Representative democracy is everywhere in crisis. In the United States, neither the presidency nor Congress enjoy much public support. In Latin America populations have taken to the streets to bring down presidents and demand constitutional reform. In Iraq – well, it's best if we just avert our eyes.
Representative democracy is everywhere in crisis, and the reasons are not far to seek. To start, it is neither representative nor democratic, nor was it intended to be so.
In England, at the time of our founding, the institutions of parliamentary government were intended to put as much distance between electors and elected as possible. The object was partly to encourage what Edmund Burke described as due deliberation in the making of laws. Legislators must be free to pursue the dictates of reason as revealed in parliamentary debate, not delegates of an informed citizenry. Even today a British “constituency” is less a population of citizens to whom a member of parliament is responsible than a place to be elected from.
In the case of the US founding, the reasoning was more utilitarian, and cynical. Institutions would be devised that would thwart the ability of selfish men and women to dominate them. Not only must the power of government to tyrannize the population be restrained, but a system must be devised to foul any chance that a “tyranny of the majority,” as James Madison put it, might have sway in national government. If the structure of government worked as promised, Madison hoped, neither Congress nor the President could wield the will of the majority against the interests of minorities. And the system has worked, at least for the powerful minorities with access to the politicians.
Majority will has little to do with the everyday workings of the legislative process in the United States (or anywhere in the world) unless and until it can express itself overwhelmingly. And even then, the odds are against it. Today, we're talking about the majority that demands an end to the war in Iraq, moral restraints in government's treatment of prisoners, decisive action on climate change, and universal health care.
Anti-war activists were outraged last spring to find that Democratic control of Congress did not translate into the power to end the war or even hamper its continuance. Bad advice, maneuvering for advantage as a presidential election approached, and, of course, Republicans were all blamed for a succession of failed efforts to cut war funding, mandate withdrawal, and restrict the president's room for maneuver.
But the real culprit is the institutions with which we are saddled. These are far more complex than the competing powers devised by Madison and his fellows two hundred years ago; but they are their stepchildren. National parties were largely unforeseen in Madison's day; they play a large role in rendering national politics unrepresentative of the popular will. Congressional rules, even more than the competing legislative powers of the White House, lend power to party leaders and subvert popular representation. And the realities of campaign finance – legislated into legality by this same system – render politicians the playthings of monied interests, rarely able to attend public demands in their efforts to satisfy their patrons.
Remember “How A Bill Becomes Law” from your civics text? It's worthwhile revisiting that boring lesson, without the rose-colored glasses. Congress people owe their position to their patrons – monied donors of all sorts, most prominently Wall Street and the largest corporations, but also monied constituents and the local politicians and political machines who represent them. (If you think the big corporations are the only corruptors of American politics, you haven't been paying enough attention to the local scene.) To satisfy this crowd, and win their support for the next election, Congress people must deliver legislation they favor, which is usually legislation that favors their financial interests. Most of this legislation is shockingly narrow – so many millions for this water diversion project, so much in trageted subsidies for the makers of this or that widget, a new federal facility here, a community arts program there. Matters, in other words, that have not the slightest interest to other Congress people.
The problem, then, is how to get these goodies into law in a majority rule setting. The answer is a system of barter. It goes by many names and takes many forms: back scratching, log rolling, horse trading, markups, riders. But it has one constant feature. To get the goodies owed one's patrons, Congress people need the support of other Congress people, and especially of committee chairs and party leaders. A lot of this is just reciprocity, not particularly distressing to the body politic if it did not involve a lot of questionable uses of the public treasury. But because it is so central to the life of Congress, it corrupts every step in the legislative process.
In this scramble for support for obscure pieces of legislation, every Congress person is a potential ally, hence the high value put on bi-partisanship. Scarcely a commitment to comity and sweet reason, bi-partisanship is a calculated effort to win support wherever support might come from. Horse trading has always gone on across party lines, never mind the passing polarization of the public. Congressional rules that enforce bi-partisan action, like the infamous 60 vote majority in the Senate, embody the institution's commitment to what counts: ensuring every Congress person the chance to make allies on behalf of his or her favorite boondoggle.
Committee chairs and party leaders are important to furthering any legislative agenda, but they demand more in return than simple willingness to make a trade. They demand loyalty. They are often willing to pay for loyalty, in the form of this or that favor hitherto denied. But on the big issues they are liable to get the loyalty they want. Those Congress people who refuse, who stand on principle or remain loyal to some constituent interest, risk being shut out. And being shut out means losing the battle to get those goodies for one's patrons, not to mention party support for their next election.
These dynamics play out everywhere, but nowhere more openly than in defense spending. In a draft of his famous parting speech, Dwight Eisenhower warned against the dangers of the “Congressional-military-industrial complex.” And with good reason. Even by 1960, the military machine had become a prime source of patronage in virtually every Congressional district in the country. New and expanded bases provided jobs and a boost to the economy, so Congress people crowed to their constituents. Never mind the prostitution, brawling servicemen, and environmental devastation. Local construction firms benefited, and suppliers grew up to provide for a population with little to spend in local stores but lots of time on its hands. Defense contractors promised jobs and tax revenues back home. Veterans perversely voted for the institution that had sapped their youth.
The need to preserve the flow of federal military dollars helped brake the paltry “peace dividend” the country got at the end of the Cold War. The Pentagon cut mainly personnel, not weapons systems, and for every base closed, half a dozen “mini-bases,” specialized military facilities, were opened up in the districts of Congress people with influence in the process.
When anti-war activists asked the new Democratic Congress last winter to “de-fund” the war, they went up against the logic of the lawmaking machine itself. Nancy Pelosi could no more refuse to bring to the floor an “Emergency Supplemental” to fund the Pentagon than she could cut off her right arm. These are privileged vehicles for pork, and the bill passed in March, 2007 showed it. The Pentagon asked for $99 billion, and the House sent forward a bill for $125 billion, including appropriations for disaster relief in New Orleans, new funding for the VA, and projects involving dozens of federal agencies besides the Pentagon, as well as the House of Representatives itself. The bill was vetoed, but the final version remained packed with special projects and provisions dear to the hearts of this or that Congress person. Little progress on the anti-war front, but oh! did the money flow for special projects. Minorities of all sorts – starting with the President and the Pentagon – were protected, indeed rewarded, but the tyrannous majority was not allowed its way. Indeed, the provisions of the bill, as of most bills before Congress, were so tedious that few people, including few Congress people, could be bothered to read them.
It doesn't have to be this way, of course. Indeed, a few heroic Congress people like Dennis Kucinich and Barbara Lee and Lynne Woolsey have undertaken to stand up for the public interest. But they pay with isolation from party leadership, committee appointments, and, above all, the influence they need to generate patronage for their districts. The system is stacked against them, and thus against any genuinely representative democracy. To change it would require a constitutional revolution: mandatory public financing of all campaigns, a ban on multi-purpose legislation, full public debate on each line-item of appropriations, and an end to Congressional rules that limit majority rule in lawmaking would be a start. And replacing the dribbling out of federal grants for this, that and the other local purpose with unfettered block grants whose destinations would be determined locally and democratically would break the patronage machine's crucial local link. More far-reaching still, a parliamentary, in place of our presidential, system would make decisive action on health care, climate change, and equitable funding for public education even more likely.
We aren't going to get a constitutional revolution, of course, though we may get reforms here and there. What we need, above all, is citizen action – not to wrest this or that concession from a corrupted Congress, not to elect some vulnerable new champion of the moment to the presidency.
We need citizen action at home, in each district and state, to replace every representative and Senator who plays by the current rules with people who won't, who will stand for the public interest, not merely local interests and not corporate interests. And we must make them accountable.
We can't accept goodies for the community, no matter how desirable, in lieu of principled stands on the issues that count. We can't support candidates who take money from the corporations or their representative or who rely on local party machines and the monied donors they represent. We'll take over the machines if we have to, defeat them where we have to, and take the first steps towards remaking American politics.
It's all very well to lament citizen apathy. But who doesn't want to retreat in the face of the obscurity of the legislative process, the obscene mysteries of candidate selection, and the corruption of even our best politicians? Few citizens can stomach tracking bill after bill, lobbying ineffectually to gain a smidgen of influence in a pay-as-you-go political system, and rallying after each defeat to have another go at it. What can arouse citizens are genuine candidates, ranged against the system, who promise a fresh vision of how things should be done. We don't ask for much, just honest legislation addressing the big issues of the day.
Michael Foley
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