Thoughts on democracy and lobbying

Dick thinks some ideas are so barking mad that they don't warrant a serious, reasoned counter-argument. In many cases he's right but I still think I'll have a crack at Wulfbeorn's suggestion to disenfranchise those on welfare. In his words:

as long as an individual chooses to live from the wealth of the public treasury, they should not be allowed to control the affairs of that treasury - doing so would effect the enslavement of their productive peers

(Incidentally, the use of an word like "enslavement" in the expression of a proposal that most people would already be inclined to reject outright might give a hint as to why Libertarians tend to perform so poorly in elections even though their policies do dovetail with a lot of people's revealed preferences) Like Dick, I'm against this proposal but for different reasons.

The first thing I'd like to say is that, unlike Dick, I don't view voting as a fundamental right. The merit of democracy is as a check against tyranny: a government which knows it can be booted out of office if it annoys more than 50% of the public is going to be somewhat more constrained in dealing with its subjects, er, citizens than a secure dictatorship. That is to say it has instrumental rather than instrinsic value.

Let's say we agree on a job the government ought to be doing, Job X. Now, there's no reason to believe that the person who acquires the most votes in a certain constituency and is favoured by the party hierarchy and gets appointed by another person who received the most votes in his constituency and among the elected members of his party, to be Minister for X would be any more effective at doing X than a random person of equivalent intelligence and education picked off the street. That is, the act of being popular doesn't by itself confer wisdom in a specific subject. Now, we can be sure that, wary of a popular backlash, an elected government will generally try to avoid (with limited success to date!) the appointment of utter incompetents to the job. But there's no reason to believe that they will be able to appoint a better than average candidate simply by virtue of being elected.

Secondly, there is a reason why terms such as "populist", "majoritarian" or "mob rule" have a negative connotation. That is, that a government which panders to the wishes of a simple majority of the population has no reason to respect minority interests. This should be clear to plenty on the "left" who are in favour of, say, Gay Marriage. The point is that while democracy might be a necessary component of a liberal society, it's not a sufficient component. Some sort of constitutional guarantee of individual rights and restraint on government would also be necessary.

The next thing to say is that one person one vote is not the only possible system of democracy and it's probably a bit irrational to fetishise the individual vote. For instance, it would be possible to elect a government of an equivalent mandate to that elected under one person one vote by selecting at random a sample of, say, a hundred people per constituency to vote. The government elected would conform pretty closely to that which would have been elected under one person one vote but yet, the vast majority of people would have been "disenfranchised".

So, what is unfair about Wulfbeorn's proposal is not so much disenfranchisement per se but selective disenfranchisement. The first thing I'd like to say about this proposal is that I can see his rationale: In a situation whereby you have a sufficient number of individuals who stand to benefit if the government increases welfare payments, there is an incentive for them to vote in a government who will do just that.

The problems with this line of reasoning are that 1) There simply aren't a sufficient number of individuals in this particular position to form a significant and effective lobbying group: this is a phantom problem, we have close to full employment. 2) What applies to those on welfare also applies to those who work in the public sector and indeed anyone in the private sector who has done any work for the government. My architectural firm has three school jobs on site at the moment. Government work doesn't form a majority of our fee income but I still benefit. By the same logic, I ought to be disenfranchised lest my vote encourages the government to spend more on school buildings than would otherwise be the case. In an economy which is in any way mixed, it's going to be hard to find many individuals who don't benefit in some way, however small, from some bit of government spending whether they like it or not.

Now in terms of fairness, all these lobbies would approximately cancel each other out. But in terms of overall spending they don't. Public choice theory and the Prisoner's Dilemma suggests that the outcome of such lobbying will be more spending all round. If you are genuinely concerned with consequences in the real world and not what would be fair in some idealised but non-existent scenario, there's no point in complaining about "enslavement", the identity of those lobbying the government, or whether they, in particular, ought to be entitled to lobby the government. Better to leave all these contentious question aside and deal with the actual problem: how to restrain government spending and here is where a properly worded constitutional provision might come in handy.

Comments

[Hugh Green]

I don't wish to distract from the substance of your argument, and fair dues for taking up what seemed like a lost cause, but I found myself wondering while reading this if you'd been invigorated by Man Utd moving within nine points of Chelsea in the Premiership?

[Frank McGahon]

To be honest Hugh, I pretty much "banked" a six point gap when Chelsea lost to Fulham (win games in hand, beat Chelsea at Stamford Bridge). I'll feel a bit more invigorated if Chelsea look like wobbling a bit more..

As for the "lost cause", as I said, I disagree with the proposal but I do think it raises some interesting issues.

[John]

The problems with this line of reasoning are that 1) There simply aren't a sufficient number of individuals in this particular position to form a significant and effective lobbying group: this is a phantom problem, we have close to full employment. . .

Or the problem is that nearly the entire electorate is in receipt of welfare to some extent. I am. My family benefits from publicly funded schooling, child benefit allowance, free (or heavily subsidized) emergency room care (and other medical facilities), etc. There are a lot of people getting free or heavily subsized housing, free use of public transport and other government hand-outs.

I suppose you could argue that only those who put in more than they get back should vote?

It is, as you've pretty much said, politically impossible anyway. However, I could envisage a system where people receive certain benefits from the state in exchange for signing away their right to vote. Again, in the current climate in Europe today, that proposal has no hope. However, I think it's slighly more implementable than simply taking the vote away from those who are on welfare.

[John]

Oh yeah, I nearly forgot. As that great American Yogi Berra once said, "It ain't over til it's over". Don't give up on the Premiership yet.

[Frank McGahon]

Here's hoping!

[Fergal]

A constitutional amendment, even if proper wording were to be found, would be of absolutely no use in reducing public spending. Any such provision could only be enforced by the courts, who are prevented by the seperation of powers doctrine from telling the government what to do when it comes to the exchequer (Hardiman J gives a good elucidation of this principle in the Sinnott v Minister for Education case). Secondly, who's going to sue the government for not abiding by the constitutional spending limit? You need to be personally affected by the breach in order to even get in the door of the court, and merely being a pissed-off taxpayer isn't sufficient locus standi (can't think of a citation for this rule off the top of my head, but there are load of authorities on it).

The reason the courts won't boss the executive around on the topic of spending is that the executive are democratically elected, and the courts aren't. Which brings me back to a question for you. Even if it did work, who needs a constitutional provision anyway? Isn't this issue the kind of thing that we have politics for?

[Frank McGahon]

Even if it did work, who needs a constitutional provision anyway? Isn't this issue the kind of thing that we have politics for?

Firstly, I was talking a little more generally here than the specific Irish situation and I am actually aware of the (possibly insoluble) difficulties involved in wording such restrictions - those which have been attempted in various US states haven't really worked too well. I might be prepared to concede that a specific amendment curtailing spending to a certain amount, or a proportion of gdp etc. would fail but you're probably wrong to conclude that we can leave it all to "politics".

There are genuine structural problems restraining pork-barrelling in this way - basically as a politician you have nothing to gain from making such a stance, and everything to gain by promising to bring a bit of bacon home - and it's probably the case that a constitutional provision which detailed how such spending ought to be approved - with the emphasis on as much transparency as possible - would be effective.

[dearieme]

It would be wiser to disenfranchise (1) Govt employees and (2) everyone under 35.