This is part of my constitutional design series.
There are two different models of how democracy works that are in constant conflict.
The first is the consensus model, where all government action is based on public approval. You want to make sure policy is good - or rather, as the best approximation we have, popular - before it is implemented. More radical shifts should require greater consensus. In this model, people’s preferences are fairly constant, so they don’t change their mind much after seeing policy take effect.
The second is the accountability model, where people vote for a party (or person) who gets all the power, and then vote them out if they don’t do a good job. In this model, voters can’t accurately form an opinion about policy until it is adopted, so it’s all about trying things and seeing if they work.
These two models are hinted at in different settings in discussions about politics or in political science literature, but I think stating them explicitly like this is very helpful for thinking more rigorously. So many choices in constitutional design come down to tradeoffs between these mechanisms.
Assumptions
Understanding the assumptions behind these two models is very useful for thinking about when we should lean toward one or the other.
The consensus model of democracy is dependent on people voting based on their political views and this notion of “collective intelligence”. How exactly collective intelligence works is somewhat of a mystery, but I’ll give the version of it that I buy the most. Broadly speaking, people value many different things - liberty, equality, justice, security, faith, etc. Whether voter A agrees with policy choice X depends on values that this issue touches on (abortion might be faith vs. liberty, for example) and how much the voter cares about these different values (a religious voter prioritizes faith over liberty and thus supports abortion restrictions; a secular voter the opposite). A more complex version of this model could include the role of elites and the media.
The accountability model, on the other hand, works best when people are voting based on their own personal interest. It also works pretty well for issues where everyone has common values and there are clear statistics on which to judge the government by, like growing the economy or preventing crime. Even still it is nowhere near perfect - American voters hated the economy for much of 2023 and 24 despite all statistics being really positive, and right-wing voters incorrectly think NYC is a crime-ridden hellhole. Voters also need to compare how things are going to their expectations, which can introduce a lot of personal bias that undermines objective assessment.
Debatable metrics like how well a government protects personal liberties are generally not the strong suit of accountability democracy - people are going to approve of a party in power which matches their views and disapprove otherwise, in which case you’re back to consensus democracy. Even so, elements of accountability democracy can still be useful because when a party is in power, voters can more clearly ascertain their political views. Otherwise, people have to rely on campaign rhetoric, which can be difficult since politicians love to lie.
I think the general rule of thumb is that the more politics is polarized, the more consensus democracy becomes compelling over accountability democracy. High polarization means that people aren’t able to objectively assess conditions very well and mostly just vote based on their political views. In a case like that, I think it’s really important to have these political views represented in government accurately. When polarization is low, on the other hand, I think it’s better to give those in power more leeway to do things so that the public can judge them as a result.
It is for this reason that I think consensus democracy generally works better on the national level, while accountability democracy generally works better on the local level. I can see merit in both visions however, and throughout this series my primary objective will be to discuss how the tradeoffs manifest in design choices rather than state which design choices are necessarily optimal. Speaking of which…
How this affects design choices
Every single constitutional mechanism that restrains the party or person currently in power makes accountability democracy harder and consensus democracy easier. These restraints make unpopular actions less likely, at the cost of limiting politicians’ ability to experiment and limiting voters’ ability to pinpoint who is responsible for outcomes.
Decisions over constraints are made even harder by the many other concerns hidden in the choice between accountability and consensus:
Constraints lead to more stability in policy:
This might be good, allowing people to more easily work around policy in their life
Or it might be bad, allowing people to discover and abuse loopholes, and providing less data on what good policy looks like.
Constraints limit the ability of the people in power to destroy democracy.
Constraints give the opposition party the incentive to intentionally sabotage the country so that people vote out the party in power.
Lastly, there is a very blunt way of looking at things: if you think the bad party does more bad than the good party does good (relative to whatever the middle point is) you should lean toward consensus, because neither side will ever truly be in charge. If you think the opposite you should lean toward accountability, because power will alternate between the two sides.
The exact constraint affects all of these concerns, and I think the details can be quite important. I hope throughout this series to highlight cases where accountability and consensus seem to work particularly well. Join me!