Re: [apsa_itp] community law-making, a system based on recombinant text

["Peter Muhlberger" <peter.muhlberger@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Michael:

On 8/16/07, Michael Allan <mike@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 15, 2007 at 06:06:41PM -0500, Peter Muhlberger wrote:
> > Hi Michael and others:  I'm a social scientist who is quite interested
> > in communityware.
> >
> > Here are some potential hurdles for Michael's community lawmaking proposal:
> >
> > People aren't lawyers.  Will participants be able to draft laws that
> > are sufficiently precise and technically consistent with the existing
> > legal framework?
>
> Hi Peter,
>
> Probably, they should be able to... The proposed system incorporates a
> collaborative medium; people could use it to pool their expertise.
> Not all people are lawyers, but some are.  For example, a citizen
> who's an expert in a particular social issue (by virtue of direct
> involvement in it) could draft rough legislation in English; a law
> clerk might then restructure it technically; and a constitutional
> lawyer might correct inconsistenies with existing law. Later, an
> experienced legislator might broker a deal with another community
> group that was focused on other issues. And so on. Legislative
> drafting would proceed in reactive cycles, among many actors.
>
> I see precedents for this kind of sustained collaboration in
> open-source software projects, and in Wikipedia.  But legislative
> drafting involves an added level of complexity, because the result
> must accurately reflect the will of a diverse community.  If
> recombinant text (the collaborative medium) works as anticipated,
> there should be no problem. It is designed for exactly that purpose.
>

Interesting!  I wonder to what extent the lawyers, legislators, and
smart people more generally would acquire unequal power by virtue of
their ability to select the language of the legislation.  Probably a
lot less than in the current system, but only to the degree that the
broader public proves attentive.  Much depends here on the social
context in which the system is embedded.  I guess my overall point is
that a lot of attention has to be given to how to set up a social
context in which people become more engaged, knowledgeable and, well,
sane.  Getting from where we are to such an alternative world probably
will take a lot more than a technical fix.  My research focuses on the
transformative effects of political engagement:  how political
deliberation can in the long run make people more engaged,
knowledgeable, and more likely to adopt reasonable political values.
For anyone interested in this, check out my website:

http://geocities.com/pmuhl78/

> > People aren't political.  Most Americans understand politics little
...
>
> I would only add:
>
>   * Being *able* to meaningfully participate (for first time)
>     is bound to increase the level of interest.
>

For some.  On the other hand, there are a large number of Americans
who have authoritarian tendencies and who do not think the public
should 'arrogate the proper privileges of political elites.'  There's
a literature in political science arguing that the average American
has a basic and reasonable preference not to be more politically
involved and that in fact involving people politically would have
devastating effects:  angry and disgruntled citizens and a political
system overloaded with impossible to meet demands.  A prominent recent
installment of this line of argument is a book called _Stealth
Democracy_, which provides evidence, from a representative sample
nationwide survey, that most Americans are 'stealth democrats' who
want a government run by business and technical elites with little
compromise or input.

What I show in a recent paper is that stealth democracy tendencies are
largely explained by authoritarianism and related tendencies such as
low desire for cognition, poor socio-political perspective taking, and
so forth.  The paper also shows that democratic deliberation reduces
both this authoritarianism and stealth democracy tendencies.  The
reductions are modest and the participants were those willing to
engage in an all day deliberation in the first place.  Also, the
deliberation was not direct democracy but held at a major university
and sanctioned by community and academic authorities.  I suspect it
would take a lot of such experiences to move the public in a direction
that would make direct democracy more feasible.

>   * Community legislators might be paid by the state. They might
>     also share amongst themselves the prestige, access to state
>     resources and other benefits that are accorded to traditional
>     legislators.
>

This would take major changes in the use and distribution of state
resources, something the current purveyors of state power are likely
to resist tooth and nail.  It will take a lot of legitimacy building
in civil society before the state would be willing to accept such
changes.  Again, it's necessary to chart a careful course from here to
there.

>   * Even if it happens that an elite group does the bulk of the actual
>     legislative work (being the most competent for it) they would
>     not be a closed elite, but an open meritocracy.
>

Assuming the public can correctly evaluate merit (may be difficult if
they have 'twisted' political values, among other things) and the
elites don't collaborate and manipulate to protect their exceptional
status, which history suggests is probable.  It would be helpful if
the public and the elites were reasonable, community-minded, and not
self-centered.  Transformative changes would be needed.

>   * Participation might be increased using a delegate cascade
>     to allow otherwise non-participating citizens to express trust
>     by delegating their votes. This would better ensure that any elite
>     (of legislators) that did form had the trust of the community.
>     So, in a very real sense, every citizen could participate.
>     (Mathematician Marcus Pivato argues that even children and the
>      mentally infirm could participate, and benefit society
>      in this way. So effective would be the resulting
>      'pyramidal meritocracy'.)
>     file:///home/mike/project/textbender/d/overview.xht#fn-23
>
> > People are twisted.  The average American scores quite high on a
> > measure of Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA).  Do we really want a
...
>
> I depend on the political theory being a sound one. As I understand
> it, our laws rest on the authority of the public, and are intended to
> be broadly reflective of society.  Accepting this theory, my job (as
> an engineer) would be to build a system that could put that theory
> into practice.
>

We call ourselves a democracy based on the legitimacy of the public
will, but we're not.  In fact, many people we would expect to defend
democratic values, including many political scientists, argue
strenuously against more direct forms of democracy and in favor of a
heavy layer of 'representation' that insures the public get what it
should want rather than what it does want.  I agree with you that we
should strive to be a democracy that draws legitimacy from the public
will.  However, I suspect we would have to do a lot of social,
political, and educational preparation to have the kind of public we
could safely entrust to pursue the good.

> In practice, then, if society is broadly wrong-headed, it should get
> wrong-headed laws. Those laws would cause problems, of course; but
> that would lead to society's political eduction.  Having nobody to
> blame but themselves (cannot blame politicians anymore) the public
> would have no choice but to pull together, and correct the
> wrong-headed laws.  In the end, therefore, society would no longer be
> so wrong-headed.
>

You're assuming people will respond to feedback and will do so
rationally.  There's plenty of evidence that the average public
(unlike the highly educated users of /., Digg, etc.).  You might check
out a book called _The Myth of the Rational Voter_ for a recent run
down.  Among other problems:  most people don't basically understand
politics because they can't conceptualize complex social systems (for
that matter, they can't conceptualize systems period).  They will
either be uninvolved politically, which means their interests aren't
being adequately represented, or, worse, involved and making seriously
bad choices due to blind spots in their reasoning.  Think of all the
Americans who seem to be voting against their own interests....  I
suspect many authoritarians fall in this category.  They can't
conceptualize a governmental system of checks and balances based on
overarching principles, so they lobby for a government they *can*
understand:  hierarchical governments with a single strong leader who
never changes his mind, never admits defeat, pursues all problems with
forceful action whether or not such action will prove disastrous, and
violates rights and liberties with no second thought....  For people
who can't understand how the political and economic systems actually
work, being confronted with evidence that their choices resulted in
bad problems won't necessarily lead to a eureka experience in which
they see the limits of their own thought.  A likely outcome is that
they will seek an explanation within their own limited understandings,
which often enough leads to finding scapegoats:  the Jews, the kulaks,
whatever.  Human history is littered with millions of murders and
other horrible abuses in part because people couldn't see the basic
flaws in their own reasoning and create communities based on fear and
distrust.  Americans, so far, are more practical:  they see that one
party led to disaster, so they vote for the other one.  The problem is
that in the long run they don't understand *why* their preferred
party's approach led to disaster and it'll be a short time before they
vote for the same foolish rhetoric and policies again.

> > Community lawmaking might be a step in the right direction if it we
> > introduced first as an effort to create rules in non-political social
> > settings and then as non-binding efforts to suggest laws to lawmakers.
> >  That's pretty much the best that can be hoped for in the medium run
> > anyway.
>
> I agree. It would have to be one small step at a time. There'd be much
> to learn along the way.
>

Yup!  I think what's needed is some serious consideration of how to
combine both technical and social efforts to move America in a
direction that could make a more engaged democracy possible.  The
technical systems need to be tailored to the limits of the audience
and designed to help people improve their own reasoning.  One thing
that might be very helpful would be to have people reflect on their
own political values and ideologies--such reflection would get right
to the heart of people's limited understandings and perhaps reveal
better ways of thinking.  A nationwide online dialog of how people
differ on political values and ideologies and how these result in
major roadblocks to addressing a wide range of serious policy problems
could remake the American political environment.  The whole thing
would have to be framed in more concrete terms, of course.  I proposed
this to a major Democratic party funder before the last presidential
election, but no one bit.  The Dems really need to think more
strategically.

Cheers, Peter

> --
> Michael Allan
>
> http://zelea.com/

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