This Is Not News

Way back when Not News became a blog, I posted a brief blurb about Ethan Lieb’s proposal for a fourth branch of government, the popular branch, in which citizen juries would have an opportunity to pass legislation or help establish community standards. As I did more digging into ideas related to deliberative democracy, I decided to buy Lieb’s book, so I figured I’d follow up on that blurb with a more complete description of Lieb’s idea, along with a few of my concerns based on my usual Deweyan perspective.

I would sum up the proposal as follows. Different groups within society would have the ability to submit measures to the popular branch for consideration. Citizens may gather petitions for a bill on a single topic that does not exceed eight pages in length. The existing legislative branch can submit an issue for consideration by a meeting of the popular branch. Also, the judiciary branch can request that a jury offer an opinion on contemporary community standards or beliefs when those standards are implicated in a particular case. Proposals that garner enough support will be presented to a citizen’s jury of 525 members drawn randomly from the population and who will be required to serve or else face potential fines or community service requirements. This process will be overseen by a government agency selected by party officials and direct election by the voters. The agency will be responsible for making sure that proposals are properly drafted and that the popular assemblies are properly selected.

Members of the popular branch will receive briefing materials and will also have the chance to receive testimony from experts. Stakeholders in the issue in question will have means of submitting information to be included in the briefing materials. This process will also be overseen by the agency responsible for the operations of the popular branch. The members will meet in small groups moderated by federal judges who have received special psychological training to prepare them for the role. All deliberations will be made public, but the identities of the members will be kept secret. (This will require the disguising of voices and faces if the proceedings are to be televised, as are current meetings of the legislative branch.) If a supermajority of members vote to approve the proposal, it will become law (in the case of a citizen’s initiative or a legislatively-sponsored referendum). The law will still be subject to judicial review to ensure compliance with the constitution, and the executive and legislative branches will have means at their disposal to veto these laws if they deem it necessary. Leib imagines that there would be a considerable price to pay for such a veto in the absence of especially strong justification.

I think this is a really interesting idea, and I think it has potential. My chief concern is whether the citizen juries would be able to gather enough information to make a good judgment. The danger here is that popular participation without popular knowledge does not necessarily result in popular control. If we accept Dewey’s notion of intelligent action, then if we do not anticipate the consequences of our actions, we do not really grasp the meaning of what we are doing. We will not be able to shape future conditions to our liking. Such shaping would seem to be the purpose of the members of the popular branch, and without sufficient knowledge they cannot fulfill this function. Bad policy is one potential consequence of this failure (and some may argue that “bad� policy results are in the eyes of the beholder.) More worrisome would be the potential loss of legitimacy for the popular branch, especially since adding legitimacy is one of Leib’s chief goals in making his proposal.

If the popular branch approves a proposal without grasping how it will affect society, what will happen when the unexpected results occur? Will the members of the jury that passed the proposal feel anger at themselves for not having anticipated the future? Will they blame the experts and stakeholders who contributed to their briefing materials and moderated their panels, and therefore lose faith in the actions of the popular branch? Will other members of the public, who would have access to the deliberations and would therefore know what the popular branch intended to happen, have a similar loss of faith when they see the mistakes that were made? These failures might also give the executive and legislative branches more substantial political cover to overturn laws passed by the popular branch, and make them more reluctant to submit questions for the branch’s consideration.

Like I said, there’s an interesting idea here, and at the very least it serves as an idea of what kind of society we could be working toward. At the moment I’m thinking of the other pieces of the puzzle that would need to be in place for this one to work.

I’ve heard it said that insanity is doing something a second time and expecting a different result. So I was struck by this passage from the AP’s coverage of PResident Bush’s speech tonight:

Bush’s blueprint would boost the number of U.S. troops in Iraq – now at 132,000 – to 153,500 at a cost of $5.6 billion. The highest number was 160,000 a year ago in a troop buildup for Iraqi elections.

So we’re going to “surge” to a number of troops less than we have had in the past, with personnel and equipment who are a year more exhausted than they were in the past, and we think this is going to be sufficient to turn the situation around?

And that doesn’t even factor in the possibility of allies reducing their troop levels.

I suppose it’s possible that these surging troops will be following some clever new plan that will make them all the more effective. But I can’t say I have a whole lot of confidence in the people coming up with the grand designs these days. And that means more people are going to be hurt.

I thought it was interesting that when Sen. Richard Durbin gave the Democratic response to Bush’s plan, he didn’t focus on the screwups. His argument instead was that we’ve done plenty of good things for Iraq, now it’s time for us to get out and let Iraq take care of itself. I gotta say, that’s not the route I would have gone. And it’s a shame if fear of looking weak or un-American keeps us from acknowledging the ways in which America’s actions have made the situation in Iraq worse, because we’d really better learn these lessons for the next time.

Anyone who wants some insight into the wackiness of the Pennsylvania Legislature would be well served to go through the Daily Kos entries posted by State Representative Mark Cohen, a Philadelphia Democrat. In a nutshell – Democrats have a one seat majority in the state House, but one Democrat announced he was going to cross party lines and vote for the Republican candidate for Speaker, a Republican from Northeast Philadelphia named John Perzel. This would have given Republicans effective control of the chamber. Democrats were able to outmaneuver Perzel by nominating another Republican from Northeast Philadelphia, Dennis O’Brien. (O’Brien happens to be my state rep, and has been as long as I can remember.) Six Republicans, angry at Perzel for various reasons, crossed party lines and voted for O’Brien along with most of the Democrats. O’Brien agreed to appoint Democrats to head committees and to support the Democratic majority, although at this time it is unclear whether or not he will change parties.

One thing that the back-and-forth over the speakership has brought to the surface is the question of whether an elected public official has an obligation to support his or her party in organizational matters such as this. One side of the argument says that public officials are elected as individuals, and their job is to use their judgment to represent their constituents as well as possible. If an official’s judgment is that his or her party should not control a legislative chamber, then the official should act on that decision.

The other side of the argument is that a candidate’s party affiliation is one of the things that voters take into consideration when casting a vote. Some voters believe that control of a legislative chamber is more important than an individual official’s beliefs in setting policy, because the leaders of a chamber and relevant committees can control what legislation comes up for a vote and what does not. In this case, an official who crosses party lines is breaking an implicit campaign promise, and a very significant one.

Since I’m definitely someone who has started voting along party lines for very much this reason, I am quite sympathetic to this way of thinking. My problem is that not everyone thinks this way, and so that implicit campaign promise has some wiggle room to it. I don’t think it’s automatically wrong for a representative to cross lines or switch parties – but if one does, he or she shouldn’t be surprised by the backlash.

It does kind of make me wish we had more of a parliamentary system, where control of a chamber was clearly a key issue and where numerous smaller parties with clearly defined platforms could go at it. But I’m not holding my breath for it.

According to Arianna Huffington at her web site, Rep. Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania is expressing a desire to explicitly block President Bush from spending money to increase the number of troops serving in Iraq. Given that Bush doesn’t appear ready to listen to advice and/or political pressure, the purse strings may be the only way to exercise any control over the situation in Iraq over the next two years.

For some reason I am viewing this as mixed news. I haven’t seen anyone offer a credible case for why escalating the conflict in Iraq is a good idea, so anything that stops more troops from being exposed to danger over there is a Good Thing. But I think I have an irrational fear that in a year or so, someone is going to say, “We wanted to send more troops, but those Democrats wouldn’t let us. Now look how bad things are.� The empiricist in me wants the current administration and its tactics thoroughly discredited, and wonders if partial victories now might make a complete victory later more difficult to achieve.

Then I say to myself, if the last three years haven’t discredited this administration’s approach to national security, nothing that happens in the next two years is going to make a difference. So take the victories where you can get them. Besides, winning partial victories right now increases the chances that voters will see the Congressional Democrats as being able to get something done, which is a key point going forward.