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Remedies for the tiranny of majority
Doug EVERINGHAM
Sunday, 18 May 2003 21:00:13 +0200
Dear Friedrich and Consensus Democracy students,
Friedrich G. HALLER" haller@quadem.org wrote on 15 Apr 2003 On the principle of majority, the * tyranny of the majority * and the principle of consensus: ... ... existing and hated politicians have not the will to reach consensus ... the new professional politicians will have the necessary will, experience, ... independence... declare their will of achieving consensus ... at the Independent Political Academy 4 years...candidates between the population and the parliaments at the different levels during another 4 years... politicians or groups ... will not have any power.
Reply by Doug Everingham:
There are existing remedies for the * tyranny of the majority * .
Switzerland's parliament elects an executive of ministers including all parties proportionally, not just a majority party or coalition.
They elect each year a presiding minister, but have no persistent head of state or of government.
They are subject to recall or referendum on legislation by popular petition.
They have strong traditions of subsidiarity (administration by the lowest level of government practicable) -- local tax collection includes taxes for federal government and contributions toward the church funeral fund chosen by the taxpayer.
Painful experience of past wars between cantons with different religion or language has taught the Swiss the wisdom of consensus. But total agreement is less common among representatives of large communities than of local communities. So the Sociocracy movement developed from a private business enterprise which found that in the absence of total agreement their policy decisions could be made on the related principle of 'no persisting dissent'.
(Sociocratic Center, IJsclubstr. 13, 3061GR Rotterdam, Holland: http://www.sociocracy.biz )
Similar management systems, some involving up to tens of thousands of participants (in the northern Spanish Mondragón Co-operative Corporation), are described in * A New Way to Govern: Organizations and society after Enron * By Shann Turnbull ( http://members.optusnet.com.au/~sturnbull/index.html ). He gives examples in several countries of feedback loops forming a network (and in large complex cases, nested networks) of stakeholders (not just elites like shareholders and career executive chiefs, but employees at all levels, suppliers, watchdog and infrastructure providers etc.)
I think this existing tradition can be extended through growing registers of world citizens like the International Simultaneous Policy Organization (ISPO -- www.simpol.org -- so that any decision on a specialized academy for politicians may be under supervision of electors from the beginning. Without this, any move for a special academy will be taken over by party machinery and plutocratic lobbies just like existing political structures.
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