Speakers and Lotteries

So we have a new Speaker, John Bercow. In this post I don’t want to say anything of the merits or otherwise of the new Speaker. However I do want to consider the election process a little in a way that touches on the debates about how to reform the chamber.

I’ve given the idea of a democracy a little thought and considered what model we would choose in the Original Position. First it seems clear that we would not choose a majoritarian, winner-takes-all system – which counts out our current system. Were we to use the maximin strategy we would quickly see that the least-advantaged would always do least-well in this system.

Second a strictly proportional system doesn’t seem to suffice either. As members of smaller political communities our power to pursue our own conceptions of the good would be proportional to our numbers. Again applying the maximin strategy this does not appear acceptable either.

Consider the dilemma of whether we should save one person from drowning or five people from drowning, in circumstances where we can only save one or the other. Under the veil of ignorance we would never choose a majoritarian system because it is just as likely that we would end up the lonely individual as we would be part of the larger group. We would not want matters to be simply proportional to the numbers. Under these circumstances we would want our chance of being saved to be equal to that of everyone else.

This does not mean that our chance would be equal to saving the whole of the five – this would not be showing the other agents proper respect either. Rather we would want our chance of being saved to be proportional; that is we would choose to have a one in six chance of being saved. Such a lottery would be weighted in favour of the five of course, as if any of them get picked they all get saved.

That is the Kantian solution to the Rescue Problem. A Kantian system, then, would strongly favour an electoral system where your chances of having your views represented were equal to the chances of everyone else. This system is known as sortition, a method used to elect the Doge of Venice way back when.

Obviously there is a question of practicality; it isn’t feasible in a large democracy to have everyone directly participate in a sortition process. It is also isn’t particularly autonomy enhancing – that is why we form political associations to help further our political will and persuade others of our conception of the good. We would therefore opt for the most autonomy-enhancing proportional system on offer. This would either be the single transferable vote with multi-member constituencies or a strictly proportional system with open lists.

We would choose such a method to select a chamber of representatives. We would then opt for our representatives to have an equal chance of furthering our interests. This would require that their ultimate role would be decided on a regular basis by sortition. This suggests something like the Federal Council of Switzerland, a seven-member executive council that collectively acts as the head of state and is jointly responsible for the federal administration. Rather than the members being elected proportionally, the members would be selected by lot (with the better represented parties obviously having a greater chance of being represented) on a regular basis (presumably annually or biennially).

We would also like to increase the likelihood of our interests being represented by increasing the number of mechanism, perhaps through standing committees as powerful as those in the US Congress.

The argument against such a system is the same as that brought against proportional systems: they increase the likelihood of views being represented that the majority find repugnant. That, however, is an argument against democracy not a particular form of democracy. Kantians tend to argue for a system of checks and balances (including as full a bill of civil rights as possible) and basic constitutional principles that would prevent some interests being put into effect – on the ground that we would choose for those interests to be prevented from being put into effect under a veil of ignorance or from a perspective of impartiality. (That is the same grounds upon which democratic institutions are argued for.)

Such a system is actually quite similar to David Hume’s Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth, where an indirectly elected senate meets and appoints members to commissions based on a sortition process. Perhaps this is a better reform of our Parliamentary system, to have the Speaker and the chairs and members of the standing committees to be appointed by lottery. Private members bills could also be selected in this way. Doing so would remove the influence of the party whips and strengthen the chance that our interests will be represented in some way.

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Parliamentary Reform

There are two models of reform being discussed in the papers over the past couple of days. The first would be a fundamental reform: a referendum on Alternative Vote Plus (AV+) as put forward by Alan Johnson in what might or might not be a leadership bid. The second – which seems to be gaining support in both Opposition and Government circles – concerns a change in the way Parliament runs itself.

I picked up in a previous post the argument put forward by the Economist that much of the anger against the political class demanded institutional change (not constitutional). Cameron and Straw recognise that (1) all the main parties have been accused and this may mean that they are not susceptible to the sort of anti-vote that the Tories received in 1997 and (2) the way to dominate the agenda and exploit this issue isn’t to apportion blame but to look “leaderly” by being at the forefront of change.

Johnson’s own analysis is that the upcoming election is going to result in a Labour loss which can be mitigated in the long-run by a move towards a more proportional system and in the short-term by identifying an issue on which the Lib Dems (MPs and voters) and the Tories have fundamentally divergent views.

Whilst Machiavelli or Aristotle might have been interested in such explanations being, as they were, more political scientists than political philosophers, here I’m more interested in the justification of such policies.

Many of the arguments put forward for institutional reform follow from the thought that MPs have too little power and that there needs to be a separate career path as parliamentarian rather than as a member (or potential member) of Government. Many of the proposals put forward by Straw and Cameron involve reducing the power of the whips by introducing a business committee and allowing Parliament to decide on the members and chairs of the Select Committees. Cameron also favours a Petitions Committee system (presumably similar to the Scottish Parliament and the Bundestag).

A business committee would allow a greater time for the hearing of Private Members’ Bills – of which pitifully (and suspiciously) few every make their way to the statute books. I’m not convinced this is the most productive avenue to open up – I’ve discussed previously the idea that Select Committees should be allowed to sponsor legislation, something a business committee should promote by distancing the Government from the control over Parliament’s legislative timetable.

Johnson’s idea of a referendum plus general election deserves consideration but I’m suspicious of introducing a conflict between direct and representative democracy in these ways. Given that I think we would choose a representative democracy in the Kingdom of Ends I think we should therefore opt for procedures that deepened the political power of citizens without undermining representative procedures. Referenda are dangerous because they exacerbate inconsistencies the occur when aggregating individual preferences and because they increase the likelihood of majoritarian decisions (the plebiscite is a favourite of the tyrant).

How could Labour introduce electoral reform without a referendum but ensuring the same sort of accountability? I believe there is a way of passing an electoral reform bill with legitimacy. Firstly, it requires a short bill introducing the class of Basic Law into UK law. Basic Law would require a supermajority to be passed, repealed or amended. I also believe the task of producing chapters of Basic Law (which together would comprise a codified constitution) should be tasked to a Royal Commission of both houses.

Second a bill passing electoral reform would require not only a two-thirds majority (which would require the support of not only all of the Labour and Lib Dem benches but also would need another eight MPs) but further with a clause that allowed such a law to be challenged. Laws in Switzerland can be challenged if 50,000 signatures are assembled within a 100 days. Constitutional amendments can be put to referenda if 100,000 signatures are assembled in 18 months. The central principle of representative democracy is that Parliament needs the final say, so I think that were there to de some sort of popular challenge to a law it would require a second vote to be had in Parliament (perhaps after a general election) with a higher supermajority or even a double majority. A double majority would require, for instance, not only a two-thirds majority overall but also a two-thirds majority in all the constituent nations.

Perhaps a mechanism would replicate the legitimacy of a referendum seemingly bestows. A similar proportion of the population would require 360,000 signatures (about 0.6 per cent of the population) within a hundred days. Normal UK convention is for 5 per cent of the electorate (roughly 2million signatures) and perhaps there might a minimum number of signatures in each of the constituent nations of the UK (something like 200,000 signatures from Scotland, 100,000 from Wales, 50,000 for NI and 1½ million for England). A further restriction would be that challenges could only be made for such Basic Laws.

Anyway back to the cricket.

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