Bruno’s post inspired me to comment on why I think initiatives are a terrible thing for democracy.
Bear with me through a little setup. In our information-driven economy, you’re essentially paid based on how much information you can process, and how effectively you do that — i.e., your efficiency (or “productivity” as it’s sometimes called by the econometricians). In the information economy, efficiency can be improved with specialization just like in any other endeavor (c’mon, this is Adam Smith).
In part, the genius of representative democracy is that it allows a certain group of people (legislators) to specialize in making, understanding, and evaluating public decisions — regulations, budgets, etc. This lets the rest of us get on with our lives, and if ever we think that our legislators are doing a crappy job, we get a chance to pink slip them every few years.
So, by moving away from specialist legislators to the idea of “everyman as legislator,” we’re essentially destroying any efficiencies in the process of public decision making. I.e., we’re condemning ourselves to suboptimal public decisions, made slowly. Or, to paraphrase an old saying from the legal profession, “the man who legislates for himself has a fool for a constituent.”
That in itself is bad enough, but it gets even worse when you look at how decisions are going to be made
I’ll start this part with a question: how much time do you spend on a day-to-day basis staying up to date on the latest news? Now, how much time do you spend reading up on the latest, say, public safety policy? And then how much time do you spend creating an OLS regression model for the impact on crime of various policing techniques? See where I’m going here? You read this blog, so you may be somewhat ahead of the curve, but think your neighbor over there polishing his pickup with the M’s on the radio spends as much (or more) time than you do on these things?
So the reality is that your neighbor — and in all likelihood you, too — will vote on an initiative based on your perception of it. And that perception is created by highly sophisticated marketing techniques employed by private organizations representing those that have a vested interest in the outcome of the issue under debate. And you don’t vote for the managers of those organizations, or the presidents of the private companies that back them, do you?
So you’re essentially shifting agenda setting and decision making from transparent, publicly accountable bodies (with well-developed feedback and oversight mechanisms) to not-necessarily transparent or accountable private bodies over whom feedback and oversight mechanisms are only intermittently effective.
Bottom line: To all those in the PacNor and elsewhere who think ballot-initiatives are a good idea — you’re handing the keys of Rome to the barbarians, people.
3 Responses to “Why Ballot Initiatives are Bad for Democracy”
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As my friend, famed former US Senator Mike Gravel says “90% of Congress doesn’t read 90% of what they vote on.” So Congress, like citizens, mostly votes on perception, just like us. Only their perception is also warped by the lavish golf trips lobbyists like Jack Abramoff take them on, the $100,000 contributions to their every-two-year campaigns, etc.
Your argument is theoretical, but there is a century of ACTUAL history of how ballot initiatives have worked in 24 US states, and 156 years of initiatives in Switzerland, the only country with NATIONAL initiatives. There, citizens read more newspapers than anywhere in the world BECAUSE they have a REASON to learn more than us. They vote 4-6 times a year, and it makes their Parliament do a better job of representing the people’s interests.
Did you know that state initiatives led to Congress later adopting Women’s Suffrage, direct election of Senators, abolishing poll taxes, and campaign finance reform? And that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says an increase in the national minimum wage is a first priority in January BECAUSE all 6 state minimum wage increases passed in November?
There are dozens more examples of how citizens lead and “leaders” follow -and many theoretical reasons Citizens should share more lawmaking power. Here’s one: more balance of power between us and our rulers.
See some at http:Vote.org and read about the future, starting here in Colorado where we’re working on fixing problems with initiatives.
Do you know that this month only 11% say Congress is doing a good job? (http://rasmussenreports.com/Political%20Tracking/Issues/congressionalRatings.htm)
Why would you want to give a monopoly on legislative power to these people?
Rome was ruled by dictators, like Bush without the smoothness and PR. It was ATHENS where citizens participated in government. But we’re FAR more educated now; hardly barbarians.
Hey, are you a politician - or just a barbarian, like you’re calling us?
Evan,
Thanks for your note. Clearly, based on where you’re working, I’m probably not going to change your mind about this issue. But I did want to throw a couple of things out there.
First, let me apologize for referring to the electorate as “barbarians.” That’s a poor choice of words meant to provide color for an analogy. A better analogy might be “you’re asking everyone who drives a car to also work in the factory.” Consuming public policy is different than making it, and making it is a highly specialized skill that isn’t acquired merely by holding U.S. citizenship.
Your points are well made about the history of citizen initiatives in both classical and modern democracy. Still, classical Athens is an exceptionally poor comparison to modern America. Despite what my sixth grade civics text book told me about the glory of the Athenian democracy, it was a system that was critically dependent on a limited definition of citizenship, and one built on the backs of slaves and disenfranchised women – the labor of whom left plenty of leisure time for Athenian citizens to debate politics.
To restate my original argument more concisely, since a voter will choose the outcome that maximizes his/her net private marginal benefit, a direct vote on a policy will often produce the outcome with the lower net social benefit, depending on how the benefits accrue to the median voter. Looking only at transaction costs, it’s simply easier for a group of 435 to be convinced to vote contrary to what they initially perceive as their private interest (i.e., to vote “altruistically”) than it is to convince 300 million of that.
Here’s where your logic breaks down for me. You cite that only 11% of Americans think Congress is doing a good job, yet they still returned over 90% of standing incumbents to office. So you’re arguing that a citizenry that’s incapable of matching its feelings to a vote — even on the abstracted level of voting for a representative, and not directly for a policy — is somehow more capable of voting directly for a policy? That doesn’t make sense to me.
You also cite the fact that most legislators are barely more informed than citizens, so you use that as part of your argument for why direct democracy makes sense. That legislators are failing to do their jobs should not be an indictment of the system, especially since we are all empowered to show our legislators the door on a predetermined schedule (or whenever we want if it comes to that).
Finally, I continue to question the ability of most individuals to know what their true interests are in any given case – there’s simply too much competing information to process, not all of it proffered in the best interests of the voting public. To return to the issue that sparked my post, the fact is that for a mere $2 billion more than the $7 billion alternative, a tunnel on the Seattle waterfront will create countless additional billions in value over its lifetime. However, asking voters to accept this requires their being able to understand that a few pennies a year in incremental value over three generations outweighs the few dollars a year they’ll spend in additional taxes over their own working lifetimes (it’s empirically demonstrated that most people will take, say, $50 today over $100 a year from now). Simply put: empowered representative government is better able to take a long view than individuals. Can voters come to see a longer-term perspective and vote appropriately? Yes, sure they can. But based on what happened with the monorail here in Seattle, I’m pessimistic that they will.
I’d buy the argument that when it comes to issues that don’t at all involve economics – abortion, say – then maybe it’s most proper for citizens to vote directly. But for specific policy choices, such as which transportation projects to fund, how much money for education, what kind of state health care program are we going to implement, direct democracy is a terrible idea.
Thanks again for your note,
Matski
Again, your argument is purely theoretical and withers in the light of hundreds of years and thousands of examples which you can easily find at http://vote.org. But you obviously haven’t.
Your economic theory of pure self-centeredness (”since a voter will choose
the outcome that maximizes his/her net private marginal benefit”) is again proven wrong by scientific experiments carried out for many decades. You can Google altruism experiments and find many. Here are some:
http://www.msu.edu/course/aec/810/snapshot.afs/experiment810.htm
If you live your life on pure private self-interest, I probably can’t help you, though I’m experienced at it: http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2006/nov/26/psychiatric-help-for-peanuts/
Your remarks on how stupid we must be to re-elect the Congress we despise ignores the extremely limited choices we have. It’s been compared to Coke or Pepsi. We can’t “show them the door” without a clone coming in the door.
But almost no “direct” democracy advocates want to REPLACE representatives. We want BOTH direct and representational democracy. In Switzerland, of the 156 years of history you ignore, if the reps don’t rep right, citizens make the laws they want themselves, and then the reps fall into line. They call this “co-determination.” Works great for couples, too.
I don’t know about Seattle’s tunnel, but here in Colorado citizens have voted since 2000 to tax themselves more for schools, colleges, transit, tobacco, the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District, etc.
There are certainly improvements to the initiative process which can be made, and the University of Colorado Law School is holding a conference Jan. 26 at the State Capitol about it. See near the bottom of http://Vote.org
There is a whole best-selling book showing that 100 million heads are better than 535 (you forgot the 100 Senators): The Wisdom of Crowds, by New Yorker financial columnist James Surowiecki.
The last 1000 years of political history is about increasing “government by the people.” If you like economics, read “Why letting the people themselves take the decisions is the logical next step for the West”
by Brian Needham, associate editor of The Economist: http://www.vote.org/?q=node/8 The Economist has written at least 14 articles on the subject since that one in 1993