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Imagine that the democratic system was allowed to progress so that a direct democracy now existed in your country. Now everybody can vote on all political issues electronically or via electronic voting stations. Politicians are unemployed, but civil servants still work to carry out the actions as voted by all the citizens of the country. How do you think such a system would work in practice over the short and long term?

ejectamenta
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    You mean like Switzerland? – JordiVilaplana Jan 13 '16 at 16:57
  • Switzerland is certainly along the road to a direct democracy however they still have politicians and parties and there is a certain amount of control over the referendum process. It seems to work pretty well for them – ejectamenta Jan 13 '16 at 17:04
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    Under this new system who proposes the questions to be voted on? Who compiles the options? How is national security defended? – Scott Downey Jan 13 '16 at 17:15
  • There would still be civil servants to implement and operate the machinery of government however democratic the democracy. Like I said there is no reason the DD has to be implemented instantly and 100% however it can be sensibly moved towards by having more referendums on different things for instance. I would at least like that people recognize that like everything else, things progress, democracy should also progress. – ejectamenta Jan 13 '16 at 18:05
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    Whenever there's an issue that affects rural and urban areas differently, votes would always swing in favor of the urban areas, due to having more people. This will make it much harder to raise crops or livestock in rural areas (where most of the food comes from), so this probably won't be good for anyone in the end. – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Jan 13 '16 at 21:06
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    @ScottDowney, directdemocracy.stackexchange.com is the obvious choice ;-) – bob0the0mighty Jan 13 '16 at 21:28
  • This has actually existed, although maybe not exactly like you're asking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy Two points about Athenian democracy versus "direct" democracy: 1) The size of the population being ruled matters (Athens was kind of small). 2) The size of the voting population compared with the total population matters (Athens extended voting to citizens only). You might clarify who is voting in your direct democracy. Two year olds? Mentally incompetent? Criminals? And then the results will vary by population size. – Todd Wilcox Jan 13 '16 at 22:02
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    From the above linked article: "* Instead of seeing it as a fair system under which 'everyone' has equal rights, the critics saw it as the numerically preponderant poor tyrannizing the rich." Fascinating* – Todd Wilcox Jan 13 '16 at 22:06
  • @ToddWilcox I think the size of the population matters only in terms of logistics. modern means of communication would allow a large population to vote and express themselves. – njzk2 Jan 13 '16 at 22:26
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    See this faction where "... a neural implant that constantly seeks the user's opinion on aspects of Demarchist life." – JDługosz Jan 14 '16 at 05:00
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    One important note: Most countries have systems in place that prevent one element from gaining absolute power. There is plenty of good reasons for that: Power without control is a dictatorship. The system you describe would not be a democracy but an olchocracy: a dictatorship of the majority. – Burki Jan 14 '16 at 07:57
  • [And who would be the civil servants?] (http://xkcd.com/977/) – Christopher King Jan 14 '16 at 10:32
  • @PyRulez The civil servants would be competent and well educated employee's of the state with the ability to implement decisions. They would also be subject to any votes of no confidence in the case of corruption or incompetence, they could also offer up a defense of their actions prior to any vote. – ejectamenta Jan 14 '16 at 10:44
  • @JDługosz I particularly like this idea from your Demarky link - kind of like a reputation on stack exchange - "Citizens who regularly make "good" decisions on civic issues, based on analysis of decision-making outcomes, have their votes weighted for more in subsequent polls." – ejectamenta Jan 14 '16 at 12:41
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    Going with that, @ejectamenta, I'm reminded of Freedom (TM) which uses rep based on a game engine as a form of government! It also has a metric describing how concentrated or spread out the reputation is, with a particular range being optimum. – JDługosz Jan 14 '16 at 17:39
  • "I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion." - Thomas Jefferson – ejectamenta Dec 09 '16 at 13:54
  • @ejectamenta Concerning "I like this idea... Those who make 'good' decisions, based on analysis, have their votes weighted for more", I hope you mean it sounds good for a story and not that it sounds good for reality, as that sounds terrible. It barely works out for a net positive for StackExchange, but we endure a lot of negative along with it. It's like the law of large numbers: you are going to endure a lot of bad before you get your minor net gain in the long run. – Loduwijk Jan 03 '18 at 22:34
  • @ejectamenta Concerning your Thomas Jefferson quote, that does not apply to the situation in your question. The situation in your question does not give the powers to "the people," but rather it gives the power to only a subset of the people; everyone who disagrees with the majority gets no power, even if that group is 45% of the population. – Loduwijk Jan 03 '18 at 22:37
  • When you ask a yes/no question, which is often the case when you have to make a decision, there can be no in between answer and the majority vote is the sensible decision, otherwise you give the vote to the minority, which is unfair. Not everyone can be a winner, but the majority of people can. BTW that is Thomas Jefferson's answer to the question is that to "inform their discretion" would help such a system work well in practice. – ejectamenta Jan 05 '18 at 16:00

13 Answers13

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First, you'd have to figure out exactly how it would work.

Will every single government decision be made by a referendum? Suppose the government still has welfare programs to help the poor. Will we have a vote on whether Fred Smith should receive benefits? Then the next day on whether Sally Jones should receive benefits? Etc. You might say of course not, we would have a set of objective criteria and it would be up to civil servants to apply them. But even so, the present criteria are very complex, involving income, assets, number of people in the family, etc. Many government regulations are thousands of pages long. Would we vote on each sentence, one by one?

Who would decide what gets voted on, what the choices are, and how they are described? Hey, if I get to decide what goes on the ballot, I'd gladly support your system! Like, "Should we declare war on Ruritania (a) today or (b) tomorrow?" That's obviously a biased question, there should really be a choice of "never". But who decides when a question is biased, and what makes it fair? Very realistically, politicians today often try to frame a question so that whether you answer yes or no, you are agreeing with them. Activists are always conducting opinion polls carefully phrased so that they are happy with any answer you give. One that comes to mind asked, "Which is more important, (a) balancing the budget or (b) cutting taxes?" A majority answered "(a)", and so they declared that the people were opposed to tax cuts. If the majority had said (b) then they could have said, "Oh well, I guess we'll just have to run up more deficits." Many would say that the right answer is to cut spending, but that wasn't even given as a choice. I could give many similar examples.

You could say that you'll avoid this problem by allowing anyone to propose a referendum. But if literally anyone in the country can call a referendum at any time, then wouldn't we have thousands of referendums every day? How could people possibly find time to even cast their vote on them all, never mind study the issue so they could make an informed decision? Sure, you could say that someone will have the job of deciding which proposals are reasonable and which are not, but then you're right back to, Who makes that decision?

It's easy to write on a piece of paper, "All reasonable options will be given and the wording will be unbiased." But how do you make that happen? At some point a person has to decide that this question is reasonable and fairly worded.

What happens when two votes contradict each other? Again, using opinion polls as a reference point, pollsters are well aware that subtle differences in wording can give very different results. For example, in one experimental poll, they asked at one point whether all citizens should get free health care "provided by the government". Later in the same poll they asked if citizens should get free health care "paid for with tax dollars". Presumably those two questions mean the same thing. Yet, I forget the exact numbers now, many people answered yes to the first question and no to the second. This was on the same poll, so it was the very same people.

As you note, you would have to have civil servants to carry out the policies that people voted on. Who chooses the civil servants? Personally, I've come to the conclusion that referendums under our current system are almost useless, because even if a referendum passes overwhelmingly, if the politicians and the bureaucrats don't like it, they just don't carry it out. Sometimes they make excuses: we're working on it, it's very complicated, see we enforced it one or two times, etc. Other times they flat out say they won't do it because they think it's wrong.

I conclude that 100% direct democracy is wildly impractical, or at least, that no one has yet figured out how to do it.

Perhaps you could make it work for a small number of high-level questions. Should we declare war on X? Should we ban handguns? Should we outlaw abortion? Etc. But even there, one can easily imagine all sorts of possible half-way positions. Like in between "anyone can buy any weapons whenever he likes" and "all weapons are banned" there are all sorts of possible half-way positions.

Assuming you found some way around these problems, you certainly would not eliminate politicians and lobbyists, at least not without a whole lot of further policies. Yes, you could write on a piece of paper, "there will be no politicians and all citizens will have an equal voice". But will you make it illegal for people to encourage their friends and neighbors to vote one way or the other? If so, your society is not free at all. If not, how do you draw the line between "chatting with your friends", "writing a letter to the editor or posting a column on the Internet now and then", and "making a career of political action". If you have no rules about what sort of political action people can engage in, then some people will devote their lives to convincing others to vote their way, and they will get people who agree with them to support them. I think that's pretty much the definition of a "politician". If you say that there will be restrictions on political action, than who enforces these rules, and how do you ensure they do it fairly? I used to be an officer in a Political Action Committee, and I saw first hand how the people responsible for enforcing campaign laws could come down hard on groups they didn't like while giving groups they did like every benefit of the doubt.

Addendum — Switzerland

I see that the OP has made a few comments about Switzerland. I don't claim to know a lot about how Swiss politics, but based on what I know, here are some thoughts. (I'm glad to hear comments from anyone who knows more about how it works in practice.)

Switzerland may well have the most "direct democracy" of any country in the world. They have a provision in their constitution for holding referendums, and it is frequently used. I just checked and found one source that said there have been about 250 proposed constitutional amendments in the past 150 years (obviously not all passed), and there are a dozen or so other referendums in a typical year.

But Switzerland makes no attempt to make ALL government decisions by referendum. They still have a parliament and an administration. Switzerland's system of referendums serves as much to shape debates in parliament as to be used in practice. That is, if a majority of parliament favor a law that has strong opposition from the people, opposing parties can threaten to call a referendum. Often the threat is enough to lead to compromise, and they never actually call a referendum. So their referendums are not primarily a means of setting the national agenda, but rather a brake on extremism by the coalition in power. In my humble opinion, this is far more practical than 100% direct democracy.

It takes 50,000 signatures on a petition to call a referendum. In theory, anyone can write up a proposal and try to collect signatures. In practice, collecting 50,000 signatures is a lot of work and requires a lot of people. Also in practice, the political parties will quickly line up for or against any given proposal. So the Swiss system does not eliminate political parties or politicians in any sense.

What Switzerland's system DOES do is, (a) prevent the ruling coalition from ramming through policies that the majority of the people oppose; and (b) give the people a way to force the government to address issues that it would rather avoid.

Given that they still have an elected parliament and political parties, I presume that in general, if a policy is popular with the people, there will be a significant faction supporting it in the government. I mean, if 60% of the people favor X, it may well be that the ruling parties oppose X, but there will still be a strong minority in parliament that support it. So for almost any serious proposal, there will be politicians in the political system who support it and will fight for it.

In my opinion, this sort of mixed representative democracy slash direct democracy system is far more practical than 100% direct democracy.

JDługosz
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Jay
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  • Pretty comprehensive and well argued answer. In reply I would point to Switzerland who implement their version of direct democracy sure it not 100% but its more than other countries and resulted in a stable system for many years. This is an evidence that progress to increased democracy is possible without leading to chaos. – ejectamenta Jan 13 '16 at 19:25
  • As long as your "never" vote on Ruritania can be revisited next Tuesday when they invade Germany. – GalacticCowboy Jan 13 '16 at 21:36
  • @GalacticCowboy Sure. "Never" was not really the right word, I was just contrasting with "today" and "tomorrow". I presume any policy should be subject to change in light of changing circumstances or new information. "New information" often consisting of, "we tried this and it didn't work". – Jay Jan 14 '16 at 06:51
  • that's exactly it, Switzerland have a progressive democracy that is in advance of most other countries. They have introduced some safeguards, maybe because of experience or maybe because of the current stage of development of their system. If anything comes from this topic I hope it would be the idea that democracy does not have to be fixed by a unchanging constitution, but that it can develop and improve to better meet the needs of society. Progress is common to most systems existing in a dynamic environment (for instance most commercial organisations). – ejectamenta Jan 14 '16 at 09:57
  • Notes about Switzerland (unordered) : (a) There is no ruling coalition. The executive power is hold conjointly by 7 people, elected by the parliament. This means that each of the 4 biggest parties (out of ~7) have generally 1 or 2 representative there. (b) Referendums apply to any law passed by the parliament, but law proposal by the people only apply to amendments of the constitution. (c) These are not meant to set up the political agenda, but are sometimes used as such by the political parties. (d) The change from ~feodal to this form of democracy lead to a civil war. (a tiny one but still) – Kolaru Jan 14 '16 at 14:55
  • @Kolaru Hmm, as I said, I don't claim to know a lot about Swiss politics. (a) By "ruling coalition", I was referring to the common idea in parliamentary democracies that a group of parties who joinly have over 50% of the seats control parliament and "establish a government". As I understand it, this is how it works in Switzerland. The members of the Federal Council are chosen by parliament and will represent a coalition of parties who can muster a majority vote. (b) Oh, I think you're right. And it takes more signatures for a constitutional amendment. – Jay Jan 14 '16 at 15:35
  • @Kolaru (c) Could debate what they are "meant" to do, but basically yes, I was trying to say something like that. (d) I'm still struggling with the politics, never mind the history. :-) – Jay Jan 14 '16 at 15:36
  • @Jay But you asked for precision :P. For (a) it is how it could work, since if you get the absolute majority you could in principle elect whoever you want in the Federal Council. But the unwritten rules of "Swiss political politeness" precise that you should elect a panel coming from all big parties. Actually there is 2 socialists, 1 of the center, 2 of the liberal right, and 2 of the conservative right. Note that 8 years ago, the parliament elected somebody of a party but not the one proposed by the party and it feels like a earthquake. – Kolaru Jan 14 '16 at 16:26
  • @Kolaru Are you from Switzerland? Your last statement sounds like someone from the country. RE (a) Do you mean that if, say, the Greens and the Liberal Greens between them had a majority, they would still have someone from the Swiss Peoples Party on the Federal Council? If so, okay, very different from how most parliaments work. – Jay Jan 14 '16 at 17:03
  • @Jay Yes I am Switzerland. The idea is that the composition of the Federal Council should more or less reflects the composition of the parliament. So in your example if the Greens and Liberal Greens get both 40% of the seats and the Swiss Peoples Party 20%, it is expected (but once again there is no written rules about that) that the Swiss Peoples Party get one seat in the Federal council. – Kolaru Jan 14 '16 at 23:42
  • @Kolaru Fascinating, and not how most parliaments work. In most countries, I think, if party A had 40% of the seats and B had 35% and C had 25%, then two of the parties would team up to form a majority, let's say A and C. A and C would then get all the ministries, and B would get none. As A has the most seats they'd normally get the prime minister. Well, this is getting off track from the question. I'll have to read more on Swiss politics, sounds interesting. – Jay Jan 15 '16 at 03:48
  • From what I gathered from a on-topic question on Politics.SE, Swiss referenda which are binding are ONLY about vetoing actual, already-passed-by-parlament, laws. NOT about voting on random topics. – user4239 Dec 01 '16 at 02:53
  • @user4239 As I understand it, you can have a referendum to veto a law passed by parliament, or to amend the Constitution. So yes, you can't propose a new law, but if you want to bring up a new subject, you might be able to do it as a constitutional amendment. For example, in 2016 there were referendums on eliminating the tax penalty on marriage, deporting foreigners convicted of crimes, and a requirement that fuel taxes must be used for road construction. I think in most cases those would be subjects for law and not constitutional amendments. – Jay Dec 01 '16 at 14:53
  • @Jay - you have to get a minimal threshold of signatures for amendment, I think. – user4239 Dec 01 '16 at 17:39
  • @user4239 Yes. 50,000 to reverse a law and 100,000 to amend the constitution. And of course you have to get a majority of the vote for it to pass. And for a constitutional amendment, I forget the details, but you also need a majority of the cantons voting for it, what they call a "double majority". – Jay Dec 02 '16 at 14:45
  • You addressed feasibility of mechanics of this structure, but not the impact that structure has. Example, in the US, I have a feeling all Hispanics would be ejected from the country, guns would be banned, and after the 9/11 attack it's possible the middle-east might have gotten nuked (I heard lots seriously say they wanted that). Further, you bring a good point about "who makes the questions?" and "who votes?" We might still have slavery of Africans. We would have a virtual slavery of minority opinions to the majority. There would be no more freedom. These are more important than mechanics. – Loduwijk Jan 03 '18 at 23:10
  • Hmm, your examples seem pretty extreme and unlikely to me. Considering that we had a war to end slavery where the majority of the people were on the anti-slavery side, I think that one is pretty provably wrong. But anyway, whether we'd have a "tyranny of the majority" comes down to whether, when faced with a controversial question, people would vote that everyone should be forced to do it their way, or whether they'd vote for freedom. To take a deliberately silly example, if you had a referendum asking if tacos should be outlawed, it doesn't follow that everyone who doesn't like ... – Jay Jan 04 '18 at 08:32
  • ... tacos would vote yes. Presumably people who like tacos would vote no. Some number of people would say "tacos are disgusting, they should be outlawed". But I'd think that many people who don't like tacos, maybe who even hate tacos, would still say that there's no reason to ban them. Even from a totally selfish point of view, they might recognize that setting the precedent could mean that tomorrow something that they like could be banned. – Jay Jan 04 '18 at 08:35
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It would be complete chaos, with manipulation of the masses become crucially important to those who have the means to do so.

Consider that most people make decisions based on very little, or very biased information:

The guy I listen to on local radio said that Orcas kidnap babies from their cribs and eat them, so I'm voting to allow the Japanese whaling fleets into our territorial waters!

Not only:

  1. Would the rich be able to manipulate public opinion on a level never before encountered.

Donald Trump has the money to launch any number of propaganda campaigns which would reach millions. He could also announce certain ridiculous promises if a certain issue is voted in. For example: I'll shave my head if the whaling fleets are allowed into our territorial waters. How many idiots would say: "OMG, I TOTALLY WANNA SEE TRUMP DO THAT!" VOTE.

but

  1. Famous people (the likes of Miley Cyrus, etc.) would have an incredible amount of power is swinging votes toward one side of an issue or another, even in foreign countries.

Miley Cyrus tweeted her anger at the government of British Columbia, Canada organizing a Black Bear cull. Their numbers had reached the point where they were coming into towns looking for food - like people's pets. How many idiots would be swayed by Cyrus's completely uninformed, ignorant stance that killing even a single "innocent animal" is murder? Sure, the local town people know that these animals are dangerous, but the more numerous unaffected citizens in the bigger cities might out-vote the locals on this issue.

The fact is that most people DO NOT understand the implications of the decisions that legislators make. Sometimes the legislators themselves fail to consider certain information, or implement flawed or biased decisions based on their ideology, campaign promises, as political favors, etc.

Allowing the ignorant to chime in, however, is a recipe for complete disaster.

AndreiROM
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    One could argue that this is a problem with democracy in general - in many ways it's more of a popularity contest than it is a rational objective selection of the best candidate. – Ieuan Stanley Jan 13 '16 at 17:11
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    @IStanley - while that's true, there's still certain checks and balances in place in order to not allow any single megalomaniac from completely polarizing public opinion and doing something extreme. The general idea is that *competent* people are elected. We know that's not the case, but at the same time *some* competent politicians *do* get in. However, if you look at the population as a whole, the vast majority are not that well informed, or educated. I'd rather take my chances with the politicians, than with Billy-Bob's and Billy-Ray's opinions. – AndreiROM Jan 13 '16 at 17:16
  • In a DD the people will have no one else to blame for the problems, they will have to get wise. 1) The rich would have to convince the whole electorate, they can't just make everyone millionaires. 2) it's a local issue why couldn't DD be decentralized for local issues, In terms of the Media influence, well the old broadcast media is dying a death, its becoming ever more electronic (Youtube, Twitter, FB). Anyway DD must not happen instantly, its a process of democratic improvements or progress, why should we be using a 19C system of democracy in the 21st century? – ejectamenta Jan 13 '16 at 17:34
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    This view does have some caveats; in a non-mandatory voting country, for example, it's possible that only the most engaged and informed would vote anyway. It's also possible that the most swivel-eyed would too, of course :) – Whelkaholism Jan 13 '16 at 17:36
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    I suppose a better way of putting it would be the people with the strongest opinions on how the country should be run would vote. Oh dear. – Whelkaholism Jan 13 '16 at 17:38
  • so you think that it would be overrun with Trolls bringing down society, where are they going to find all these trolls, they would have to find millions of idiots who want to live a terrible existence. Now we have the situation that a few very rich idiots decide the rest of us can live a terrible existence, these people are busy buying mansions in far away places like New Zealand. – ejectamenta Jan 13 '16 at 17:42
  • @ejectamenta, a good reason to use a 19th century (or waaay older actually) system of government is that it's been working for hundreds of years! Our world is changing a lot lately, especially technologically, but that doesn't mean everything from the past should be thrown away. – Nacht Jan 13 '16 at 23:09
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    You have a rather sad view of the world, you assume that the majority of people is stupid and ignorant. Given good education and proper new outlets most people are interested in what is going on around them. From the media you obviously the worst of humanity gets the most show-time, same with internet trolls being only a small part of the users but being the loudest overall. Though as a disclaimer I'm not from the US so maybe I'm used to a different culture. – Selenog Jan 14 '16 at 10:10
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    @Selenog - who said I'm from the US? Also, it's pretty easy to lose hope in mankind when you look at what's happening in the world. How many Westerners even know where Syria is on a map? Would you let them vote on sending bombers over there? – AndreiROM Jan 14 '16 at 13:33
  • @AndreiROM, I did not mean to imply you where from the US. Just that from what I understand the average education level is not great there (not talking about the well educated here so don't take offence, I'm talking about the average family) in comparison with West-Europe and media outlets are heavily politicized. As such I might be used to a different culture and hence my opinion is colored by that. – Selenog Jan 14 '16 at 14:44
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    Re: this answer, that's precisely the outcome I would expect. Even now, party politics is mostly a popularity show using fear, ideology, data mining and public talking skills instead of demonstrating competency. However, doing the opposite and taking decisions away from the uninformed masses and letting experts decide (technocracy) would quickly have the masses blame the experts and revolt... – Cygon Jan 14 '16 at 14:48
  • Note that the problem of mass manipulation could be reduced if there was a proper education about manipulation in school. The progress made by scientific on the subject the past century have been reflected in advertising strategies, but not in education (at least were I live). – Kolaru Jan 14 '16 at 15:01
  • If you ask the public they support good quality education to benefit their children in life, if you ask the politicians they support poor quality education so they are better able to manipulate the electorate. The doomsayers are commenting from the viewpoint of a society that has been already been damaged by power politics. This topic is about the best possible future system of government, IMHO this system should not be a revolution it should be an evolution of step by step improvements. – ejectamenta Jun 11 '18 at 08:42
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Mob rule - the rise of Tyrants - see ancient Greek history.

This was discussed by the US Founding Fathers. They studied the history of democracy and came to the same conclusion: Direct Democracy is very unstable and prone to the rise of Personality Cults - Tyrants as they were called in Greek History.

The French Revolution devolved into mob rule in many places, mostly cities. People were arrested and/or executed on the opinions of the mob and nothing else.

When you have mob rule, your rights are dependent upon the goodwill of the mob and nothing more.

Do something to make the mob mad, and they vote to kill you, and you're dead.

That is much harder to accomplish through a slow moving representative democracy.

The very things that can make representative democracy annoying are the same things that protect your civilization from the emotions and whims of the mob.

  • You are talking about very unstable situations, situations of civil war, is there anything good that comes from civil war? These civil wars come about mostly through a form of fascism, the complete opposite of DD? – ejectamenta Jan 13 '16 at 18:18
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    Certainly not - Plato, in his Republic clearly outlines how a tyrant comes to power by manipulating the mob, then using the mob to bring his enemies to court and have them executed. –  Jan 13 '16 at 18:26
  • I don't see what mob rule has got to do with a ordered and modern system of direct democracy. You are talking about a society from 500BC! – ejectamenta Jan 13 '16 at 18:39
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    Why does technology change anything? You are saying that everyone gets to vote. I submit to the mob for a vote that we execute you. I promise them your property and bank accounts if they vote "yes". They vote "yes", you get killed and we take your property. Modern or not, technology has nothing to do with it. –  Jan 13 '16 at 18:42
  • But why should this happen, why should everyone follow you and kill me, and anyway what has happened to the legal system, and anyway what kind of a DD would allow a vote on killing someone just because someone said it, this is more Mad Max than DD. – ejectamenta Jan 13 '16 at 18:51
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    Why? Because people oftentimes want what others have. Especially if you are rich. You ask what kind of DD would allow a vote like that - I gave you two clear historical examples, which you rejected because they were old. Because you appear to be bigoted against other time cultures, let's use a current example. In the US, the majority of citizens in most States voted to reject gay marriage via DD. Were they right or wrong? –  Jan 13 '16 at 18:56
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    If the system doesn't allow us to call a vote to kill you and steal your property, then that must mean that someone decides what questions are allowed to be voted on and what questions are not. I volunteer to be that person. – Jay Jan 13 '16 at 19:09
  • Why is it different then the current system? Today if a majority mob wants to vote to kill someone and take their stuff, they then elect politicians that agree with them and pass it into law. The only difference now is that we cut out the middle man. Are you all claiming that demands of this sort come up already and we are only saved by the high morals of our politicians? – sdrawkcabdear Jan 13 '16 at 20:25
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    @sdrawkcabdear - depending upon what you mean by the "current system" (e.g. the US has a bunch of structural impediments to doing exactly what you propose), the issue is probability - not possibility. Although the same outcome for both "systems" is possible, they are not equally probable. It is far more probable with a mob rule system than a representative system designed to prevent what you describe (again, the US system is a good example). –  Jan 13 '16 at 20:32
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    If you can vote to do it to someone else, then someone else can vote to do it to you. Since no politician can promise it will not happen to you, it seems very unreasonable to allow "killing people law" in the first place. In the other hand, a politician can be elected promising "I will kill all Jewish but not you". If you are not Jewish you do not risk anything. – Kolaru Jan 14 '16 at 15:16
  • @Kolaru Reminds me of a certain poem. – JAB Jan 14 '16 at 18:57
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It is obvious from your commenting that you believe that this system would be highly advantageous to current representative democracy. Like many other answers here I have some concerns.

Firstly, your assumption:

Politicians are unemployed, but civil servants still work to carry out the actions as voted by all the citizens of the country.

I am doubtful about this. In a direct democracy, you would need more, not less, politicians. Somebody needs to form all those referenda, administrate the voting, provide subject information, and implement the results. Those people are going to be politicians, if not by name, then by task. They will be very influential to the daily political life, and I see no plausible way to prevent their personal beliefs (or impact of the decision on them personally or on their friends and family) from impacting how they go on about their tasks (other than, say, having some sort of mindless drone or robot be responsible for this - this is worldbuilding.SE after all).

I have the impression that you assume this to be the tasks of the "civil servants" in your direct democracy. At the end of the day, if the real power ends up in the hands of appointed (not voted) civil servants who keep their job indefinitely, you have constructed a tyranny of technocrats. Incidentally, this is a common complaint about the European Union, where highly influental positions are filled by employees who get appointed rather than voted, and who remain in their post indefinitely and without any public validation. If those "civil servants" are, on the other hand, voted, then where is the difference to a politician?

Now to the core of your question:

How do you think such a system would work in practice over the short and long term?

Perfectly implemented, a direct democracy where almost anything gets voted on by a large fraction of society all the time (this is my assumption what you have in mind) would probably mean that the legislation would usually closely approximate the current sentiment of the majority of society about every issue. This sounds great, but has (besides rather obvious advantages) also tremendous disadvantages:

  • Minority rights stop to exist. Right now, one substantial benefit of representative democracy is that even minorities have (or should have) representation in parlament. If every issue gets decided by majority vote, a topic that is crucial to a small part of society but irrelevant or disadvantageous to the rest is essentially a lost cause.

(sidenote: I sense that you will argue that the majority will surely see the importance for the minority, and vote accordingly. As an example to the contrary, I live in Switzerland. As you mention elsewhere, in Switzerland indeed many important issues are already directly voted upon. This has sometimes interesting and illustrative effects. For instance, in the Swiss canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden, women were not allowed to vote until 1991. There were many, many referenda to give them voting rights like everywhere else in the Western world, which always got shot down based on ludicrous reasons by the male part of the population. I think this anecdote gives us a good feel for what would happen to underrepresented minoritoes in a pure direct democracy.)

  • Unpopular but necessary changes are impossible to implement. Good luck getting direct democracy approval for any change that will increase taxation for the majority of citizens.

  • Facts are (even more) irrelevant to political decision making. On all but the most simply decisions only a tiny fraction of voters actually have reasonable information to decide, hence people follow their heart and fall prey to all sorts of decision making fallacies.

(another sidenote: In Switzerland this is arguably already happening to many public votes. Many of the most contested issues are decided by both sides painting extreme and dark pictures of the future should the other side win, and at the end of the day the side that triumphs was more able to convince that Switzerland will burn should the other side win. Facts are not even a sidenote in some of those votes, and we are talking about one of the most educated countries in the world.)

  • Public attention is a fickle beast. The law of the direct democracy land changes all the time based on media reports or current events, and hence based on what the public currently considers the most important topics right now. Consequently, media are even more important and powerful, essentially replacing politicians as the entities that steer the country.

Due to this, over the medium to long run, some issues will arise that are again not voted on (taxation, basic rights, etc.). Otherwise, direct democracy land will slowly sink into chaos and anarchy, simply because it will be completely unable to reform and break down due to internal societal conflicts.

xLeitix
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  • Firstly I am in favour of democratic progression, I asked the question because I think it is an important one, as seen in all the interesting discussions. Civil servants are like employee's they are employed on the basis of qualifications to do the job, there could be voted in (like stack overflow moderators) there should be safeguards to prevent corruption, for instance corrupt and ineffective civil servants could get voted out. Your Swiss example reminds me of the recent Scotland referendum and all the media manipulation! It was a great however that they allowed this referendum to happen. – ejectamenta Jan 14 '16 at 09:40
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    "Minority rights stop to exist." It is called by some "dictatorship of the 51%". However, as in Switzerland, you can fight against that by setting different level of vote, as it is done in federation. For example, your fellow Appenzeller can not vote on the politics of Geneva. – Kolaru Jan 14 '16 at 15:10
  • Dictatorship of 51%? that's a lot of dictators! would they be all acting as dictators to each other? There was a time where there were a million little Hitlers, the cause was fascism, the very opposite of direct democracy – ejectamenta Jan 14 '16 at 19:44
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    @ejectamenta, No, they would be acting together as a dictatorship to the 49%. And, if you think the rise of Hitler was the result of fascism then you need to study history. Hitler copied fascist concepts from Mussolini after he came to power, not before. –  Jan 14 '16 at 20:52
  • I said that the cause of the German people being like little Hitlers was because of Hitler's fascism, I don't claim Hitler invented the concept, (Machiavelli?) Having said that, you are quite right I am not a historian. – ejectamenta Jan 15 '16 at 09:45
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The ancient Greek philosophers were contemptuous of Democracy for a good reason, the mob would be swayed by Demagogues and make their choices based on the passions of the moment, rather than through reason or calculation.

In the History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides has many examples of the Athenian jury being swayed by Demagogues into making rash or poor decisions. While he may be biased since one of the decisions was to exile him for breaking off a naval engagement to save sailors of floundering ships in his fleet, events like the Mytilenian Debate and the Sicilian Expedition are very strong evidence that he was correct.

In order to govern, and in order for politics to even work (politics is defined as "a means of allocating scarce resources" in Organizational Theory), passions of the moment need to be placed in the background, so questions can be examined and answers developed. In ancient Greece, efforts were made to prevent the formation of what might be called voting blocks by having Jurors (voters) selected at random for each day's debates, and the organizing body (the Boule) made up of citizens selected by lot to serve for a year and having only one term for life, but this did nothing to dampen the effects of the Demagogues.

The American Founders separated the organs of state to ensure that no one person could gather power exclusively int their hands, even to the point of initially having different election systems for each branch of government (the Congress was and is elected by popular vote, while the Senate was appointed by the various State legislatures and the President is elected by a system of electoral college votes). In Switzerland, anyone can put a question for a referendum, and given sufficient signatures the legislature is compelled to examine the question, but are under no obligation to pass any legislation related to the question if they so wish, nor come to any predetermined answer (i.e. the question may be framed in such a way as to suggest or force a particular answer, but Swiss legislators are not compelled to answer the question in the "desired" manner).

So any "direct" system needs to have some sort of "dampening" mechanism to prevent voters from being overwhelmed by emotion and enacting laws on that basis.

Thucydides
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  • This is the answer. To know how a true democracy would affect society, look no further than ancient Athens, Greece. The word "democracy" has its roots in the Greek word "demagogue." – Greg Burghardt Jan 14 '16 at 04:38
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    @GregBurghardt, that's a nice example of demagogic -- both democracy and demagogue come from demos. Correlation does not imply causation. – o.m. Jan 14 '16 at 06:30
  • @o.m. - You are correct. Both words have the same root in Greek. – Greg Burghardt Jan 14 '16 at 13:42
  • The system existing in Greece in 500BC cannot not be directly compared to today. However maybe it is the only example we can compare against since the Swiss model is only a partial implementation. Still observations about using damping mechanisms are useful. Nowadays however we have technology to assist, much less general levels of violence, there are legal frameworks in place to limit extremism and computer technology can help with implementation issues. – ejectamenta Feb 05 '16 at 16:09
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Like Andrei, I believe that it would result in chaos. Some more thoughts in that regard:

  • Direct democracy has problems when multiple related questions are asked. Do you want lower taxes? Do you want a lower public debt? Do you want decent schools? Do you want a strong national defense? If the answer to all four questions is "yes," what then?
  • On a related note, direct democracy has problems when it comes to negotiating compromise solutions. Say you have 10 trillion in spending priorities and 9 trillion in taxes. Do you call for another vote on both issues? Just on spending? Just on taxes?
  • There will be people who are working full time shaping public opinion, aka politicians. By pretending that they are concerned citizens like any other, they deceive the public. Better have them admit their party membership.
  • Last but not least, people with a real job and a real life can't afford to vote on all the issues. That leaves the crackpots and single-issue fanatics.

I'm not qualified to decide on a revision of the fire safety rules for apartment buildings. Neither are my elected representatives, but those representatives have the time to listen to many different interest groups, and perhaps even the budget for a staff which does research for them.

o.m.
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  • Neither of these statements have to be the case in a DD. 1) The questions can be controlled so that they are sensible. 2) There wouldn't be politicians, there would be no need, there would however be civil servants whose job it is to run things, they are already doing this now, politicians are only a kind of public face for industry. – ejectamenta Jan 13 '16 at 17:38
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    @ejectamenta, then the people who control the questions set the agenda. And regarding politicians, imagine some guy tries to organize a vote on a minimum wage. He speaks in the neighborhood, he speaks in front of the town hall, and then people think he should speak in the capital. He says "sorry, I can't afford the bus ticket, and I can't afford to take the time off from work." So the supporters let a hat go ground to collect money. Does that make the speaker a politician? – o.m. Jan 13 '16 at 17:51
  • Well that goes on now, in DD the agenda would be decided as well. Anyone can talk and have opinions, it doesn't make them a politician, they are people belonging to parties which in turn belong to interested groups, they are the only ones allowed by the current system to make decisions for the country, its quite different to your example, actually I don't really see your point.. – ejectamenta Jan 13 '16 at 17:57
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    @ejectamenta, I don't believe that political parties "belong" to special interest groups. Sure, special interests try to influence parties, but a well-organized party is more resilient to that than unorganized individuals. – o.m. Jan 13 '16 at 18:11
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    @o.m. And if we have a law that says he's not allowed to collect money to engage in political action, then people who are independently wealthy and don't need to hold down a job, i.e. the rich, have way more political influence than the working class. Indeed, we have a law in the U.S. today that says that a candidate for public office cannot use campaign contributions to pay his living expenses, and that you cannot evade this rule by saying it was a personal gift and not a campaign contribution. As a campaign for federal office is pretty much a full time job for a year or more, this means ... – Jay Jan 13 '16 at 19:19
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    ... that only people who can afford to not work for a year can run for federal office. That is, you must be rich to run for federal office. It is literally AGAINST THE LAW for a middle class or poor person to run for federal office in the U.S. today – Jay Jan 13 '16 at 19:20
  • @Jay, I don't believe that the present-day US are a good example for effectively organized political parties. – o.m. Jan 13 '16 at 19:37
  • @Jay what is the law you speak of? What is its specific definition of middle class? Is it literally a US Federal law that middle class people can't run for office or are you arguing that it is so expensive only the rich can afford to run without massive fund raising? – sdrawkcabdear Jan 13 '16 at 20:16
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    @ejectamenta "in DD the agenda would be decided as well" - by whom? – GalacticCowboy Jan 13 '16 at 21:38
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    @sdrawkcabdear Please read my post. I explained what I meant: to run for Federal office you have to be able to take a year or more off work to campaign, and you are not allowed to use campaign contributions or gifts to support yourself. I did not say or mean that the law explicitly says, "middle class people are not allowed to run for office", but rather that the law makes it almost impossible. – Jay Jan 14 '16 at 06:58
  • @sdrawkcabdear Oh, and it's not that only the rich can do it "without massive fundraising". My point is that fundraising to pay your mortgage, medical bills, electric bill, etc is specifically prohibited, so unless you have savings or investments adequate to support yourself without working, you can't run. You can raise funds for actual campaigning -- running ads and so on -- but not to pay your personal bills. Okay, a poor person who is retired and has a pension could run, and there are some loopholes in the law that under some circumstances your husband or wife could support you. – Jay Jan 14 '16 at 07:01
  • @GalacticCowboy the people could decide the agenda, by a proposal/voting system, I could imagine a kind of Reddit voting system where the posts are agendas. The agenda's move up or down depending on popularity. However this is all theoretical whether it works or not would have to be determined experimentally whether it leads to a positive outcome. – ejectamenta Jan 14 '16 at 10:11
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Surprisingly there are some things we pay politicians for. There are a few issues its is hard to deal with without full time legislators.

Complexity

Some topics are complex and so the laws controlling them have to be complex, the nuclear treaty with Iran would have to be multistep, and would require a strong understanding of the process of making nuclear weapons, Iran's current capabilities and the balance in the region. It would take days and weeks to learn enough about these issues to make an informed vote.

Secrecy

There are congressional committees that provide oversight for covert operations, direct democracy would require that everything the government knows is public information so we can vote on it.

Compromise

There is only X money in the government's budget if everything everyone wanted got funded we would spend 5X or 10X. So a compromise needs to be reached where some things don't get funded, or taxes go up. Its very easy for part time legislators(direct democracy) to just dig in their heels and say I want thing Y and I refuse to compromise. Full time legislators spend time figuring out what others can and cant give up and have pressure on them from their constituents to balance the budget and keep the government running.

Trickery

A subset of complexity. It is easier to fool a part time legislator so it would become more common. Bury a important clause funding some random thing deep in a bill where people will miss it. Propose and vote on important legislation the night of the Grammies so most people won't pay attention to it.

sdrawkcabdear
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  • Interesting points. Civil servants provide a lot of the work that you mention, they are supposed to be non-political. There's no reason why civil servants would not still be needed to manage the machinery of government, just like you need engineers to fix your car regardless of who is driving it. At the moment politicians do the trickery for their own advancement, but yeh sure, they would have to be many safe guards to prevent civil servant corruption. – ejectamenta Jan 13 '16 at 18:10
  • @ejectamenta I don't see how civil servants help any of this. Civil servants tend to be decision executors not decision makers. These are all problems with part time decision makers, how would civil servants help? – sdrawkcabdear Jan 13 '16 at 20:09
  • The politicians job is to appeal to voters and manipulate the political machine, there is no requirement to be intelligent (remember Ronald Reagan?). There is also the wisdom of the crowd (Jury's are a form of DD by the population), if you ask the audience they rarely get it wrong. That's not to say that the average is better than the best, however they are less corruptible (hence their use in juries). – ejectamenta Jan 14 '16 at 09:48
  • @ejectamenta "are less corruptible" Tell that to the juries in the 1800s and early 1900s who put African-Americans to death even when it was obvious they were innocent of what they were accused; and who let Caucasian murderers go free even when it was obvious that they were guilty. That *did* happen, by a jury selected from the citizens. – Loduwijk Jan 04 '18 at 00:03
  • "by a jury selected from the citizens" - because in the apartheid system that existed in the USA at the time there was an all white jury. African-Americans could not vote for or be members of the Jury. Direct democracy is representative of all the population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-white_jury – ejectamenta Jan 05 '18 at 15:51
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I was thinking about how a truly direct democracy could work in which there would be no politicians even for announcing votes. The lowest form of government would be cities and towns including the country side around those cities and towns. Each town or city would have voting stations that people would go to vote.

For the first stage of voting people would go to their polling stations and write in what issues they think should be voted on as well as deciding what choices other people could choose to vote on for the issue they wrote in and what level of government that issue would be for.

For the second stage of voting people would look at posted issues and give each issue they find that they want to vote on a thumbs up and thumbs down issues they find that they don't want to vote on. The voting machines would then add up the thumbs up to thumbs down ratio each person gave and then divide by the number of people who used the thumbs up and thumbs down feature for voting to find the average ratio of thumbs ups to thumbs downs. Next the voting machines would delete the same ratio of issues as the average ratio of thumbs downs from each person. The issues with the highest ratio of thumbs downs to thumbs ups would be deleted.

For the third stage of voting people would thumbs up the issues that they can find that are left over from step two that they want to vote on and thumbs down issues they don't want to vote on. The voting machines would then delete the same ratio of issues as the ratio of issues deleted from stage two and using the same formula of deleting the issues with the highest thumbs down to thumbs up ratios. This process would repeat until there would be the same number of issues left as the average number of thumbs ups people gave in step two.

For stage four people would vote on the issues that had been selected. For issues that have more than two options people would rank the options and the option that would come in last would count for no votes, second to last one vote, third to last two votes, and so on. The option that would receive the most votes would be the option that would be chosen. For issues that would be quantitative people would write in the number they prefer and the average would be the number that would be the decision.

For the fifth stage of voting people would come back to their voting stations and look up what the decision for each issue would be which would automatically get posted by the computers.

Anders Gustafson
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First of all, if you want it to work, you need to prepare you country. It is quite clear that if you just drop it now without warning, it will be disastrous. Not because a direct democracy system must be flawed, but because the change is to brutal.

To get were they are, French people went through 4 different styles of republic (it is now the 5th), at least two dictatorship and a brief return to monarchy. Monarchists probably said that the problems arises because the new system was bad. It is not the case, the transition in Britain were much smoother.

So what preparation do you need to achieve a smooth transition to direct democracy ?

Reform education

Stupid people take stupid decisions. In elective democracy, you can hope that whatever happen even stupid people will elect smart representative, with DD you can not.

The actual education's goal is to make everybody capable to find a work and become a happy average Joe. The actual system (depend on where you live actually, I speak here about Switzerland where I live) is probably not bad, but surely not sufficient for our goal.

You need to add lectures about:

  • Manipulation and how to avoid being manipulated, to avoid fore example the mob effect described by Prinz ;
  • Reading statistics, because when you are a politician you need to read a lot of them and it is not trivial ;
  • Politics, diplomacy, well everything else you need to be a good politician.

And that is the point, to become relatively good in a discipline, everyone needs a corresponding formation.

That will delay the transition of several decades, since you want mainly "politically educated" people to take parts in your DD. You can of course reduce the delay by offering this lectures to adults.

Reform work code

As it as been mentioned in other answers, making politics takes time. Reducing works hours seems reasonable to expend "politics hours". You could even actually pay people the time passed on politics (after all that's a service they give to the nation, isn't it ?)

How to sustain such changes is beyond the scope of this answer.

That is for the minimal preparation. Now how will your DD be shaped ? First of all a question, you went everybody to (be able to) vote, that is the legislative power. But who will hold the executive power, and thus the power to propose law.

First of all you need to choose interesting proposals. Once it is done, I propose to allow application for a "writing committee" who's task will be to actually write a law based on the proposition. The people who made the proposition can choose whoever they want for the committee, which will be of course given juridical support.

But how to choose the "interesting proposals" ? In the spirit of a DD, here are some possibilities :

Reddit like

Proposition gain points when they are voted up, loses point with time, and if they are near the top for a certain time, they are chosen.

As for Reddit, everybody can submit, everybody can vote, and the all stuff can be divided by topics to allow you to focus on your interests.

The makers of proposal should be anonymous until the funding of the writing committee, to avoid external pressures or corruption.

Random

Everybody have a little place where to put a proposal. Each day some of them are picked at random and then the writing committee funded. It allows ugly looking proposals to be funded.

That is it. Of course you can make it better by putting up the system for each level of government (nation, state, district, city, whatever), and strongly decentralising the decisions. It will avoid a too much effect of "dictatorship of the 51%".

By teaching that politeness implies "do not vote on subject that do not directly concern you", you can even crush the effect a bit more.

Kolaru
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  • This term that keeps getting bandied about "dictatorship of the 51%" is a misnomer. A dictatorship by definition is a single persons view. What it is is a decision made by 51% of the people that maybe you might disagree with (i.e. you are in the 49% losers group). There is no implied fascism with this, only that it seems like you dislike the concept of making a binary decision on some matter that must be decided. – ejectamenta Mar 12 '19 at 15:55
  • @ejectamenta It is an hyperbole, but a genuine concern. For example, when the modern constitution of Switzerland was created, it was even a major concern: Catholics feared that the Protestant majority would impose their will (and religion) on them. The constitution was specifically designed to avoid this scenario (which was a rather nice move since the Catholics lost the corresponding civil war). – Kolaru Mar 13 '19 at 16:13
  • People always fear stuff, but in reality it was the dictators of old like Kings who imposed their will on the others of different religion. For the ancient Greeks the period of Athenian democracy was also their golden period with developments in the arts and science. And the less democratic our society is the less cultural it tends to become.
    • – ejectamenta Mar 14 '19 at 09:02
  • In general though it is a bad idea to look to history for examples of how it would be now. In those days war was much more likely and the people more war like, even if you can change your own people though democracy like the Greeks did, you can't change the other people like the Spartans. And so because they did not have nuclear deterrents in those days the Athenians got invaded and so ended the one real example of direct democracy in human history (the Swiss model is only semi-direct).
    • – ejectamenta Mar 14 '19 at 09:02