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.

Increasing Political Party Membership

Interactive Democracy can increase the general population's involvement in politics and this may actually increase their interest in joining a political party (or parties), both as a route to garnering support for their ideas and as a means of debating and learning about political issues. I believe this would be good for democracy.

(The above graph does not confer support for any particular party from this web site.)

The Demise of Political Parties?

Would Interactive Democracy (ID) mean the ultimate demise of political parties?

There is a role for them in ID, to put forward the best candidates to become MPs, to debate political issues, create ideas for improvement and to solve national problems, to put forward theses ideas in the ePetition (Ideas Engine) system and to vote together en-mass to effect Interactive ballots. Also, people who want to be in government are likely to need to belong to a political party - the winning party in a general election. So, there are still very good reasons for parties to continue to exist.

In ID the power of political parties may be somewhat diluted among the population as a whole, as everyone can vote on each issue. However, this means that individual party members actually have more power, both as party members and normal voters. Their leaders have less power except for their powers of persuasion.

The Political Parties could also use the Interactive Democracy infrastructure for internal polls, perhaps improving the efficiency of there own operations.