[EM] Partisan Politics, or Rising Above It

[Juho Laatu]

--- On Fri, 13/2/09, Michael Allan <mike at zelea.com> replied to Fred Gohlke:

>   T(p) Practical: What is the practice?
>        In principle, is it feasible?
> 
>   T(q) Probable: What is the method of
>        transformation? Is it likely,
>        in fact, to happen?
> 
>   T(m) Moral: What are the expected
>        consequences?  What good?  What
>        evil?

> T0 is the null transformation (status quo).

> If your argument of T0(m=parties,evil)
> is valid, then
> it follows that the moral question
> T(m) is not essential to a
> successful transformation.  In other
> words, even if we have the
> technology to transform society, we
> have no guarantee that the result
> will be an improvement.  We may
> succeed in doing harm.

> After all, the introduction of the
> party system was arguably the most
> recent major transformation (T0). 
> You focus on T0(m), but what of
> T0(q)?  The parties somehow
> transformed the workings of our
> institutions, without transforming
> their structure.  How did they do
> that?  Can the trick be repeated?

One approach to modelling the transition
is to assume that the change to a party
based system consisted of two transitions,
Tx and Ty. The (exaggerated) equations
could look like...

Tx(q = possible, m = good individuals)
Ty(q = probable, m = bad parties)

Tx eventually happened, maybe after a
long struggle. Ty followed easily as the
next natural step.

The idea is that there is a chain of
transitions where the last state is the
most stable state. A transition to an
idealistic system may lead to transitions
towards some more pragmatic and often
even more corrupted systems where the
value of m gets lower.

Also many stable states are vulnerable in
the sense that one has to be active in
order not to let the system slip into a
bad transition (that is possible and
probable without continuous monitoring).

Juho


P.S. One more approach to modelling the
transitions is to separate interests among
different interest groups. One could e.g.
say that (exaggerating again) for lobbyists
and politicians corruption is a temptation
but for regular citizens it is a problem.
That may lead to an interest of the citizens
to build systems that forbid such corruption
and that also enforce that stated interest.
Transitions with sufficient interest are the
probable (q) ones. In this case the problems
may also materialize when the citizens give
the power to their representatives that do
have somewhat different interests.