Let's Write a Constitution for a Hypothetical Nation

Rott: Democracy isn't just people voting. There's more to it than that.

It's really more about the electorate being able to make intelligent decisions based on their own views on how the country should be run.

Well if we have a legislative process with elected office, taking away the third party such as a lobbyist/activist group is logical to maintaining the efficiency and reliability of the legislature to not only put forward ideas in good faith but also props up the voter in the situation. With the lobbyists gone, it's either follow what the people elected you for, or else.

Well, I'm concerned as to how we can maintain an informed and active electorate. And as much as I hate lobbyists, I really don't want political contests to boil down to "All politicians are self-funding, ergo, whoever is the most personally wealthy wins."

If it were me, I'd probably want the entire process of political debates to be run by a neutral third party-but no such entity exists or could exist, so...

edited 24th Sep '10 8:33:42 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

There's always public campaign funding, although that has its own problems. Or you can have a state-owned TV station and give every candidate time on that.

It'd be hard to keep the state-owned TV station a neutral third party, methinks.

There are state-owned, partly owned and state-funded broadcasting systems which do maintain a very good baseline level of neutrality, as good or better than your average cable news station. Certainly the BBC is more neutral than Fox News.

But in my example, candidates would produce their own TV programmes/adverts and those would be broadcast by the public station, without editorial interference from the station whatsoever.

edited 24th Sep '10 8:42:39 PM by BonSequitur

I have previously proposed an alternate system of legislation- if you want a law made, make the law itself stand trial.

Take the law to court, place it before a jury of at least 100 citizens.

Interested parties then get an opportunity to make their arguments for/against the act, to call witnesses, cross-examine the opposing parties, etc.

Eventually, the jury deliberates and renders their decision.

Intentions:

• since a jury is drawn from the overall populace and disbanded after the trial, there is no established lawmaking body for lobbyists to target.
• witnessing the arguments between a bill's supporters and opponents (and hopefully more neutral friend-of-the-court briefs) should hopefully allow the jury to be better informed about the bill's subject than the general populace would be in a direct-voting system.

True true.

It really does go back to the fundamental question-how do you keep the electorate informed without shaping the electorates decisions in ways that are beneficial to the people currently in power?

@Tomu: I'm suggesting very short, non-renewable terms as a way to get around the Iron Law of Oligarchy.

A chief executive or a legislator with a term of years has a lot of time to reward his financiers and ignore the electorate.

@Tangent: That's a good idea.

edited 24th Sep '10 8:44:39 PM by Rottweiler

Rott, if you were serious about one day terms and not just straw-manning democracy, then I think you're pretty silly. Or did you mean one year?

Tangent, those centuriae of citizens would be if anything more susceptible to lobbying than a regular legislature.

From my understanding, juries are sequestered during the trial they've been called for, correct?

Once selected, the only contact they'd have with potential lobbyists would be during the public proceedings of the trial.

edited 24th Sep '10 8:50:27 PM by Tangent128

Sometimes, depending on the trial. Still, I'm not terribly keen on the idea of handing over legislative decisions to a group of 100 random people taken from the street.

And there are logistic problems, as well. Would you fly all those people to the capital so they can attend? How do you ensure those 100 people are a representative cross-section of society? A group picked truly at random will introduce bias with regularity. Are you prepared to do this for every law?

Tomu, I meant one day. Make the head of government a Prime Minister, selected for a day from among a council of several hundred, like the chairman of the Athenian boule. That way, bribery/campaign funding would be minimized, since he wouldn't have time to reward his financiers.

How is "look to Athens" a strawman of democracy?

Certainly the BBC is more neutral than Fox News.

In many regards yes, but Fox is vastly more neutral than anybody else in the private media.

What that means for this however is any hypothetical state-run media is going to have to be by law impartial, not just assuming it is.

In addition it would have to be protected from the government itself to avoid retaliation from butthurt politicians or power-seeking ones. Meaning for example, it would have to be protected in a way that Politician X cannot bring about a bill to de-fund the station because the station had reports that did not shine Politician X in a nice light.

edited 24th Sep '10 8:55:46 PM by MajorTom

I don't even know how to respond to the notion that Fox News is somehow 'more neutral' than other media outlets, given how overwhelmingly stupid it is. Fortunately, I don't have to, because this is on-topic conversations.

Oh okay, I see where you're going.

Yeah-if everyone of a given council is already informed in the matters of state, you could cut down on the friction of regime changes. However, if you really had everyone voting every day you'd basically just have a certain group of people take voting as their full-time job.

Which, no, is not the maximization of democracy.

Can we get term limits for Legislative folks, too? I think we would have a more active population in civil affairs if we didn't have to worry about career politicians. Say, two terms in a row, and no more than four total for their lives. Set term limits for Legislatures at something like two years.

Will the country be divided up into districts? How will that be determined? (will determine how influential certain districts are, and if we need to develop a lower House and an Upper house, maybe.)

And I agree, we can nail down basic rights after we nail down the basic structure of the government.

I think that we shouldn't have career politicians necessarily, but I do think we should be able to have an efficient bureaucracy. I mean, when someone serves their term limits they should have a place to go to afterward. The warm busom of meaningless politically oriented paperwork.

@Tomu: The people wouldn't vote for chief executive with that short of a term. The legislators, elected by the people, would take very short turns as Prime Minister.

Probably give the legislators a term of one year and ban consecutive terms. That would remove the problem of perpetual legislators of gerrymandered districts.

I think that we shouldn't have career politicians necessarily, but I do think we should be able to have an efficient bureaucracy. I mean, when someone serves their term limits they should have a place to go to afterward. The warm busom of meaningless politically oriented paperwork.

^ So you maximize democracy by taking the decision out of the voter's hands? That strikes me as ... odd. Electoral College style?

edited 24th Sep '10 9:02:34 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

^^^ Legislative term limits (as well as Executive term limits) is a must. As we see today, there's nothing more plaguing of a democracy outside of a power grab than a career politician.

edited 24th Sep '10 9:03:30 PM by MajorTom

Nah, I agree with you there, but I don't know that we want to isolate people from politics too much. As is, people build up a career of politics and then make a run for President.

We may not want someone to spend 20 years in a position of power, but we still want people to be able to develop skill and influence-or at least respectability. But I'm definitely in favor of term limits.

^^ Going by the Law Of Large Numbers, a sample size from 1,000 to 10,000 will yield a rough average of the populace's opinions and breakdowns. The larger the number the more accurate the average.

edited 24th Sep '10 9:05:33 PM by MajorTom