Preserving Diversity in Democracy

In a democratic government the opinion of the demos, the citizens, is supposed to control decision-making. This can be through participation, as for example in ancient Athens where each citizen was required to serve the polis for a few weeks every year, actually sharing the burden of government. Alternatively, it can be through representation, where the citizens vote for candidates from amongst themselves, who then perform some of the work of government for a limited time. Democratic government has been in practice a mixture of these two forms, and a fundamental problem has been to preserve diversity of opinion and participation. Preventing dictatorship by the majority, or catering just to the needs of a powerful minority, is important in all branches of the government: executive, judicial and legislative. This can only be achieved by preserving diversity on a variety of dimensions, and taking active steps to make sure that every citizen has a chance to participate and be heard: we need a government that involves each individual.

Importance of Diversity

In the biological world, diversity invigorates life, as more variation in each of the interdependent life forms leads to natural selection from a wider range, and therefore a better chance to create an improved life form that survives in the struggle for existence. In social and political systems, we need to ensure that a wide variety of voices and opinions are heard, and all sections of society, no matter how small in number or diverse in their opinion, have a chance to prosper and thrive. Their actual fate should be based on natural selection, not the arbitrary actions of any dominant group or class. Political and social groups or classes can be considered as varieties of the same species, homo sapiens and their ability to utilize and adapt in the competition with all the other species on the planet is the key to their survival. Unchecked, individuals or groups would do all that is needed to propagate at the cost of the other varieties of humans, other species and even the planet.
Government is a tool used in this struggle for existence[1], invented because the long-term survival and prosperity of society requires a controlling authority. When this is taken over by a single ideology or class, all the varieties that arise as a natural response to changes in the physical environment and the biological ecosystem no longer have a voice in shaping the future. The societies that have stopped listening to the varieties in their midst eventually end up out-of-step with the nuances of the ground reality and are replaced, sometimes at great human and social cost, by a new structure that is more in tune with reality. Only political systems that ensure that every voice has the freedom to speak and participate are able to make the infinite course corrections needed over time to ensure that they are in tune with the rest of the planet.

The Purpose of Government

The fundamental purpose of government is to regulate and control man’s struggle for existence. It does this through the organizations that provide the defense, law and order, justice, financial, communication, health, education, welfare and other needs of the nation; this is true even in monarchies and dictatorships. In the case of democracies, there is an additional purpose: “increase the sum of good qualities in the governed, collectively and individually”[2]. This is to be done specifically to help meet the three criterion needed for a government to be successful: the people must be willing to accept its rule, be willing and able to do what is needed to keep it standing, and do what it needs of each of them to fulfill its purposes[3]. This requires the citizens to participate not just in electing their representatives, but engage in the work of government. The regular participation in this work by each and every citizen, not just leaving it to an “other” who runs the government[4], is the hallmark of democracy.
Mill distinguishes between the normal educative task of the government, i.e. to provide a basic education to each citizen, and the “degree in which [political institutions] can promote the general mental advancement of the community… virtue, and in practical activity and efficiency”[5] through the engagement of every citizen. Personal participation in some aspect of government work by each citizen moves them from theoretical posturing to a deeper understanding of the practical difficulties involved in implementing policy in a complex world, making them better citizens. Mill claims that government has the most influence in taking the people to the next level of civilization, that a despotic rule creates a “mentally passive people”[6] and the “ideally best government… is that in which the sovereignty…is vested in the entire aggregate of the community; every citizen not only having a voice…but being…called on to take an actual part in the government, by the personal discharge of some public function”[7]. The problem is to design the political process so that it harnesses the diversity of that aggregate.

Dimensions of Diversity

In the social and political sphere, diversity takes many forms. There is gender, ethnicity, language, culture, level of education, religious belief or the lack of it, age, sexual orientation, political affiliation etc. These, and many other parameters, are important dimensions of diversity that any democracy has to serve, without letting any one voice drown out the others. Unfortunately the “one-man one-vote” model used in most democracies, as well as problems in financing participation and candidature have ensured that only a narrow slice of the “aggregate of the community” actually can participate. Most of the citizens are relegated to merely voting for their representatives every four or five years, unable to make their voices or ideas heard; only rarely do they participate, that too just at the local level.
Historically, participative democracy has only worked at the local level since the citizens have other responsibilities at work or on the farm to look after. Therefore, they can only devote part of their time to government work and cannot travel very far. If participation required them to spend days or weeks at a central location, it would limit the range of citizens who could take part. Increasing complexity of the job, and the professional training needed for most government positions have reduced the posts that can be effectively performed by citizen-participants. Hence, citizen participation in the actual work of the government in most countries is limited to the legislative branch, advisory positions, or jury-duty.
People’s representatives are chosen from a constituency to fulfill legislative functions. Diversity can sometimes be preserved by the choice of constituency and the number of seats allotted. For example in the United States Senate, there are two seats for each state of the Union, providing Vermont, a very small state in terms of land area and population with the same number of votes as California, which has a population, land and economy larger than most countries in the rest of the world. This balances the votes that California has in the Congress in which seats are allotted based on population. Thus, the opinion and diversity represented by Vermont is preserved[8].
Time is also an important dimension of diversity. A recent feeling amongst the citizenry, brought on by current events, should not completely take over the policies and programs of the government. The time dimension is used in various ways in the United States. First, elections in the US are on a fixed timetable, with Congress, the Executive and the Senate on two-, four- and six-year cycles respectively. Instead of elections being called when the timing is convenient to those in power or due to the pressure of current events, a rhythm is maintained. Second, all the positions are not offered up for election every cycle, but only a fraction. This preserves continuity, instead of a wholesale changeover. Third, there are term limits imposed on all offices, ensuring that new blood, and therefore new ideas are brought in regularly, another form of diversity.
Geography dominates most political entities. Apart from the fact that national or state governments are based on geographical entities, almost all democracies organize their political posts using geography. While this may make sense for the purposes of organizing a set of governmental functions, it makes less sense for political purposes. It emphasizes one dimension of diversity, geography, to the detriment of others such as sexual orientation. Assume, for example, that homosexuals are randomly distributed as ten percent of the population. In a system of representation based on geography, they would never be able to get a representative elected without support from other groups, yet on purely democratic principles, they should get ten percent of the representatives if the whole nation or state is considered. Mill describes and recommends a way to resolve this issue.

Mill’s Suggestion

Mill points out that while many consider democracy as the dictatorship of the majority, in reality it is that of the minority. Consider a purely representative government where the people elect their representatives to a Parliament, which is the legislative body. Suppose that the candidate with the most votes is elected, so at most she needs 51% of the vote, but usually a lot less[9]. Hence, the legislator is in practice chosen by a minority. Suppose further that the rules of the house require that bills be passed based on a simple majority. Once again, only 51% of the legislators need assent, each of whom represent a minority, therefore perpetuating control by the minority. In practice, legislators do not usually vote on their own conscience, but follow the party line. In addition, very few bills are simply a position on one side or another, but have many sometimes conflicting or unrelated parts in them. For example in the US Congress a few months ago, the Democratic Party added a clause requiring a timetable for withdrawal of the troops from Iraq, to the bill financing the war. Thus, Republicans who support the war and want to assent to the bill cannot do so. The solution being proposed to this is the line item veto: the President should be able to accept only parts of a bill that she finds acceptable. Thus, the link between the will of the people and the legislation that is implemented is in practice a very tenuous one in representative government.
Mill attempts to tackle the first problem, the quality of representation, by diversifying the geographical constituency to one based on interests. Based on suggestions by Hare and Fawcett, he proposes that in addition to the local candidates on the ballot, the voter should be able to choose or write-in others who are candidates in other constituencies. Additionally, in order to make sure that a person’s vote counts in all cases, he proposes that the voter express her order of preference on the ballot. For each seat in the ballot, the voter would not just put one vote, but give the names of candidates in order of preference. Once a candidate has received enough votes to be elected, the remaining ballots that have her as the first choice would be counted as per their second choice. Continuing this way through all the ballots, would result in a more diverse body than the system used currently[10].
It appears that this system has been adopted in a simplified form in some European countries as the system of proportional representation. However, in Mill’s United Kingdom, the US and many countries influenced by Anglo-Saxon concepts of law and politics, the system continues to be the flawed first-past-the post system. Of course, implementing this system of counting votes needs a centralized tallying center, or the use of technology to tally the preferences over the entire country. Thus, in the case of the US it goes against the bottom-up approach to political organization: here the county is the unit of organization for elections, not a federal body.

The American Way

Alexis de Tocqueville describes many aspects of the American political system in the early nineteenth century that support both diversity and participation. The first of this was the concept of the township. Settled by 2000-4000 persons, this was the lowest level of granularity in the political system where the “organization of the township preceded that of the county, the county that of the state, the state that of the Union”. For example, in New England, the body of voters appointed their fellow-citizens to various paid full- and part-time positions to carry out the work of governing, but for any action other than upholding the law, they would have to bring their proposals in front of the general assembly. No system of representation is required at the local level where “law and government are closer to those governed”. The administrative and technical skills needed for the nineteenth-century American township were well within the reach of its ordinary citizens and could be rotated amongst all who were willing and able. The township provided a minimal level of government, since the citizen was supposed to be “master in his own affairs where he is free and answerable only to God” [11], making it less intrusive and controlling than modern government.
At the next levels of government, the county, the state and the Union, the act of governing requires full-time application of skill and knowledge, but the citizen still has a participatory role as the “public, mainspring of the whole checking machinery”[12]. For example, in Massachusetts, Justices of the Peace appointed by the Governor form Sessions Courts where actions could be brought against public officials or even townships[13]. The decrees from these courts, while enforcing administrative rules, were judicial in nature and enforced by the county Sheriff. Thus, while the increasing complexity of public administration as we progress to the larger geographical units requires full-time professionals, but they are ultimately made answerable to the people at a local level. Not only does this provide participation, but increases diversity: the opinion of local citizens affected by the administration is placed as a check over what could become an over-professionalized bureaucracy.
Of course, from our modern point of view the diversity described by de Tocqueville is incomplete: women and African-Americans were denied their voice, as were most persons who did not fit into the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant mold. However, the systems and institutions created were easily extended to include these dimensions of diversity as societal changes forced the dominant class to accept them, as well as others, as equal.

Conclusion

We need to create stable systems of government that evolve naturally over time, adapting to the myriad changes in the political, social and physical environment by tuning into the many dimensions of diversity. Every individual citizen must be given a chance to participate and contribute, and this means using modern technology to change the way governments operate.
In modern manufacturing there has been a move away from the “large batch step process” in which a factory was organized to perform many small manufacturing steps on a large batch of parts. The diverse demands of the consumers coupled with better flow of information between all participants in the process have led to the redesign of manufacturing processes so that smaller batches are processed and the final product individualized for each consumer. Companies such as Toyota now claim to have achieved an “economic order quantity”[14] of just one car, meaning that their manufacturing processes are agile enough to build each vehicle to order. This raises the question: can we build political and social systems that involve each individual? During the last century we have seen the failure of mass movements on the left and the right, and the totalitarianism that results when we stop engaging the individual, albeit a confused, opinionated, diverse person, in politics. Fortunately, just as in manufacturing, we now have technology that promotes the communication paths between the individuals that belong to each dimension of diversity and the institutions that govern them. Just as retailing is being re-oriented to service the “long tail”[15], politics and government needs to re-configure itself to serve all the dimensions of diversity.
While the technology required to create a government based on each individual is advancing every day with the development of social networks, the political and administrative frameworks needed for this lag way behind. The US has the technology to enable these changes, but its dependence for its constitution on the exact thoughts of the Founding Fathers, make it unlikely to take political diversity to the next stage. Countries that joined the democratic club after being liberated from colonialism may be better suited to the changes needed, but most lack the access to technology needed to pull it off. This leaves countries like Russia, China, India, and Brazil that are grappling with the problems of diversity while enjoying explosive economic growth. These are the new frontiers where we need more diversity in democracy.

Animesh Mukherjee
Paul Robinson
MLA 9: European Thought & Culture
Final Paper
December 16, 2008

Works Referenced
Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. In Darwin, selected and edited by Philip Appleman. New York: Norton, 2001.
De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America. Tr. Gerald E. Bevan. London: Penguin Books, 2003.
Liker, Jeffrey K. The Toyota Way. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004.
Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1951.
[1] Darwin defines the term: “…including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny” on pg. 108.
[2] Mill, pg. 259. While he quotes Bentham, the text and the reference to Bentham’s classification of man’s qualities as moral, intellectual and active, evoke Plato’s The Republic.
[3] Mill, pg. 237
[4] It is common in most democracies to forget that democracy is “government of the people, by the people and for the people”, and concentrate on what “they”, the government being outside the people, can do “for the people”.
[5] Mill, pg. 262
[6] Mill, pg. 272.
[7] Mill, pg. 278, emphasis added.
[8] The example is from de Tocqueville.
[9] If there are two candidates, one of them needs at least 51% to win. However, if there are three, four or five candidates, the minimum percentage needed to win becomes 34%, 26% or 21%.
[10] Mill, pp 344-370.
[11] De Tocqueville, pg. 52, pg. 74.
[12] Mill, pg. 261
[13] De Tocqueville, pp. 89-92
[14] Defined as the number of parts that have to be produced in a batch in order to minimize the production costs. This used to be based on just the setup cost and the per piece processing cost, but is now based on the entire cost chain starting with customer acquisition cost, inventory and costs for disposing of excess parts produced, as well as loss of business due to inability to meet the customer’s specific need in time.
[15] The concept that if we were to plot a graph of consumer preferences with the number of persons who want a specific product or configuration, it typically has a sharp drop off after the commonly sold set of characteristics, and then a long line (tail) where there is just a little demand for each of many different variants. The internet has made it possible for the consumers who require these diverse versions of the product meet up with their producers in a way that traditional brick-and-mortar cannot. Take for example a musical genre that has little demand and therefore cannot get a mainstream label to produce and market its CDs. The internet allows these artists to sell the music directly as downloads to its aficionados, creating a diverse market.