I think it’s a neat idea and we should consider experimenting with it, because something in representative democracy clearly needs improvement.
You can criticise the idea from various points. But I think that in this case not trying it could be worse than running the experiment.
What do you think?
9 comments
This will effectively cede all the power to the people posing the questions in the first place.
(P)referenda supposes that most people are aware and involved in politics and news for most of the time. I strongly doubt this is the case.
Imagine a preferenda held end of 2021 for an election, defense spending would never even make the first 30 priorities. But I think the current events teach us a thing of two about that.
Worst idea ever.
I think it is an interesting idea, although I would like a neutral/no opinion option instead of only agreeing/disagreeing.
I also don’t think we really need a citizen’s assembly to decide the questions. Just let elected politicians decide for which proposals they need more feedback from the public.
The main drawback I can think of it is that you will have to stand in line way longer when going to vote if everyone has to fill in a questionnaire for 30 different policy proposals.
The usual Belgian complicated version of the old Swiss Direct democracy?
I wonder what it would be like to wake up and think, what is it that we need to get the masses interested in our democracy? “I know, let’s increase the complexity immensely” Because surely people who aren’t following politics right now or don’t feel involved only do so since they find our current system way too easy.
Such a system requires just way too much effort from the average voter, on top of that I find a lottery a bad system to begin with. If you don’t force people to participate you will get very strong biases in the group that is supposed to write the proposals. And even if you force them Assisen juries have proven time and time again that 1 or 2 charismatic individuals can drastically influence decision making.
And loose measures aren’t a cohesive policy. Try making a budget with everyone voting to: increase pensions, increase investments in public transport, keep salary cars, abolish inheritence taxes,…
Just bring back ancient Greek ostracism and we should be fine.
I like it. It gives an indication of what’s on people’s minds. I think the resulting ranking should not be followed precisely though, because the government needs to have the flexibility to deal with issues as they come up during their time in office (Covid and the Ukraine war being two recent examples), and some boring topics like leading our justice system into the digital age are important, but probably not on most people’s minds.
>this new process — this preferendum — has a much richer interface for indicating your policy preferences. You get to translate your individual preferences into the collective priorities of your community.
Not quite. It still suffers from the same flaws. The people asking the question frame the issue. You can’t propose a halfway compromise. You can’t indicate whether you disagree because it goes too far, or not far enough. You can’t say that you support this measure if one or two crucial conditions are fulfilled. You can’t say that you agree that the problem should be dealt with, but in an entirely different way because the proposal just makes it worse. It’s not possible to say you agree but only if it’s balanced with other measures. Etc.
>Given the relative slowness with which democratic innovation is being institutionalized and the extreme urgency of robust climate action, the preferendum could serve as a critical instrument for instituting climate policy in classical representative democracies during the next decade.
We do not want give referendums the power to quickly pass measures without debate. That defeats the purpose.
Besides, people are going to vote defensively and err on the side of conservatism, look at Switzerland for examples. This will not result in faster climate measures.
That being said, let’s try it out as a consultative part of the legislative power. So we can see how it works and whether it adds something to the dynamic. At the very least it sidesteps careerists attached to political parties.
Ah yes the informed citizen, the danger and myth no capitalist ever wanted.
edit: i’ve always found this dude a moron, but maybe it’s just me