What sorts of decision-making institutions and practices would be appropriate fo

r a good society? In several essays, I have argued that that the main traditiona
l answers to this question are seriously deficient in one respect or another, an
d that we need an alternative, one which I called participatory politics or parp
olity.
Representative Democracy
The most widely endorsed political system is representative democracy, a system
whereby people vote for other people—representatives—who rule in their names. Repres
entative democracy has several important flaws.
First, it treats politics as strictly instrumental—that is, as a means to an end,
instead of a value in its own right. But political participation is intrinsicall
y worthwhile: it gives people the experience of controlling their own lives. The
more that the task of thinking about how we can collectively manage our lives i
s delegated to others, the less knowledgeable we become regarding our society, t
he less we determine our own destinies, and the weaker become our ties of solida
rity to our fellow citizens.
A second problem with representative democracy is that representatives, for many
reasons, don't, in fact, represent their constituents. Representatives say one
thing to get elected and then change their positions once in office. They have n
o real connection to the hundreds of thousands of people they represent. Their d
ifferent life circumstances lead them to develop different interests from those
of their constituents.
We could, of course, "mandate" representatives—that is, require them by law to kee
p their campaign promises. But what happens when circumstances change? Surely, w
e don't want representatives to be compelled to carry out policies that new deve
lopments have made inappropriate or even harmful? Alternatively, we could mandat
e all representatives to follow the evolving wishes of their constituents as ref
lected in public opinion polls. But if we do this, then the representatives are
rendered technically irrelevant. There is no need for representatives to study o
r debate the issues because it doesn't matter what they think. All that matters
is that they vote according to their constituents' stated wishes. Mandated repre
sentatives could simply be replaced by a computer that compiles the opinions of
the people and then votes accordingly. But this is really nothing more than a sy
stem of direct (referendum) democracy. So if representatives are mandated, they
are irrelevant, and if they are not mandated, then they will often not be truly
representative of their constituents.
Advocates of representative democracy do have some legitimate arguments. They cl
aim that it would take too much time for everyone to decide everything. This poi
nt is often exaggerated—people's tolerance for meetings, for example, cannot be ju
dged by their reaction to meaningless meetings today where they have no real pow
er. Nevertheless, it is true that not everyone has, or ever will have, unlimited
time or enthusiasm for politics.
A second argument on behalf of representative democracy is that representative l
egislatures are deliberative bodies that debate and negotiate complex resolution
s that fairly capture the essence of an issue, whereas the citizenry as a whole
would be incapable of such fine tuning. They have to vote a ballot question up o
r down; they can't reword or amend, even though we know that the precise wording
of a ballot question can often skew the results. This is a valid point, one whi
ch any alternative to representative democracy needs to take account of.
Referendum Democracy
Direct democracy is an alternative to representative democracy. Under direct dem
ocracy people make decisions themselves rather than choosing others to do it for
them. There are several variants of direct democracy, including referendum demo
cracy, where every issue is put to the population as a whole. In the past such a
n approach was simply impossible: there was no mechanism for allowing large numb
ers of people to cast ballots on a nearly daily basis. But modern technology mak
es this possible on a vast scale. People could use the Internet first to access
as much background information as they wanted and then to vote on their preferre
d options.
But even if technically possible, would we really want to spend all this time ex
haustively studying the many hundreds of issues that national legislatures curre
ntly take up each year. Those legislators are doing this more or less fulltime.
Do we all want to invest that same amount of time (while doing some other job as
well)? Legislators typically have a staff to make the work manageable. Would ea
ch citizen have a staff person? Clearly some means is needed to separate the imp
ortant issues out from all the rather routine issues that legislators currently
deal with.
Beyond this time problem, referendum democracy suffers from another defect: when
people make decisions that do not emerge from participation in some sort of del
iberative process, their off-the-cuff opinions are more likely to be intolerant
and uninformed. Whereas deliberation encourages people to seek common ground and
find ways to take seriously the opinions of others, voting in a referendum enco
urages people to express their pre-existing views on polarized positions.
Autonomous Communities
A second type of direct democracy is where all decisions are made directly by th
e people living in fully autonomous small communities. Here we can combine the b
enefits of participation and the benefits of deliberation. But there are neverth
eless serious shortcomings with this approach.
First, not all problems are susceptible to small-scale solutions. Pandemics call
for a global solution. Environmental problems need a large scale response. Smal
l communities cannot afford expensive technologies, like medical equipment. It i
s true, of course, that some large-scale technologies create great harm—like nucle
ar power plants—and that much technology is horrendously misused in current societ
y to serve the interests of elites; but this is no reason for us to reject techn
ology out of hand. Technology can reduce human drudgery and provide us the oppor
tunity of undertaking more creative work and leading fuller lives.
Advocates of autonomous communities often reply that their preference for small
scale does not prevent communities from cooperating, whether to address environm
ental problems or to share an MRI machine. But sharing and cooperating need some
decision-making procedure involving multiple communities. Otherwise there will
be no way to prevent an autonomous community from polluting its neighbors or hoa
rding medical equipment. And if we have procedures that can prevent the pollutio
n or the hoarding, then the polluting or hoarding communities are no longer full
y autonomous.
A second problem with small autonomous communities involves the question of size
. Either they are too small, and thus can't function effectively or provide inad
equate diversity or they will be too large to permit face-to-face direct democra
cy. A meeting of thousands or even hundreds is not typically a very participator
y experience.
Nested Councils
A third type of direct democracy rejects both the self-sufficiency and the refer
endum models and, instead, has small councils linked to one another. Everyone ge
ts to participate in a primary council that is small enough for face-to-face dec
ision making and for real deliberation. Many decisions will be made in these cou
ncils because the decision affects only, or overwhelmingly, the members of that
council. But because there are many decisions that affect more than the people i
n a single council, the councils affected will have to coordinate their decision
making. This means that councils will have to send delegates to a higher level
council. And, if the decision affects more than one of these higher level counci
ls, they would in turn send delegates to a third-level council. And so on.
How would these higher-level councils operate? We don't want to have delegates m
andated by their sending councils, for then the higher level councils will not b
e deliberative bodies. As noted previously, there would be no point to anyone sp
eaking or trying to persuade others or passionately explaining one's special con
cerns because all the delegates would have zero leeway. They would have to vote
the way their sending council told them to. This means that no one from council
A gets to hear the perspective of people from council B and there is no possibil
ity of coming to a better position than either A or B alone proposed. On the oth
er hand, if the delegates are not mandated and just do what they want, then we h
ave the problem of delegates becoming like the unrepresentative representatives
that characterize contemporary representative democracy.
What makes more sense is to send a delegate who, because she has been part of a
council and participated in a deliberative process with its members, understands
their sentiments and concerns, and is authorized to deliberate on their behalf
with other delegates. But what will prevent this unmandated delegate from becomi
ng an unrepresentative representative? First, the connection between delegates a
nd their sending councils is an organic one, not at all like the connection betw
een constituents and representatives in typical representative democracies. The
delegates are part of—and constantly returning to—their sending council. Second, del
egates will be rotated. No one will be permitted to serve too long as a council'
s delegate. Third, delegates will be subject to immediate recall. If ever a coun
cil believes that its delegate no longer adequately reflects its concerns and se
ntiments (and all higher-level council meetings are videotaped and easily monito
red), then it may immediately replace the delegate with someone else.
Most importantly, however, what prevents the unmandated delegates from usurping
power is that the higher-level councils will only vote on matters that are relat
ively non-controversial. Whenever a vote is close (or when enough citizens or lo
wer councils insist), the issue is returned to the lower councils for a decision
.
It might be asked, why not send all issues back to the primary-level councils fo
r a vote? But this is where our concern to avoid overdoing participation with ex
cessive time demands comes in. By sending back contentious issues or those so re
quested by the citizens or the lower-level councils, we have a check on abuse of
power by the delegates to the higher-level councils. But to send everything bac
k would simply be a waste of time.
The notion of nested councils has elicited some confusion, with some seeing the
layered councils, each sending delegates to the next higher level council, as si
mply a system of multiple indirect elections. Indirect elections, however, have
serious deficiencies from a democratic point of view and it is essential to unde
rstand the problems with indirect elections, as well as the problems of direct e
lections, and how parpolity seeks to avoid both sets of problems.
Indirect Elections
In a standard capitalist (representative) democracy, policymakers—officeholders ab
ove the civil service grade—are chosen in one of two ways. Some are elected and so
me are appointed. But the appointing is done by individuals or bodies that were
themselves elected. Of course, this process can be repeated any number of times,
so an official might be appointed by those who were themselves appointed by ind
ividuals or bodies who were elected. So rather than referring to elected and app
ointed officials, we might call them directly elected and indirectly elected.
How subject are these indirectly elected officials to popular control? Some of t
he factors that make them relatively immune from democratic control are not inhe
rent in the fact that they were elected indirectly. So, for example, U.S. Suprem
e Court justices are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate—which
is to say, they are chosen by elected officials (indirectly elected). Because th
ey have life terms, democratic accountability is remote. The public might find t
he views of a justice selected decades earlier abhorrent, but they have no means
of removing them during their lifetime.
But life terms are problematic from a democratic point of view even with elected
officials. Various rulers have arranged to have themselves elected "president f
or life"—typically these "elections" were bogus affairs, but even if they weren't,
no electorate, no matter how democratic, should be able to bind future generati
ons or even itself forever. What happens when officials who are indirectly elect
ed serve only as long as the elected officials who appoint them, or roughly as l
ong? Are these appointees subject to democratic control?
There are three reasons why democratic control would be relatively attenuated wi
th indirect election compared to direct election.
First, there's the analogy to the children's game of telephone. You whisper some
thing in someone's ear, who in turn whispers it into the ear of the next person
and so on. By the time the message gets to the end of the line it typically bear
s little semblance to the original. And the more whisperers involved, the more t
he distortion. In a direct election, there's already a problem with the will of
the voters being carried out. Representatives don't perfectly match the views of
their constituents, but in an indirect election, there are more whisperers. The
voters don't match the intermediate official(s) and the intermediate official(s
) don't match the final appointee. Thus, the source of the divergence between th
e voters and the ultimate officeholder has multiple sources—the divergence between
voters and the first intermediate level of officials, and then the divergence b
etween these intermediate officials and the final officeholder—and will therefore
be greater than if there had been no intermediate elections.
The second reason why indirect elections don't allow adequate democratic control
is related to non-unanimity. Say we have a political system where voters in ten
districts each vote for a representative and these ten elected representatives
then vote for a single person, A or B, to hold some office. If the voters within
each district were unanimous in their desires, and the ten representatives all
faithfully reflected the views of their constituents, then the officeholder they
would choose would indeed be the choice of the people as a whole. But the situa
tion is different when views within districts are not unanimous. Suppose that in
each of 7 districts, the vote was 60 percent in favor of the representative wan
ting to choose candidate A and 40 percent in favor of the representative wanting
to choose candidate B. In the other 2 districts, 20 percent of the voters favor
ed the representative wanting to choose candidate A and 80 percent the represent
ative wanting candidate B. When the 10 representatives meet, they will vote 7-3
in favor of candidate A. But in terms of the wishes of their constituents, a maj
ority, 52 percent (.7 x 40 percent + .3 x 80 percent) preferred candidate B. Wit
h the addition of further layers of indirect voting, the disparity becomes even
greater.
The third problem with indirect elections is that each layer of representatives
doesn't just randomly diverge from those who elected them; the divergence is sys
tematic. The representatives tend to have better skills than those who elected t
hem. It is not surprising that representatives tend to be more outgoing, better
speakers, and more politically aware than their constituents. This bias may not
skew things all that much, but in an indirect election this bias operates at lea
st twice, once at each election.
Indeed, this was the reason that indirect elections were established in the Unit
ed States. The founders worried about "[a] rage for paper money, for an abolitio
n of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wick
ed project" (James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 10), and so some means was need
ed to minimize these dangers of popular rule. In at least two significant areas,
the Constitution used indirect election to this effect.
First, an electoral college was established to choose the president. Voters were
to elect the electors and the electors were to choose the president. (Keep in m
ind that, as initially conceived, the electors were not, as they are today, gene
rally pledged to voting for the candidate favored by the voters.) The purpose of
this arrangement was to ensure (in the words of Alexander Hamilton in Federalis
t Paper No. 68) that "the immediate election" of the president "should be made b
y men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station..." Hamilto
n went on to say that "A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citiz
ens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and di
scernment requisite to such complicated investigations." This system, said Hamil
ton, would "afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder"—which
is to say, to the possibility that the views of the "unrefined" public might pr
evail.
The second major indirect election provided for in the Constitution involved the
U.S Senate. Until changed by the 17th amendment in 1913, U.S. senators were not
directly elected by the people of the states, but by the (elected) state legisl
atures. This undermined the will of the people in two ways: one, the senators ha
d a longer term of office than the state legislators who chose them, and, two, t
hey are indirectly elected. In Hamilton's words (Federalist 27) because senators
were to be chosen "through the medium of the State legislatures which are selec
t bodies of men...there is reason to expect that this branch will generally be c
omposed with peculiar care and judgment."
That indirect elections reduce democratic control has been confirmed empirically
. For example, a study found that in the United States elected regulators of ele
ctric utilities are more likely to pursue pro-consumer policies than appointed r
egulators.
Direct Elections
But if indirect elections have problems from the point of view of democracy, so
too do direct elections. Democratic theory requires that the electorate keep tab
s on their representatives to ensure that are representatives acting and voting
as their constituents want them to? If citizens can't answer this question, then
they can't punish the representatives at the polls, they can't pressure their r
epresentatives, and the representatives have little incentive to follow their co
nstituents' wishes.
But keeping tabs on representatives is not easy to do. It is particularly diffic
ult to do in large electoral districts where there is a greater number of voters
per representative. And direct elections tend to have larger districts than ind
irect ones for the same end position. (For example, today a directly-elected sen
ator is chosen by all the voters of the state. Before the 17th amendment, the in
directly-elected senator was elected by a hundred or so state legislators, each
one responsible to a few percent of the state's voters.)
Few citizens read the Congressional Record regularly to check up on their repres
entatives. Few citizens wade through the roll call vote records to determine whe
ther their representatives have voted "the right way." To be sure, various organ
izations can compile such data to make it easier for the public to assess their
representatives' records, but it is still difficult for the average citizen to k
eep up with anything but the most significant votes.
This is not—as is often claimed—a result of voter stupidity. The connection between
voters and representatives is quite remote. In the United States a member of the
House of Representatives has some 650,000 constituents and, in most states, sen
ators have an even larger constituency (36 million-plus in California). Many U.S
. voters don't even know the names of their congressional representatives, but t
his is likely a result of voter powerlessness rather than a cause of it. The ave
rage person can master lots of information (think about celebrity gossip or spor
ts statistics), but they have to be connected to that information in some way—it h
as to make a difference—something that's lacking when it comes to political repres
entation on this scale. Why take the effort to learn about your representative w
hen you're not going to be able to use that information to effect meaningful cha
nge? At best, you can vote against a bad representative at the next election (if
they stand for re-election), but the odds of defeating an incumbent are small.
Parpolity
Both before and after the amendment—under both indirect and direct elections—democra
cy was not well served. Unlike typical direct elections, a good political system
must give people an organic connection to those they elect so they can adequate
ly monitor their performance and remove them when necessary. There cannot be lar
ge or remote constituencies that render monitoring impossible or even burdensome
. Unlike typical indirect elections, a good political system must ensure that th
e people's will does not get attenuated through each intermediate level of votin
g.
The way in which parpolity achieves these dual goals is through the system of ne
sted councils, with delegates to each council level known personally to the coun
cil members who elected them. This maintains the organic connection missing from
so many direct elections. But at the same time, there are various mechanisms to
make sure that the will of the people actually emerges. The most significant is
that a petition signed by a given number of people or primary councils can ensu
re that an issue is returned to primary level councils (of which every citizen i
s a member) for a vote. (The petitions, of course, would be electronic and the n
umber of signatures needed would be relatively small.) Additionally, a higher le
vel council can always decide to send an issue to the primary level for decision
. This will make sense whenever the issue is contentious and at all close.
As noted previously, to send every issue to the primary councils for decision wo
uld be exceedingly inefficient. Most people are happy to let minor, non-controve
rsial issues be decided by their representatives—as long as they have the ability
to have their say when they want to.
Other mechanisms to prevent the nested councils from undermining democratic cont
rol include: delegates return frequently to their sending councils, any delegate
is subject to immediate recall by the sending council, delegates are rotated, a
nd all deliberations and decisions of higher level councils are recorded and acc
essible to members of lower level councils.
Majorities/Minorities
One of the biggest dilemmas in designing political institutions involves the rel
ationship between majority rule and the rights of minorities. Obviously we rejec
t a political system where the rich or the well-born or the meritocratic rule ov
er the majority. So in that respect, we favor majority rule. On the other hand,
we would also obviously reject any political system that allowed the majority to
exterminate or enslave or oppress the minority. Moreover, we would consider it
improper for the majority to tell the minority what they could read or say or be
lieve. Indeed, there are many things we think majorities should not be allowed t
o do. Many countries have Constitutions that spell out people's rights, but whic
h are really no more than restrictions on what the majority can do.
A good society ought to have restrictions on the majority, entrenched in some so
rt of Constitution. But, of course, no brief document is going to provide a full
elaboration of what these rights entail. Does free speech include pornography?
Racial insults? Libel? These sorts of interpretations are typically left to cour
ts. In the United States it's the Supreme Court that ultimately decides the actu
al boundaries of free speech and of other constitutional provisions.
But this returns us to the question of how the justices of the Supreme Court—or on
comparable judicial bodies in other countries—are to be chosen. If they are chose
n by indirect election and have long or even life terms, then they are removed f
rom majority control. But why should nine individuals, only indirectly elected,
who may have taken office when the public had very different views, get to impos
e their opinions on the rest of us?
On the other hand, if the justices were chosen by direct election, would they ad
equately protect minority rights? One can imagine a candidate for Supreme Court
justice running for office on a platform denying rights to criminal defendants o
r atheists or gays. If the purpose of the Supreme Court is to prevent the majori
ty from oppressing the minority, wouldn't an election by the majority undercut t
his purpose? Wouldn't an elected court be subject to the same passions and intol
erance that might permeate the majority? When the U.S. Congress, elected roughly
by the majority, voted to ban flag-burning, wasn't it a good thing that there w
as a Supreme Court (not up for election) that could declare that law unconstitut
ional?
There have been various proposed solutions to this dilemma of reconciling majori
ty rule and minority rights. One approach has been to reject majority rule entir
ely, insisting that all decisions be made by consensus, which would mean that a
single dissenter (or perhaps a very small number of dissenters) could block pass
age of any law.
Because parpolity emphasizes democratic deliberation, consensus should always be
sought. However, to insist on consensus in every case is ill-advised. It is som
etimes said that even a large group should be forced to respect and acknowledge
the sentiments of a single dissenter who feels strongly on an issue. Respect and
acknowledgment are fine, but the question is whether the strong feelings of the
one dissenter should invariably be able to block the equally strong feelings of
everyone else. To allow the lone dissenter to block action is to deny the overw
helming majority ultimate authority to decide their own fates. There is nothing
magical about 50 percent plus one, but it does deserve more moral weight than 50
percent minus one.
Another approach to the majority/minority dilemma has been to insist on absolute
parliamentary supremacy—that is, anything the majority wants to do should be perm
itted. The argument here is that the protective benefit of Supreme Courts is ove
rstated. Most of the time, the Court reflects rather than checks the passions an
d prejudices of the majority. (So, for example, in 1986, the Supreme Court uphel
d state laws criminalizing homosexual relations between consenting adults. When
the Court reversed itself in 2003, six out of ten Americans agreed that homosexu
ality should be legal.) Historically, the minority to which the Court seems to h
ave shown the most deference has been the rich. Nevertheless, the long history o
f majoritarian discrimination against racial, religious, sexual, and other minor
ities should leave us uneasy about unchecked majority rule.
The participatory politics approach to this dilemma is analogous to the jury mod
el. Choose a small group at random from the population to constitute "council co
urts." These courts will review decisions made by councils to see if they interf
ere with basic rights and constitutional protections. Each level council above t
he primary-level will be assigned a court, with the court assigned to the highes
t level council being the High Council Court. Like current-day juries, these cou
rts will be deliberative bodies, though unlike juries they would have a term lon
ger than a single case—perhaps staggered two year terms. As a cross-section of the
population, these will be democratic bodies serving to check the democratic cou
ncils. The logic here makes use of the finding, noted above, that when people ma
ke decisions through a deliberative process, the result is likely to be less int
olerant than a simple poll of public opinion.
Summing Up
Redesigning political institutions alone cannot assure a decent political system
. A good political system needs a good economic system. Put another way, without
an economic system that is equitable, democratic, and participatory, no politic
al system will be able to offer the values we seek. But if we have a participato
ry economy, with equity in terms of gender, sexuality, and national, ethnic, and
religious differences, then parpolity seems to me the appropriate political str
ucture.
Nested councils offer the possibility of a political system that promotes democr
acy, participation, and equality. But nested councils can only achieve these goa
ls if issues can, whenever desired, be returned to the primary council level for
decision.