Representative Democracy

The May 2004 issue of Harper's Magazine (link) features an essay by Richard N. Rosenfeld called "What Democracy? The Case for Abolishing the United States Senate." Mr. Rosenfeld seems to come from the two-paragraphs-fill-a-page school of writing (of which Ayn Rand was a graduate), so it's far from easy to follow his arguments -- but as far as I can tell, he thinks that the founding principle of the Senate (each State gets two votes, regardless of size) has outlived its usefulness. In (mercifully-brief) pull quotes, he says "The less populous States have extracted benefits from the nation out of proportion to their populations" and "The purpose of a second chamber was to protect the wealthy from the demands of a democratic majority."

Well, okay, that's probaby true, as far as it goes. But I was also taught that the whole point of representative democracy, as opposed to direct democracy, was to insulate government decisions from fads of the moment and knee-jerk public reactions like the one that had a great majority of the people in this country supporting George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq. (Okay, okay, representative democracy didn't help in that case...the theory is still sound.)

Nevertheless, Rosenfeld has got me thinking that, yeah, maybe the rather-arbitrary geographical division into States may not be exactly the best way to divide up power and votes.

Which brings me to an idea of my friend Phil Meade. Phil proposed a third house of Congress, one based on a non-geographical scheme: interest groups.

Phil puts his idea in the form of a Constitutional Amendment, among whose clauses are:

2. The Chamber of Ministers of the United States shall consist of one
Minister from each National Ministry, and each Minister shall
have one vote. A Minister's term shall be one year.

3. Each Minister must be a bona-fide member of the interest group
which he/she represents. Ministers shall be chosen by majority
vote of all bona-fide interest group members. The time, manner,
and place of such elections shall be determined by each interest
group, as provided by law by the Congress, in such a manner as to
allow all member citizens full and fair opportunity to register their
vote.

4. Once each five years, the number and nature of the National
Ministries shall be determined, under supervision of the Census
Bureau, so as to fairly reflect the interests of all American citizens.
Every National Ministry shall be supported by petition of no fewer
than one percent of the total adult population of the Nation, and
no interest shall be represented by more than one National
Ministry. The total number of National Ministries shall not exceed
five hundred and one. The Supreme Court shall resolve disputes
over the number and nature of the National Ministries.

5. The Chamber of Ministers shall initially consist of no fewer than
fifteen Ministries in the following areas: Agriculture, Commerce,
Defense, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development,
Health and Human Services, Interior, Justice, Labor, State,
Telecommunications, Transportation, Treasury, and Veteran's
Affairs, plus whatever other Ministries are determined under
clause 4 of this Article.

6. No citizen may cast votes as a member of more than six individual
interest groups under the provisions of this Article.

Now, obviously this isn't going to happen anytime soon. But it's an interesting thought experiment, and such an arrangement would certainly change the dynamic of "special interest group" politics in today's United States.

M.

---

The Ivory Madonna's story is told in Dance for the Ivory Madonna by Don Sakers.