Loose Reflections on Representative (or Indirect) Democracy

    Direct democracy is not a good idea, except for very specific questions. But it is always a risk to entrust questions of fundamental importance to the people – in a referendum, say, Brexit being one glaring example. Representative democracy, or indirect democracy, however, is worthless if the representatives do nothing but vote according to public opinion polls – or much worse, special interest lobbying, a form of legalized corruption – or even worse, representatives who just do whatever Trump wants them to, no matter how toxic for the country.

  The criteria to vote for a representative should be emphasized in education. Above all competence – a person of independent judgment, experience, and virtuous character (wisdom, self-restraint, justice, courage). This means that a representative must be willing to lose the next election if necessary. There is little a political process can do to guarantee only competent, virtuous representatives will govern. You can take away all the corruption – legal and illegal – by getting the money and lobbying out of the system: elections should be publicly financed; instead of TV ads designed to pull emotional strings, only rational debates with competent moderation and editorial pieces in newspapers and magazines. Books of course. And speeches. This presupposes an enlightened public, which is not given in any current liberal democracy, though some are closer to it than others. This also presupposes a sense of community, which alone can give people a deeper sense of who they choose to represent their interests. There must be a healthy political culture if there is to be good representation, and this is sadly missing. The growing of a healthy political culture is paramount. Actually, if there were a healthy political culture and an enlightened public, the arguments against direct democracy would be correspondingly weakened.

   In Germany, the problem of competent representation is dealt with by the party system. The parties select their list of candidates based on internal criteria – political promise, character, intelligence, etc. (ideally). If elected to the Bundestag (Parliament), they are assigned to committees – foreign policy or military policy, for example – where they acquire expertise and experience. It’s like starting to work for a company. You get promoted if you show ability (or have good connections). By the time you reach the top policy-making positions, you will have usually already proven yourself over time. For example, the current minister of the health system, Dr. Karl Lauterbach,

 

Curriculum vitae

Born in Düren on 21 February 1963, career: university professor.

1982-1989: Medical studies at the RWTH Aachen, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, University of Texas San Antonio (USA), (PhD in Medicine).

1987: Research residency at the University of Arizona, Tucson (mentor: Prof. Dennis Patton).

1985 to 1990 PhD in Medicine at the Institute for Nuclear Medicine of the nuclear research facility in Jülich (mentor: Professor Ludwig Feinendegen).

1989-1990: Master of Public Health (MPH) at the Harvard School of Public Health focusing on Epidemiology, and Health Policy and Management.

1990-1992: Master of Science in Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health.

1992-1995: Doctor of Science in Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health (mentors: Professor Marc Roberts and Professor Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences).

1992: Fellowship in Ethics and the Professions at Harvard University (Director: Professor Applbaum)

1993: Fellowship at Harvard Medical School’s Division of Medical Ethics (Director: Professor Lynn Peterson).

Since 1996: Guest lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

Since 1998: Director of the Institute for Health Economics and Clinical Epidemiology of the Medical Faculty of the University of Cologne.

C4 professorship offers from the Ernst Moritz Arndt University in Greifswald and the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen.

Since 2008: Adjunct Professor at the Department of Health Policy and Management of the Harvard School of Public Health.

Main research focus: Primary and secondary prevention of chronic disease, in particular disease management of diabetes mellitus, hypertension, COPD, and hypercholesterinaemia. Health economics and health policy.

1999 until 2005: Member of the Advisory Council on the Assessment of Developments in the Health Care System.

2003: Member of the Commission on Sustainable Financing of the Social Security Systems (Rürup Commission). Member of the SPD Cologne Programme Committee.

2004: Member of the SPD Party Executive’s working group on citizens’ insurance.

Since 2005: Member of the Bundestag, on leave from his post as the Director of the Institute for Health Economics and Clinical Epidemiology of the Medical Faculty of the University of Cologne. (In his absence, Professor Stephanie Stock is Acting Director).

2013-2019: Deputy parliamentary party leader of the SPD.

Since December 2021: Federal Minister of Health.

  

  Note that he only became a minister after years of experience making law in the Bundestag and within his party. Of course, other parties disagree with many of his policies. He is not popular among the doctors. But no one can doubt his qualifications. His personality and policies are well known. Disagreements with him are like two accomplished pianists disagreeing over how to perform the end of a Bach piece than between an accomplished pianist and an amateur like myself over the same subject. We have very few such qualified people in Congress, and why should we? Congress is not responsible for making policy, though they do have the power to wreck policy and leave the country without a policy – as is the case currently with Ukraine support, immigration policy, and many other issues.

  And of course, in the German system, the Bundestag produces the government. Should the SPD (Lauterbach’s party) not be part of the next election, Lauterbach would still be in the Bundestag and take part in debates about policy as a critic. These debates – ideally – would contribute to the political education of the citizens. Unfortunately, few citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany follow the discussions in the Bundestag. They – like everywhere – increasingly tend to get their news from Instagram or whatever. The public media does regularly cover Bundestag debates, however.

   Since our Congress does not make policy but only approves or disapproves the policies of the executive – or make deals with the executive to secure their approval – discussions, such as they are, have a very different quality. The fact that Congress has only this negative role reduces the need for expertise. At present, our Congress is so dysfunctional – a ground for shame.  But that is connected with the structure of our government: a debating society with the power to reject policy or make acceptance conditional on all kinds of things (concessions to big Pharmacy to the oil industry to the political needs of a certain congressman to the will of Trump) – that is so unworkable; only representatives of amazing character could overcome it, but how our representatives get chosen has nothing to do with the way Karl Lauterbach was. Money is usually all important, and of course public persona, which is a function of media access.

    The German system tends to produce better representatives because of the discipline imposed by the party system. To advance a representative is beholden to the party – not special financial interests or media access. Anything human is imperfect however: we have some fine representatives (too few) and there are some idiots in the Bundestag. But overall the Parliamentary system with the parties governing produces better representatives. I suppose the disadvantage is that party discipline means that policy decisions are made at the top; for a lower-level legislator to reject the policy decisions of their party leadership means an end to their political career. This is not necessarily bad: policy is made by the most experienced, the most proven. But every system needs the occasional maverick to buck it.

 

Parties in the Federal Republic of German and the United States

    I would like to have a system without parties, in which a representative was elected for their competence and character. But that requires a level of enlightenment and investment of time on the part of the voters that is utopian in the current society. In Germany, people vote for parties first, personalities second if at all – under normal circumstances. The general orientation of the parties is well-known enough for people to cast their vote without the kind of investment of time my party-less idea would require.

   Germany uses a mixed-member proportional representation system, which allows for a greater diversity of political parties to be represented in the national parliament (Bundestag). This system encourages the formation of coalition governments, as no single party typically wins an outright majority of seats. In contrast, the United States primarily employs a first-past-the-post electoral system for congressional elections, which tends to favor a two-party system. 

   German political culture places a strong emphasis on consensus-building and compromise, particularly due to the proportional representation system and the prevalence of coalition governments. German parties are often more ideologically disciplined, and there is generally a higher level of trust in political institutions compared to the United States. American political culture, on the other hand, tends to be more adversarial and polarized, with a focus on winner-takes-all elections and ideological purity within parties.

    Since the American system is a winner-take-all, we have only two parties. Within the two parties – before Trump – different groupings would have their own parties in Germany. For example, within the Democratic Party, there are so-called progressives, that are close to the Social Democratic Party or the Green Party in Germany. And you have liberals who are more friendly toward the corporate economy – like Clinton and Obama. Our system forces them into the same bed, which can become quite uncomfortable for the one or the other.  Sometimes compromises are made to ensure harmony going into an election – Biden was certainly moved to the left by the progressives, pissing off many “moderate” (hilarious ideology) Democrats like Joe Manchin. This is like the Social Democrats having to work out compromises with the Greens to form a government. In the German case, the compromises are worked out after the election, and the agreements are like a governing contract that is public. But Green voters don’t have to stomach voting for the SPD and vice-versa.

    Again, in my ideal of party-less candidates, the working out of compromises would be so complex as to be unworkable. Parties seem to be a necessary evil. German political parties tend to have a more centralized and hierarchical structure compared to American parties. Decision-making within German parties often involves party leaders and officials at the national level, with a strong influence from party headquarters. In contrast, American parties often have a more decentralized structure, with considerable autonomy given to state and local party organizations – i.e. less control over who is elected, who advances, etc. – and more beholden to private sources of money. When representatives represent corporate or billionaire class interests, we can no longer speak of indirect democracy. Indirect Plutocracy would be a better term, and that is where we increasingly were going in my home country. There has been under Biden hopeful movement in Democratic Party to correct this. 

 

    In the end, while the structure of a political process is important, it all comes down to how healthy is the pollical (democratic) culture; how enlightened are the voters; how competent and virtuous are the candidates. Political systems that encourage or make difficult these things, but not guarantee them. A democracy is only as good as its voters and representatives.