NYT commentator David Brooks thinks that many of the problems we face - especially as compared to autocratic governments he calls "the guardian state" - are because of the consequences of democracy. We might benefit from less democracy - at least at the national level.
- Click here for the article.
Here are a few quotes from the article:
The events of the past several years have exposed democracy’s structural flaws. Democracies tend to have a tough time with long-range planning. Voters tend to want more government services than they are willing to pay for. The system of checks and balances can slide into paralysis, as more interest groups acquire veto power over legislation.
. . . A new charismatic rival is gaining strength: the Guardian State. In their book, Micklethwait and Wooldridge do an outstanding job of describing Asia’s modernizing autocracies. In some ways, these governments look more progressive than the Western model; in some ways, more conservative.
In places like Singapore and China, the best students are ruthlessly culled for government service. The technocratic elites play a bigger role in designing economic life. The safety net is smaller and less forgiving. In Singapore, 90 percent of what you get out of the key pension is what you put in. Work is rewarded. People are expected to look after their own.
These Guardian States have some disadvantages compared with Western democracies. They are more corrupt. Because the systems are top-down, local government tends to be worse. But they have advantages. They are better at long-range thinking and can move fast because they limit democratic feedback and don’t face NIMBY-style impediments.
. . . So how should Western democracies respond to this competition? What’s needed is not so much a vision of the proper role for the state as a strategy to make democracy dynamic again.
The answer is to use Lee Kuan Yew means to achieve Jeffersonian ends — to become less democratic at the national level in order to become more democratic at the local level. At the national level, American politics has become neurotically democratic. Politicians are campaigning all the time and can scarcely think beyond the news cycle. Legislators are terrified of offending this or that industry lobby, activist group or donor faction. Unrepresentative groups have disproportionate power in primary elections.
The quickest way around all this is to use elite Simpson-Bowles-type commissions to push populist reforms.
The process of change would be unapologetically elitist. Gather small groups of the great and the good together to hammer out bipartisan reforms — on immigration, entitlement reform, a social mobility agenda, etc. — and then rally establishment opinion to browbeat the plans through.
Sounds like the a rehash of those age old arguments. And ironically, what he is describing is similar the systems the framers of the Constitution envisioned, where the mass public had very little input in the formation of national laws, but much more on the state and local level - at least among those that were able to participate politically.
A commentator at the Washington Post isn't buying it. Our problems are more due to rules that interfere with the proper workings of our institutions.
- Click here for the article.
Democratic self-doubt is nothing new. In the 1930s, Americans worried that, unlike fascist states that could "get things done," our government was too sclerotic to get us out of the Depression. In the 1960s, we worried that communist states that were rapidly industrializing and sending satellites into space were leaving us behind. And today, we're worried that one-party capitalism is more effective than multi-party capitalism. These authoritarian states, Brooks tells us, "are better at long-range planning and can move fast because they limit democratic feedback." You can see the future if you go to Shanghai — and it works, at least at breathtaking catch-up growth.
Well, not really. These paeans to government of, by and for the elite ignore China as it actually exists. Their air is unbreathable. Their high-speed railways are unsafe andshoddily made. And their government's credit-driven stimulus might have inflated a monster housing bubble that's now popping. Not exactly examples of superior long-range planning.
The truth, as boring as it may be, is that Winston Churchill was right: Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. Daron Acemoglu, Suresh Naidu, James Robinson and Pascual Restrepo have a new paper that finds that countries that switch to democracy have about 20 percent higher GDP per capita 30 years later. That seems to be because greater civil liberties lead to governments that reform more economically and invest more in education and health care — in short, that are more responsive to the people.
. . . Our problem isn't too much democracy. It's too little. The filibuster means you need a Senate super-majority to get anything done. The Hastert rule — which, remember, is more of a guideline — keeps bills that have majority support from even coming up for consideration. We could get immigration reform and tax reform and every other kind of reform we need done — first among them ones that help the long-term unemployed — if we didn't have these parliamentary rules that enable obstructionism.
Now, calling for the end of the filibuster isn't as thought leader-y as calling for Simpson-Bowles forever, but it might actually, you know, work.
