The Spirit of Moderation

1. The problem

We are intoxicated with politics; the premium on political power is so high that we are prone to take the most extreme measures to win and to maintain political power, our energy tends to be channeled into the struggle for power to the detriment of economically productive effort, and we habitually seek political solutions to virtually every problem. Such are the manifestations of the over-politicization of social life in Nigeria…As things stand now, the Nigerian state appears to intervene everywhere and to own virtually everything including access to status and wealth. Inevitably a desperate struggle to win control of state power ensues since this control means for all practical purposes being all-powerful and owning everything. Politics becomes warfare, a matter of life and death.

– Professor Claude Ake, Presidential Address to the 1981 Conference of the Nigerian Political Science Association

I am going to try to lay out a cartoon-version of the “big picture” here. I am simplifying somewhat, but I intend to circle back and add qualifiers and complexity.

There is a bug in the code of democracy. Winner-take-all elections raise the stakes of electoral conflict. When the stakes are high, otherwise good people “do what needs to be done” to win. This is the logic of political survival. The details depend on the context, but the logic dictates a generally disturbing pattern. Whether the contest is to win executive control of a city, a state, or a country – for example, whether in the city of Newark, the state of California or the country of Nigeria – in winner-take-all politics, the ends justify Machiavellian means.

The pattern of abuse is so ubiquitous that some pessimists see electoral politics as irredeemably red in tooth and claw. Rather than seeking the common good, our leaders seek to supply the spoils demanded by co-partisans and privileged interest groups: bailouts, subsidies, tax credits, government jobs and contracts, tariffs, and monopoly privileges. Rather than upholding the truth, our leaders seek to flatter popular dogmas and prejudices, making scapegoats of foreigners, immigrants, the very rich, the very poor, or the treasonous opposition-members, as necessary. Nor are our leaders immune to dogma themselves. They are divided into warring ideological tribes, each of which clings to its own elite dogmas, sustained by confirmation bias and groupthink.

These phenomena – the frenzied fight for spoils, the pandering to popular dogmas, and the hubris arising from elite dogmas – are each manifestations of the logic of political survival. To address each problem separately is to hack at the branches, when we ought to strike at the root.

The root cause is that winner-take-all elections are not *representative* when forward-looking but short-sighted people disagree. At least in the short run, the slightly larger party is over-represented, and the slightly smaller party under-represented. Winner-take-all systems make a mountain out of a molehill of difference in votes. The party with 50.1% gets 100% of the time in office and the party with 49.9% gets none. The stakes seem especially large to the candidates, as well as their families, friends and key supporters, because – if they win – they personally stand to gain considerable wealth, status, security and/or power to influence policy. In the long run, there is turn-over in office, but people care far more about the immediate future than the distant future. As J.M. Keynes said, “In the long run, we are all dead.”

2. The solution

A more representative voting system would give equal parts to equal parties, and award the whole office only to a candidate that was closer to representing the whole electorate. In what I call a turn-taking institution, a party wins the whole term only if it can build a broad enough, big-tent, supermajority consensus; otherwise, the major parties take alternate years in office. For starters, let us suppose the requirement is 60% of the popular vote. If neither party is broad enough to win it all, the first-place team wins the first and third year and the second-place team wins the second and fourth year. Note that there is one president at a time; the ability to make decisions swiftly in times of crisis is preserved.

The turn-taking institution would have two effects. The first effect would be to immediately lower the stakes of electoral conflict. It is as though the situation itself says, “chill out!” The second effect would be to incrementally induce the growth of a culture of mutual accommodation and toleration. It is as though the situation says, “love your enemies, for they see you better than you see yourselves.” Let me explain…

Chill out! Individual citizens each start with their own sense of what is at stake. The candidates and their closest supporters may each feel as if their fame and fortune are at stake. Some voters may feel as if their livelihood or way of life is at stake, while others may believe “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference” between the candidates. Regardless of where you believe the stakes start, the turn-taking institution brings them dramatically down. So long as neither side can build the broader supermajority, the difference between the first and second-place teams is not the difference between winning four and winning zero years – a feast or famine of power – but rather the negligible difference between winning the first and third years rather than the second and fourth.

This changes the logic of political survival, or “what needs to be done to win control.” It decimates the payoff for the kind of foul play that today is too often recognized as a necessary evil or rationalized as a positive good. It weakens the grip of the invisible hand that draws in otherwise good people to targeting lavish benefits at co-partisans and key special interests; to pandering to popular prejudices; and to dogmatically pursuing risky and divisive policy objectives. Of course, even if office-holders were to continue to do the same awful stuff as before – no longer to increase their chances of winning but merely to “get while the getting is good” – the stakes of electoral conflict would go down.

Love your enemy! The turn-taking institution would incrementally induce the growth of a culture of mutual accommodation and toleration according to the spirit of the golden rules. Across a vast variety of situations, the positive golden rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you – serves as a heuristic for identifying behaviors that participants would deem to be mutually beneficial and fair. The negative golden rule – do not do to others what you would not have them to do you – serves as a heuristic for identifying behaviors that would elicit angry, spiteful or vengeful responses. The golden rules work because they tap into the human propensity for the logic of reciprocity. The turn-taking institution puts opposing parties in a situation where they expect to spend equal time in the “in” and “out” role in the immediate future.

Over time, this would dampen the privileges demanded as well as the privileges supplied. Many citizens would see that demanding partisan privileges today only brings an equal and opposite reaction tomorrow, and therefore moderate their demands. The logic of reciprocity would work even better between opposing leaders, who – in the turn-taking institution – would have ample opportunities and ample motivation to meet, deliberate, and work together. Even if many citizens did not step off their demand for partisan privileges, the leadership could limit the supply of them. Each side could still win its turn even if the more extreme elements of its coalition were left un-mobilized.

This leadership-level reciprocity is especially important for the problem of pandering to popular prejudices. Why? While we can choose to pursue or not pursue an extreme version of our interests, we have no choice but to see the world through the lens of our prejudices. However, insofar as the leadership does not share the prejudice, they can tacitly refrain from making popular prejudices the foundation for their campaigns. Again, each side could still win its turn even if the more extreme elements of its coalition were left un-mobilized.

Your enemies see you better than you see yourself! Of course, the leadership suffers from its own dogmas and prejudices. Some of the prejudices have to do with their estimates of their own benevolence and competence. Each side tends to be confident that they are the “good guys,” and they surround themselves with people who agree, which leads to groupthink. Some of the dogmas have to do with their philosophy of governance (e.g. liberalism or conservatism). For example, liberals may start with the presumption that every problem has a government-based solution, and conservatives with the presumption that every problem has a market-based solution. Each side has its ideological “hammer” that makes everything look like a nail. Policies that incorporate the best insights of both are non-starters. Moreover, co-existence and parallel experimentation are often possible, but over-looked in favor of the Biggest Prize in the Land: imposing one’s policy at the highest level of government. In sum, though the opposing teams of partisan leaders tend to vehemently disagree, each side is confident that they are the good guys with the best plan for all of us.

Somebody must be wrong, and I suspect that somebody is everybody. Fortunately, we humans have a robust ability to spot bias in others more easily than we spot it in ourselves. This ability – a kind of perceptual hypocrisy – can be harnessed to do good. To paraphrase the line from Matthew 7:3: though I cannot see a plank in my own eye, I can see a speck in yours. Francois La Rochenfoucald, the 17^th century French moralist, wrote: “Our enemies’ opinion of us comes closer to the truth than our own.” These insights have been affirmed by research in the last fifty years of social psychology.

Turn-taking allows us to harness our ability to see the opposition’s leadership as the often self-serving and fallible humans they are. Institutions that foster deliberation, moderation, experimentation, transparency, checks and balances, and due process are vital safeguards to the powerless, even if they are mild irritants to the powerful. In the turn-taking institution, we can all agree to restraints on the discretion of the powerful though each of us thinks, “We do this only because they too must have their turn, and they are obviously and irreparably biased, incompetent, stupid, evil, self-righteous, hypocritical…” and so forth. Each would submit to rules with the intention of limiting abuses by the other, but with the unintended consequence of limiting abuses by both.

An example: state religion vs. rights of conscience. Imagine a country divided into three camps of fervent religious believers. Suppose 45% are Muslim, 35% are Protestant, and 20% are Catholic. If those in each camp had their druthers, their particular religious beliefs would have privileged status. Unless the Protestant and Catholic elites form a Christian coalition and mobilize their voters, the Muslims will win a plurality-rule contest. If Protestant and Catholic elites manage to do so, they can assign privileged status to Christian beliefs. Each faction would prefer to rule alone, but the numbers rule it out. A policy of enforcing a universal right to worship according to one’s conscience would be best for all, but at the outset this is nobody’s ideal. Each faction’s best-case is to dominate and worst-case is to be dominated. Protestant and Catholic elites figure that pro-Christian policy can get the Christian base to turn-out in a way the “watered-down,” inclusive, universalistic policy never could. The Muslim elites make the same calculation and attempt to turn-out their base with pro-Muslim policy. Good people do what needs to be done to win control.

With the turn-taking institution, by contrast, neither coalition would be large enough to win it all. Either the Christians would have to broaden their coalition to include the Muslims, or they would take turns with the Muslims. In effect, the options are: (1) suffer through the lose-lose conflict of alternating mutual imposition, (2) find win-win opportunities through alternating mutual accommodation, or (3) build a win-win supermajority consensus. It is not an option to win while the other loses, or lose while the other wins. This takes away the temptation to dominate as well as the fear of being dominated.

Even if initially we stumble along taking turns and imposing lose-lose policies, this is likely to be a temporary condition. In this case, each coalition would benefit from initiating or reciprocating some form of religious liberty.

Another example: spoils, patrons and clients. As an another example, in cases where the divisions were mostly rooted in opposing client networks, with each network accustomed to winning spoils in the form of government jobs, tax breaks, subsidies and monopoly privileges, each coalition would benefit from initiating or reciprocating a meritocratic civil service and a non-discriminatory tax and regulatory code.

The two paths to win-win policy – turn-taking and supermajority consensus – work together. On the turn-taking path, the partisan leadership can tacitly explore alternatives to see whether they lead to results that can be widely reckoned as mutually advantageous and fair. What is discovered by trial and error can form the basis of – in the fullness of time – a supermajority culture of mutual accommodation and toleration.

3. Summary and conclusion

The tree of winner-take-all presidential politics has borne us rotten fruit: the frenzied fight for spoils, the folly of popular dogmas, and the hubris of elite dogmas. Our partisan leaders do what needs to be done to win control rather than doing what needs to be done to give us good government. Winner-take-all elections are not representative in societies divided along ideological, ethnic or regional lines. At least in the short run, the slightly larger party is way over-represented, and the slightly smaller party is way under-represented. The turn-taking institution is more representative. This dramatically lowers the stakes of electoral conflict. It removes the temptation to dominate as well as the fear of being dominated. It harnesses for the common good the human propensities to seek mutually beneficial and fair arrangements, and to see bias more easily in others than in ourselves.

The form of the turn-taking institution may change with dialogue and experience.  Experimentation with the turn-taking institution should start at the city-level. If it works there it can spread to the regional or national levels. Those in countries where major parties routinely and violently abuse one another in the contest for control would have the most to gain from the turn-taking institution, but they do not have a monopoly on politically-induced fraud, myopia, graft, waste, dogma, hubris and hypocrisy.

Without disproportionate representation, our elections are made fair. Without spoils for partisan and special interests, our policies can be made impartial. Without the burden of popular and elite dogmas, our politics can be made wise. If we plant the seed of fair elections, we may someday harvest the fruit of policies that are more impartial and a politics that is more wise.

This entry was posted on May 18, 2010 at 6:48 pm and is filed under Institutional design, Politics.