More on democracy

Thanks to the link at Bjørn Stærk's blog, there have been some interesting comments to my two posts below (here and here.)

In a comment Håkon writes:

There are benefits with the european system:
It is not as vulnerable to pork barrel politics, as the candidates are more dependant on the party doing well in general more than their ability to grab money for huge misguided projects.

Pork barrel politics certainly is a big problem in the American system. When in five thousand years archeologists and paleolinguists try to reconstruct contemporary English, they'll probably use Robert Byrd as the word for pork. And here, in this authentic late 20th century menu, you can see the references to breaded Byrd cutlets with fried potatoes... Perhaps we should just rename West Virginia to Byrdsylvania and be done with it. To be fair, pork is an inherent feature of the American political system as it stands now, although few have mastered the art of pork as well as Robert Byrd. But it is something that affects both parties and is an inevitable consequence of the process of canvassing for votes. If you support $1 million in my district, I'll throw in some subsidies for you. And that is a problem.

However, pork exists in Europe too, although it is more diffuse and less traceable to individual politicians. But I do disagree that this leads to fewer "huge misguided projects." In fact, I would argue to contrary. As American pork is localized, it usually tends to consist of small portions. When you add those small portions up, it's a huge chunk of money. Bigger pork comes into being when Congressmen team up to try to get a certain cut of pork for their constituencies. At some point, there is a line where you cross from pork to policy. It may be misguided policy, but it's no longer pork. (At least, I associate pork with relatively small but numerous attacks on the taxpayer's wallet.) There is a European analogon too, but it is less blatant. Well-connected politicians will be able to pull strings to get pork for their friends.

The European system instead facilitates large projects. Perhaps pork is no longer the right word to describe them, but political leaders can become enamored of certain huge projects and will use their position to push them through, even if they don't make sense. One good example is the Betuwelijn in the Netherlands, a railway link connecting the port of Rotterdam with the industrial region of the Ruhr in Germany. It's widely unpopular, and studies are now showing that the enormous infrastructure cost is not going to be recouped in any reasonable timeframe. Existing raillinks can do the job just as well. But the project is being pushed through anyway, since so much political capital has already been spent on it. Even a change of government has not made a difference.

But I guess that is somewhat tangential to the original point. Pork in the US system is indeed more of a problem than in Europe. Within the current system, a number of reforms could be introduced to counteract this. Stricter limits on what can be added to congressional bills might be one way, although I am not familiar with procedure and therefore have no idea whether this is feasible. The much-discussed presidential line item veto could also bring relief, allowing him to erase particularly blatant porky items.

But none of these remedies really cut to the heart of the problem, and that problem is that politicians have too much power. They can do too much. And once they can do something, they will do something, even if nothing needs to be done. Simply by having the option of disbursing pork, they will do it. In the comments below, Gunnar writes:

But the bigger question is "What is the purpose of government?" The American founding fathers asserted that the only proper purpose of government was to secure the individual rights of man. This is highest moral purpose of government. In the ideal then, the legislature could only pass legislation that better protects human rights, and could never violate them.

It is the ideal of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That's an ideal that was never achieved, nor was it quite as narrowly defined as above. The preamble to the Constitution states

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

This implied a broader interpretation than merely securing individual rights. Section 8 then details some of the things that fit under "general welfare." But I am treading on dangerous ground here, since I am no constitutional expert. I would agree though that having a government whose sole purpose is to safeguard individual liberties is a good thing, and an ideal worth trying to attain. But the problem with ideals is that they tend to become unstuck when faced with reality. There are areas where conflicting rights will compete for supremacy, and some abridgement of rights is necessary in to make the greater structure work; raising taxes to provide for the common defense is an obvious example. Circumscribing the powers of Congress would be a step in the right direction, not only in the pragmatic sense of reducing pork, but also in the idealistic sense of bringing government back to its main task.

In this discussion, there are a number of other issues I'd like to comment on, but feel too tired to write much about today. There's the role of money in politics, where there are some interesting comparisons to be made between the US and Europe. Another issue is that of the Supreme Court and the role of the judiciary. Finally, I'll have some thoughts on the wider reform of voting systems with some ideas for more direct democracy (and their problems).