My Demarchic Utopia

A Superior Political System

Every year – or perhaps every two years (hard to say) – every major polity (i.e. I’m thinking state or nation (a polity with a population in the hundreds of thousands, let’s say), although my discussions mostly assume federal institutions) should hold a major exam as the preliminary phase for deciding the federal politicians of their polity for the next political ‘term’. This exam, held simultaneously in all major cities/settlements across the polity, would be open and free to all adult citizens, who, however, must enter with the knowledge that if they pass it (/pass some carefully chosen threshold), they will be entered into a draw (a lottery, à la the Ancient Greek practice of sortition) to become a salaried politician. Then, if they are chosen as one of the unique hundred or two hundred (maybe varying by the size of the nation or polity) from the draw of successful exam candidates, they will be expected to move to the capital and become full-time salaried politicians for the next year (or two).

I imagine the exam being written and judged by a professionally elected body of academics (not sure about the length of the term of office of this body) from many different fields (economics, political philosophy, law, decision theory/game theory, civil-engineering, ecology, climate science, maybe even mathematics and physics) representing institutions across the nation. It would feature questions on the many different subjects which the academics in the body cover, although perhaps with the largest focus (only as a proportion, though) being polity-relevant history and political information. It would feature both a multiple-choice section, short answers and a longer-form section. As I implied, I think it would actually be cool to include explicitly mathematical problems along with stuff on law and history and political philosophy. It would be long – but give examinees a lot of time and heavily-supervised breaks (i.e. they must bring lunch into the exam room, while being forced to leave electronic devices outside, and the room will have its own toilet, maybe gym equipment, maybe have some music-playing facility via earphones/headphones (you get the picture)) – and perhaps quite difficult (I would imagine requiring a polymath of genius-level intellect to actually approach full marks), but with the threshold set relatively low, so that it allows for people with relevant intellectual strengths/specialties to get by mostly just on the basis of that specific knowledge or expertise. The idea would be that quite a significant number get through to the draw stage, so that this draw approximates a random cross-section of politically engaged people with a high level of literacy and relevant education (obviously, there would be no in principle debarment of the self-educated), but with wealth and connections obviously being only incidental factors, rather than factors more directly selected for (as in our current system).

In the capital of the polity, in the houses of parliament, there would be a longer-term staff of functionaries, staffers and intellectuals who specialise in this or that portfolio. The respected figures/heads of each portfolio would be in charge of hiring new blood for their area and firing poor performers. Oversight over these ‘senior mandarins’ themselves could perhaps be achieved at least partially by internal voting mechanisms, i.e. the senior mandarins would have regular meetings and could also privately decide to vote out one of their number. Perhaps the professionally elected body of academics could exercise some oversight over the senior mandarins (though I also imagine some potential overlap between these two groups, given that I am imagining that most of the mandarins would have an academic sort of background).  

I am imagining that we keep a high court. I am imagining my hypothetical polity has only one house of parliament, but only for simplicity and I have limited confidence in that feature of the architecture. The newly minted politicians would be instructed by the judges of the high court and/or the senior mandarins that they have been vested with the responsibility of deciding amongst themselves how they are going to (more or less evenly) split themselves up into groups controlling the (let’s say) 10 to 15 possible portfolios. They would have the freedom to be slightly flexible with both the number and name of the portfolios, if the mandarins agree, although I imagine there would need to be a constitutional law mandating that the distribution of politicians by portfolio must meet a specific mathematical threshold of evenness. They would be expected to solve this problem of allocation via an internally organised system of deliberation and voting (with some supervision by the senior mandarins) within, maybe, two or three weeks (while the incumbent politicians are just finishing their term in office). If they fail to agree on an appropriate assignment of people to portfolios, then I imagine that the senior mandarins would be given the task of reviewing all the relevant information (the resumes and skills of the various politicians, on personal relations, and so on), before making a binary decision: either to solve the problem for the politicians by mandating an allocation, or by throwing the football to the high court (with an official report attached), who then have the power either to replace one or more politicians under instruction from the senior mandarins, or (in an ideally very rare crisis) to throw out the whole government and temporarily leave governance to the functionaries in the capital before a new government can be thrown together (maybe there would be two draws from the cohort of successful exam candidates (or three, just to be completely safe) in preparation for this contingency).

Once given their portfolio, these politicians would do essentially what our current politicians do, except better and with a stronger intellectual focus. Primarily, they would be expected to work hard with each other and with the permanent staffers to think hard about policy and help draft or refine bills, which they would all then vote on. Due to the absence of party divisions and dissension, it may be that the threshold for a bill that passes has to be somewhere around 75% or 80%. And, of course, the high court would have the power to strike down bills it viewed as contrary to human rights (or contrary to whatever constitution the polity has). Of course, these politicians would also attract publicity, like our current politicians do, and have media appearances. They would be allowed to go on political trips if they so choose (although the senior mandarins could submit a request for termination of office to the high court if a given politician became too lackadaisical or insouciant or too dazzled by the spotlight (or whatever)). And some of these politicians would also be expected to attend international political meetings on important issues of war and peace, the environment, etc.  

This system is very impressively secured against moneyed corruption and corporate lobbying, certainly of the massive-scale, institutionalised kind (particularly bad in the US today (see some of my old political writings, which I find a little fervent for my tastes now, for more)); it is also impressively secured against various forms of cronyism because any ties politicians have to the media or to other important institutions will be random and non-systematic (and it is partly secured against corporate media influence on politics generally, because the media won’t know much about these people’s politics until they start making decisions); this system is epistocratic to some extent, and yet also very morally pleasing (arguably, one of the main objections to “epistocracy”), because of the anti-corrupt design and because these politicians, though not elected, are, by design, a fairly representative cross-section of the educated/smart members of the polity; this system ideally selects for people who are actually interested in difficult and nuanced debate and complex intellectual problems; this system avoids the groupthink and anti-rationalist incentives of political parties and robust, long-term political coalitions.

This system has flaws. One is that a lot of power is invested in the long-term functionaries and especially the people I called the “senior mandarins” in the capital. Perhaps it’s also more likely than I think that the group of people selected won’t get along very well and will struggle to co-operate to distribute themselves across portfolios. Perhaps it’s also more likely than I think that a lot of these people will do their job poorly, be lazy etc. It’s definitely bad for long-term planning and development that the terms of the politicians are so short – but then again the long-term staff and functionaries would have some ability to bend the elected politicians to their will in terms of steering discussions and policy ideas. One major concern is that most citizens will become totally disengaged from the political process. It also is not crazy to think that, though not explicitly designed, there is potentially a huge class divide inherent to this system. It may well be that the people with the time and skills to sit the exam/the desire to spend a year or two being a politician in the capital are overwhelmingly upper-middle class people.

Anyway, still seems superior, imho. I always thought demarchy was bitchin' when I learnt about it in this wonderful unit on democracy I did at uni in late 2016. I still think that. It's true that coming up with grand political projects from the armchair is an epistemologically problematic enterprise just in general. And of course, this thought experiment belongs to a genre of political philosophy that Karl Popper rejected entirely (for pretty good reasons): Utopian political philosophy. I haven't actually made even a single suggestion for how we might 'move' towards this system. I have no such suggestions. Indeed, I have almost no confidence that anything like this system will ever be realised. But, still, worth chewing on, I feel. Props to Francois Chollet on Twitter for motivating this thought with a couple of Tweets he made today on "sortition" in Ancient Greece, which reminded me of how cool I thought that was when I learnt about it.