Direct Democracy?

[nihilistcat]

---

Direct democracy has had a bad name in the US ever since our founding, but the history of direct democracy (e.g. ancient Athens) that our founders had access to, turns out to have been somewhat inaccurate (and direct democracy was more functional than previously realized).

But similar to the way we define (mischaracterize) socialism in this country (as anything that involves the state), we also wrongly define direct democracy. For instance, in NYC (where I live) one time mayor Lindsey attempted to make our democracy more direct and participatory. He did this by creating community and school boards. However, members of the school boards were caught taking bribes from unscrupulous school principles, and eventually the system was scrapped.

But at no time was this system in fact characteristic of a direct democracy. Citizens of the communities these boards claimed to represent were not able to vote on the issues, they had no appreciable input into the decision making process, and so it was really a variation of representative democracy (just more decentralized than what we have today). Nonetheless, this period gave direct democracy a bad name (and it gives its detractors some red meat to add to their arsenal).

IMO mixing some features of direct democracy into our political system (direct voting on issues at the local level, more referendum voting at the municipal and state level, and the ability to hold recall elections across the board), could potentially be the answer we're looking for (in terms of reducing corruption in our political system). I don't think it's the only thing we need to do (I think we need other ideas as well, like public financing of campaigns), but creating mechanisms and incentives to enhance citizen participation in our democracy, could go a long way to enfranchising marginalized communities and reducing corruption.

---

Thoughts?

Things that Direct Democracy needs in order to be optimally effective (in no particular order):

1. A highly informed, involved and egalitarian electorate
2. A non-partisan system of government; preferably one where individuals, rather than committees, are voted in to roles
3. Representatives with scrupulously high ethical standards 
4. High levels of local executive power with centralised principles and governance
5. Rigorous and ruthlessly executed governance systems with lifetime consequences for transgressors

This list isn't exhaustive but compare it to your current political structure and you can work out how appropriate it would be to put DD in place. I'd suggest that if 1, 3 & 5 aren't there, there's no point at all: self-interest and corruption would all too quickly destabalise the system.

"representatives" would be contrary to direct democracy, although you could have a system of delegates (and in most DD systems, delegates are usually rotated in and out, they're not elected ... every citizen would have an obligation to be a delegate at some point, much like we have a jury duty obligation). 

But in a hybrid system, I suppose we could have some aspects of both representative and direct democracy (which may be the most functional of all the alternatives). 

There's many problems inherent in both representative and direct democracy, and to date, I'm not aware of any advanced society that has been able to find the perfect mix. So IMO I think we need experimentation (but it takes a lot of work and activism just to get the space and resources needed to experiment).