Brexit And After: Why Plain-Vanilla Democracy Is Past Its Sell-by Date

The Brexit vote, which shocked Britain’s elite, has led to calls for a second referendum, or even a denial that it even happened. US Secretary of State John Kerry said yesterday (29 June) that Brexit may never happen, as Britain has not figured out how to leave the European Union (EU). The Economist, which had predicted chaos after Brexit (and got it), mildly suggested that a second referendum – this time on the terms of the exit deal with the EU -  would hopefully scupper Brexit. Meanwhile, the losing side has floated a petition seeking another referendum, and this has already garnered over four million votes. The petition does not say it wants a second referendum just for kicks; it says any referendum decided by a vote of less than 60 percent and with less than 75 percent participation should be declared invalid.

This is largely losers’ angst. Every loser wants a recount. But embedded in it is a more fundamental issue: do voters vote in their best interests always? Underlying this question is the even more fundamental one of whether electoral democracy itself is the best way to be democratic.

Many liberals have for long wondered if giving everyone the vote – including the illiterate and the ill-informed - was all that wise, especially when those voting may not have a stake in the outcome. They may also not be in a position to judge weighty, complex issues that may or may not be in the best interests of the maximum number of people. John Stuart Mill was unsure if universal suffrage was a wise thing to do. Winston Churchill, quoting an unnamed wit, famously said that “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time..”. In other words, democracy is just the lesser of evils, not necessarily a great thing in itself.

After the Brexit vote, David Van Reybrouck, writing in The Guardian, another left-liberal bastion, observed that “never before has such a drastic decision been taken through so primitive a procedure – a one-round referendum based on a simple majority. Never before has the fate of a country – of an entire continent, in fact - been changed by the single swing of such a blunt Daxe, wielded by disenchanted and poorly informed citizens.” His article is provocatively titled: “Why elections are bad for democracy.”

This is surely an exaggeration, and shows frustration with the Brexit vote, but there is a lot of truth in it. After all, isn’t this how even general elections get decided – by “a single swing of such a blunt axe?

The one thing that actually unites the elite and the non-elite is this reducing belief in what electoral democracy can deliver. The poor vote to express their frustration over the fact that they can only choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, between Republicans or Democrats, both of whom have under-delivered in the past. So they go for Donald Trump, who at least seems to disagree with both. Voters now have the option of choosing Hillary Clinton if they hate Trump, and vice-versa. Is this any way to run a democracy? Ditto for Brexit: the choice surely cannot be between globalisation on EU’s terms and isolation.

Democracy and one-man-one-vote sometimes seem to deliver poor choices and sub-optimal outcomes. Maybe, Democracy, Ver 1.0, is past its sell-by date. We need Democracy, Ver 2.0.

The only thing democracy seems good at is giving voters the chance to vote against tyrants and autocrats. But they often deliver indifferent or poor outcomes. Is this any less tyrannical for those at the losing end of the spectrum of outcomes? Globalisation without jobs and EU integration without having a voice seem as tyrannical as having an autocrat as your leader.

Clearly, democracy is sorely in need of reinvention, and this is the job the world’s intellectuals need to focus on.

The crucial questions are the following:

Is one-man-one-vote relevant in all situations? The answer may be yes in a general election, when you want to decide who (which persons, which party?) should lead the country, but probably not when the question is whether the EU is good for Britain or not. Because the answer cannot be a straight yes or no. The right answer could be ‘Yes, it is good but…” (Or ‘No, but we could do this…’). This can’t be decided in a referendum. People can vote knowledgeably only when the issues that concern them are disaggregated and clarified. This means referendums should be layered, with several stages in-built in them: a first stage to decide what is the top concern for people, and then a second one where those concerns are sought to be addressed with solutions by experts who can then vote on them, and maybe, a third stage, where a general vote can be taken when the issues are clarified. One-man-one-vote works only at some stages in the game.

Is the first-past-the-post system democratic? In a multi-party fragmented democracy like India, FPTP often delivers a government based on a minority of votes. Once again, staged voting, something like the French presidential election, makes more sense; in the first stage you vote for who you like, and at the next stage you may vote against those you dislike (or those whom you dislike less), and so on.

Then there is the issue of complexity. Take the question of whether India should abandon nuclear power. Right now, the issue is decided on the basis of irrational fears about the dangers of nuclear accidents, when these have been so rare as to be negligible. If this is decided by popular vote, we will get the wrong decision. A weighted vote, based on believable experts and non-expert but educated intellectuals, can then be offered for final clearance by the broad electorate. The electorate needs opinion and expertise they can trust, and not advice based on partisan and irrational concerns. A layered voting system is worth considering. In a digital universe, it may even be affordable, for people can vote through the internet, using digital identities. Above 90 percent voting, impossible when voting is physical, is possible in the digital universe.

Then there is the local versus the regional versus the national versus the international. Maximum voice must be given to those who will be directly affected by a decision, but they too cannot be given the veto on behalf of others who may not agree with them. A decision on garbage collection is a purely local decision, but a decision on environmental law has to be international, or at least national. Voting on climate change issues should thus be multi-national in character, with qualified people voting first, a broader educated elite voting next, and the general population last. The benefit of the earlier rounds goes to inform the decisions of the uninformed.

In such a world or layered and weighted voting, Brexit would have been decided not in the first round, but after two rounds of decisions by people who have thought it through.

There can surely be even better ideas, but democracy as it is currently structured is not working for many, many people. That’s why they go for a Trump.