I describe a medium of assent currently being developed as an electoral system, for project Votorola. The backbone of the medium is a delegate-cascade voting mechanism that is open to recasting. Its voter lists are authenticated by a community trust network. Its basic purpose is to enable the expression of mutual agreement (and disagreement) in formal messages of assent (votes). The initial application is the open and impromptu election of nominee officials, and of normative texts, such as laws and policy documents. The objects of assent might be other kinds of text, as well, or other cultural artifacts; suggesting that the medium might be applied, more broadly, as a general support for mutual understanding and consensus in society. With this in mind, I attempt to predict the fit of the medium in society, particularly in the light of Habermas's theory of communicative action.
Rough draft. The main sections (numbered) are only roughly outlined. They still need to be fleshed out from sources, and from the older draft in the appendices (lettered).
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This is the first of two sections, outlining the structural design of the medium.
The description is based on the design currently being developed within project Votorola,
in the form of an “open electoral system”.1
- the medium is essentially a voting mechanism
- object of vote is a person, in the context of a particular election
- unlike the steering media of power or money, the medium of assent does not function
as a substitute for mutual understanding or consensus
- rather, it serves to formally express mutual understanding or consensus
- behind the formal expression, behind every accumulation of votes that betokens a consensus,
there is an actual consensus
- this is guaranteed by the freedom of assentors to withdraw their votes
or shift them as they please (unlike in an ordinary election)
- a vote can never be alienated from its owner, as can power or money
(nor can it continue to be held, once cast, without the continued assent of the owner)
- consider Habermas's distinction between steering media (such as money or power)
and generalized communication media (mass media, in its centralized and,
lately, distributed forms) TCA2.390-391
- the medium of assent is an instance of neither
- it is an adjunct, a support (rather than a replacement) for general communication
- it conveys specialized messages of assent, not general-purpose messages
- an election defines the context of voting
- identifies a particular role that the candidates are expected to fill
- two broad classes of role
1. holder of power
/ as in elections to an office of state
2. drafter of a norm
- law maker, policy maker, planner, utopian visionary
- where consensus matters
- unclear its application to composition of cultural artifacts
where consensus matters less (expressive art, scientific texts, +)
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- patterns of generation and maintenance of normative texts, in parallel with the medium
- gross effect is to restructure text as a population
- finer is to redirect text flow toward consensus drafts
- patterns of assent having a tendency to reshape the patterns of text flow,
along similar lines of convergence
# # # # # # # # # #
- "The processes of reaching understanding upon which the lifeworld is centered
require a cultural tradition across the whole spectrum. In the communicative practice
of everyday life, cognitive interpretations, moral expectations, expressions, and valuations
have to interpenetrate and form a rational interconnectedness via the transfer of validity
that is possible in the performative attitude. This communicative infrastructure is threatened
by two interlocking, mutually reinforcing tendencies: systemically induced reification,
and cultural impoverishment." TCA2.327
- modernization has followed "a highly selective pattern that appears to exclude two things at once:
building institutions of freedom that protect communicatively structured areas
of the private and public spheres against the reifying inner dynamics of the economic
and administrative systems, and reconnecting modern culture to an everyday practice that,
while dependent on meaning bestowing traditions, has been impoverished
with traditionalist, left-overs." TCA2.328
- the medium of assent is here proposed as one such "institution of freedom",
in support of communicative action
- this is the first of several sections in which I attempt to predict the rough fit
of the medium within society, particularly in the light of Habermas's
theory of communicative action 18, 19
- in subsequent sections, I will outline the specific protections
against economic and administrative systems, and the reconnection to culture
- in this section, I will describe the immediate supports offered
by the structures of the medium, and of norm generation,
that are suitable for communication action
- lightweight structural support, strengthen and extend communicative action
- for large-scale consensus
- http://lists.thataway.org/SCRIPTS/WA-THATAWAY.EXE?A2=ind0803D&L=NCDD-DISCUSSION&P=10113
- http://lists.thataway.org/SCRIPTS/WA-THATAWAY.EXE?A2=ind0803D&L=NCDD-DISCUSSION&P=16427
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- "As the private sphere [of the lifeworld] is undermined by the economic system,
so too is the public sphere by the administrative system. The bureaucratic disempowering
and dessication of spontaneous processes of opinion- and will-formation expands the scope
for engineering mass loyalty and makes it easier to uncouple political decision making
from concrete, identity-forming contexts of life. Insofar as such tendencies
establish themselves, we get Weber's (stylized) picture of a legal domination
that redefines practical questions as technical ones and dismisses demands
for substansive justice with a legalistic reference to legitimation through procedure." TCA2.325
- this section describes how, to the extent it was employed, the medium of assent
would remove political decision making from the hands of administrators
- decisions of political import that were formerly made by parties and governments,
and mediated by power, would instead be made in the broader public sphere
through communicative action, mediated by assent
[ decision making in political parties
- bypassed
[ decision making in the executive
- aligned to consensus policy and plans
[ decision making in the legislature
- aligned to consensus legislation
- necessity of scale
- legitimacy in popular assent (this is obvious)
- decisions will be acted on, only if seen as legitimate
- the test of legitimacy is general agreement, which requires scale
- without this, there is no transfer
- to address large or complex problems which escape our control
- problems too big for individuals
- countering personal feelings of powerlessness, owing to a thwarted
sense of moral responsibility for large-scale problems TCA2.394
- a small act (a vote) providing an outlet, connecting the individual with the problem
- problems too big for government, transcending the state borders that restrict
all governments
- problems too small for government, slipping through their fingers, escaping their power
- the medium can scale to match the size of the problem, by restricting
the scope (electorate) of the elections that address it
- an established medium of assent might properly be called a “counterinstitution”,
in reaction to power-steered politics TCA2.396
- in which case, it owes the free and open code on which it is built
to a “countereconomy”, in reaction to money-steered production
(as Habermas also foresaw)
- so the institutions of economics and politics are entwined in the lifeworld,
as they are in the system
- the modern historical tie between capital production and state administration
making a late appearance in the lifeworld (in reaction to growing stresses upon it)
in suitably “free and open” forms
- historically, might it be related to the public sphere between people and state
that existed in the 17th and 18th centuries (but has since vanished)? 36
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- formal vote flow, on actual organizational structure of administration, and flow of power
- correlates with affect on text flow, in generation of norms
- gross sense, of winner takes the office
- finer sense, including runners up
- assent in executive elctions will tend to align with existing administrative structures,
because people will be looking for proven ability (if not immediate action)
- where it forms along existing administrative lines,
it will confirm and strengthen them
- where not, it will tend to reshape them
- so, in an exectutive election (head of state, for example)
might the hierarchical structure of the cascade be replicated
in the resulting administration, to some extent?
- and since elections are continuous, might not the shifts in the cascade
tend to translate as cabinet shuffles, and so forth?
# # # # # # # # # #
- "It is not the differentiation and independent development of cultural value spheres
that lead to the cultural impoverishment of everyday communicative practice,
but an elitist splitting-off of expert cultures from contexts of communicative action
in daily life." TCA2.330
- the hierarchy of assent may be seen as a hierarchy of expertise,
connecting non-experts (top) and experts (bottom)
- through intercommunication and mutual understanding
- and through legitimizing the uses of expertise, by basing them in a broader social context
# # # # # # # # # #
- Of ideology, in the broad sense of the term?
- "The lifeworld is always constituted in the form of a global knowledge
intersubjectively shared by its members; thus, the desired equivalent
for no longer available ideologies might simply consist in the fact
that the everyday knowledge apearing in totalized form remains diffuse,
or at least never attains that level of articulation at which alone knowledge
can be accepted as valid according to the standards of cultural modernity.
Everday consciousness is robbed of its power to synthesize;
it becomes fragmented." TCA2.355
- as the medium of assent can serve to ground cultural expertise in everyday communication,
that same ground can also serve to intermediate among otherwise disconnected spheres of culture
- this may occur particularly when assent attaches to a norm that is a cultural object
in the broader sense
- not merely legislation, political policy, or a short-term plan
- rather something like Segal's "serious utopian visions"
- any consensus that formed on such an artifact would necessarily be cross-cultural,
uniting science, morality, art
- thus we might re-attain the benefits of a form of social integration that was lost
when modernity undercut the possibility of religion, and later of ideology TCA2.354
This section was moved here from Votorola's design documentation. Its salvageable content has yet to be separated out, and integrated with the main text (top).
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- the system allows for different types of election, including
[ office (e.g. executive)
[ rule promulgation (e.g. legislative)
[ policy declaration
- all are elections in the true sense of the word, because the immediate purpose
is to elevate a candidate to a postion of responsibility
- from there the purpose is effected, be it to serve a term of office,
to promulgate a rule, or to declare a policy
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- as originally discussed in the lists1
- one election per office
- votes go to candidate officers
- winning candidate serves, or is recommended for, a term of office
- election never terminates
- elevations to office recur, with current leading candidate elevated as each new term opens
# # # # # # # # # #
- as documented for community law-making12
- one election per rule
- votes go to rule drafters and their non-drafting backers
- winning drafter submits her draft (bill or whatever) for promulgation (e.g. as a statute),
typically after a reflection period
- election might terminate if/when promulgation occurs;
alternatively, it might continue, for amendment purposes
# # # # # # # # # #
- similar to rule promulgation (above), but:
- one election per executive office, but in parallel
- votes go to policy drafters and their non-drafting backers
- executive candidates (in election for that office), and serving office holders,
may each adopt and avow any particular draft
- election never terminates
- see the scenario Climate Change Policy for Minnesota,
for an illustration of the process
- policy making thus open to public
- provides an executive (or candidate) with a choice of ready-made and documented policies,
each quantified by its public support (count of votes behind the policy draft)
- given this, an executive candidate would be unlikely to draft her own policy,
at odds with those drafted by the public
- cleanly separates policy making from execution (executive and bureaucracy)
- much as law making is kept separate from judiciary and police
- provides a framework and vocabulary for:
[ public to question executives on actions that diverge from avowed policy
[ executives to answer, and explain unforseen comlications, and so forth
[ policy drafters to refine their documents,
or voters to refine their choice of executive, accordingly
A delegate cascade is a voting mechanism in which received votes are carried along with cast votes.13 One who receives a vote is a candidate; one who casts a vote, a voter; and one who both receives and casts is a delegate. As each vote is carried through successive delegates, it cascades with other votes, as shown in Figure 7.
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The delegate cascade is associated with certain political functions and processes. One function (shared in common with all voting mechanisms) is the quantification of consent. Consent is the agreement or permission that society grants to political actors (or actions). It is quantified in the cascade by the counts of votes held by each candidate, typically at the end of each cascade (where most of the votes are usually carried). The total of these counts is always equal to the total cast by the electorate (one per voter).
But the delegate cascade also models several other political processes. It may be unique in this, as ordinarily these processes are not formally modelled (interest, collective identity, participation), or are modelled in separate institutions (representation). The processes are:
A voter's interests are grounded in risks and opportunities. To know one's interests, one must first know what is at stake in the election. [It is not just the publicized ‘issues’ that define interest, perhaps not at all.]
The delegate cascade also models the formation of collective identity. Collective identity is partly a matter of faction, or of shared interest, and partly a matter of consensus, compromise and shared responsibility.16 A voter having a particular interest will be attracted to a candidate who shares that interest. Most candidates will not gain (through shared interest alone) sufficient votes to stand on. Most will find it necessary to act, and the easiest action will often be to cast votes of their own, and thus become delegates. The resulting tendency will be for the votes to cascade together in higher delegates, and to keep cascading until stopped by a real division of interests.
Once a division of interests is exposed in this manner, it can be dealt with politically. The prize of votes will go to the candidate who can bridge the division. Voters who assent to this will see their interests brought closer to realization; while those who withold will see them in a new perspective, with clearer definition. In both sides, a sense of collective identity will be strengthened.
In short [but this is tentative, as I am taking Rousseau at second hand], the factional, leafward portions of the cascade tree (figure 7, top) model what Rousseau termed the ‘particular wills’ of society, and the connecting, middle portions the ‘real wills’.10 In the middle, the delegates and their voters effect a step-wise transition that bridges the particular to the general, anchoring each connecting span with the consent (real will = votes) of the electorate. Rootward (bottom), the consensual portions of the cascade model the ‘general will’ of the public. The general will is unknown until it emerges from the cascade, and it may change over time (or even dissolve again) in response to external events, and its own internal reflections and dynamic.
The delegate cascade also models representation and participation. The two go hand in hand. In this, it is unlike the modern practice of democracy which provides for representation at the expense of participation.11 In a modern state, political representation is the function of the legislative assembly and (less formally) of political parties. The delegate cascade can replace both: it can replace the legislative assembly with open elections for the promulgation of rules; and it can replace the political parties with candidates and their voting backers. Within the cascade, the candidates (meaning delegates too) are the representative agents. A candidate who fails to adequately represent the interests of her voters will tend to lose votes. If the election is legislative, a candidate's voters are roughly equivalent to constituents, and she is their representative law maker. Or (in another view), her voters are roughly equivalent to a political party, and she is their leader. (The latter view applies to all types of election, not only to the legislative. In both views, the representation is immediate, as opposed to distant; with the candidate acting as a ‘delegated representative’ in Birch's terminology, as opposed to the more distant ‘elected representative’.)9
Participation is closely tied to representation, and begins with receiving votes. Any voter who receives votes becomes a candidate (usually at the level of delegate), and is thereby involved to some extent in politics. The more votes she receives the more she becomes involved, until, by degrees, she is fully engaged in public service. She need not win the election to participate fully, in this way. Representation is undeniably a public service in itself, and since its performance is quantifiable through the voting records, the state might easily endorse it by providing official acknowledgement, remuneration and other supports to candidates based on the voting records. It might also provide them with formal authority: for example, as semi-official leaders of the opposition, representing the interests of their constituents; or as official appointees charged to carry out government policy in line with those interests.
This section [rough, unfinished] attempts to illustrate how politics might operate in the cascade. The following is a hypothetical policy-making scenario, set in a near future Minnesota.24
Resident A drafts a proposed Climate Change Policy for Minnesota, and posts it to the Web. Two days later, resident B reads it; copies it; makes changes; and posts a variant draft. Now there are two variant proposals on the table.
A day later, C posts a variant of B's draft. But C also votes for B (tentatively). B learns of this; examines the textual differences of C's document; and copies them into her own. C notices this, and decides to keep voting for B (for now). (The new policy is thus being drafted as a recombinant text, in combination with cascade voting.)
C
\
A B
S and T have no time to participate in the actual drafting, but they do like A's draft. They both vote for A. Meantime, U and V (also non-drafters) vote for B. At the end of one week, the situation is:
U
T | V
S / C | /
\ / \|/
A B
Another week goes by, and now D is studying the textual differences between A and B. She has been following the discussions in A's blog, and the mailing list of B's 'constituency'. She sees a possible bridge between the positions of A and B. She drafts a compromise, and explains it to A and B. They agree (tentatively) to vote for D's compromise draft. (B has trouble convincing V of this, and is worried about losing V's vote. But for now, a consensus holds.)
U
T | V
S / C | /
\ / \|/
A B
\ / various other cascades
\ / forming in parallel, not shown
\ /
D
D's draft now has a 7 vote backing. Consequently D has a measure of political clout. Other drafters, some with 50 or 60 votes in other cascades (not shown) would like to get D's vote (and the 7 others it carries). They are in discussions with D. D, meantime, is holding off, and looking for bridges among their separate positions, with an eye to proposing an even larger consensus.
At the end of six months, 6000 voters (including 300 drafters) are participating in the process. The governor's office takes notice. Approximately 40% of the participants are behind a single consensus draft; 15% behind another; and the rest are in ever-shifting splinter groups. The governor feels that 40% is not enough for action. His advisors, however, have noticed that many of the splinter groups are disputing technical points of science. The governor sees an opportunity in this, and decides to release funds for climate change research, aimed specifically at the points of contention.
After two years (in which participation has grown), a 55% consensus has emerged. Minnesota adopts the leading consensus draft as its official Climate Change Policy. During the same period, a rival consensus of 30% has formed on an alternative policy. It has been adopted, in turn, by a rival candidate for the Governor's office (a continuous election for Governor having been in progress, simultaneously).
The delegate cascade may be distinguished from other voting mechanisms by the structural property of hierarchy. If hierarchy were removed (if every voter were to cast directly for an end candidate, as in figure 8), then the tree structure typical of the cascade would flatten to a star, typical of most other voting mechanisms. The nominal result of the election (quanitity of votes held by candidates) might or might not be affected, depending on which end candidates the voters re-cast for.
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Hierarchy is essential to certain political processes, namely to those that depend on a dialogue between voters and candidates. Without hierarchy (figure 8), the voter density might reach to thousands or millions per candidate, depending on the size of the electorate. This is clearly beyond the range of dialogue. With hierarchy (figure 7), the average density would hold more-or-less constant regardless of the size of the electorate. It might hold at anywhere from 5 to 50 voters per candidate (according to the bushiness of the tree), which is well within the range of dialogue. The political processes that depended on this are:
Hierarchy also serves to model political decision making. In this regard, a conventional star structure (figure 8) is a poor model, because it reflects only consensus (a majority in favour of a candidate), and none of the generative complexity (compromise, mutual understanding, etc.) that contributed to it. It therefore gives the appearance of (and perhaps promotes) a decision making process that is without foundation — at best a popularity contest. On the other hand, the tree structure of a delegate cascade (figure 7) offers a richer model, one that roughly mirrors the foundational structure and dynamics of the decision making process. In that mirror, voters can see the diversity of interests and groups (always present to each other in the cascade); how they interrelate in support of (or opposition to) the consensus; and where each individual's decision (vote) fits within the larger outcome.
Hierarchy also serves for recruitment. It lowers the barriers to participation by offering a series of small steps toward political responsibility (upward in figure 7), instead of one large step. Climbing these steps, learning a little at each level, would be easier than jumping directly into office without preparation. Most politicians have no formal training as such, rather they learn by doing.
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- the general structure of a cascade is a cyclic graph
- a single vote, itself, never cycles; it stops:
| *before* it encounters a voter for a second time
and remains held by the caster
/ then voting for a backer effectively exchanges backing
- this rule grants the balance of decision power in resolving cyclic contention
to the voter with the most backing
- it follows that self-voting is disallowed
- since the vote is stopped before encounters the voter
/ desireable for reasons of consistency, in any case,
because many candidates would disdain self-voting despite its slight advantage
/ | *after* it encounters a voter for a second time
/ and remains held by that voter
/ / then voting for a backer effectively return the backing
/// no, this is unnatural
- stable cycles are indicative of reluctance among candidates to accept votes
- in the extreme, where nobody wants to be elected, the cascade will naturally evolve
into a perfect ring (so the candidate holding two votes in figure 9 would cast
for the voter holding none, and thus pass on the extra, 'hot potatoe' vote)
- this would be rare in an ordinary election
- the opposite would be an election in which everybody is so intent on winning
that nobody casts a vote (hence no election at all)
which is also expected to be a rare occurence
This section attempts to ground the design of Votorola in Habermas's theory of communicative action.18, 19 Points of correlation between the theory and the design will be described, and hypotheses formulated. These are of immediate interest, because (despite the predicted effects, not least on state institutions) open elections may be staged independently of government. So the hypotheses can easily be tested.
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Among the four subsystems of society (figure 10), open elections are a part of the community (bottom right). Their aim, however, is to affect the polity (top right). One theme of the analysis that follows is that of a counteraction to what Habermas calls the ‘colonization of the Lifeworld’ — the interference of the economy and polity in the functions of culture and community. Counter to this interference, we predict a form of ‘decolonization’ in which decision making (but not administrative power) is transferred from the System to the Lifeworld. We predict that, in separating the functions of decision making and administrative action, and allocating each to the subsystem of society most competent to handle it, we will thereby rationalize society.
| Society | Open Elections | |
| Communicative Acts | Voting Coordinated by Discourse | |
| Unforced Consensus | Vote Cascade | |
| Colonization of Lifeworld | Political and Economic Interference | |
| Ideas and Interests | Texts and Votes | |
| De-colonization | Lifeworld and System Rationalized |
The basic action types are:TCA1.85-86
In communicative action, “the plans of action of various agents are coordinated through an exchange of communicative acts — that is, through the use of language (or of corresponding extra-verbal expressions) oriented toward an understanding (Verständigung) or consensus (Einverständnis).”21
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- an open election proceeds by communicative action
- contrast with ordinary election: proceeds by teleological (including strategic) action
- the action being coordinated (leaving the coordination itself aside) is the casting of a vote
! but that's only half of it
- the objects of voting (candidates and texts) are changing too
- and those changes are also coordinated by discourse
- votes are cast from peer to peer (voter to candidate):
many instances of few-to-one voting, yielding a tree topology
- contrast with ordinary election: voting for party candidates
is mass voting: a few instances of many-to-one voting, yielding a star topology
- coordination is by discourse within community, peer to peer
(voter to candidate, and voter to voter)
- discourse is tightly coupled to the casting of a vote (the object of coordination)
[yet also to the world, since the votes have meaning, mapping, ... must specify this too]
- a single vote for a candidate implies an understanding between voter and candidate,
and the voter's consent [again, must specify for what]
- multiple votes for a candidate imply, in addition, understanding and consensus
among the voters [again, must specify on what]
- only the voting is directly modelled, not the discourse
- the lines of voting do, however, appear to trace a potential communication network
external to the voting model
- they will approximate an actual network, because discourse will naturally arise,
and will be coupled to the voting
- contrast with ordinary election: where voting is not coordinated among voters
- each voter acts teleologically, or strategically, pursuing her own interest
- candidates and parties act strategically, attempting to sway voters
- communication is one-way, by broadcast through mass media, to voters
- there is no discourse, no dialogue between a candidate and the mass of voters
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- no internal mechanisms of power in the vote cascade
- all consensus is voluntary and conditional/tentative (may be withdrawn at any time)
- and yet, where it is politically possible, consensus will naturally emerge and hold
- But: Does the quantification of votes (and desire to attract them)
account an internal forceTCA1.25, or a non-force influence?
Votes themselves are innocuous, tokens equivalent to expression (approval),
but their accumulation/tallying might be something else.
- But: “Negotiating compromises does not at all serve to redeem validity claims
in a strictly discursive manner, but rather to harmonize nongeneralizable interests
on the basis of balanced postions of power.”TCA1.35
- if compromise is the basis of ‘consensus’ in the cascade
(as it appears it often must be) then is it real discourse and consensus,
or mere ‘conflict’ resolution forced by circumstance?
or ‘arbitrary choice’TCA1.38?
- real discourse and consensus, because H means another kind of compromise
than the political one aimed at in the cascade (rationally agreed by all, without force)
- political compromise in the cascade is not an argumentative mode,
nor an action imposed on unwilling parties by an adjudicator;
rather the compromise is a proposition whose validity is claimed
- the participants are seeking a way forward to a political solution,
knowing full well that some particular compromise is often entailed
- so the proposition ‘this is a good compromise,’
or ‘we ought to choose this compromise,’
is one that rational discourse does serve to redeem
- likewise, the powers that are to be balanced in the compromise,
are conceptual elements of the proposition at question
- it often matters (in a political context) that one interest outnumbers another
- the norms (generally accepted) may give extra weight to the majority;
or, in some cases (such as rights), to the minority
- this concept of political power of a majority is not realized and imposed
(on the minority) during the argumentation toward consensus;
it remains a conceptual reason that might serve to support the proposition
- individuals (on either side) remain free to accept (or reject) that reason
on purely rational grounds (trying to be objective, and put their own
peculiar interests aside, just as they would in any rational discussion);
and, on that basis, to join (or abstain from) the compromise
In modern society, the System's intrumental steering capacity extends into the Lifeworld (colonizes it, in Habermas's metaphor). The “capitalist economy and modern administration expand at the expense of other domains of life that are structurally disposed to moral-practical and expressive forms of rationality and squeeze them into forms of economic or administrative rationality.” This interferes with the communicative action that would otherwise generate meaning, collective identities, and belief in the legitimacy of political institutions. These become weakened, and crisis ensues.TCA1.183, TCA2.301-373
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- how might such interference might find its way into open elections?
- to read:
= Peter Muhlberger, Strategic and Communicative Rationality
in a Deliberative Field Experiment
- economic
- vote buying (aka campaign financing, to those in higher circles)
- political
- an equivalent of party discipline (?) emerges
This section attempts to correlate the development of society based on the interrelation of ideas and interests in society, with the design of open elections based on the interrelation of ideation and interest formation in open elections.31 In his review of the historical transition from feudal to modern society,TCA1.187-200 Habermas analyzes Max Weber's distinction between ideas and interests, and how the two interrelate in the rationalization of life orders.
... we can grasp the relation between interests and ideas somewhat more precisely. In the introduction to ‘The Economic Ethics of World Religions’ we find the famous passage that refers implicitly to Marx's preface to ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’: “Not ideas, but material and ideal interests directly govern men's conduct. Yet very frequently the ‘world images’ created by ‘ideas’ have, like switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest.” Insofar as we explain social action with reference to legitimate orders (conventions and legal norms), we are supposing:
Recall that open elections depend on a combination of two media: a compositional medium (a), and a consensual medium (b). Together they comprise the open electoral medium (c).
The compositional medium facilitates the formation and expression of ideas, by way of collective recombinant texts. The consensual medium facilitates the formation and expression of interest, by way of the collective alignment of votes. When the two are combined (and the texts become the objects of voting) the result is a general purpose medium for the formation and expression of consensus.
How much can be made of this particular correlation? Ideas and interests naturally combine and grow in society to yield the ‘social forms of life’. Likewise, they combine and grow in open elections, but there to yield a consensus. In its nascent form, the consensus is small (as small as 2 people). Subsequently, it grows. Possibly, it grows to reach the scale of the community itself. If its mature form is political in nature, then it is actualized in the political sphere (as either an actor, action or law) according to the principle of sovereign consensus [misnomer]. Otherwise, if it is non-political in nature, then it may be actualized according to other principles of consensus actualization (yet to be stated) that operate in other spheres. (We have yet to predict the effect, within its own sphere, of a consensus that is economically, culturally or communitally oriented.)
So open elections model at a fine scale (through correlates such as these) the essential structure and function of societal development. Further, the electoral media are augmentive, and embedded in the fabric of societal communities. Is there a sense, then, in which open elections could function as a cradle of societies? Could they facilitate, accelerate, enhance, or otherwise affect the reproduction of a society (ontogenesis), or the development of new societies (phylogenesis)?
From an ontogenetic point of view, the answer is still unclear. [I understand the interrelation of text-expressed ideas and vote-expressed interests in the nuts and bolts of open elections, but not the corresponding interrelation in day-to-day society. My reading of the theory is incomplete here.] From a phylogenetic point of view (as evoked by Weber's ‘world images’), an answer is attempted in the next section.
This section hypothesizes the effects of placing an open electoral medium at the disposal of communities. In general, the predicted effects are the disentanglement of Lifeworld and System, and the consequent rationalization of the four subsystems of society. Specifically, societal community (side figure, bottom right) will effectively (a) take the driver's seat of the political machine, so that community interests will come to guide the general course of politics (top right). Distant goals will be expressed through the cultural sphere (bottom left), which will be (b) disentangled from the economic (top left), and (c) hooked, instead into community. Artifacts of collective creation — of consensus expression — will then become the travelogues, the sign-posts, and the visions that fill the blank spaces of the journey's map.
# # # # # # # # # #
- disentangling community and polity, and rationalizing the function of both
- decision-making (but not administrative power) is transferred
from the System to the Lifeworld (where, we assert, it naturally belongs)
- transfer effected according to the principle of sovereign consensus
- the principle of sovereign consensus [misnomer] asserts that,
where a societal community attains a general agreement (consensus)
on an issue of politics, government will act on the consensus33
- to the extent that consensus forms freely and independently, therefore,
and to the extent that it covers political decisions in general
(which officers to empower, which policies to follow, which laws to enact),
consensus will rule society
- the reason is that consensus will find allies in government
- politicians will naturally align themselves
with any clear consensus reached by the electorate,
because it will improve their chances of reaching or holding onto power
in future elections
- the bureaucracy will tend to align itself with public consensus
- in principle, being servants of the public
- in practice, being (more often than not) a party to the same consensus
- executives will tend to align themselves with consensus, because it will
enhance their power (practical effectiveness) and authority
- so the wheels of government will naturally turn more easily
in the direction of a consensus
- transfer thus separates the functions of decision-making and administrative action,
allocating each to its most competent subsystem
- administrations are not equipped to decide the wants and aspirations of communities
- but communities are so equipped (if given the appropriate tools)
- power remains in government hands, of course (communities per se not being competent
to hold power, only to guide and lead the political actors who hold it)
Sovereign consensus [again, misnomer] will first assert itself (it is predicted) at the ballot box. Open elections will out-compete political parties in the role of nominating candidates for state ballots. To understand how open elections can affect the System in this way, the important thing to bear in mind is that state elections typically depend on multiple electoral systems:
The relationship between them is that the party elections together determine the candidature of the state elections. Effectively they print the ballots. When voters show up at the polls on election day, they choose between candidates A and B (and sometimes C). But those candidates were pre-chosen for them by the electoral systems of the parties.
Open elections may be viewed as a system in direct competition with political parties. The two are in direct competition because they perform similar political functions (in theory), and because party members will have a choice (in practice) of which to use for the purpose of conducting nominations for the ballot. As well, the rest of society (non-party members) will have a way to participate in the nomination process without joining parties.
In the competition between the political parties and open elections, it is expected that open elections will have two key advantages: technical superiority of electoral facilities; and a single facility to serve all interest groups. Technical superiority follows from the observation that engineers and other technicians have a work ethos that embraces openness (in the sense of knowledge sharing). The argument is that, because the technology of open elections is based on similar principles, it will attract more of their interest and effort. And that will be sufficient to ensure that open elections are the best equipped.
The other key advantage is a single electoral facility, serving all interest groups in common. It replaces a plurality of separate elections (one per party) with a single election. This is an advantage, in part, because it offers a convenience to voters and candidates who have interests that happen to cross party lines. With a single electorate and a single pool of candidates, votes can more easily find their targets. More important, an open election with a broadly based electorate would provide not only nominees for the state elections, but, increasingly, an accurate prediction of the final winner. The desire to influence that prediction will attract the membership of the political parties.
If open elections do attract more participants, then they will win the competition. Then, come election day, the candidates on the state ballot (A, B and sometimes C) will have been pre-chosen by open elections, and not by the political parties. Open elections would then be having a real effect on government. The combination of open elections plus the state electoral system would then serve as a bridge from the societal community to the polity (figure-10).
# # # # # # # # # #
- need to elaborate, and explain (as already explained in lists)
how this bridge will pull all general decision making out of the administration,
and into the community
- we might be able to reach a series of hypotheses, such as:
i) open elections will have a beneficial effect on governance
- through expanded “scope for unconstrained coordination of actions
and consensual resolution of conflicts”
that follows from an increase in communicative rationalityTCA1.15
- this leading to better decisions
(who to elect, what policy to adopt, what legislation to promulgate)
- the increase in communicative rationality being:
- measured relative to that of the conventional processes that are replaced
(party elections, policy formation, legislative processes, etc.)
- owing to more participants
- owing to fewer distortions of communicative action,
as open elections [must show in prior sections]
have no effective handles for instrumental steering
ii) the beneficial effects will become known to communities
iii) communities will aquire [it seems reasonable to conclude] strengthened meaning,
collective identities, and belief in the legitimacy of their political institutions
This section and the following are informal, anecdotal in style. They have yet to be formally anchored in theory. The necessary sources are largely unread. The incidental focus is fine art; other fields of culture have yet to be considered in detail.32
Imagine how a text might look, as it formed within a collective medium of composition. Imagine a creative literary work, for example, as it is being composed by a community of artists. Picture it, not from the vantage of an artist, but rather from that of an outside observer. Viewed thus from a distance, the population of variant drafts (one per artist), looks much like a swarm of particles, or a cloud. It is somewhat amorphous and hazily outlined. Most of its internal structure and dynamic (complexes of specialization among the artists) will be invisible at a distance. But we might still see concentrations, here and there, around particular artists. We might see a division between two language communities, two half-clouds with a narrow bridge of translation between them. Or we might see the cloud tending to pull apart in other places, on the verge of becoming two clouds, drifting away from each other.
At a finer scale, we know that the internal dynamic of creativity and composition (unseen to us) is one of textual interchange. Artists are exchanging pieces of text amongst themselves, peer to peer. These unseen exchanges are, in fact, the attractive force that holds the cloud together. Without them, it would disperse away into nothing. These exchanges are also the primary motor that impels the text along on an evolutionary course. Communicative exchange — a kind of dialogue or conversation — is therefore essential to the process of composition within this new medium.
In a sense, this is nothing new. Artistic creation has always been a dialogue (of one form or another) among artists. Ian Colford explains this sense of it, with regard to traditional creative literature:
It is this interplay between reader and author that creates a literature. We read, we agree or disagree, and we are stimulated to compose a response (either in emulation or in opposition), and in effect reverse roles with the author. No written work ever emerges from a vacuum, without reference to another. Each text that is created represents an attempt to refine or refute or answer or in some way imitate or improve upon an earlier one.28
In modern society, the form of this dialogue is very unlike the one we envisioned further above. Rather than an exchange of textual fragments, it is an exchange of whole texts. And rather than engaging many artists in a humming, buzzing cloud of activity, it empowers a few to speak loudly through the machinery of mass communication. An artist speaks, the presses clatter, and a million copies of Harry Potter are printed for the world. The world reads it. Eventually, the presses clatter again, and the reply is printed.
There was once an economic rationale for this form of dialogue, but it no longer has a basis. Capital machinery and costly distribution systems (printing presses, book stores, and so forth) are no longer needed for literature. We can therefore ignore the old economic rationale, and re-design our media according to a purely cultural rationale. According to that rationale, an efficient facility of dialogue is foremost. So we leave the clatter of the presses behind (for now), and turn once again to the hum and buzz of the cloud.
Given that this is the new medium of composition, we naturally wonder what is being composed in it. (What stories do the writers tell, amongst themselves? What tales do they spin for their own pleasure?) Reaching into the cloud, we pull out a copy of an individual draft. A publisher happens along, equally curious. He peers over our shoulder, and together we read it. Soon he is shaking his head, “No, no. I'm afraid we can't print that.”
You might think he fears there will be no market for it; that the writers have composed a dark, modern tale of alienation and malaise. But no, it's actually worse than that. They've copied the entire text of Harry Potter, and are freely adapting it.
“It's guaranteed, ” he says, “A copyright infringement suit.” He pauses, and looks over at the cloud, “On the other hand, if the readers actually like it...”
But the cloud cannot answer the question on his mind. To answer, it would need a consensual medium. Recall that a consensual medium would facilitate the formation and expression of collective interest. And collective interest is exactly what the publisher is looking for.
Something changes, however, when we add a consensual medium that introduces voting to the cloud. The compositional ideas that had been flowing throughout in a wayward, criss-cross pattern, now begin to coalesce in places. New ideas, new pieces of text, have now acquired a slight tendency to move toward the nearby consensus drafts (those having the most votes). The reason is simple: every ‘consensus artist’ has a natural desire to appeal to the voters. The easiest way to appeal to them, and attract their votes, is to pull content from other artists (artists are voters), and to openly receive new ideas from them. By gravitational attraction, therefore, the clumps of consensus are drawing content from the creative cloud along communication lines that resemble (somewhat) the voting lines.
This raises an interesting question. The text is not, in this case, a policy document or legislative bill. Rather, it is art. What is the meaning of consensus, when it forms on an object of art? When it forms on a policy document or a legislative bill, its meaning depends on the fact that the artifact is subsequently actualized in the political sphere. But where is art actualized? How does a work of literature, for example, confront the world?
“I publish it,” answers the publisher.
Then art is actualized in the economic sphere? This would take us back to where we began. Culture might be broadcast to a mass audience, once again. The difference is, this time, the relationship between culture and economy is altered. The two spheres are now disengaged. The publisher would be drawing his wares fully formed from the cultural sphere, without being involved in their composition.
But there is more to it than this, as becomes apparent if we revisit the question of cultural consensus, this time on a broader scale.
This section concerns the formal relationship between culture and community, as bridged by the open electoral medium.32
To fully address the meaning of a cultural consensus, we must consider the effect of a consensus that extends broadly across the community. All members of the community can vote, of course, because the medium is open. A properly broad consensus will therfore extend beyond the artists and their immediate audience to encompass the entire community.
This opens a question: How can those members of the community who are neither artists nor audience meaningfully contribute to a consensus that forms on a particular object of art? To frame an answer, let us return briefly to a political orientation, and consider an object of law: a legislative bill for tax reform. Most residents are not actually going to read a legislative bill. (Even professional legislators often read only a summary.) Nevertheless, almost every member of the community does have an interest in tax legislation. Consequently, they also have a motivation to vote. This poses no problem for the consensual medium, because it is a delegate cascade. A typical voter who lacks the time and expertise to read a legislative draft will nevertheless have time to cast a vote. She can do this in an informed manner, for example, by voting for a friend who is better informed than herself — perhaps a friend who is a tax accountant — and has similar interests to her own. By casting a vote on the basis of trusted and reliable information, such as this, she is making an informed decision. If she has doubts or questions, she can direct them to her chosen candidate. By engaging her friend in dialogue and weighing the answers, she can decide whether to leave her vote in place, or to shift it to another candidate.
Meanwhile, those candidates who are more directly occupied with the legislative drafting (higher in the cascade) will be revising their drafts in response to (and in anticipation of) the vote shifts. By this mechanism, an entire community is intimately involved in the composition. And should their votes ever cascade to a single consensus draft, then it properly represents the legislative expression of the entire community.
We can now see, more clearly, the meaning of a cultural consensus. If a broad consensus were to form on a cultural artifact, then that artifact would be, quite literally, the creative expression of an entire community. It only remains to predict what sort of artifact would be capable of capturing and holding the broad interest of a community. If it was not Harry Potter, for example, then what might it be?
Recall from Weber: “Not ideas, but material and ideal interests directly govern men's conduct. Yet very frequently the ‘world images’ created by ‘ideas’ have, like switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest.”22 Recall from Parsons (figure 10): the function of the political sphere is ‘goal attainment’. Putting these two together suggests the hypothesis that a community will employ an open electoral medium in order to independently form and express its most distant aims in culture; while, simultaneously, employing it to attain those aims in politics.
| 1. |
The original idea of an open electoral system came out of discussions in the APSA_ITP mailing list.2 We were considering an earlier proposal for a system of community law-making.12 We realized we could take the proposed voting mechanism of community law-making (intended to vote bills into law) and use it to drive a stand-alone electoral system for voting candidates into office. This idea was then proposed in the Torcamp mailing list, and explored further in APSA_ITP, DoWire, and Rabble Babble.3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 |
| 2. |
Community law-making, a system based on recombinant text. APSA_ITP, mailing list of the American Political Science Association, Information Technology and Politics Section, August 2007. http://lists.hmdc.harvard.edu/lists/apsa_itp_at_lists_hmdc_harvard_edu/2007_08/threads.html |
| 3. |
Could the public vote its own candidates into office? TorCamp Discussion Group, August 2007. http://groups.google.com/group/torcamp/browse_frm/thread/486035734280d5f9 |
| 4. |
A quiet revolution in democracy. APSA_ITP, mailing list of the American Political Science Association, Information Technology and Politics Section, August 2007. http://lists.hmdc.harvard.edu/lists/apsa_itp_at_lists_hmdc_harvard_edu/2007_08/threads.html |
| 5. |
A quiet revolution in democracy. E-Democracy and E-Government Researchers Network, DoWire Groups, August 2007. http://groups.dowire.org/groups/research/messages/topic/1Zbd0H1N6LASECK8AzLJQX |
| 6. |
A quiet revolution in democracy. Rabble Babble, August 2007. http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=5&t=002357 |
| 7. |
Open electoral system (strawman plan). APSA_ITP, mailing list of the American Political Science Association, Information Technology and Politics Section, August 2007. http://lists.hmdc.harvard.edu/lists/apsa_itp_at_lists_hmdc_harvard_edu/2007_08/threads.html |
| 8. |
Open electoral system, orderly deployment. Rabble Babble, August, September 2007. http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=006756 |
| 9. |
A ‘delegated representative’ is defined by Birch as ‘a person who has the acknowledged duty of defending or advancing certain interests specified by his or her principal’ (p. 135).17 In a delegate cascade, these interests are specified in a dialogue between the agent (candidate) and principals (voter), in which votes are voices of assent. |
| 10. |
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. [1762] 1913. The Social Contract. Dent, London. As related in Birch, p. 117.17 |
| 11. |
John Dunn. 1992. Conclusion. In Democracy: the Unfinished Journey, 508 BC to AD 1993. Edited by John Dunn. Oxford Unversity Press. |
| 12. |
Michael Allan. 2007. Recombinant Text. SourceForge.net, project textbender, release 0.2.2, file d/overview.xht. http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=134813&package_id=148018. (See also the latest version online.) |
| 13. |
Marcus Pivato describes a form of law making based on a delegate cascade, in which the end delegates would sit in a traditional legislative assembly. He also analyzes the potential benefits of the resulting ‘pyramidal meritocracy’.14 Rodriguez et al. describe a system of 'dynamically distributed democracy' based on delegate cascade, for the general purpose of collective decision making.15 Michael Allan sketches the concept of an ‘open legislature’ in which variant bills are drafted in the medium of recombinant text, and exposed to delegate cascade voting.12 |
| 14. |
Marcus Pivato. 2007. Pyramidal democracy. http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/3965/ |
| 15. |
Marko A. Rodriguez, Daniel J. Steinbock, Jennifer H. Watkins, Carlos Gershenson, Johan Bollen, Victor Grey, Brad deGraf. 2007. Smartocracy: social networks for collective decision making. 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'07). http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/HICSS.2007.484 |
| 16. |
The essential tension between personal interests and collective responsibility is described by Cynthia Farrar. 1992. Ancient Greek political theory as a response to democracy. In Democracy: the Unfinished Journey, 508 BC to AD 1993. Edited by John Dunn. Oxford Unversity Press. |
| 17. |
Anthony H. Birch. 2007. The Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy. 3rd edition. Routledge, New York. |
| 18. |
Jürgen Habermas. 1981, 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action. Volume 1. Reason and Rationalization of Society. Translated by Thomas McCarthy. Beacon Hill, Boston. |
| 19. |
Jürgen Habermas. 1981, 1987. The Theory of Communicative Action. Volume 2. Lifeworld and System: a Critique of Functionalist Reason. Translated by Thomas McCarthy. Beacon Hill, Boston. |
| 20. |
Maeve Cooke. 1994. Language and Reason: A Study of Habermas's Pragmatics. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. |
| 21. |
Quoting Cooke, p. 9.20 |
| 22. |
Max Weber. The social psychology of the world religions. In From Max Weber. p. 280. As quoted in Habermas, TCA1.193. |
| 23. |
Building consensus online. Online Consultations, Dialogues, and E-Participation, DoWire Groups, January - February 2008. http://groups.dowire.org/r/topic/uRIMxHGd9vlEp5IZRP6yz |
| 24. |
The Minnesota policy-making scenario is modified from the discussion thread Building consensus online.23 |
| 25. |
HabermasTCA1.4 attributes this diagram to Talcott Parsons. |
| 26. |
Community consensus and state power. Rabble Babble, February 2008. http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=007088 |
| 27. |
How to accomodate a 'meteor' that affects the consensus? Online Consultations, Dialogues, and E-Participation, DoWire Groups, February 2008. http://groups.dowire.org/r/topic/4Q6Pu2rGI9iPwJDjE7MQ4U |
| 28. |
Ian Colford. 1996. Writing in the electronic environment: electronic text and the future of creativity and knowledge. Occasional papers series, 59. School of Library and Information Studies, Dalhousie University. |
| 29. |
Societal and cultural effects of broad consensus. NCDD-DISCUSSION, mailing list of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation, February 2008. http://lists.thataway.org/SCRIPTS/WA-THATAWAY.EXE?A2=ind0802C&L=NCDD-DISCUSSION&P=18816, http://lists.thataway.org/SCRIPTS/WA-THATAWAY.EXE?A2=ind0802D&L=NCDD-DISCUSSION&P=4239 |
| 30. |
Societal and cultural effects of broad consensus. E-Democracy and E-Government Researchers Network, DoWire Groups, February 2008. http://groups.dowire.org/r/topic/6HJIwzhJ86I03JLfAvR6jX |
| 31. |
The correlation between society and the electoral medium, with respect to ideas and interests, was originally proposed in the NCDD-DISCUSSION mailing list.29 |
| 32. |
The hypothesized effects of the electoral medium, with respect to the cultural sphere, were originally presented in the NCDD-DISCUSSION and DoWire mailing lists.29, 30 |
| 33. |
The rationale underlying the principle of sovereign consensus was presented as a series of use-case scenarios in the DoWire forum. It was further elaborated in the forums of Rabble Babble, Literature and Latte, and Votorola.23, 26, 27, 34, 35 |
| 34. |
Political slogan. Literature and Latte, February 2008. http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=27332 |
| 35. |
Direct democracy. (or, As obvious as a mandrill's bottom.) Votorola mailing list, February 2008. http://groups.google.com/group/votorola/t/4d5ffb8690c2b4d2 |
| 36. |
Jürgen Habermas. 1962, 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Translated by Thomas Burger. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. |
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