Before I go on, some background. At this point it is pretty obvious to anyone not in Washington that the Democratic Party needs to vote for the Senate Health Care bill, send it to the President's desk and take it from there. Anything else invites disaster. Now, as much as I've been trying to find out, it's hard to know who exactly in the House is digging in his/her heels against this plan. One House member is on record: Progressive Caucus member Grijalva. If I had him near, I would slap his face trying to bring some sense into him. But, disagreements and all, Grijalva and left-wing opponents of the bill are not incurring in "democratic fetishism." Theirs is a different kind of problem, probably just plain old wishful thinking.
The ones I'm thinking of right now are the self-styled "moderates" that claim that with the election of Brown "the people have spoken" against health care reform. Sure, that's what people like Evan Bayh would say to justify themselves. But, at a deeper level, isn't there something wrong with our notion of democracy when a special election in Massachusetts, again the state that has more consistently than any other supported health reform, so much so that they have one of their own, is taken to represent "the will of the people"?
It's plain nuts to believe that the will of the people can be found this way. OK, in the case of Bayh it may be bad faith, but in the case of those who believe him, it's idiocy. Trying to determine the will of the people on the basis of the latest election, or the latest poll, or the latest pundit-approved interpretation of the latest poll about the latest election is just chasing ghosts. So, why is the Democratic party in the business of chasing ghosts?
I think the answer is because it is not a party, it just plays one on TV. The Democratic party is a confederation of politicians that on some occasions happen to hang out together. But else than that, it has shown repeatedly that it has no coherence of its own, it doesn't stand for anything. I thought that it stood for universal health care (an important goal but, in the scheme of things, a modest one) but now apparently not even that. So instead of defending its core values it has to be constantly seeking the "will of the people."
I could go on venting about the US Democratic Party but I think there is a deeper problem at hand. The institutions of modern democracies resemble market institutions in several ways. That much is clear and has been noted at least since Schumpeter or Anthony Downs. Within that structure, it is possible to think of the "will of the people" as some aggregate of preferences akin to the consumer preferences in economic markets.
There are many problems with this way of thinking, problems that hit close to home in my case because they pertain the way rational-choice models of politics are built. The first and most salient problem is that, although political preference may be represented, for analytical purposes, in much the same way we represent consumer preferences, such representation captures just the end product of a much deeper and more complex process.
To see what's wrong with this, let's look first at a non-democratic regime, say, the long-disappeared East Germany. People, even political scientists, operate under the stereotype that dictatorships do not consult the preferences of the populace. But this is inaccurate. In fact, the East German regime went to great lengths to consult the citizenry. It created an elaborate system of "Eingaben" which were, at least nominally, input offered by the people about how to improve the regime. An apolitical East German could, without risk or harm, write letters about this or that complaint affecting his daily life and on some occasions the complaint would be processed which is more than you can say of many democracies.
The trick here was how to operate within the limits of the acceptable. In terms of form, it would help if you prefaced your complaint explaining how it would help in the "construction of socialism" or something to that effect. More importantly, in terms of contents, there were some things off-limits. Suggesting multi-party elections, or freedom of travel, or the introduction of free markets would not be welcome and could land you in trouble. But there were lots of "safe" issues as long as you were not questioning the pillars of the regime.
The point of this example is that you can have a political system that relies on the "preferences of the populace" but that makes sure that those preference are rather flat and simple. Stuff like reporting pot holes in the streets, the appalling food at the factory's canteen, etc. But a vigorous democracy needs more than this. A vigorous democracy needs to take into account preferences that pertain to deep, structural aspects of the social pact. Health care is a good example. In the US the social pact does not include right now a principle of universal availability to health care; it is not considered a right. Health care reform is, above anything else, about that. Cost and deficit issues aside, the question is whether the US will ever become a society where health care is a right. There might be good arguments on both sides (although you can imagine where I stand on this issue), but the point is that a democracy needs to be able to have such kind of debate.
To some extent, the American democracy IS having such debate, although a lot gets obscured. But the thing is, and here I am getting into more speculative territory, regular citizens don't often go to work thinking "gee, it's amazing the ways in which the deep, structural aspects of the social pact we live in are screwing up my life." To pose deep, structural questions and, even worse, to come up with deep, structural answers requires an elaborate process of political socialization, it requires deliberation and collective action. In other words, it needs social movements, parties, things of the like.
That's what's so problematic about the American party system. If the Democratic party gets out of the business of bringing people together to arrive at a collective view of where they want to take society, if it insists on just chasing the latest polls, over time it becomes a kinder, gentler and more efficient version of the East German SED, a party that is good at keeping the customers satisfied. (The SED could only keep the customers satisfied for 40 years until they decided that they wanted an altogether different menu.)
Without political organizations and institutions that can bring citizens together to question the social structure they inhabit, democracy becomes inherently conservative and that, I believe, is the reason why many sectors in the left have been uneasy with democracy. These days in the US you hear a lot that "you need 60 votes in the Senate for anything." That's not exactly true. If you want to cut taxes for the rich, illegally invade countries, spurn global efforts at tackling global warming, wiretap and torture suspects, and other great accomplishments of the Bush administration, you don't need supermajorities. It's only progressive change that needs them. And the reason this is so is, again, because the Democratic Party is not a true party or, if it is one, it is every bit as conservative as the Republican only that it strikes a classy pose every now and then.
Have I become a Naderite? Oh, my. I don't know. I think that, given the institutional constraints of the US electoral system, the best shot for leftists in the US is still to collaborate with the Democratic Party and sometimes probably to work within it, much in the way they have done it. I still believe that it was folly for Nader to run in 2000, let alone in 2004. But I'm with the usually mild-mannered Ezra Klein that has been working himself into a rage these days: if the Democratic Party drops the ball on health care this time, the right thing to do for leftists might be just to sit on their hands in November and send it back into minority status.
Since I'm not a political blogger (well, we already established that I'm not a real blogger, but that's another thing) but rather a social scientists, my issue of the day is not electoral strategy. What I'm trying to argue is that those of us who work within the rational-choice paradigm must acknowledge that the concept of political preferences, while useful for some purposes, is badly flawed.
I'm proud to say that this is not a sudden epiphany for me. I've been thinking about this for a while only that the current crisis brings my thoughts into focus. I have a whole book to prove it. You'll have to wait for it, though, it's gonna be spectacular!
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