The Spirit of Moderation

This post argues for a new design criterion for electing mayors, governors and presidents. A good voting system is one where  roughly equal parties expect roughly equal shares of time in office in the relatively immediate future so long as they are roughly equal. Think of it as proportional representation through time for forward-looking but short-sighted people (i.e. us).

That last part is important. People are fond of pointing out that — as the decades roll by — winner-take-all elections can lead to a kind of proportional representation through time. This is true but irrelevant. The trick is to create proportional representation through time within the time-frame that does most to shape our hopes and fears.

As a toy example, if people bracket off everything that is more than four years out in the future as too inscrutable to matter, then winning or losing a four-year election means winning or losing for as far as the eye can see. In this case, electoral victories should bring ecstasy and electoral defeats should bring agony.

By contrast, with a turn-taking institution the first-place team could take the first and third years, and the runner-up the second and fourth years. Roughly equal parties get roughly equal shares of time in office. Here citizens should be relatively indifferent between first and second place, even if they intensely prefer to be “in” rather than “out” of office.

Why is this desirable? Three reasons.

1. It lowers the stakes of electoral conflict going INTO the election. The stakes = the marginal benefit of being in first place rather than second place. The higher the stakes, the more intense the conflict over winning control. When office-seekers perceive the stakes  to be high, they target “spoils” at well informed pivotal supporters, and “symbols” at poorly informed pivotal supporters. When citizens perceive the stakes to be high, they are more likely to suppress their doubts and dissent, and march in step to defeat the common enemy. A good institution encourages equals who disagree to chill out.
2. It sustains cooperation AFTER the election. Trust arises where there is trustworthiness. Trustworthiness arises where there are on-going opportunities for reciprocity and mutual adjustment. A team who expects to be in office for a disproportionate amount of the immediate future loses more than it gains from cooperation. Other things equal, the gains from cooperation are greatest when each side expects to be in the “in” and “out” role in equal amounts in the immediate future. A good institution encourages equals who disagree to treat one another as they want to be treated.
3. It fosters a culture of self-restraint among citizens at large. In Federalist #10, Madison warned that “enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” And for this reason we should be interested in limits on the scope of power. But ask the co-partisans of any recently elected executive, “Will we have an enlightened statesman at the helm for the near future?” and you will hear some variant of, “You should have seen the self-serving idiot he beat out.” Of course, you would hear a very different account from the opposition. On the margin, we are all more self-serving and idiotic than we would like to believe. Our enemies see us better than we see ourselves. Even if they err on the too-negative side, their error is smaller than our error on the too-positive side. A good institution encourages equals who disagree to balance out their overly-positive self-assessments with the overly-negative assessments of the other.

The standard criteria in electoral systems design focus on *how to get people to reveal their preferences with their votes,* and *how to aggregate votes to pick the best candidate.* This is a fine place to start the inquiry, it seems to me, but a bad place to stop it. More on this point to come…

This entry was posted on May 21, 2010 at 10:57 am and is filed under Institutional design.