Youth and/or Direct Representation Parties

[Sai]

For those of you who have proportional representation parliaments, a couple suggestions:

1. Youth could create a party of their own, with actual youth MPs.

AFAICT, the percentage of voting age youth (let's say 18-29 years old) in Europe is approx. 10-20%. That's more than the ~5% of the general vote needed to get seats in parliament, even after average voter turnout.

IMHO, it's always better to actually have power yourself than to merely ask those in power to please consider your perspective. In the US, this would be completely impossible (our political system is 99% a first-past-the-post duopoly, at all levels). In the EU, looking from the outside, it seems to me that it's completely feasible, though it'd certainly be hard (and very unusual).

Would the youth reps @ WFD be interested in forming a bona fide political party? Would the CoE or others be able to support such a party?

2. Direct representation could also be a (non-partisan) party.

In short, direct representation is when someone is elected who promises to simply vote how their constituents tell them to (e.g. through a liquid democracy system). It's a way to bootstrap direct/liquid democracy from within a representative democracy.

In the US, it's unfortunately fairly far off (though a couple minor candidates have tried, e.g. Jeremy Hansen and Phil Dodds); it's something I intend to create w/ makeyourlaws.org, but is years/decades in the future even in a best case scenario. We're just starting from a much different place legally; for third parties to be actually viable at all would require a lot of change, so my strategy in the US doesn't depend on using a direct rep party.

In the EU, though… this could be an actual party; somewhat like the Pirate Party in structure, but minus its specific ideology (though of course they could still be influential proxies), and probably with significantly different resulting votes in each jurisdiction (since people will have different preferences).

Joonas Pekkanen is starting this (for Finland 2015, IIRC). See https://groups.google.com/group/direct-rep if you're interested in doing this anywhere.

Thoughts?

Sincerely,

- Sai

[Quentin Grimaud]

We, at http://www.democratiereelle.eu are applying the second option
that you are talking about for the next european elections. We have
lists in all regions of France and French-speaking Belgium. Members of
the lists have been picked at random among a list of citizen
candidates, and their only promise if elected is to apply at the
europen parliament the votes of the citizens via an online voting tool
(for each of the law proposals which comes to the parliament).


2013/12/6 Sai <sai...@gmail.com>:

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Quentin Grimaud

[Joonas Pekkanen]

Quentin,

For the 2015 parliamentary election we are launching the "Open Party" where there's a layer of what we call "experts" in between. Citizens give their mandate to a selected expert. Or they can choose different experts in different topics to have their mandate. The the MP is faced with a choice the panel of experts tells the answer. This brings in the liquid democracy / real-time mandate changing possibility and directs people towards selecting actual experts on the topics to take part in deliberating the right choices.

I will be happy to follow your initiative and wish it goes well.

Best, Joonas

Open Ministry

Open Knowledge Finland

[Christie Dudley]

There are some challenges I think that might need to be addressed if you're looking for a proxy government such as that.

For pass/fail issues, the voting makes sense. The problem I have been thinking about a lot lately involves how to bring people on differing sides of an issue together. Outside of computing, my experience has been that binary oppositions are almost always false oppositions. But how do you help people see how close they are when they're working these things out?

Would you have mechanisms for negotiations? I suppose you could do some more complex polls to set priorities for tradeoffs, but that's a pretty mechanical way to work through an agreement, without having much opportunity for creative solutions. I think that sort of model probably could be better than a lot of the unimaginative bureaucrats we currently have making less informed tradeoffs, but still probably not optimal.

Maybe something with reddit-style idea/proposal recommendations? Letting people come up with ideas, then getting others to vote up the ideas, then having a poll over the top so many ideas that are proposed?

Dunno. These are just ideas. But I'd love to see a better way to negotiate amongst party members in addition to as a party. That negotiation is pretty important for politics.

Christie

________

Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.

 - Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo

If you're interested in my work, 

Videos of my talks can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/user/longobord

I was a discussant at the World Forum for Democracy in 2013: http://www.coe.int/web/world-forum-democracy/deferred-transmission/-/asset_publisher/sMxWO41JBwRq/content/lab-7

Slides from my talks are here: http://www.slideshare.net/ChristieDudley

My papers can be found here: http://ssrn.com/author=1999441

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/coe_wfd/9e62d294-d73a-4d39-977e-fed633ebec65%40googlegroups.com.

[Sai]

A direct rep party wouldn't really be a "party" in the sense that it
wouldn't have a coherent ideology; every jurisdiction would have its
own outcomes. So it's no more binary than any other form of liquid
democracy; it's just that you control one legislator's actions (some
of which are ternary, like votes, and some of which are not, like
proposals and budget allocation negotiations and the like), rather
than the final outcome.

(FWIW, I see this as an intermediate step of a full liquid democracy
anyway, at least in places like the US where votes are allocated based
on things other than pure population, like the Senate which skews
towards state equality rather than population equality. It's one of
the reasons why we still have an electoral college, despite the purely
technological part of it being totally moot.)


Therefore, I'd reframe your question thus: how can one have a
collaborative, liquid-democratically-weighted legislation authorship
system that allows for differing outcomes for different cliques within
the system (e.g. voters in different states) while still nudging
people towards collaboration / consensus rather than mere majority
(using process, forced exposure to minority opinions, etc) and taking
empirical information into account (… especially when it disagrees
with your prior opinion)?

I think it's a very interesting question — as I said during one of the
WFD plenaries, I think it's *far* more interesting to ask how one can
make a liquid democracy deliberative than to ask whether deliberation
is in conflict with direct/liquid democracy — and it's one I've given
some significant thought to.

They're not written up in one place however, and I'd prefer to hear
what others think before giving my ideas on it.

- Sai

[Christie Dudley]

Well, your point makes my point that much more important! I would like to understand it's not just "authorship" either. 

A yes/no question is a binary opposition, no matter which way you frame it. I'm not talking party ideology here. I'm talking those vitriolic conversations that nobody wants to be a part of because people try to insult each other instead of addressing each others' viewpoints. I'm talking about people's generalizations and mischaracterizations of bills because they have an axe to grind "with the kind of people who would support that". That's the sort of stuff that creates gridlock in DC, although I see signs of it in Europe as well.

Say, there's a bill that is floating around that the people who you represent have voted against. The author of the bill, desperate to get it passed, comes to the representative to ask what he could change that would make it more palatable to the people. This is a serious question and happens all the time. Usually, there's some specific reason that someone would vote against a bill, and eliminating that will enable laws to get passed.

Making compromises, or more hopefully, finding common ground is fundamental part of the political process. It mirrors life very much in that way. Most people do this on a daily basis (or has a tough time staying married, staying employed, etc.). 

I think it's possible to create a mechanism to do this in a partyless system like you propose. I think it's not an easy problem to solve, though.

Christie

________

Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.

 - Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo

If you're interested in my work, 

Videos of my talks can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/user/longobord

I was a discussant at the World Forum for Democracy in 2013: http://www.coe.int/web/world-forum-democracy/deferred-transmission/-/asset_publisher/sMxWO41JBwRq/content/lab-7

Slides from my talks are here: http://www.slideshare.net/ChristieDudley

My papers can be found here: http://ssrn.com/author=1999441

[Joonas Pekkanen]

Christine,

the model we are planning in Finland where there is an intermediate level of "experts" (professors, academians and, yes, probably some populists also) would be the group that discusses and arguments. The people who have given them the mandate to represent them on the issue at hand might not be able to take part in intelligent deliberation but the assumption is that a group of experts on the issue could (at least better) do it. The group of experts could come up with other recommendations for action than just voting yes/no (e.g. suggesting an amendment to a bill etc).

Best, Joonas

--

puh. 050-5846800

PS. Tilaa uutiskirjeemme niin pysyt ajan tasalla Avoimen ministeriön toiminnasta: http://eepurl.com/jlIi5

[Christie Dudley]

Wouldn't that just be politicization of the group of experts? I know Academia is pretty political as it is. Each theory, whether describing economy or human behavior,  develops followings and oppositions. Even without the academic disagreements, there is the blindness of the ivory tower, where experts cannot be relied on always because they don't have the experience with the real world.

The area that I was most involved in when I started investigating legislative change was information security - an area that works hard to defy the codification schemes that help identify who the experts are. In fact, the DoJ professed a significant amount of knowledge, but tended to misrepresent it in order to gain more power and authority for themselves. 

Another example, there is a famous Finn - Mikko Hypponen - who is highly regarded in the industry. He is not faculty and I'm not even aware if he has a degree. It's not really important, because he's considered so influential that many would trust his opinion on things related to that field. (But then gain, his speaker's fees are high and you might not be able to secure his advice for government decision-making.)

Do the experts have the ability to speak over the people? How do you deal with competing theories of things? This is a thorny problem.

Christie

________

Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.

 - Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo

If you're interested in my work, 

Videos of my talks can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/user/longobord

I was a discussant at the World Forum for Democracy in 2013: http://www.coe.int/web/world-forum-democracy/deferred-transmission/-/asset_publisher/sMxWO41JBwRq/content/lab-7

Slides from my talks are here: http://www.slideshare.net/ChristieDudley

My papers can be found here: http://ssrn.com/author=1999441

[Joonas Pekkanen]

Yes, surely it would politicise the group of experts (not only academians by any means) to some extent and requires they are willing to act as a political intermediary between the people giving them the mandate on their are of expertise and the political decision-making. For example Mikko Hypponen might well be ready to take mandates from people and talk & decide for them on issues of privacy and data protection. 

Other people might give their mandate on this issue (privacy and data protection in this example) to other experts. As the experts discuss the topic openly people can (in real-time) switch their mandate from someone turn out not be a very good expert on the topic to someone who seems to know the stuff better.

Experts have the ability to speak over people (if I understand the question right). And of the people are not happy with the speak, they switch their mandate in real-time to another expert before the final vote takes place.

[Christie Dudley]

Ah, a mandate system sounds like it could work for that problem... so long as people don't substitute mandates for actually making decisions themselves. (i.e. assign a permanent mandate for everything to a person or group) I'd be fascinated to see that implemented.

To be fair, I must confess that I do not believe direct democracy can work on a large scale, but that's mostly based on suspicions, not anything proven. I think it's important to try (although I can't ethically encourage people to do so) to validate or disprove the hypothesis. I would want it to be a good try, though, so it's well and truly tested.

Christie

________

Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.

 - Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo

If you're interested in my work, 

Videos of my talks can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/user/longobord

I was a discussant at the World Forum for Democracy in 2013: http://www.coe.int/web/world-forum-democracy/deferred-transmission/-/asset_publisher/sMxWO41JBwRq/content/lab-7

Slides from my talks are here: http://www.slideshare.net/ChristieDudley

My papers can be found here: http://ssrn.com/author=1999441