I had to give in this article before the outcome of the UK election was known. But whatever the result and the form that the ensuing government will take, all parties seem committed to electoral reform. The Tories have pledged a smaller House with cuts in ministerial salaries in order to demonstrate that it is not only the ordinary citizen who has to carry the country’s burdens. Does that thinking apply here? Labour on the other hand wants to make of the House of Lords a purely elected chamber. The Lib Dems want to change the voting system so that the ratio of the national vote that a party obtains is represented by the number of seats it will have in the House, which is not the case at present.
Image versus reality
In other words, reform seems to be in the air. Political parties of course promise reform on a daily basis and more so during campaigning, but when the crunch comes, it asks for a lot of principle for politicians to willingly divest themselves of the power they hold and which they are always seeking to extend in many subtle ways. Philosophers and social scientists have theorised throughout the ages about the relationship of the citizen vis-a-vis the managers appointed to govern his affairs.
The starting point is generally the Athenian demos and its function but in the modern state that one particular management method is impossible to apply. The last attempt was Gaddafi’s Libya with its regional people’s committees. There are those who argue that local government achieves the same purpose. In bigger countries it may but I am afraid that my stint in local government has shown me just how limited this is in Malta. To actually claim that our local councils represent citizen power in action is to put image before reality.
Madison and Siéyès
Two men credited with playing a crucial role in establishing modern political representation are James Madison and the Jesuit Abbè Siéyès. Both men faced revolution: Madison was involved in his country’s war of Independence while in the case of Siéyès it was the French Revolution. Madison has gone down as the father of the American Constitution, an honour which he refused as, in his own words, “(the document) was not the off-spring of a single brain but the work of many heads and many hands.” Despite the very different contexts in which they functioned, both men contrasted representative government and democracy in similar terms.
Madison saw representation as intended to refine and enlarge the public views by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.
He went on to add that under such a regulation it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose.
Abbé Siéyès saw representative government as the application to the political domain of the division of labour. For him, the common interest, the improvement of the state of society itself cries out for us to make government a special profession.
Wise, virtuous and professional
And that is the model that has come down to us. Madison extended his theory by asserting that the aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society. However he did add a cautionary note by saying the public had to take the most effectual precautions to keep their leaders virtuous in their public office.
And here we have it all. Politicians should be wise and virtuous, know how to conduct the affairs of the country in a professional way while at the same time, the citizen should have enough power to reward or punish his appointed managers for any failure of public trust. In between elections the political leaders are expected to have a certain amount of leeway in the taking of decisions; which is right and dandy so long as they are truly wise and virtuous and not acting, as Madison put it, for temporary or partial considerations.
The problem in our times is that more and more citizens are becoming better equipped at analysing politics, more competent in discerning the reality behind the sound bites. Sky Channel has given local audiences for the first time the chance to judge a political campaign calmly and objectively. They could clearly see that despite Nick Clegg explaining that he was only against educational tax credits to people in his salary bracket and higher, for in his opinion such measures should be aimed only at those who really could not afford it otherwise, Brown still carried on claiming that the Lib Dems were against the grant of tax credits. And when Brown, time after time, accused Cameron of proposing to give back thousands of pounds in inheritance tax to the three thousand richest estates in the UK, Cameron pretended not to hear it. Yes it was easy to discern the politician’s economy with the truth but would it have been so apparent had that been said locally?
Deliberative democracy
A school of political thought argues that democracy should be organised in such a way as to promote reasoned debate among citizens. The emphasis lies on the word reasoned and the word citizens. This school seeks not only to expand the scope of current democracies, but also to improve its quality in two ways. They argue that wider and more informed debate will result in better, more rational, more inclusive decisions. Additionally they also argue that a wider debate will improve citizens’ moral reasoning, cognitive abilities and public spiritedness. This was partly the spirit behind the TV debates held in the UK for the first time, an experiment that I believe will not be easily ignored in future elections. Indeed it can only be improved upon.
Deliberate democracy adherents believe that there is a variety of specific measures which might well bring added value to the democratic process. They propose for example, that deliberative polling replaces attempts to discern the citizens’ already formed opinions with a series of polls interspersed with provision of additional information and occasions for discussion. Of course the immediacy of political decision may not always allow for any form of consultation or deliberation, but policies often do.
It might be well to record Simone Weil’s dictum that: Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.