The Second Superpower: Referendums

In the 2012 David Butler Lecture, "The Second Superpower", YouGov President Peter Kellner advocates Representative Democracy, dismissing Direct Democracy and referendums as "flawed devices, used when politicians lose their nerve". Of course, Interactive Democracy supplants YouGov and all the other pollsters, to which millions of Pounds of tax payers' money flows, and this may account for his opinion, but it's worth listening to his arguments nevertheless.
He identifies several problems with referendums:-

1. If the choice is not a binary "for or against" and there is more than two choices, then measuring the result becomes difficult. Interactive Democracy can overcome this in two ways: Parliament should refine all the possible options as they do today; and an alternative vote type system can be used to measure the response to multiple options.
2. Once a referendum decision is made it is hard to change without another referendum, thus mistakes are difficult to reverse. It seems that Peter Kellner only considers infrequent referendums, but ID proposes very frequent referendums with devolved votes to your MP if you don't participate. This makes laws just as easy to change as today. But there's another facility, too: the government could refuse to implement the majority result at the risk of triggering a general election. They may take this option if the situation has changed or they have another good reason.
3. Referendums tend to maintain the status quo as there is a natural tendency among many to conserve the familiar rather than risk adopting something new that may turn out to be worse. That assertion may or may not be true but it hasn't stopped Switzerland from being a successful and progressive society. In my opinion it all comes down to the quality of the debate, the conservatives (small c) pointing out the risks, the progressives highlighting the benefits. The ID system (indeed any good government) should also facilitate using evidence from other places, local studies or setting up experiments to prove a policies worth.
4. Referendums stop politicians from being accountable. In ID there are special provisions to identify the arguments that politicians make when persuading us of their views prior to a referendum, by highlighting their contributions on the debating part of the site. This makes them more directly visible to their electorate who will judge them on their performance. It is their responsibility to research and present their views. The government is also accountable for many things, such as international relations or the implementation of policy, that we can judge them on in the usual manner.
5. How the referendum questions are phrased can vastly effect the result. This is undoubtedly true, but in ID the question is phrased by Parliament, government and opposition together, under the critical gaze of an involved electorate, savvy to their Machinations, who can mobilise real political power to press them for an honourable process. (I consider the pressure ID puts on politicans good for keeping them honourable.)
6. Peter Kellner also highlights the problem of the expectations gap: the difference between what the electorate expect and politicians have the power to achieve. By engaging the electorate in the debate, encouraged by easy access and real empowerment, the debate its self educates the population - Interactive Democracy IS education!

After all of his arguments, Peter does offer an alternative vision to cope with the general population's low opinion of politics (identified in his polls). He suggests the use of Citizens' Assemblies where people debate a topic, something he says is used successfully in Iceland, which also frequently uses referendums. And that's my point: let's have Citizens' Assemblies, too; they can run along side Interactive Democracy and reinforce it by offering a face-to-face debate that some may prefer. Perhaps the political parties or the media would fund them. Yet Citizens' Assemblies are much more difficult to access for most people than the slow written on-line debate, points collated for and against, that ID provides. This can be accessed from home, a library or even while on the move, at a time that suits you, and it facilitates careful deliberation.
Peter also advocates a People's Veto. This would stop any law if 50% of voters vote against it. That's not empowerment, it's a sop to public opinion and doesn't offer any real chance of implementation. It effectively bans my referendum vote unless a majority of others make an effort to get involved.
What Peter misses from his criticism of conventional referendums is that a low turn out enables a minority of the electorate to carry the day. ID avoids this problem by automatically devolving your vote to your MP if you don't happen to vote, making sure you are always represented and providing a balance of power between MPs and Citizens depending on the degree of public engagement.
Please click here to watch the lecture. I'd appreciate your views.

Cultural Diversity

Cultural diversity may be an important aspect in improving the decision making of direct models of democracy. The corollary is that conformist societies may not benefit from direct democracy to the same degree.
According to Surowiecki the four key criteria for wise crowds are:

1. Diversity of opinion based on private information
2. Independence from the opinions of others
3. Decentralised knowledge
4. Aggregation - a mechanism for turning individual judgements into collective decisions

Interactive Democracy does some of this, but the degree of private information, independence and decentralised knowledge is effected by the extent of the public debate. If the debate is broken into separate discussions, perhaps fostered within diverse communities, informed from separate sources, whether by personal experience or diverse media, ID is more likely to be a success. Nevertheless, it will always be more diverse than a Parliamentary, representative system.

Common Wisdom

One of the arguments against direct democracy is that common people are likely to vote based on their own selfish desires, without considering their long term needs or the benefits to others. Though this may be true of a handful of people I don't accept it of the vast majority:

• Most people go to the dentists: they accept pain for future benefits.
• Most people save money, though they would rather spend it today.
• Most people will offer a helping hand to their neighbours.
• Many people give to charities and will go out of their way to help others in need.

In a representative democracy we attempt to appoint a wise person. In direct democracy we listen to a wise person and decide if we agree with them. The two aren't very different.

The above graph is taken from here.

Arriva Departed

Arriva, the British bus and train operator, has been bought by Deutche Bahn and, in the wake of the upset over Cadbury's, Labour and the Lib Dems want to "lock short-term investors out of voting", according to The Guardian online. The Liberals propose that takeovers should be subject to a public interest test.

Interactive Democracy could allow the wider public to initiate a debate on limiting specific takeovers. Such a debate may be led by the unions, customers or suppliers. On the other hand, shareholders and the investment markets may argue that the free flow of international capital is a crucial element of our burgeoning quality of life. The debate could be fierce, but automatically skewed towards British interests as foreigners wouldn't be allowed to vote.

The key difference between ID and Representative Democracy in this regard, is that those with a vested interest can contribute to the debate, and vote, and it's not just the corruptible politicians who would decide on the policy.

Foreign Influence

According to this article from the BBC "More than 20 MPs broke rules on declaring hospitality... on more than 400 occasions..." Is this another example of the ability of foreign influence in our political system? Isn't representative democracy about representing British Constituents?

The former commissioner for Standards in Public Life, Sir Alistair Graham said it "demonstrated the failure of the self regulating system". But who is to regulate the regulators?

Interactive Democracy allows the public the power to deal with errant MPs swiftly, without their misdeeds becoming lost in the rhetoric of electioneering or the complexities of multiple issues, manifestos and party politics. But it would be nothing without the power of a free press to bring such issues to light. Good on the BBC.

Income for Influence

There was once "Cash for Questions" and now 4 MPs have been caught in a sting set up by The Sunday Times and Channel 4, suggesting they could influence government policy for the payment of some extra income. Is this how Representative Democracy has always been?

Interactive Democracy ensures that power comes from voters, not from well funded political lobbyists via subversive MPs. In ID, if pressure groups want to influence policy they will have to influence the electorate themselves.

More from the Times On-Line.

The Flynn Effect

The Flynn Effect is the term used to describe the rise in average IQs in the population. There is much debate as to the cause of this: it may be improved education, better nutrition, the modern stimulus of a diverse media or heterosis (genetic mixing). Unfortunately, recent studies have shown a levelling out of average IQ results, especially in developed countries, and even a small decline.
It has been suggested that an intelligent electorate with a good level of education is a prerequisite for Interactive Democracy. I'm all for an education system that concentrates on teaching diverse ways of how to think, rather than what to think, and I'd like to see wide use of the techniques promoted by De Bono and Tony Buzan. However, the difference between the most intelligent people in the country and the average intelligence is likely to remain pretty much the same, even with better education, in which case why not continue to pursue a political meritocracy such as representative democracy? If you accept that representative democracy has its faults and that it could be improved by more electorate power (as I argue on this blog), then waiting for a better educated, more intelligent population means we may be waiting forever.
Instead I'd prefer to see a slow and experimental progression towards ID. The first step could be an ePetition system that forces Parliamentary debate on popular issues, like a more powerful version of the one already employed in the Scottish Parliament.

It's also worth noting that the Swiss direct democracy system has evolved over the last 150 years, starting with a population that wasn't educated to today's standards and didn't benefit from any of the drivers of the Flynn effect. Neither did they have a diverse media or the web to inform their choices, facilitate research or stimulate debate.

Jim Flynn is the Emeritus Professor of Political Studies at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.

Mandate, Trustee or Delegate?

In 1774 Edmund Burke explained to his constituents that, should they vote him into the House of Commons, he would act as a trustee of their faith in accordance with his own conscience. He asked them to trust him to do the right thing: The Trustee Model.

This is in contrast to the notion that an MP is a delegate of his constituents, voicing their concerns and voting in a way (s)he believes the majority of the constituents would want. This is sometimes know as The Delegate Model.

Alternatively, if an MP believes that they won their seat because they belong to the party with the winning Manifesto they may act to bring those election pledges into being: The Mandate Model.

Interactive Democracy recognises that MPs are torn between conscience, party and constituents on some issues. Yet they have no simple mechanism for measuring the will of the majority of their constituents and must make assumptions about what they want. ID provides that mechanism and at the same time frees MPs to debate and persuade as their party and conscience dictate.

Whose Interests do MPs Represent?

In a BBC commissioned poll by Ipsos MORI the public showed little belief that MPs represent constituents. (Click here for the article.) In four polls taken between 1994 and 2009 no more than 10% believed that MPs represented us and it's worse now. Typically 50% thought that they represented themselves and 20 to 30% thought that they represented their party!

Is this what you call representative democracy?