The Aristocratic Logic of Parliamentary Selection
It is remarkable that the only way to hold elective office in federal politics is for thousands upon thousands of individuals to line up in community centres and schools to write your name down on a piece of paper. Once compiled, if you have the most supporters, you are elected. Why then are the chosen ones held in such contempt and neglect by the choosers?
The term democracy is thrown around a lot, and we have a tendency to speak of western governments as though they were democracies. A democracy is a political organizing principle whereby the people exercice the power of decision making. Since the "people" as a unit do not actually exist in real life, the only way that the "people" can articulate their decisions is by division (ie. vote). If this is theoretically possible, it is far from the state of things in Canada or anywhere else in the world. I hope that I am not being to controversial if I point out that most politicians are lawyers, from the educated, professional or wealthy class, and represent entrenched political organizations known as parties that aggregate the dominant views of the loudest and most mobile segments of the population.
It was my professor Gilles Labelle who taught me, and I think that he is right, that parliamentary selection is based on an aristocratic logic. Think about the choice being made. Each person is asked to select: not an idea, not a policy, not a platform, not a doctrine, but a name. This name is supposed to be the best person, in the eyes of the elector, to legislate or govern (we never know at the time of selection whether the person we are selecting will legislate or govern, sit in the back or the front bench). Thus the question, in principle, becomes one of merit, a logic of supremacy over inferiors. Instrinsic and unspoken is the idea that some are more fit to legislate than others. And here is the truth that belies the democratic pretension of the parliamentary selection system: We all implicitly accept the aristocratic idea that some are more fit to govern than others. If we saw all as equally fit, we would see random selection processes (such as for jury duty) as an entirely plausible way of selecting parliamentarians.
Why do we randomly select persons for jury duty? Why do we entrust questions of judgement and condemnation to the randomly selected citizen, but not the laws that govern him? How about a role reversal: Let us nominate only lawyers for jury duty, and let us randomly select parliamentarians. Imagine the death of the polling firm, the bagman, the lobbyist, the strategic counsel firm, the patronage grant, the access and influence game within the political party, all those dark and sinister institutions that grow from our perpetual competition for aristocratic success at the ballot box. Can a brighter future be contemplated?
A democracy would be founded on the principle that all are equally fit to make the laws. By deduction, random selection processes would be the simplest and cheapest way to provide for a law-making body in a country as large as Canada. Does it scare you that you or your neighbour would be called to Parliament, by a poor telemarketer at 6pm on a school night? In the meantime, let us confess our aristocratic ideology and shake the hypocrisy of calling our parliament a democracy.
The term democracy is thrown around a lot, and we have a tendency to speak of western governments as though they were democracies. A democracy is a political organizing principle whereby the people exercice the power of decision making. Since the "people" as a unit do not actually exist in real life, the only way that the "people" can articulate their decisions is by division (ie. vote). If this is theoretically possible, it is far from the state of things in Canada or anywhere else in the world. I hope that I am not being to controversial if I point out that most politicians are lawyers, from the educated, professional or wealthy class, and represent entrenched political organizations known as parties that aggregate the dominant views of the loudest and most mobile segments of the population.
It was my professor Gilles Labelle who taught me, and I think that he is right, that parliamentary selection is based on an aristocratic logic. Think about the choice being made. Each person is asked to select: not an idea, not a policy, not a platform, not a doctrine, but a name. This name is supposed to be the best person, in the eyes of the elector, to legislate or govern (we never know at the time of selection whether the person we are selecting will legislate or govern, sit in the back or the front bench). Thus the question, in principle, becomes one of merit, a logic of supremacy over inferiors. Instrinsic and unspoken is the idea that some are more fit to legislate than others. And here is the truth that belies the democratic pretension of the parliamentary selection system: We all implicitly accept the aristocratic idea that some are more fit to govern than others. If we saw all as equally fit, we would see random selection processes (such as for jury duty) as an entirely plausible way of selecting parliamentarians.
Why do we randomly select persons for jury duty? Why do we entrust questions of judgement and condemnation to the randomly selected citizen, but not the laws that govern him? How about a role reversal: Let us nominate only lawyers for jury duty, and let us randomly select parliamentarians. Imagine the death of the polling firm, the bagman, the lobbyist, the strategic counsel firm, the patronage grant, the access and influence game within the political party, all those dark and sinister institutions that grow from our perpetual competition for aristocratic success at the ballot box. Can a brighter future be contemplated?
A democracy would be founded on the principle that all are equally fit to make the laws. By deduction, random selection processes would be the simplest and cheapest way to provide for a law-making body in a country as large as Canada. Does it scare you that you or your neighbour would be called to Parliament, by a poor telemarketer at 6pm on a school night? In the meantime, let us confess our aristocratic ideology and shake the hypocrisy of calling our parliament a democracy.
posted by Lt Smash at 8:59 PM
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