An Alternative to Majoritarianism
Remember the “I’m Just a Bill” song from Schoolhouse Rock? In it, a singing bill describes the path it must take to become a law in the United States, from surviving committee to getting a majority of support in both the House of Representatives and the Senate and, finally, requiring the signature of the president. The nation’s founding fathers famously sought to create a cautious process through which only the most worthy of ideas could become law because they wished to constrain overzealous legislators. But this cautious impulse is not just constrained to the United States. From houses of parliament to company boards the world over, a proposal must have the support of a majority of stakeholders to have a prayer of success. If a constituency’s issues cannot gain majority support, they are labelled “the opposition” and their issues remain unsolved. Is there an alternative to the majoritarian legislative process?
In order to give more power to marginal voices, some countries employ a proportional representation system which gives political parties legislative representation equivalent to the degree of support they receive in the popular vote. Such systems often lead to a splintering of parties along more single-minded boundaries, so proportional parliaments are dominated less by traditional left and right-leaning blocs and more by parties that emphasize singular issues like climate change, anti-corruption reform, or immigration. Ultimately, however, every legislative branch company board around the world decides on issues through a majoritarian vote in which a bill will pass or fail depending on whether it has majority support. In effect, parties which can coalesce 50% of the vote can assume 100% of the political power at the expense of the political minority.
Centuries of majoritarian democracy have left the impression that this is a fair and proper way of apportioning control, but in truth it is inefficient and divisive. First, because bills require at least 50% of the votes in a legislature to proceed, coalition building becomes necessary. In a democratic society, the priorities of the populace are bound to vary among voters who emphasize different issues. However, in a majoritarian process those interests must coalesce in order for any to gain half the parliament’s support and survive. In some cases these coalitions seem natural. In Canada, Trudeau pursues his centre-left agenda with confidence-and-supply from the further left-wing New Democratic and Green parties. Often, however, coalition building requires compromises that defy reason. In Austria, the Green party and the Austrian People’s party formed a government coalition in the aftermath of the election. This required the People’s party to dramatically change their climate policy and the Green party to cave to their partner’s anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic social policies. In either case, majoritarian democracies grant nothing to the political minority, and in fact label them “the opposition” as if their democratic interests are anathema. This system is also inherently divisive because it creates a zero-sum environment where one group’s political interests can only be advanced at the expense of the other’s. Arguably, this fosters a general mindset in which citizens assume unquestioning loyalty to their chosen coalition and treat others as enemies.
Perhaps most importantly, majoritarian legislatures are simultaneously bipolar and overly cautious. Necessary proposals, like those which address climate change, often wait on the sidelines for years, waiting for the right coalition to form and bring the sympathetic opposition into power. Even then, the future of such proposals is in doubt, because the next election could bring with it a slight change in representation which could fundamentally alter the balance of power and the government’s agenda. Hypothetically, this system is a breeding ground for extremism as valuable minority sentiments are ignored until people cannot wait any longer and take matters into their own hands, such as with the violent CRAV movement of winemakers in the French Languedoc.
As a result, majoritarianism is unstable. In the past four years the United States has witnessed the rise of two major populists, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. While a complex range of issues - ranging from wealth inequality to automation and outsourcing - brought their policies platforms into relevance, it was ultimately the deadlocked political process which made their “burn down the establishment” style of politics popular. Socialists on the left and nativists on the right had become disillusioned with a system of politics which perpetually denied them, and in 2016 they denied the system. To be clear, I am not equating or advocating for these two figures. However, any political process which will not grant a sliver of political power to niche voices will inevitably struggle with populists seeking to burn the system down. For further proof, consider Marine Le Pen in France, Pablo Iglesias in Spain, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, and many more such figures around the globe.
This need not be the case. While a majoritarian decision-making process makes sense in the executive branch - leaders need to make up or down decisions in foreign policy and law enforcement - legislative agendas can be decided proportionally because political priorities for different groups are frequently non-overlapping. There is no sense in which a restrictive immigration approach impedes an active climate policy or a progressive social agenda precludes a laissez-faire economic strategy. Such a system should be able to provide every seat-holding party some power to advance their agenda rather than giving total control to coalitions representing even a small majority of representation. Finally, it is necessary that parties be given the power to veto fringe proposals which a plurality of the country actively dislike. The proposals of the minority should not be allowed to hurt the majority.
Through mechanism design, we can craft such a legislature. To build a proportional legislature, I propose the establishment of a parliament with a fixed number of legislative sessions in a given year. Each party would be able to submit their favored bills to the parliament. Within each session, the parties would then be able to cast as many votes for or against the presented bills as they have members of parliament. For example, if a party has 30 members of parliament and there are 10 bills under consideration, the party would be able to spend 3 votes per bill on average. At the end of each legislative session, bills with a positive number of votes would pass on to the next branch or become law.
In practice, this would dramatically increase the power of minority parties. Imagining a legislature with 100 seats, even a party with 10 would have a significant capacity to advance its agenda if it acted strategically. Large parties would retain the power to defeat the bills of their smaller counterparts, but only at the cost of their own legislative priorities. Crucially, by setting up a system in which parties would have to budget their votes, those parties would be compelled to abandon a zero-sum mentality and work cooperatively to advance their own agendas. Furthermore, because control would not revolve around the 50% threshold, the legislature’s balance of power and its agenda would be more stable over time. In such a system, parties would be able to specialize in the non-overlapping needs of their constituents. For example, a green party representing a niche constituency would have the power to advance major climate legislation with just a handful of seats because it wouldn’t necessarily contradict the platform of any other party. In such a system, nobody would ever be consigned to the opposition.
For those who prefer majoritarianism, there are still ways to improve our moribund legislatures. Most countries do not have two presidents or two prime ministers because the executive branch would gridlock whenever they disagreed. By the same logic, switching to unicameral legislatures would expedite the legislative process and thus empower that branch of government. Alternatively, as mentioned earlier, employing proportional representation would give greater voice to niche interests, even if they remained in the opposition. Finally, while these reforms do not directly pertain to legislatures, reducing the amount of money in politics and cracking down on misinformation would remove impediments to voter rationality. Whatever the method, the goal in reforming legislatures must be to reduce deadlock and increase inclusion.
Realistically, people have lost the appetite for constitutional reform, but it is hard to deny that our modern democratic systems are failing. Around the world, populist extremists are gaining footholds, constraining the governing coalitions of the establishment centrists and threatening the integrity of their countries’ democratic institutions. At the same time, these democracies are failing to contend with growing threats like climate change and wealth inequality. The intention of the founding fathers to establish a cautious process was admirable, and perhaps suited to their time, but in the modern era the incredible rate of technological, social, and economic change has exposed the inadequacy of majoritarianism. Proportional legislatures would be able to keep up with the world without leaving anyone behind.