[EM] Parliamentary compromising strategy

[Michael Allan]

I still want to salvage Kristofer's liquid democracy approach to the
problem.  My last post didn't properly describe the executive primary,
however, and it seems to be crucial.

> I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. Is it parliamentary, in
> that the primary decides upon the composition of the legislature,
> and the legislature decides upon the composition of the executive?
> Or is it presidential, where there are two separate primaries, both
> decided by the voters through a liquid method?

I describe both parliamentary and presidential systems in this new
document: http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/power_structuring
Looking at the parliamentary system, there are two continuous, open
primaries.  One nominates the legislature (still as described in my
last post) and the other nominates the executive.  If the technical
parties that run the primaries (parties like Pirates and Partido de
Internet, which we can also call "open parties") do well enough in the
election, then the head of state invites the winning primary executive
to form the government.  Why?  Because the open parties take for their
titular leader the current leader of the executive primary.

So although there is no executive election (no constitutional change,
just a primary), neither does the new parliament decide the executive,
as it did before, at least not where the open parties are concerned.
They instead defer the decision to the executive primary.  So your
next question still needs to be answered.

> It seems to me that you're saying it is "presidential" (separate
> executive elections), but the assembly has to give confidence to the
> government. What, then, happens if the assembly doesn't? Is there
> another executive election? Or does the assembly just watch the
> candidate executive until the voters rearrange their voters to
> produce an executive they approve of, and then they pick that
> executive?

If parliament brings down the government on a motion of confidence,
then probably parliament is dismissed for an election.  That much is
the same as now.  The difference is that parliament no longer decides
the government.  But it can still bring the government down, and this
raises (again) a question of stability.

Suppose the bone of contention (budget or whatever) is itself open to
a continuous primary.  If a budget that's unpopular in the budget
primary is pushed by the government, which therefore begins to suffer
in the *executive* primary, then the assembly has a clear licence to
bring down the government.  Otherwise it does not and might itself be
punished in the resulting election.  I'm thinking this will solve the
stability problem by increasing (once again) the level of information.
It puts a lot onto the citizens, but presumeably also gives them the
tools and experience to deal with it.

> As for parties adopting the list, I don't think they would. Consider
> it in systems terms. Then the party is a system that responds to
> influence from the outside in such a way as to retain its
> integrity. The party thus desires to push the political environment
> in a direction that supports its existence. Traditionally, that can
> be done by gaining influence. Increased influence means greater
> capacity to change the environment - and thus a greater ability to
> head off changes that would be a problem to the party's own
> integrity. Here, a problem to integrity would be something that
> either weakens the party or requires it to change enough that it's
> no longer that party.
>
> Adopting a consensus list might give the party greater
> influence. But this influence is given at the cost of destroying
> integrity. In your own simpler words, it's political suicide. What
> good does it do the party to gain greater control, if the thing
> which gains control is not the party any longer? Control and
> influence are tools to keep integrity, but if there's no integrity
> to keep, it loses its point.

True.

> The party would have to redefine its identity so that it is not
> based on any political position before it could adopt the list. I
> don't think any usual parties would do that. They have not defined
> themselves as organizations that encourage democracy whatever its
> shape, but as organizations that politically represent a certain
> general position.

I was wrong about the fate of the political parties.  I couldn't find
a role for them, so I thought they'd just vanish.  But I found a role
when I was drawing the diagrams.  You can see it here in figure SN:
http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/power_structuring#SN

The two massive trees (Cx and Dx) are a lot like political parties.
They're certainly political in the sense of being concerned with
power.  They seem likely to have integrity too, as you say.  Two key
differences though: (1) even in a parliamentary system, they have
nothing to do with the legislature, such as party lists.  They're
purely executive parties; one in power, the other in waiting.

(2) They are recursively structured *as* political parties.  At least
I imagine that each sub-office would have it's own specialized
sub-parties.  So if O is the ministry of finance, then Co and Zo are
sub-parties that specialize and diverge in issues of "left finance",
and Do and its peers in "right finance".  One of these sub-parties
will ordinarily be in power, it's leader sitting as minister, while
the others are in waiting.  Presumeably the large number of parties in
PR systems would be swallowed up by 2 or 3 of these hyper-parties,
where they'd rise or descend through the semi-fluid hierarchy.

(I guess it's an evolutionary system.  At first I thought it might be
genetic because the formal offices look like genes, and the variant
parties that fill them look like alleles.  But it's not clear that
these party-alleles can replicate in the population (population of
what?), so I doubt it.  Still, the better sub-parties are likely to
sink vertically to greater power.  So it might be seen as a kind of
evolutionary breeder, or developmental nursery of parties.)

> New parties could define themselves differently. If the party's
> considering itself "an organization to introduce liquid democracy",
> for instance (as the Internet Party is, to my knowledge), it would
> have no difficulty moving to a consensus list.

Yes, I think the technical parties are better equipped to become "open
parties".  They'll cooperate in a loose network to provide the crucial
open primaries.  They'll be formal parties in the eyes of the state;
but each will take its candidate list from the assembly primary and
its leader from the executive primary, meaning they aren't really
parties, just technical platforms clothed to fit the parliamentary
system.  http://havoc.zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/glossary#open_party
The real political parties are in the executive, where they focus
exclusively on issues of power.

> But would it get rid of the parliamentary compromising strategy that
> I mentioned? ...

It seems instead to move it into the executive primary.  Looking again
at figure SN: http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/power_structuring#SN
Suppose an election is approaching.  I'm voting for Ds on the right,
but it's looking like the left will win.  The nominee for the finance
minister is a spend-thrift too, and I'm a fiscal conservative.  So I
shift my vote to Zs, thus supporting Zo for finance minister.  Maybe
we conservatives can unseat the spend-thrift Co.

This seems benign now.  The accuracy of the executive primary cannot
really be questioned, because it's as accurate as the electors want it
to be.  So this is no longer the problem:

> > > But if enough people vote this way, then the [left-wing] wins,
> > > even if the polls were inaccurate and it would not have won if
> > > people had voted honestly.

If there's any instability centered on the nomination for the finance
ministry, then it's Cx's fault.  He decides the nomination.  Either
he's open to renaming the finance minister, or he's not, and he should
communicate that decision clearly.  Probably he has.  Probably it's
too late for vote shifts from the right to have any influence.  It's
all crystallized.  Better to stand one's ground and wait for the left
to enter office.  Let them get bashed around a little by reality.
Then maybe the primary will become fluid again, at least in places.
The minister has to pass a budget.

> ... It depends on how the lists are frozen before the election. ...

There's a potential weakness here.  Continuous primaries can't be
bolted directly to decision systems, so the candidate list has to be
extracted with care.  Ideally we have a separate secret ballot to
extract the decision, like in single winner:
http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/assembly_election/single-winner
But the secret ballot is unavailable here (goes to waste).

So maybe a lottery every week.  It chooses a random time from the
previous week.  The result snapshot at that time becomes the decision
for the week.  It's reviewed by a panel who strike it (reverting to
the previous week's decision) if they see any wild gyrations, or other
fishy stuff.  So we have decisive candidtate lists at weekly
intervals.  (Later we vote to amend the constitution and do all this
by secret ballot instead.  That seems ideal, if we don't mind the
added expense.)

> If there's a negotiation step between the candidates on the list,
> then it could [rid strategy]. Say a voter votes for a liberal. This
> liberal notices that according to predictions of support for the
> non-technical list, more conservatives than liberals will be
> elected. Thus he gives his support to the more liberal
> conservatives, pushing them above the less liberal ones on the final
> list.  If there is no negotiation, then the voters have to do the
> negotiation step, and that could lead to the kind of instability I
> mentioned. It might be less serious than the case with a continuous
> election, though.  The voters know they have to make up their minds
> before the time the lists will be frozen (for the elections). The
> pressure is akin to that in Simmons's consensus method: "reach an
> agreement or we'll pick at random". One might still want to have
> tools that could be used to escape local attractors, however. In the
> case where the right splits off the center to not be diluted, it
> would be nice to have some mechanism that could predicate the vote
> transfers on keeping the center, so the right can see that splitting
> off the center will never work. But I don't know what those tools
> would look like. I think a liquid system would be more free to
> develop these than a traditional party system would, since the tools
> and mechanisms would only inform the voters, not alter how they
> delegate.

Does it still look problematic?  It seems the right/left boundary in
parliament is now so fuzzified, there's no longer any fulcrum to
teeter on.  It's so hemmed in by primaries too, that (as a whole) it
hasn't much wiggle room either.  The energetic elector might save his
powder for legislative primaries, for instance, in which bills are
prepared: http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/legislative_action

Mike


Kristofer Munsterhjelm said:
> On 03/12/2013 06:27 PM, Michael Allan wrote:
> > Hi Kristofer,
> >
> > I think the "liquid democracy" solution can be salvaged by moving it
> > into an open primary.
> >
> >> I suppose the problem is that the coalition makeup is set up after
> >> the election rather than during it. So the voting method has no idea
> >> about how power is distributed and arranged after the election. ...
> >
> > I agree, it's an information problem.
> >
> >> That leaves the second option, which sounds more like a form of
> >> proxy voting or liquid democracy. Besides the problems with
> >> vote-buying [1], there's also the instability. ...
> >
> > Instead of a continuous election, what about a continuous primary?
> > Being continuous, the results are still informed by daily events in
> > the assembly.  But being a primary, there's no direct feedback to
> > cause instability.  Instead, elections are held at long intervals as
> > usual, and this is where the primary kicks in.  It's an open primary,
> > so it produces a single candidate list that cuts across all parties.
> > Any party may adopt this all-party list as its own.  This is political
> > suicide, of course, but it also wins votes.  The party surrenders its
> > power over the elected members, who now owe their seats entirely to
> > the open primary, and not to any party.  Electors and candidates will
> > be happy to support this arrangement.  It dissolves the power blocs
> > and frees the assembly to focus on its legislative functions. [2]
> 
> That would get rid of the instability, or at least slow it down to only 
> oscillate between election periods. To use a metaphor, the elections 
> serve as a low-pass filter.
> 
> But would it get rid of the parliamentary compromising strategy that I 
> mentioned? It depends on how the lists are frozen before the election. 
> If there's a negotiation step between the candidates on the list, then 
> it could. Say a voter votes for a liberal. This liberal notices that 
> according to predictions of support for the non-technical list, more 
> conservatives than liberals will be elected. Thus he gives his support 
> to the more liberal conservatives, pushing them above the less liberal 
> ones on the final list.
> If there is no negotiation, then the voters have to do the negotiation 
> step, and that could lead to the kind of instability I mentioned. It 
> might be less serious than the case with a continuous election, though. 
> The voters know they have to make up their minds before the time the 
> lists will be frozen (for the elections). The pressure is akin to that 
> in Simmons's consensus method: "reach an agreement or we'll pick at 
> random". One might still want to have tools that could be used to escape 
> local attractors, however. In the case where the right splits off the 
> center to not be diluted, it would be nice to have some mechanism that 
> could predicate the vote transfers on keeping the center, so the right 
> can see that splitting off the center will never work. But I don't know 
> what those tools would look like. I think a liquid system would be more 
> free to develop these than a traditional party system would, since the 
> tools and mechanisms would only inform the voters, not alter how they 
> delegate.
> 
> As for parties adopting the list, I don't think they would. Consider it 
> in systems terms. Then the party is a system that responds to influence 
> from the outside in such a way as to retain its integrity. The party 
> thus desires to push the political environment in a direction that 
> supports its existence. Traditionally, that can be done by gaining 
> influence. Increased influence means greater capacity to change the 
> environment - and thus a greater ability to head off changes that would 
> be a problem to the party's own integrity. Here, a problem to integrity 
> would be something that either weakens the party or requires it to 
> change enough that it's no longer that party.
> 
> Adopting a consensus list might give the party greater influence. But 
> this influence is given at the cost of destroying integrity. In your own 
> simpler words, it's political suicide. What good does it do the party to 
> gain greater control, if the thing which gains control is not the party 
> any longer? Control and influence are tools to keep integrity, but if 
> there's no integrity to keep, it loses its point.
> 
> The party would have to redefine its identity so that it is not based on 
> any political position before it could adopt the list. I don't think any 
> usual parties would do that. They have not defined themselves as 
> organizations that encourage democracy whatever its shape, but as 
> organizations that politically represent a certain general position.
> 
> New parties could define themselves differently. If the party's 
> considering itself "an organization to introduce liquid democracy", for 
> instance (as the Internet Party is, to my knowledge), it would have no 
> difficulty moving to a consensus list.
> 
> > The power structure is nominated in a separate, executive primary [3].
> > The assembly gives its confidence to the nominated government, or not,
> > and this information feeds back to both primaries (executive and
> > assembly).  The more of the assembly members who are elected in this
> > fashion, the more the assembly is apt to take guidance from primary
> > sources in all matters, even legislation.  But the guidance is always
> > discretionary, so there's time for talk and adjustment on both sides.
> 
> I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. Is it parliamentary, in that 
> the primary decides upon the composition of the legislature, and the 
> legislature decides upon the composition of the executive? Or is it 
> presidential, where there are two separate primaries, both decided by 
> the voters through a liquid method?
> 
> It seems to me that you're saying it is "presidential" (separate 
> executive elections), but the assembly has to give confidence to the 
> government. What, then, happens if the assembly doesn't? Is there 
> another executive election? Or does the assembly just watch the 
> candidate executive until the voters rearrange their voters to produce 
> an executive they approve of, and then they pick that executive?
> 
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info