Democracy, More or Less
The Brookings Institution report covered in the previous blog post reviewed proposals for improving the process used by political parties in the United States to nominate candidates for president. The authors observed the sidelining of experienced party leaders in the 2016 nominating process by reforms intended to increase voter participation. That, along with changes in election financing and media reporting, resulted in a 17-candidate field for the Republican party. The 2020 Democratic party nominating process began with a similar overabundance of candidates and limited input by party leaders.
The authors say that the 2016 Republican primary illustrates how the process can result in victory for a nominee who is not representative of the majority of the party. The authors contend that restoring the involvement of party professionals in the vetting process would assure nominees are competent to govern and are representative of the parties’ voters. They also recognize that their proposal would likely be opposed by populists.
Well, if that would be opposed by populists, one can only imagine how populists would respond to the positions taken in a new book by Garett Jones, an economist. The title of the book explains why: 10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less.
Jones retells the story of the downfall of ancient Athens’ “direct” democracy, in which every free male citizen would vote. Candidates for major government positions were voted on by the citizens. When Sparta defeated Athens in battle, the citizens of Athens voted to remove the generals in the war. Compare that to the current practice of “indirect” democracy, with “voters choosing between competing candidates or competing political parties, who in turn will go off and run the actual government for a few years before returning to check back with the voters.”
Jones cites evidence that elected officials vote differently when they are closer to the ends of their terms, displaying more concern with how their actions are viewed back home. His recommendation for making politicians “braver” is to have less frequent elections. The six-year term for U.S. senators is far preferable than the two-year term in the House of Representatives. And as with senators, he recommends staggering the elections for all legislative bodies.
Jones’ key to good decision-making is independence. His model is the U. S. Federal Reserve Bank. Studies of government bureaucracies found “the more ‘independent’ the nation’s central bank was from the political process, the better things typically turned out.” He recommends the same independence for the government overseers of international trade relations. Voters tend to oppose lowering trade barriers. Yet, “reducing trade barriers is good for the nation that lowers them.” Senators are more inclined to vote for trade deals in the first four years of their terms, and against in the last two years. Independent trade negotiators deliver better trade decisions.
An independent judiciary “is one of the crowning achievements of the world’s legal systems.” Ideally judges would be selected by a technocratic merit commission and serve for long terms. Jones would apply the same system for city treasurer positions and those charged with regulatory authority over utilities. He suggests: “when it’s crucial to get the technical details right and when the policy debate is less about values and more about facts and competent execution, that’s likely a good opportunity to delegate power to unelected bureaucrats.”
More controversially, Jones also argues for more weight being given to more informed groups of voters, and he would give government bondholders “an explicit advisory role in modern democracies as a check on the shortsighted, impulsive, frequently ignorant electorate.” And he agrees that party insiders should be given more influence over party politics, as advocated in the Brookings report.
Garret Jones wrote his book before the spread of the Covid19. This virus illustrates the merit of independence for subject experts, and what is lost in the absence of it.