On constraints in politics

When I tell people that I work from home, they ask me how I have the discipline to do so. The answer is that I don’t. I just have a habit: I start work every weekday after breakfast without fail, so I can often get a few hours done before I’ve started thinking. If I were to wake up every morning and ask “what do I feel like doing today?” I’d never do any work.

I use a similar rule in my investments. Mostly, I make a direct debit into a tracker fund each month and an Isa contribution every November. If I had to do otherwise, I’d not save enough or make all sorts of silly stock picks. And I do the same for exercising: I go to the gym four times each week at about the same time so I’m on the crosstrainer before I’ve had a chance to ask whether I feel like it or not.

Strict habits do for me what tying himself to the mast did for Ulysses when he feared the Sirens would lure him onto the rocks. They save me from my own mistakes. All of us are potentially irrational in countless ways, in the sense of acting against our own interests. Like Ulysses, we need constraints to prevent us acting on this irrationality.

Which raises a problem. In politics, these constraints aren’t strong enough. As Paul Evans says, the EU plebiscite helped weaken our traditional system of representative democracy which was “almost specifically designed to stop leaps into the unknown.”

63% of voters think MPs should do as their constituents wish, even if this goes against their own judgement: they don’t think MPs should act as constraints upon the hasty opinion of the mob. Not that MPs are well able to do so anyway: parliamentary candidates are selected by a handful of cranky fanatics often on the basis not of ability of ideological conformity. You all like to point and laugh at the likes of Bridgen, Francois or Burgon. But what you should be doing is ask: if they’re so stupid, how did they become MPs?  

And then, of course, there is the media. This does not reveal truth and expose lies but instead operates as a broadcaster of those lies.

None of this is to claim there was ever a Golden Age of wise legislators exercising Solomonic judgment. There wasn’t. But it does mean we have a problem. We know that we all have limited rationality and knowledge. If we are to tackle socio-economic problems we must try to overcome these limits by restraining ignorance and irrationality. And yet our political system does not do so. Worse still, many politicians and commentators treat politics as just another marketing exercise and don’t even see a problem. They don't even see the question asked by Daniel Hausman: why should we satisfy preferences that are irrational or mean-spirited?

But there is. And this should not be a partisan matter. Those Brexiters who are so keen on invoking the “will of the people” should ask: would I be so enthusiastic about this will if a leftist government were to appeal to it to justify widespread nationalization?

Of course, traditionally, there have been many Ulyssesian constraints, some of which still exist. One of course is the law, which is sometimes regarded as a substitute for politics. Technocrats have devolved some decisions to experts, such as in giving the Bank of England operational independence. Rightists have traditionally favoured limited government so that political irrationality can do only little damage – although this option has fallen out of favour recently, not necessarily for good reasons. And yet others – such as Jason Brennan – advocate limiting the franchise to knowledgeable electors.

But there are other methods. What we need is the promotion of what Habermas called communicative rationality – methods of debate which rest upon truth and rationality and in which everybody has an equal say. Such methods mean that irrationality is constrained whilst cognitive diversity is encouraged. In his book Save Democracy, Abolish Voting Paul advocates mechanisms for doing this. We also require institutions (pdf) of deliberative democracy, whereby citizens can weigh evidence properly rather than act upon irrational whims.

One thing we’ll learn from the upcoming election campaign – and, I fear, perhaps the only thing – is that our existing institutions are a million miles away from such an ideal. And worse still, very few people care.

Comments

[Jim]

"As Paul Evans says, the EU plebiscite helped weaken our traditional system of representative democracy which was “almost specifically designed to stop leaps into the unknown.”"

Shame that didn't apply when we were taken in......

[Jim]

"Paul advocates mechanisms for doing this. We also require institutions (pdf) of deliberative democracy, whereby citizens can weigh evidence properly rather than act upon irrational whims."

AKA making sure that the masses can't vote for anything I don't like.............

[georgesdelatour]

“Why should we satisfy preferences that are irrational or mean-spirited?”

There’s a danger in presenting “irrational” and “mean-spirited” almost as if they’re synonyms. Especially with issues of public health, the “mean-spirited” approach can sometimes be the one that will save the most lives.

A classic case is the two Samoas, during the 1918 flu outbreak. New Zealand had conquered Western Samoa from Germany during the war, and their NZ governor was anxious to be liked by the Samoans. So he refused to impose quarantine. Eastern Samoa was under US control, and the US governor responded to news of the flu outbreak with draconian quarantine, firing warning shots at any ships that attempted to land. The end result was stark: Western Samoa had the highest fatality level from the outbreak, while Eastern Samoa had the lowest.

I mention this because, during the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak, I noticed a tendency among many decent liberal types to oppose quarantine. Apparently quarantine was cruel, it limited people’s human rights, maybe it was even racist. When a Spanish nurse infected with the disease returned home on a commercial flight, the biggest protests occurred when the authorities entered her apartment and destroyed her dog.

[georgesdelatour]

“None of this is to claim there was ever a Golden Age of wise legislators exercising Solomonic judgment. There wasn’t. But it does mean we have a problem. We know that we all have limited rationality and knowledge.”

That’s why the most important quality a polity needs is nimbleness / flexibility. Rapid error correction. The ability to execute a quick 180º turn with the minimum disruption.

Imagine if our postwar policy choices had been routinely quizzed from the following perspective: suppose your proposed policy is completely wrong - how difficult will it be to reverse course? It turns out the Attlee government’s wholesale nationalisation of major industries was actually very easy to reverse; not so the Heath government’s decision to join the EEC, apparently.

[georgesdelatour]

For a Marxist, you seem surprisingly uninterested in the class conflicts between the credentialed optimates and the un-credentialed plebs. You can’t analyse politics simply as if the optimates will be rational, disinterested and beneficent, while the plebs will be a seething mess of incoherent prejudice. The two groups are differently situated, and often, what’s good for one class is bad for the other. Politics exists partly to manage such class conflicts.

[Haohao]

The sad revelation of the Brexit debate is that it is precisely those who are most educated who are furthest from Habermasian ideals. Indeed it is so often these people that use procedural tricks to get their way, thus eating away at the very institutions that are hoped to give communicative rationality. Reason is power, power is reason: and that is all ye apparently need know on this Earth.