The latest world events, political trends and scientific studies point to the approaching global political crisis associated with the problems of the degradation of "democracies." In order to understand why the “democracies” are degrading, it is necessary to consider the reasons. The reasons can be found out by considering the core of the existing political systems, so-called “democracies” by many of us.
- The established world political systems, called “democracies” in the modern world, are not conceivably like this:
Democracy (ancient Greek δημοκρατία “democracy” from δῆμος “people” + κράτος “power”) is a political regime based on a method of collective decision-making with equal impact of the participants on the outcome of the process or on its essential stages.
It is generally recognized that in countries, which are considered to be democratic, have built systems of polyarchic power:
Polyarchy (ancient Greek πολυαρχία, from poly- + ancient Greek Greek αρχία (power) - “multiple authority, the power of many people”) is a political system based on open political competition of various groups in the struggle for voter support.
- Described in detail:
Dahl, Robert. A Preface to Democratic Theory. Formed world polyarchic political systems are not identical with democracy.
The public competition of political elites and the involvement of the population in the political process make the concept of polyarchy close to the concept of democracy. But this is not the same thing.
- Due to this reason, the recent works on "democracy" degradation can be considered only in relation to the polyarchy of political elites:
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt How Democracies Die,
Foa R. S., Mounk Y. The Danger of Deconsolidation,
Mounk Y. The Undemocratic Dilemma.
- The public choice in polyarchy matches to the guaranteed choice of the social welfare function made by the dictator:
Kenneth J. Arrow, 1951, 2nd ed., 1963. Social Choice and Individual Values.
In other words, in the current regimes of polyarchy we choose the dictator of the social welfare function, and those are called democracies only because there are some public institutions made to raise public attention if the ruling elite exceeds the reasonable (Pareto efficient) legislative, judicial and executive moral scope peculiar to democracy. And the ruling elites (or clans) are supposed to listen to public opinion.
- What happens if the ruling elites directly or indirectly buy representatives of public institutions or go into a huddle with each other? The question is rhetorical. The answer is already on the streets of many developed countries. The news increasingly turns into military chronicle. The guards of elite polyarchies stop working in systems of different countries.
And this is just the beginning.
- The most general requirement for a social welfare function in a democracy is the consistency of this function with the Pareto efficient criterion: if the practicality (welfare) of one of the society members increases, the rest should not decrease.
Pareto Vilfredo, Compendio di sociologia generale, 1920
In a concentration situation: 1% has more wealth than the remaining 99% of the Earth’s inhabitants, this is clearly not the Pareto efficiency and this fact can be one of the main evidences of the “elite polyarchy” model failure at the current stage of societal development, the reason and the sign of the upcoming world disaster.
- The theorists of polyarchy consider excessive concentration and power centralization to be an essential democracy brake. Therefore, an important factor in the development of polyarchic "democracy" is the concentration of economic and political resources.
It is safe to talk about the current concentration of economic and political resources in the hands of the ruling elites and thus about the presence of “imitative polyarchic democracy” as one of the reasons of the global political crisis.
- On the other hand, Kenneth Arrow’s theorem will also be true for each individual choice of “overextended” economic and political resources if the social welfare function aggregated in his theorem is presented as its components. In practice, these are institutions that perform the basic state functions. Choosing judicial, legislative, executive (after awareness and being informed) power according to Arrow's theorem, we will get local function dictators of public welfare in their person.
- Separately selected local dictators of state functions will not be able to go into a huddle with each other, in terms of less than their powers, find the Nash equilibrium.
(Nash, John F. (May 1950). "Non-Cooperative Games" (PDF). PhD thesis),
if they will be legalized through elections of 10 or more from each government branch and, accordingly, at each level of management. Under these conditions, real agreements (cahoot beyond the general Pareto efficiency) between executives can be reached only after several years (theoretically even more):
Yakov Babichenko, Aviad Rubinstein Communication complexity of approximate Nash equilibria.
- Selected executives, in case of applying the conclusions of the work of George Akerlof (George A. Akerlof. The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism)
about the establishment of guarantees (annual re-elections) in the presence of asymmetric information (election promises), will be forced to cooperate with voters due to the fact that the time to find Nash equilibrium with the voter (within Pareto efficiency) will be incomparably smaller than finding Nash equilibrium with other functionaries (cahoot without a common Pareto efficiency framework) due to the incompatibility of the set of possible strategies in each set of players and the limited time of authority. In this case, the entire system of state administration, with its election by the people, will strive for Pareto efficiency of society.
In addition, the difference in the time of finding the Nash equilibrium between the elected functionaries and the voters (cahoot outside the general Pareto efficiency) puts “prisoner dilemma” between people’s deputies, in this case, “whether to go into huddle with each other in prejudice of voters' interests” dilemma. The optimal solution to the dilemma will lead to Pareto efficiency of the entire system.
Albert William Tucker Contributions to the theory of games, Annals of Mathematical Studies 1950
- Comparison of polyarchy systems: the existing one, where the elite is chosen - the global dictator of social welfare function, with the supervision of the chosen controllers, with the polyarchy system where the local dictators of separate state functions and controllers are legally chosen by the people leads to an understanding of the true "polyarchic democracy" not the imitative one.
- As an example, citizens of many modern polyarchic countries with the help of mediators elected for 5 years (deputies, president, coalition) “elect” attorneys, judges, key civil servants. Those elected are not obliged to do anything to the citizens, and therefore work for those who have really elected them. For such state executives, the people are only the subject of management, but not a partner and employer.
Where is the logic? Shift the kings with their retinues (elites), so that over the centuries people will become the subject of control (subjects) again, bring temporary “kings” with their own selected or engaged retinues (elites) into power for 5 years, those who create themselves as a safety resource in case of resigning both national oligarchy and the world financial hegemony. Kings were not interested in the withdrawal of funds from the country and the creation of a transnational elite, much more powerful financially than their countries. They were masters of their countries. Who is the real owner of the countries with the systems of temporary elite polyarchies? Obviously not their people.
- The global resource hegemon in the form of the super elite is extremely advantageous to modern national elites. The power of national elites is temporary, and having withdrawn the part of national resource during the reign from their country the national elite becomes a part of the transnational super-elite with a huge capital sufficient to bribe (directly or indirectly) individual representatives of national "democratic" institutions, engaging the changing national elites, "brainwashing” people about the existing lack of alternatives through the purchased media, the support of engaged "intellectuals", populists, nationalists and opinion leaders through endless grants and awards. Solving problems of direct or indirect bribery of national elites (ruling clans) and their populizers is becoming easier due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of the public is busy with ordinary, everyday activities or just surviving with their 1% of wealth but not controlling elites suffering from excessive greed.
- What prevents people from directly choosing state executives and controllers with their re-election a year later, as a guarantee of their functions in Pareto efficiency? The answer is obvious - unawareness of causal problems. The artificially created system of smooth-talking of causal problems, distracting the attention of societies of “democratic” countries to artificially created problems of consequences, significantly complicates the awareness of causal problems. A sure sign of smooth-talking are heated discussions in the media of pseudo-problems (problems of consequences) without offering solutions.
- The obvious beginning of the world political crisis of imitation elite polyarchy can contribute to the awareness of causal problems and the search for ways out of the upcoming political and economic disaster.
- It is not necessary to change the structure of government. By changing the election system of the governing elite to the election system of people’s representatives in the government structure, the regime of government automatically changes, the outdated political system will be changed to a democratic one, without radical changes in the structure of government. In this case, the system of “elite polyarchy” is transformed into the system of “people polyarchy”, which is much closer to the “ideal democracy”, and much further from the imitational one. Global and local system of corrupt surplus value: Money - Politics - Money will be lapsed in several iterations by the described mechanism, because of leading to Pareto efficiency.
“Therefore, the coming global political crisis is correct to call a crisis of imitative elite polyarchy and not a crisis of democracy as it is.
- Separately, it is necessary to figure out the coincidental in time crisis of the world transnational super elite, expressed in its stratification into clans, and in the beginning clan division of spheres of influence into weaker national elite polyarchies. This state is extremely dangerous due to the possible transition of the confrontation of the transnational super-elite clans from the cold phase to the hot one, involving people in the conflict, first of all those of the imitation democracies.
- That is not to deny the elite usefulness, under conditions of well-founded leadership and not leaderism elites play their natural role as engines of human progress also in the political sphere.
Leadership is a process of social influence, through which the leader receives support from other members of the community to achieve the goal.
Chemers M. An integrative theory of leadership. — Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1997
It is important to build interconnected relations of peoples with their elites and the super elite.
These problems require additional research and development.
- Transformation of existing regimes by national societies to the system of “people polyarchy” can be implemented in the following form (on the basis of generalization of the generally accepted scientific works):
Direct elections of the central government:
Term of office up to 3 years
President with the functions of control of the Constitution
Commander-in-chief
Term of office from 1 to 2 years
Chief Justice and Court Members
Attorney General and members of the board
Head of the Security Service
Head of the Anti-Corruption Department
Head of the Special Prosecutor's Office
Head of the Bureau of Investigation
Prime Minister
Minister of Government Property
Minister of Finance
Minister of Health
Minister of Police
Education Minister
Head of the Central Election Commission (CEC) and its members
Legislative Deputies
Head of Central Bank and his deputies
Head of Antimonopoly Authority
Head of public media and members of media regulatory institutions
Direct elections of regional authorities:
Term of office from 1 to 2 years
Governor
Judges
Attorneys
Representatives of the regional legislature
Head of Police
Head of Healthcare
Head of Education
Head of Public Property Management
Head of Land Administration
Head of Election Commission and its members
Head of Public Media
Direct elections of local government:
Term of office from 1 to 2 years
Mayors or Heads of Communities
Attorneys
Judges
Executive Representatives
Healthcare Committee
Education Committee
Head of Collective Property Management
Head of Land Administration
Head of the Election Commission and its members
Head of Public Media
- The most important safeguard of the “people polyarchy” is the annual (at early steps) re-election of people's representatives for each branch of power of at least 10, at each level of government. The total amount of years spent in office by individual representatives may remain traditional, due to the fact that the time for cahoot will not be enough and it is unlikely that a full set of managers will be repeated with consistent strategies. The evidence is similar to that given above.
- The offered configuration of the social structure, the basic rules of public choice and its frequency does not contradict the basic Constitutions of democratic countries, the Charters on human rights of UN and EU.
- In economically developed countries, parts of the presented layout have been implemented historically and intuitively. These countries are the least affected by the global political crisis. The introduction in the full complex (or its semantic modification taking into account historical peculiarities) of the system of election of people’s representatives in the structure of government in countries with pronounced "elite polyarchy" will allow to get out of the global political crisis and go to the regime of "people" or that will be identical to "democratic polyarchies ”
- Practical implementation can be carried out through a social contract and (or) a referendum.