Parliamentarism and 10% Less Democracy
Parliamentarism and 10% Less Democracy
"10% Less Democracy" is a good book with an unfortunate title. Garett Jones does an excellent job presenting the evidence that plebiscitary decision-making is perilous to societies. That is why independent central banks perform better than central banks pressured by public opinion, why elected judges perform worse, and appointed city treasurers perform better.
The title is unfortunate, however, because are numerous ways one can have 10% less democracy. Exaggerating for effect, it is a bit like suggesting to improve a failed and heavy car by taking 10% of the steel off. Jones would argue, rightly, that this is of course true, and he specifies in his book what are precisely the democratic aspects he would favor reducing. For example, he would stay very far from limiting freedom of speech - all mentions to this institute are positive. His more specific suggestions for 10% less democracy are:
- Longer terms for politicians
- Independent central banks, both on paper and in practice
- A more oligarchical judiciary
- Greater weights for more informed voters
While we agree a lot on the diagnosis, I depart from Jones on these solutions. Take longer terms for politicians. While the suggestion is more specific than only 10% less democracy, it is still not specific enough. Longer terms for which politicians? In a presidential country, this matters a lot. If the president is strong and you increase the terms for the legislature, the effect will be small because of how decisive the form of government is for the future of a country. If, instead, you increase the terms for presidents and other heads of the executive branch, you risk devolving into autocracy, as so many presidential countries have experience. As John Carey puts it: "Concerns about presidential perpetuation in office are as old as presidentialism itself; they followed naturally from the preoccupation among the founders of America’s many republics with maintaining political stability in the absence of monarchy."
The second suggestion is also not specific enough. Evidence shows that independent central banks are only better when they are independent in practice, not only on paper. But when rules for independent central banks are first created, there has to be some important actor which believes that it will bring about more independence. Maybe the president knows he will maintain his power but wants to appease legislators. Maybe the legislators themselves know there will not be independence, but want to pretend for their constituencies of for foreign observers. But somebody must have some expectation that it will work, otherwise it would not be passed. So we still have a problem: what sort of arrangement will produce central banks who are independent in practice? As I discuss in the book, Carola Binder shows that parliamentary countries put less political pressure in their central banks.
A more oligarchical - or technocratic - judiciary by itself also seems like incapable of achieving great results. As the 2017 World Development Report puts it: "even the most stringent constitutional guarantees of independence and best-practice forms of judicial appointment often do not correlate with de facto measures of independent judicial behavior (Feld and Voigt 2003; Ríos-Figueroa and Staton 2012)." So we are back to the same problem for central banks: how do we ensure independence? You won't be surprised to learn that Hayo and Voigt have found that parliamentary countries provide greater de facto independence to their judiciary than presidential countries.
Applying greater weights for more informed voters would be extremely hard to approve, and for little benefit. Not only would there be great resistance to the idea of having one vote count more than the other, but how would one possibly draw the line in a satisfactory way so that there would not be constant pressures to keep changing it? The reason why I would expect little benefit is that, as discussed in the book, the dangers of plebiscitary decisions derive mostly from the lack of incentives for rational decisions, not from a lack of capacity to make decisions.
Lastly, I would dispute that making democracy more representative and less plebiscitary could even be considered making it "less democratic". When we are facing issues such as Arrow's paradox - which parliaments can overcome - or rationally irrational voters, the system which is capable of actually delivering the "will of the people" is the representative one, and should be recognized as such.