The 21st Century Democracy

This is a most important year for democracy. More than 80 countries will be holding elections in 2024. I’m not a scholar or an academic by any means. I’m a software developer with a passion for history and social sciences in general. The following are simply my thoughts and opinions on the subject of Democracy. They are not necessarily the most original or groundbreaking ideas, but they are mine and it’s my wish to share them in the hopes of making them ours.

I design software systems for a living. These are not meant for computers, but for the people working on a certain domain. Software Developers, like myself, find flaws in these systems and thrive to improve them in order to better serve both, our users and our peers who work on maintaining them.

Democracy is the framework in which we’ve chosen to build our systems in the free world. Its purpose is to provide people with the capacity to govern themselves in one way or another. We assume that democracy is synonymous with elections, but that’s inaccurate at best.

Democracy can take many forms but there is one crucial constant; individual freedom. Every citizen exercises their sovereign power every day, with every action, when we talk to our friends, family and colleagues about our issues, when we decide not to buy from a company we disagree with, when we explain our decision behind it to our friends, when we complain about taxes, safety, housing, wars, etc.

But the problem in most democracies resides not in our direct participation but in those with direct incidence in the most important decisions and how they get to power.

A broken democracy

Currently, most if not all democracies are Oligarchic. We are forced to choose from a pool of powerful and influential individuals. They’re funded by other powerful individuals with true capacity to impose their agendas through them. In many cases, these are people and organizations involved in illegal and or socially destructive activities.

The current system keeps the power in the hands of a few powerful people and away from the general public. We have a false sense of agency, when in truth, we’re being conditioned by deceitful targeted marketing campaigns and made to choose a side. It should be quite obvious by now that we’re almost never getting what we supposedly vote for, as many other people are voting the exact same thing, sometimes even for opposite reasons. That’s how a well orchestrated marketing campaign works.

The tribalization of political parties has made it so that by choosing a side, we demonize the other, creating a divide between us with fanatics chanting, waving flags and idolizing political figures. Fanatics are willing to defend their own, passionately no matter what. Even if it means going against their own principles.

Moral values are easy to bend around when someone on your tribe gets attacked and the need to defend them becomes imperative. It starts by putting people on the spot for not sticking to the script. Denying accusations, stating that the other side is worse, placing the blame on policies from other governments, bending the truth to fit your narrative; these practices have become the norm.

This is an implicit problem of the party system. Ideally, we’d have idealistic, disinterested individuals with high morals and a true sense of civic duty, gaining recognition and eventually being elected. This has proven to be an unrealistic utopic fantasy. People are willing to manipulate, bribe and do whatever it takes to reach a position of power and influence. They’re willing to take money from anyone to fund their political campaigns, effectively putting those rich individuals in power. After they reach government seats, in many cases their families and immediate circle of influence become legacy power. Their names will forever carry an inherent weight in political organizations and for the public in general.

The whole point of a party system is to amass participation in order to provide as much representation as possible. This has proven over and over again to be unfeasible, making the general public disillusioned and uninterested in politics. This only gives more power to the powerful and legitimizes the legacy status of current participants.

As a result, people end up voting what they consider the “least worst” option, or in many cases, passionately voting out of an irrational fanatism, sometimes even conditioned or pressured by their immediate circle. And this is if they vote at all. It’s a sick and broken system.

How do we solve it then? How do we choose public officials?

Between the 12th and the 18th century Lombardy, Venice and Florence used a system of random allotment of magistrates that kept the balance of power in check. It wasn’t ideal but it helped to deter corruption and keep a more cohesive and stable government in a place where the power play between the elites was rampant.

But a similar, far superior system, known as sortition, was first documented in the Athenian democracy around the 6th century BC. The ancient Athenians did not consider elections to be democratic. To them and the thinkers of the era, the only way to prevent corruption and political sects to gain power, was to randomly select public officials, from a pool of equally capable candidates.

This means no political campaigns, no fundraisers, no legacy power, no favors or hidden agendas.

Athenian Democracy lasted 180 years, and it was solid and stable. It would have gone on had they not been defeated by the Macedonians. Modern democracies are fairly young, diverse and have gone through great transformations in the past couple of centuries. In many cases, only landowners could vote until the late 19th century. Women couldn’t vote in Italy until 1948. Some democracies are still ruling in the name of Monarchs or their version of God, while others, like Switzerland, have collective heads of state and remain quite stable. We’ve had many Dictatorships along the way that have come and gone with much bloodshed and changes to the system.

This proves that changes can happen, and they should be made when the system’s as broken as it is. There are exceptions to the rule, like Switzerland, but they are extremely rare and still capable of falling in the ugly practices of the rest. Even then, as they are exemplary, it shouldn’t surprise anyone if they were the first to change their system preemptively.

So what’s the problem with this system? Why can’t we implement it? Why wouldn’t we all agree that anyone with the capacity to perform civic service should be able to do so? The vast majority of us would agree that this is a much better way. Fanatics and powerful people with much to lose will disagree and fight these ideas with all of their being. They have too much to lose.

What will it be of career politicians and lobbyists if they suddenly lose their rackets? They’ll probably find another way to excerpt their influence, to cheat and deceive the general public, of course. Luckily, they would have lost their grip on those who can put them in jail where they belong.

Who should be selectable?

Selectable candidates should come from a pool of self-selected, full citizens between 30 and 65 years of age, with a minimum required academic level, no criminal background and a positive psychological screening. The state must ensure equal, free access to the minimum academic level required to be in public office, at any stage of their lives.

A common argument against sortition is the concern around the capacity of the selected candidates to perform their duties. One cannot seriously be concerned about this with the comedic cast of politicians that the most important democracies in the western world have had in the past 20 years alone.

The proposed system is a Republic, and in that context, candidates can either be picked as part of The Executive Council, The General Assembly or The Supreme Court.

The Executive Council

Formed by as many officials as ministries. Their duty is to administer the executive power of the republic. Each council member is assigned a ministry to oversee, where they can hire or replace ministers. The council functions, in essence, as a president and its cabinet. Each member should have the chance of presiding the council for an equal period of time.

A citizen can only be selected once in their lifetime as part of the executive council, and they can serve for two years. Before the end of the first year, they have to render an account of their time in office to the General Assembly. If they find this to be insufficient, they can vote to select a new council to replace the current one at the end of the first effective year.

The General Assembly

A demographically proportionate representative assembly of citizens with the duty of enacting laws, overseeing the executive council and bringing forward the voice of the general public. They must elect a member to preside over the assembly for a fixed period of time, no longer than three months, to allow for at least four chamber presidents in a year.

A citizen can be selected as part of the assembly only once in their lifetime and they will serve for at most two years, with a performance evaluation before the end of the first year to determine whether they can continue for a second year.

Members of the assembly should regularly hold open forums in their communities in order to “take the temperature” and be able to bring forward the most immediate issues of those they represent in front of the assembly.

We could make a case for an upper chamber from a separate pool of candidates with more strict requirements, perhaps with the need of a law degree or similar, to ensure the legality and feasibility of proposals. We could also rely instead on a commission of lawyers employed under the consensus of the assembly.

Supreme Court

The role of the supreme court is to be the hands of justice and as such, it cannot be blind. Rather than 2 sets of eyes, it should include as many as necessary. It must look people in the eye as it exercises its power. It must look at the nuances of every situation in order to be humane and fair.

Supreme judges must be selected from a pool of capable candidates with the highest of standards. They must know the law inside and out and be thoroughly screened.

The Jury system used in the United States and other countries should still be used as it allows the participation of regular citizens in the judicial system.

More regulations should be imposed on lawyers to prevent them from emotionally manipulating judges and jurors. They should decide using only the facts presented to them.

Ensuring Productivity and Effectiveness

To ensure the productivity and effectiveness of public officials, it’s imperative that their duties become an important step in their profession, whatever that is, as they will have to resume them as soon as their public duties are over.

They should be provided with a maximum of one year full paid grace period until they’re able to resume their professional activities.

Their CVs should by then reflect their achievements as public officials where having made it the full two years by itself should be testimony enough of their capability.

The Assembly will vote to award leaving officials with a medal of honorable service. One of the greatest accolades that a citizen can receive, enough to be recognized by a future employer and or clients with gratitude, regardless of the path taken from then on.

Where does ideology fit in all this?

Ideologies are usually associated with dogma, the pot in which political sects brew their nasty schemes. So let’s make a case for philosophy.

In a system with no political parties there is no place for dogma, there’s only the facts, and what needs to be done. The agenda is set by evidence, consensus and general opinion driven by the diversity of elected officials as well as academics, scholars, thinkers and philosophers of their time spreading their ideas.

Schools of thought would naturally exist, but with no structures to lobby behind them, summed up to the pressure of making the full term with honors, it’d be extremely hard for public officials to be influenced by them in a negative way. Any sign of organized sectorialism should be strictly forbidden, in favor of open, adogmatic discussions.

The absence of parties also means no media pushing their agendas. The risk still remains of powerful rich individuals using their money to influence news and propaganda to drive the public opinion in a certain direction. This should, by all means, qualify as treason.

Direct Democracy

In general, direct democracy requires electors to be well informed in order to make decisions. It works well in Switzerland where this is ingrained in their culture but doesn’t necessarily export well to other countries where the context is quite different.

For some particular decisions where there’s much division, the council or the assembly could make the case to open the poles for a referendum, but in most circumstances the diversity of selected members and the high rotation should ensure that decisions represent everyone’s best interest.

The prospect of being selected after having passed the necessary courses, should be a good start for citizens to have a good understanding on public administration, in order to form an opinion and have meaningful discussions with their peers and neighbors. This is the best form of direct democracy, because it allows for the general opinion of the public to reach the assembly one way or another.

Another important instrument for participation are town councils, open forums and other forms of citizen assemblies where their opinions, thoughts and concerns can be brought in front of their representatives and local administrators. At the end of the day, it’s up to each of us to decide to what extent we wish to exercise our democratic powers or delegate them to others with our inaction.

What you can do

As I have stated before, the fanatics and the powerful will fight this. But make no mistake, the rest of us, we’re more than them. We can make this happen. This won’t be the first, nor the last drastic modification to our forms of government. We can’t sit idly by waiting while the powerful do as they please. It’s our democratic duty to stop them with a peaceful display of our might. Share this text and discuss it with your peers. Spread the ideas and start a healthy debate.

This is an invitation to believe in a better future. To stand your ground for an ideal. Let them know you don’t believe in them, let them know you’re looking for change. Take as many chances of participation as possible in order to spread the word, and if you can, vote for smaller candidates to divide the power of the elites. Don’t idolize people, even less politicians. If you take a side, hold them even more accountable for their misgivings than your rivals. Most importantly, don’t personalize this movement and risk it becoming a part of someone’s political agenda. Don’t be a part of the problem.

Change starts with the seed of a powerful idea in our minds. And as our voices resound, from every corner of the earth as one, we’ll emerge victorious to harvest the fruits. We’ll look back at this time in history as a more primitive era where we took the first steps to become a more advanced civilization.