The
proportional voting system in Switzerland works because of the special
social conditions there ("Konkordanzdemokratie"), in many other places
this system produces strong "rent seeking" effects (Italy).
There is no single instrument for controlling the "rent seeking"
influence of special interest groups and of political parties in
"Parteienstaat" models of government, these phenomena can (and must) be
controlled with many instruments.
The direct and/or indirect control of special interests and of parties
can be controlled partially with the return to the Athenian purely
stochastic (s)election for a majority of seats (reserving let´s say 51%
of them for stochastic (s)election. Every voting system can be
manipulated and has both advantages and disadvantages. The point is
that no voting system is chosen or designed explicitely for controlling
politics and politicians, but for empowering them.
Equally important is: increase the number of direct (s)elective
positions in the judiciary and in the executive/administrative branches.
Equally important are additional instruments for voting away
politicians and administrators: recall elections, popular veto
elections.
The cost of democracy must be in a relation to its productivity. The
overall goal must be to use direct democracy instruments to guarantee
as much as possible the social productivity of political activities.
When the cost is higher than productivity, like in the Parteienstaat,
the political institutions break down by themselves anyway in the long
run. The question is with what to replace them.
What is required is a general concept for re-engineering democracy so
that it becomes compatible with a new-old requirement, i.e. its
"controllability", which is related to accountability, but only
partially. Our concept of democracy is incomplete: it was successful
with delegation, but very miserable with control. It lacks practically
all efficient instruments of political and fiscal control. The effects
are devastating: we have states that have more powers than totalitarian
regimes and we cannot control them efficiently anymore.
There are some powers that definitely need to be withdrawn from
legislative institutions, like the budgeting rights, which parliaments
arrogated from the kings in many hundreds of years.
Financial referenda should become the standard budgeting procedure.
The budgeting institutions should not be parliaments anymore, but
courts of accounts with popularly elected judges and jurors.
Another power that should be withdrawn is the constitution making and
revision power, it is definitely a separate power from the legislative,
executive and judiciary and it should be institutionalized in separated
PERMANENT constitutional assemblies of directly (s)elected
representatives (small bodies at regional, national and supranational
level).
Constitution making and revision should be out of the hands of
professional politicians.
Constitutional initiative, total and partial, should be reserved to the
people with proper referendary procedures "organized" under the
permanent constitutional assemblies.
And so on ...
Luca Zampetti