The Veil of Ignorance

The veil of ignorance is a concept first introduced by John Rawls in "Towards a Theory of Justice". It is an imaginary veil behind which you know nothing of your race, sex, abilities, etc. and you become an unbiased, moral person able to exert free will. From behind "the veil" you can make decisions that aren't designed to benefit yourself but are based on "higher" criteria of justice and fairness.

But the real world doesn't work like this. We all have our biases, some of which we may not even be aware of. As this attorney writes, pressure groups manipulate democracy to formulate laws to benefit themselves. They may be well funded and powerful. Perhaps the only way of undermining their power is to implement more direct democracy. Interactive Democracy gives us all a chance to come up with a majority view less distorted by money and political connections. It doesn't use a fictional "veil of ignorance" to achieve justice, but balances one bias against another to get a similar effect.

Political Meritocracy

Representative Democracy may be considered a political meritocracy. Politicians are chosen by their party and, in theory, win elections based on their merit. The best of them gain the support of their peers to become leaders and senior figures. Long standing and experienced politicians may be appointed to the House of Lords.

All good stuff on the face of it. But being good at one thing, indeed many things, doesn't make you good at everything, and politics is a vastly diverse subject. No one person is likely able to master all of it. In reality meritocracy is more complicated and corruptible than the ideal:

1. How does the old boy network effect who is chosen to become a candidate?
2. Does the electorate vote for politicians or parties; do they judge the candidate effectively?
3. Does the best funded or the most capable candidate/party, win?
4. Can students of Machiavelli play the system and gain power?
5. Are Honours given fairly or is there bias in appointments to the Lords?
6. If meritocracy was perfect, wouldn't we be able to find the single best candidate to make decisions for us (someone the ancient Greeks called the aristoi, root of the word aristocrat)?

Though imperfect, I think the current political meritocracy needs to be a key element in the Interactive Democracy system because we need politicians to formulate laws, man committees, debate proposals, form governments and act in opposition. ID just allows public sentiment to flow into this process and check the results of it.

Interactive Democracy adds a meritocracy of ideas to the meritocracy of politicians, where the best proposals can jump through hurdles of debate and ballot to become policy.

Here's an interesting article about educational meritocracy from asiaone.

Free Party Membership

In the proposed Interactive Democracy system I imagine that political parties with the most members will garner the most financial support from those wealthy individuals and institutions who want to influence us. This is because Party Members will probably be emailed persuasive arguments about each issue advising them how to vote. It therefore makes sense to offer free party membership.

Some thoughts:

1. If you have a broad interest in politics it makes sense that you join several parties to find out their various perspectives.
2. How parties develop and capitalise on their membership lists will be a key competency for them in the future.
3. Will this allow new parties to emerge? I suspect the strong brands, Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat, are best positioned as strong political influencers.
4. Does this undermine the egalitarian nature of Interactive Democracy? Ultimately you have the power to cast your vote any way you see fit, so, no, I don't think that this mix of capital, membership and persuasion is particularly odious, and a good deal less so than today's poisonous brew.