Constructing a Simple, Hypothetical Democracy

Outline

  1. Constructing a Democracy for Wonderland
  2. Power Structure of Wonderland’s Government
  3. Elected Representatives
  4. Electoral Systems
    1. Electoral System for Electing the President
    2. Electoral System for Electing the Legislature
      1. District Representation (Plurality Voting, First Past the Post)
      2. Proportional Representation (Party-List System)
  5. Rights of Democratic Participation
  6. Protecting Individuals from the Tyranny of the Majority
    1. Tyranny of the Majority
    2. Rights
  7. Protecting Democracy from the Abuse of Power
    1. Abusing Power
    2. Separation of Powers
    3. Checks and Balances
    4. The Problem with the Framers’ Safeguards: Political Parties
  8. Summary of Wonderland’s Democracy
  9. Addenda
    1. Direct and Representative Democracy

Constructing a Democracy for Wonderland

  • The idea of democracy is simple: rule by the people.  But functioning democracies are complicated and differ in significant ways. To reify the concept of rule by the people as a working democracy, threats must be guarded against and choices made. I explore matters by constructing a simple, hypothetical, representative democracy for a country of 10,000 souls I call Wonderland.
  • Let’s assume Wonderland already has a simple government comprising:
    • an accounting department that collects taxes and writes checks
    • an army
    • civil and criminal courts
    • a law enforcement agency
    • a legislature
  • The objective is to make Wonderland a representative democracy, a government run by elected representatives. 

Power Structure of Wonderland’s Government

The first order of business is to define the power structure of Wonderland‘s democracy.

  • The simplest kind of democratic power structure is a government headed by a single elected person or group.
  • The problem is that this makes it too easy for an elected tyrant to keep himself in power, since he/she can pass laws oppressing the opposition, having them arrested, tried, and found guilty.
    • Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No.1
      • “of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the great number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.”
    • Lord Acton
      • “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”
  • Thus, in the The Spirit of Laws (1758) Montesquieu proposed distributing power into three separate and independent branches: the Executive, the Legislature, and the Judiciary. For Wonderland this looks like:
  • Following Montesquieu, as the Framers did, we’ll go with three separate branches of government.
  • More on Separation of Powers

Elected Representatives

The second order of business is to decide which government positions are elected.

  • Let us lay down the following:
    • Wonderland’s Legislature consists of one chamber of 10 representatives, elected by the people.
    • The Executive is led by an elected Head of Government, supported by appointed heads of Accounting, Army, and Law Enforcement.
    • Members of the Judiciary are appointed by the Legislature and Executive working together.
  • We also have to decide who elects the Head of Government.
    • In a parliamentary system, the legislature (Parliament) elects the Head of Government (Prime Minister), a process known as forming a government.
    • In a presidential system, the Head of Government (President) is elected by the people.
  • We shall adopt the presidential system for Wonderland.
  • Wonderland‘s government thus comprises:
    • The Legislature, which makes laws and consists of ten members elected by the people
    • The Executive, which consists of Accounting, Army, and Law Enforcement departments and is led by the President, elected by the people.
    • The Judiciary, which consists of civil and criminal courts whose judges are appointed by the Legislature and Executive

Electoral Systems

The next order of business is to decide how the President and members of the Legislature are elected.

Electoral System for Electing the President

  • The procedure for electing the president of a democracy should be a no-brainer: election by direct popular vote.  The only question is whether the winner needs a majority or a mere plurality.  The latter is easy to implement. The former may require a runoff election or ranked-choice voting.

Electoral System for Electing the Legislature

  • A tougher question is how the ten members of the legislature are to be elected.
  • Oversimplifying the matter, there are two different ways of electing members of an assembly.
    • In district representation citizens of an electoral district elect a member of the assembly to represent them, that is, to represent the residents of the district.
    • In proportional representation citizens at large elect members of the assembly to represent their interests, that is, to represent the interests of those who voted for the members.
District Representation (Plurality Voting, First Past the Post)
  • Suppose Wonderland is divided into 10 electoral districts, with each legislator representing a district and elected by its residents.
  • The principle of One Person One Vote requires that the districts have the same number of residents.  Since 10,000 people live in Wonderland, there are 1,000 residents in each district.

The Distribution Dependency of District Representation

With district representation, the party breakdown of an elected assembly depends not only on the total votes each party receives but also on the distribution of those votes across districts. Thus, the party breakdown of an assembly can differ, sometimes dramatically, from that of the electorate.

Example

  • Assume there are two political parties: Majors with 5,100 members and Minors with 4,900.
  • The problem with district representation is that the number of Majors and Minors elected to the legislature depends, not just on the overall vote count (5,100 to 4,900), but on the distribution of the parties across districts as well. Indeed, given 5,100 Majors and 4,900 Minors, the composition of the legislature can run anywhere from (a) Majors holding all ten seats to (b) Minors holding all seats but one.
  • Scenario (a):
    • Majors and Minors are equally distributed throughout the country so that in every district Majors beats Minors 510 to 490. The Majors win every seat.
    • See bar chart below.
  • Scenario (b):
    • Minors beat Majors 540 to 460 in nine districts
    • Majors beat Minors 960 to 40 in the remaining district.
    • The totals work out:
      • Minors: 9 x 540 + 40 = 4900
      • Majors: 9 x 460 + 960 = 5100
    • So Minors win nine seats and Majors one.
      • (The concentration of Majors in one district may be due to gerrymandering or because Majors voters prefer living together.)
    • See bar chart below.
  • In general, for any number of seats, if one party has slightly more voters than the other, district boundaries can be drawn so that the allocation of seats runs anywhere from the majority party winning all seats to the minority party winning all seats but one.
  • You might ask: which among the possible allocation of seats is most fair?
    • One answer:: the allocation whose party distribution best matches that of the electorate.
    • Justice Roberts’ answer in Rucho v Common Cause:
      • “It is not even clear what fairness looks like in this context.”

Scenario (a)
Majors beat Minors 510 to 490 in all districts

Scenario (b)
Minors beat Majors 540 to 460 in nine districts
Majors beat Minors 960 to 40 in one district

Proportional Representation (Party-List System)
  • In a Party-List system, the simplest and most widely-used form of Proportional Representation, citizens vote for a list of candidates provided by a political party rather than for individual candidates.
  • Voters in Wonderland would thus vote for either the list of ten Majors candidates or the list of ten Minors candidates  The results would be:
    • 5,100 votes for Majors party-list
    • 4,900 votes for Minors party-list
  • The party-list candidates are assigned seats accordingly:
    • Majors gets 5 seats
    • Minors gets 5 seats.

Proportional Representation
Majors Party-List beats Minors Party-List 5,100 to 4,900
So Majors get 51% of the seats and Minors 49%

  • Per Wikipedia, 85 countries use party-list voting for their legislatures.
  • The US uses district representation for the House (electoral districts) and the Senate (the states).
  • For Wonderland we’ll go with:
    • a plurality system for electing the president.
    • a proportional party-list system for electing the legislature.

More on Electoral Systems

Rights of Democratic Participation

  • For democracy to work, citizens must have the right to vote and other rights of democratic participation.
  • For Robert Dahl, these are:
    • Right to vote in the election of officials in free and fair elections
    • Right to run for elective office
    • Right to free expression
    • Right to form and participate in independent political organizations
    • Right to have access to independent sources of information.

View Dahl’s Institutions of Representative Democracy

  • In Wonderland every citizen at least 18 years of age has rights of democratic participation.

Protecting Individuals from the Tyranny of the Majority

Tyranny of the Majority

  • Tyranny of the Majority in a nutshell:
    • A majority of the electorate believes that biracial sexual relations are immoral.  They elect representatives who enact legislation making interracial marriage a crime. A couple is found guilty of violating the law and sentenced to a year in prison
  • In Federalist 51 James Madison distinguishes two threats a democracy must guard against:
    • “It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.”
  • The first is the tyranny of rulers.
  • The second is the tyranny of the majority, where a majority of voters elect representatives that unjustly restrict the freedom of individuals in the minority, for example by enacting laws that
    • make interracial marriage a crime,
    • prohibit the sale of intoxicating liquors, or
    • make distributing contraceptives to unmarried men or women a felony.
  • The majority may be motivated by differences in race, ethnicity, religion, politics, culture, moral codes, education, or wealth. The majority’s motivation may also result from misinformation, e.g. that one of the political parties wins elections by fraud.
  • John Stuart Mill put the risk this way in On Liberty:
    • “The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; the people, consequently, may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power.”
  • Or as some clever person said:
    • “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they are going to have for lunch.”

Rights

  • A democracy protects individuals from the tyranny of the majority by establishing individual rights.  The right to free speech, for example, protects individuals against a majority making it a crime to criticize the government.
    • A liberal democracy is a democracy that establishes constitutional rights.
  • Rights protecting against the tyranny of the majority are negative rights.
    • A negative right to something (e.g. to keep and bear arms), or against something (e.g. unreasonable searches and seizures) prohibits the government from taking some sort of action (confiscating your guns or searching your home without a warrant).
    • A positive right to something (e.g. the right to a K-12 education) requires the government to take some kind of action (teach children).
  • We establish the following constitutional rights for citizens of Wonderland:
    • Rights against the police power of the state
    • Right to life, liberty, property, and security of person
    • Right to a minimal standard of living
  • There is also a mechanism for adding new rights.

Protecting Democracy from the Abuse of Power

Abusing Power

  • Politicians and political parties seek power, which they get by winning elections.  Once they gain power they want to keep it.  The risk for democracy is that they’ll abuse their power to keep themselves in office. 
  • There are many things antidemocratic politicians and parties can do.

The Framers used two primary safeguards against the abuse of power: separation of powers and checks and balances.

Separation of Powers

  • In the The Spirit of Laws (1758), Montesquieu proposed distributing the power of government into three separate and independent branches: the Executive, the Legislature, and the Judiciary. It would be the “end of liberty,” he warns, if the same person controlled all three branches:
    • “There would be an end of everything, were the same man, or the same body whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and that of judging the crimes or differences of individuals.”  (Chapter 6)
  • Thus the different branches of government must be run by different people.
  • In Federalist No 51 Madison notes that the US not only has separate branches of government but also separate governments — federal government and the states.
    • “In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.”
  • By contrast, parliamentary systems have no division of power between the executive and the legislature, since parliament elects the prime minister.

Checks and Balances

  • In both the US and UK the powers of the judiciary and legislature are separate. But there’s a key difference. The US Supreme Court has the power to render laws enacted by the legislature null and void. The UK Supreme Court has no such power (Wikipedia).
  • In Israel there’s currently a move to strip its Supreme Court’s power to nullify laws.
  • Thus branches of government need not only to be separate, but also to have the power to limit the power of the other branches.  As Montesquieu succinctly put it in Chapter 5 of The Spirit of Laws.
    • “To prevent the abuse of power, it is necessary that by the very disposition of things power should be a check to power.”
  • John Adams talked about balancing the powers.
    • “It is by balancing each of these powers against the other two, that the efforts in human nature toward tyranny can alone be checked and restrained, and any degree of freedom preserved in the constitution.” (Letter to Richard Henry Lee)
  • Examples of checks in US:
    • Checks on Congress
      • The Supreme Court can render legislation null and void, per Madison v Marbury.
      • The President can veto legislation
      • The House and Senate must be in agreement to pass legislation.
    • Checks on the Executive
      • Congress can override a presidential veto, by a vote of a supermajority
      • Executive appointments require the consent of Senate
    • Checks on the Judiciary
      • Members of the Judicial Branch are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.
      • Congress establishes the organization of the federal judicial system and the size of the Supreme Court.
      • Congress initiates amendments, perhaps reversing decisions of the Supreme Court
    • Checks on the both the Judiciary and Executive
      • Congress has the power of oversight and investigation
      • Congress can impeach members of the executive and judicial branches, by a vote of a supermajority
  • We’ve already laid out Wonderland‘s separation of powers.
  • Let us add these checks:
    • The president can veto legislation
    • The legislature can override a presidential veto
    • The legislature can investigate the executive
    • The legislature can impeach members of the executive
    • Executive appointments require the consent of the legislature
    • The legislature and executive together appoint judges
    • The Judiciary can nullify laws.

The Problem with the Framers’ Safeguards: Political Parties

  • The Framers divided the federal government into separate branches to make it difficult for a tyrant to concentrate power. 
  • In Federalist 47 James Madison wrote:
    • “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
  • The Achilles’ heel of the separation of powers is the reality of political parties.  A political party that holds the presidency, the Senate, and the House and who’s appointed like-minded judges is thus, per Madison, a threat to democracy.
  • Indeed, the Framers viewed “factions” as a danger to democracy.
    • Alexander Hamilton regarded parties as “the most fatal disease”. 
    • John Adams feared that “a division of the republic into two great parties… is to be dreaded as the great political evil.” 
    • In his Farewell Address Washington warned that the fighting between political parties “gradually incline[s] the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.”
  • A political party can not only bypass the separation of powers but can also render checks and balances irrelevant.  For a party in control of the executive and both chambers of congress, for example, these checks are meaningless:
    • The President can veto legislation
    • Congress can override a presidential veto, by a vote of a supermajority
    • Executive appointments require the consent of Senate
    • Members of the Judicial Branch are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.
  • One of the primary checks on a tyrannical political party is ironically opposing political parties.

Summary of Wonderland’s Democracy

  • Wonderland‘s government comprises:
    • The Legislature, which makes laws and consists of ten members elected by the people
    • The Executive, which consists of Accounting, Army, and Law Enforcement departments and is led by the President, elected by the people.
    • The Judiciary, which consists of civil and criminal courts whose judges are appointed by the Legislature and Executive
  • Wonderland‘s electoral systems are:
    • a plurality system for electing the president.
    • a proportional party-list system for electing the legislature.
  • Every citizen of Wonderland 18 years or older has the following rights of democratic participation:
    • Right to vote in the election of officials in free and fair elections
    • Right to run for elective office
    • Right to free expression
    • Right to form and participate in independent political organizations
    • Right to have access to independent sources of information
  • To prevent the tyranny of the majority Wonderland establishes these constitutional rights:
    • Rights against the police power of the state
    • Right to life, liberty, property, and security of person
    • Right to a minimal standard of living
  • Wonderland also has a mechanism for adding new rights.
  • There are the following checks on Wonderland‘s branches of government.
    • The president can veto legislation
    • The legislature can override a presidential veto
    • The legislature can investigate the executive
    • The legislature can impeach members of the executive
    • Executive appointments require the consent of the legislature
    • The legislature and executive jointly appoint judges
    • The Judiciary can nullify laws.

Addenda

Direct and Representative Democracy

  • In a representative democracy (or republic) citizens vote for people to represent them in government. 
  • In a direct democracy citizens participate in government directly rather than through elected representatives.
  • Today direct democracy operates within representative democracies when citizens vote on referenda and initiatives rather than for a person or a party.
    • At the state and local levels citizens in the US vote on propositions, state constitutional amendments, and bond issues.
    • Switzerland uses referenda and initiatives at the national level.
      • “One of the unique aspects of Switzerland’s constitution is the number of decisions it requires citizens to make through referenda and initiatives. Sovereign power ultimately rests with the people, who vote on proposed legislation several times a year at the national level and often more frequently in the cantons; indeed, Switzerland has held more than half of the world’s national referenda.” (Britannica)