Review DIRECT DEMOCRACY (Verhulst and Nijeboer)

This is the promised and awaited publication from Democracy International, the European network for direct democracy, in cooperation with Democratie.nu, the Belgian movement for the introduction of the binding citizen's initiative. I recommend it.

DIRECT DEMOCRACY is strong and unwavering. No doubt or fuzziness in definition or goals: it is dedicated to expansion of initiative and referendum. Also it’s a rich resource on the current experience and prospects for direct democracy.
However, the book wants to be a compendium of the reasoning that leads to direct democracy. Fair enough. But it also sets another, much harder goal: to put forward a complete and compelling scientific argument for direct democracy. I think it does not completely succeed, and worse, sometimes it’s assertive/ argumentative to cover gaps.

Let’s talk a bit about these observations.

Likeable:
-The current experience and hopes for direct democracy. This is worthwhile stuff.
-A conclusion that consciousness is beyond physics (p 36).

Hmmm. I’m not sure that a belief in transcendence is central to a discussion of democracy. Nevertheless, I kindof agree with this. Modern behaviorist discussion of human beings is missing nothing except the psyche ... which is to say almost everything.

-A well documented discussion (pp 16-19) why quorum requirements are frequently counter-productive. I’m convinced.

Questionable:
-Extensive discussion of direct democracy as a legitimate outcome of Maslow’s concept of self-actualization.

There's a lot to like about this. My problem is the focus on Maslow to exclusion of others in his time.

The spread of totalitarianism after WWI created a wonderful counter-burst of humanist explication during and just after WWII with particular emphasis on the need for democracy*. Freedom-oriented names and works of the mid and late 40's come to mind like:

Fromm (Escape From Freedom) and Popper (The Open Society and Its Enemies) which discuss why people are susceptible to fascist ideation;
Camus (Neither Victims Nor Executioners) on resistance and morality;
Tolkien (Lord of the Rings) an allegory about Communism and Nazism;
Orwell (1984) and Koestler (Darkness at Noon) the truth about Communism;
Hayek (Road to Serfdom) which argues that property rights are central to individual liberty;
Kurtiz (the film Casablanca) which would be my favorite film except that almost all the characters are defined as good or bad or pragmatic. The only character near the fulcrum of decision is Peter Lorre ... and he’s done in early;

Maslow is an important contributor in his time; couldn’t do much better on human motivation and the function of society. But I question Verhulst and Nijeboer's focus on Maslow to the exclusion of others. Maslow is not a heavyweight on economics or politics or revolutionary morality.

- The assertion (p 12) with little discussion that all decisions in a democracy should be made by simple majority.

Amartya Sen has made a very strong point that famine (widespread starvation) cannot continue in a democracy. People will not put up with it. (Every generalization in the study of humans fails against some test. The Irish Potato Famine is an example of a famine in a democracy.) But the record is not so good for democracies and war. Athens committed suicide in its imperial invasion of Sicily (one might argue that their intellectual suicide happened a bit earlier at Melos (Thucydides, The Melian Dialogue) when Athens acted on the basis that might makes right). The democracies of Europe came close to committing mutual suicide in WWI. And the US is in trouble on that score today.

-An emphasis on the works of Ben Barber to explain the economics and politics of direct democracy.

This is troublesome. Jihad vs. McWorld is a long essay with some truth, but it surely is not a comprehensive or rigorous work on politics or economics. Its categories are fuzzy. For Barber, Jihad doesn’t mean Jihad. It means militant narrow nationalism. Fine, but then how to categorize the Mujahedin of Afghanistan in the 1980s? Militant nationalists for sure. But on the other hand they liberated their country and shook an evil empire. And McWorld is not such a clear category either. It pretty much is a label for change that we don’t like. So I guess Starbucks is McWorld, while WiFi is ... ‘good’ progress?

What’s Missing:
-A sharp focus on the theoretical promise of direct democracy for improving governance’s impact on the economy.

There’s a well recognized paradox about government and the market. ‘The market’ is a powerful mechanism for progress. However, self-interest never sleeps; the ‘big boys’ collude and seek privileged access to resources and markets. Government is needed to develop and enforce rules to make the market work well through prohibiting monopoly, providing infrastructure, and encouraging certain types of spending and investment. But government functions slowly, commonly with negative side effects, and not uncommonly altogether perversely. Further, government - which is supposed to limit special interest - frequently is heavily influenced by powerful interests. Mancur Olson ("The Rise and Decline of Nations") has talked about the accumulation of benefits for special interests as a central phenomenon in national decline.

“Evil is always the assertion of some special interest against the common good.” (Niebuhr - The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness.)

“Economic vicious circles (like the car-suburban sprawl vicious circle) tend to be subsidized... If not at first, then soon, and ever more heavily as time passes. We could keep them in hand – at least theoretically – if they had to pay their costs and include those in the prices.” (Jacobs, The Nature of Economies (Jane Jacobs is most well known for the classic: Death and Life of Great American Cities).

Must we accept that government, though necessary for maintaining and humanizing the market, will always be a poor and un-improvable tool? No. A solution to this paradox is not so complex: partisans of direct democracy should take their program seriously! Direct democracy is improved democracy; is improved governance and can effectively fight vested interest. I’m of a mind that development of this thesis would be richly rewarding in any comprehensive justification for direct democracy.

-One final recommendation to Verhulst and Nijeboer :
Lose the azure color for the cover page. It’s too similar to hyperlink blue.

Mark Antell
November 6, 2007
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Get DIRECT DEMOCRACY, via free download, from the following web address:
http://democracy-international.org/book-direct-democracy.html

*Aside: The only modern period that even comes close to rivaling the WWII period for urgent freedom-oriented profundity occurred in eastern Europe just prior to (and contributory to) the disintegration of the USSR.