearly in the country's interest, that is no longer the case, either. Rather, in a time of clear, sometimes dire, national and global challenges--both economic and societal--the Republican leadership now says that its principal goals and priorities are to deny the Democratic president re-election, and to deny or reverse any legislation advanced or passed during his term in office. That's what it has come to. That is the range of vision and depth of responsibility that now passes for national and international leadership. And this is our face to the world that still looks to us with hope for more balanced, responsible global leadership.

If there have been times in our history when the dysfunctional polarization of party leadership and members has rendered our government less able to serve the best interests of the country--at home and abroad--it was clearly not at a time when so much was at stake, when effective, timely and balanced responsiveness was so critical to the nation and the international community. And it was not at a time when the ascendant economic, military and geopolitical power and influence of other countries was so clearly poised to take advantage of our internal weakness, even to threaten or eclipse our power and influence in the world.

But once this addictive, destructive opiate--variations on direct democracy--is out of the bottle, how do we get it back in? How do we save ourselves--except by those same politicians suddenly realizing and embracing the essential need for their responsible leadership?


**Federalist No. 10 is an essay written by James Madison and the tenth of the Federalist Papers, a series arguing for the ratification of the United States Constitution. It was published on Friday, November 23, 1787, under the pseudonym Publius, the name under which all the Federalist Papers were published. The essay is the most famous of the Federalist Papers, along with Federalist No. 51, also by Madison, and is among the most highly regarded of all American political writings.^[1] (Wikipedia)

**Federalist No. 51 is an essay by James Madison, the fifty-first of the Federalist Papers. It was published on Friday February 8, 1788 under the pseudonym Publius, the name under which all the Federalist Papers were published. One of the most famous of the Federalist Papers, No. 51 addresses means by which appropriate checks and balances can be created in government and also advocates a separation of powers within the national government. One of its most important ideas is the pithy and often quoted phrase, "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition." (Wikipedia)

Links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/opinion/06brooks.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper 
http://www.economist.com/node/18586520?story_id=18586520

© Gregory E.Hudson 2011
First written: May 2011