(continuation of earlier response) At 04:43 PM 2/26/2006, Jiri Räsänen wrote: >The idea has been proposed by a several individuals later on. At the >moment, there are at least two organisations proposing direct >representation. One is The Finnish Citizens' Power Association, and the >other is the Center for Collaborative Democracy ( >http://www.democracy2000.org )
Democracy2000.org went up in 1998, proposing proxy representation. There is no mention of delegable proxy, which is a crucial innovation, there. Standard proxy representation, as proposed by Democracy2000, would be a vast improvement over existing methods of forming assemblies in the political arena, but we can see from the experience with proxy representation in large corporations that this innovation (i.e, applying proxy rep to political organizations, as if each voter held one share in a corporation) will be limited in its impact. It is delegable proxy that could reduce the gap between individual members and those who represent them; without this, in large organizations, we will end up with something quite like what we have today. Better, but not radically different. Politics as usual, really. A small notch up from proportional representation, that's all. >There is also a proxy-voting decision-making software under GNU. ( >http://www.vivarto.com/tiki-index.php ) If I'm correct, this is the software whose bugginess resulted in its abandonment by Demoex. (I'm not sure.) Software is necessary if one desires to make the calculation of total vote from actual cast votes easy, and especially (and with the greatest difficulty) if one wants to have base-level proxy assignments to be secure and not only confidential but blind, i.e., the recipient of the proxy does not know who exactly is being represented. Can't talk to this person on the phone, though might be able to send an email. I actually think that it may be impossible to be fully secure, for reasons I won't go into here; if secure, the system will be badly hobbled. However, fortunately, it is not necessary to be secure in initial, nongovernmental applications of DP. Proxy assignments can be open and verifiable by anyone. Further, if the context is what I've called a Free Association, phony registrations in order to fraudulently amplify the proxy rights of someone will not only be difficult to maintain, but they will be next to useless. To describe why would take more words than I can spare at the moment. Suffice it to say that I am actively promoting the combination of delegable proxy and the Free Association concept as being what will radically -- but peacefully and in an orderly way -- transform society, not just politics. Because of the avoidance of controversy *as an organization*, a Free Association could function even under difficult political circumstances, such as in China today. A Chinese FA would simply be a means whereby citizens could communicate and cooperate, ostensibly and *actually* for the purpose of intelligently and efficiently implementing official governmental policy. However, the medium is the message. Once large numbers of people are communicating efficiently and openly -- with the existing constraints --, and if delegable proxy is implemented, there will be no way to control the content of the communication, because it will take place by nonelectronic means once the connections are made. So a very gentle revolution, with maximum intelligence and minimum violence, could become possible. Tienananmen Square contains many lessons for those who would transform a place like China. Confronting a deeply entrenched oligarchy is not something that can be successfully done by ad-hoc and incoherent organizations. Even though the students at Tienanmen actually succeeded in getting the government, and especially sympathetic elements within the government, to negotiate with them, the students were unable to agree to anything, for the radical elements, who make the most noise and who can field the most fanatics on short notice, were inflexible and demanded nothing short of the total humiliation of the government. What I see is that to confront the oligarchies, we must organize independently of existing structures, and we must organize in a way that can quickly form, when necessary, a consensus. If the organization is structured properly, radical elements who do not accept the considered views of the large majority of members (as developed and expressed directly or indirectly through proxies), and who choose to act, will correctly be seen as being independent of the organization, and the organization itself will not suffer from their likely repression. Free Associations, quite simply, don't take controversial positions. But there is nothing to prevent a caucus within the organization from acting independently, since a Free Association has no control whatever over its members. It does not even take their money and spend it without their individual and continued consent, except for very minor routine operating expenses, completely noncontroversial. Once we have a broad consensus, formed outside of existing structures, we can move the existing structures, they are vulnerable to this, *all of them.* Only the most totally repressive of governments could succeed in preventing it, actually. China is repressive, but not that repressive. And neither is the United States. In someplace like Iraq, it is possible that the government could and would have acted to suppress the independent communication of citizens; however, we really don't know. Do remember that such an organization, in such a place, would be organized, ostensibly and, as I've said, actually at least at the beginning, to promote official goals. In China, for example, official policy favors environmental protection and is strongly against graft. The fact is that *any* excuse for organizing that could bring in large numbers of people could establish the organization necessary to produce the kind of social change I'm talking about. But the combination that would make this happen has never been tried: FA and DP. Demoex implemented DP, and it worked, but Demoex did not understand that in order to create what they said they wanted, they had to bring in everyone. Yet Demoex took controversial positions and promoted them. They elected a representative to serve on the city council who pledged to vote the way that they decided. It was quite easy to predict that this would alienate and offend the other members of the city council, who were faced with a robot rather than with a human being whom they could negotiate and deliberate with. Suppose, instead, that Demoex had *not* attempted to control a city council member, through an internet-meeting political party, but they had formed a DP Free Association, the purpose of which would be to *advise* the city council with regard to citizen views, and also to communicate back to the citizen whatever the council wanted to present to them. In other words, what if the relationship between this different Demoex and the council had remained totally voluntary, without any effort to exert, *directly*, political power. In this case, every member of the council would have a strong interest in communicating and cooperating with this Demoex. If not, I could predict that the next election would reverse that situation. In turn, the Demoex structure would be a means whereby the voters would receive advice about how to vote (which does happen with the actual Demoex). Note that the organization itself, unless a position happens to enjoy complete unanimity, won't be giving voting advice. But the individual proxies can and will advise those they represent as to how to vote. This is typical of FAs. They do not collect and wield power directly. But they can mobilize tremendous power if they can find consensus or something close to it. (If there is, for example, a small majority in favor of some position and almost as many members, directly or indirectly, against that position, because the two caucuses virtually formed around this issue remain free to act independently, and if both sides care about the issue, they, acting independently, will cancel each other out. But if they can find consensus, they can exert power additively. This is why FA/DP organizations would tend to generate consensus, even with highly controversial issues: consensus is more powerful. *Much* more powerful. Consensus is not nearly as elusive as most think. It seems elusive because the mechanisms to seek it generally don't exist. And existing political structures profit from division. Those who have worked in organizations using consensus process, though, know that consensus can often be found, when the process is undertaken to find it. And this brings us to why the organizations we need must be efficient, and why they must be able to form small working groups, why having a large assembly with hundreds of members won't cut the mustard. There are not hundreds of positions on any issue; therefore there is far too much redundancy in large assemblies and thus highly inefficient communication process. However, once again, I applaud and encourage all efforts to apply proxy democracy, even more delegable proxy, whether or not the organizations contain all the elements that I would see as necessary for maximum success. We will all benefit from the experience gained in these organizations; I only caution readers that the failure of such organizations will not mean that, for example, delegable proxy won't work, because failures may be due to other elements present. It will be important for us to understand *why* these experiments either failed or were less successful than they might have been. Note that one of the more subtle dangers is that an organization is mildly successful. Those who are the effective acting oligarchy in the organization -- there is always such -- will tend to think that the success if due to their efforts and that continued success depends on keeping things more or less the same, the only thing that needs to be done is to convince the bulk of the members that they should be more active. But success can exist *in spite* of what those involved think is bringing it. To me, the key questions would be: 1. Is the organization bleeding members ("whiners," "people who will never be satisfied," "people who don't really support our goals," as they will often be described), or, alternatively, does it have large numbers of relatively inactive members who are not clearly represented and connected with the decision-making process? 2. Are new ideas rapidly considered and openly accepted or rejected, such that the person bringing the idea knows, quickly, *why* it was rejected, if it was rejected? Many organizations develop black holes for new ideas. Frustrated members often don't make any noise, they just fall silent or go away with no fuss. If you don't try to find out why they have become inactive, they won't tell you. 3. Does the group make decisions without the consent of all or nearly all of its members? I don't mean "active participation," that is actually not only impossible in large groups but undesirable, but rather that there is a general and on-going consent to the existing power relationships in the organization. As an example of organizational dysfunction, consider Americans for Approval Voting, or Citizens for Approval Voting, and its primary communication mechanism, the yahoogroups list. The list is controlled by one person, though I think it may be owned by another. I was blacklisted from posting to that list, without due process, and certainly without any consultation of the membership. To my knowledge, I'm the *only* person who has ever been blacklisted who wasn't a spammer. And what did I do? I attempted to suggest that those who support Approval Voting organize as an FA/DP organization. And I did not agree to stop when I was asked to stop posting "irrelevancies." I didn't refuse, I just didn't agree to stop. I never violated any rule, at least not any written rules. I was not abusive and not truly irrelevant, and, when, earlier, the moderator had asked me, on the list, to stop writing about irrelevancies, several members spoke up and said they thought it was relevant, and the moderator basically said, "Never mind." But, of course, next time the moderator did not bring it up on the list, the moderator made the demand directly of me, and when I didn't immediately agree, the moderator did not threaten banning me, rather the moderator simply banned me, period. And even more arguably irrelevant material continued to appear on the list, just not from me. Had Approval Voting been a critical issue for me, there was plenty I could have done. But it was not, and I have, as readers of this list know, other fish to fry. I did just a little so that if there was any substantial dissenting faction in the AV community, it would have a place to go (hence av.beyondpolitics.org, a wiki), and it appears there was none. However, and this is my real point: the list traffic dwindled to nearly nothing and has continued that way for a long time. I actually did support Approval Voting, and have continued to promote it elsewhere, even though AV is little more than a short-term band-aid on the face of majoritarian democracy. Healthy organizations will welcome dissent and will channel it into its truly constructive purpose: deliberation and the development of consensus. Most of us, and most political activists especially, want to organize and communicate with people of like mind, which is quite limiting. ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
