Inclusive Institutions, not Culture

In "The Great Degeneration" Niall Ferguson argues that inclusive institutions, not culture, explain the success of the West. "... while culture may instill norms, institutions create incentives. Britons versed in much the same culture behaved very differently depending on whether they emigrated to New England or worked for the East India Company in Bengal. In the former case we find inclusive institutions, in the latter extractive ones." I have previously argued that culture is a significant factor in impeding the tyranny of the majority and persecution of minorities, but Niall has a point. Further proof comes from the structure of the Swiss Federation which protected the rights of the large minority Catholic Cantons against domination by the Protestant majority. If only the same could be created in Syria and Iraq for Sunni and Shia.
(The Human Rights Act may also help.)

Public Inquiry

Public Inquiries could utilise Interactive Democracy to gather questions that they could put to witnesses. If it were possible to vote for each question then potentially many thousands could be prioritised, getting over the problem of not having enough time to deal with them all.

Chilcot's Iraq Inquiry has been widely criticised for being too deferential to its key witnesses but this proposal would allow hard hitting questions to come from the public and perhaps from the parents of soldiers who sat in the public gallery and were, reportedly, disappointed with proceedings.

Short Cut to War

Clare Short told the Iraq Inquiry about how cabinet was "misled", Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, had been "leaned on" and Parliament was just a "rubber stamp" (you can read the BBC report here). It's a frightening indictment of our government and democracy.

Some may say that Interactive Democracy would be manipulated in similar ways, but perhaps they have forgotten the mass protests against war. I suspect that the issue by issue democracy that ID could deliver would enhance the debate, put pressure on politicians not to be seen to be manipulative and slow the headlong rush to decisions. It may have prevented us going to war in Iraq, it may have delayed it until the end of the summer, giving the UN more time to avert catastrophe, or it may have re-focused our attention on Afghanistan. Who knows?

Many would be right to assume that truth in Government, in Parliament and in the Media is an important ingredient for a functioning democracy. I'd like to see laws in place that punish those that lie. More here.

Blair's Wars

A simple summary of Blair's reasons for going to war with Iraq could be that

Saddam

+ chemical weapons

+ international terrorists
= a serious threat to British Citizens and our allies.

As Prime Minister, it was Blair's responsibility to protect us.

I don't want to get into re-examining Blair's rational, his estimation of the likely confluence of these factors or the downside risks involved. Instead, I want to ask the question - does a Prime Minister's duty to the British People skew his judgment; by analogy, do people accept more risks themselves than they would allow their children to take?

And another question: is it morally right to calculate the risks and duties to your own electorate at the expense of humanity abroad?

Thirdly, can Interactive Democracy help?

What ID does is allow everyone to input their own answer, balancing the calculus of probability, risk and reward and their own moral view. It allows each voter to take a personal view and not be skewed by the worry of how history would judge them. Imagine Tony, worrying about this sort of historical epitaph: "Blair, the leader who failed to protect his people, wallowing in weakness and indecision". My point is that leaders may be driven to make decisions by pressures that the average man in the street does not feel.

The problem comes when the key pieces of information are so secret that only our leaders are privy to them. But, even then, the Government's presentation of their rational would be debated by a broad spectrum of individuals, involving many military analysts, who may have cast doubt on the 45 minute claim almost as soon as it was made; or terrorism experts who may have questioned the link with Al Quaida. In such a way, ID may not only enhance the breadth of the debate, but it's quality, too.

But it's not all about the war decision, it's also about how best to proceed. Interactive Democracy provides a channel for creative ideas about solving problems. Limited wars to protect the Marsh Arabs and the Kurds, or offering Saddam and his family a luxury sanctuary, may have been among a plethora of suggestions for Parliament to debate. Perhaps, if we'd had ID, such ideas would have emerged at a much earlier juncture.

International Law

In light of the revelations to the Iraq Enquiry that former law officers at the Foreign Office advised the government that an invasion was illegal, how would Interactive Democracy influence International Law?

Indeed, what is International Law and how does it come about?

International Law can be separated into supranational, public and private categories. It is the public aspect, the law between nations, that is relevant here. There has been international law since the Middle Ages, particularly amongst Muslim states, but the key administration in this case is the UN, which is also responsible for non-binding standards such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And this is the rub of it: International Law may fail to protect the individual from abuse by their state; and other countries that seek to protect individuals from abuse by their states may end up doing more harm than good. In addition to this mismatch of ideas, the UN has no independent power, except through agreement with its benefactors, to provide aid or military power (witness the genocide in Rwanda). In this way it is very different to national systems with independent legislators, judiciaries and police forces.

Is International Law democratic?

The United Nations involves many undemocratic countries whose representatives contribute to the formation of its resolutions. In this way the foreign policy of a democratic country, if it abides by International Law, can be defined by undemocratic states!

I think that the UN is a valuable organisation (jaw, jaw, not war, war) but I'd like to see our politicians and diplomats influenced more directly by the electorate in how they deal with other countries, both in terms of direct action and UN negotiations. ID provides a system that could decide if we go to war or not with a far higher degree of national debate and responsibility than can ever be attained by applying International Law as defined by the UN, or by leaving it to the politicians to have the final say.