A new for of democracy ?

[Spiffor]

I have recently thought about something.

In our current form of democracy, we elect leaders so that they can follow the policies they please within the bonds of a constitution.

I have thought about making it different: why not have an unelected executive who is bound to follow a definite policy ? People would be voting for said policies (between programmes every few years, said programmes being developed by parties), and they'll be voting for specific policies through referendum.

I don't think such system is better or worse than the current form of democracy, but it sure is different. I actually don't see it as less democratic than our current form.

What do you think of it ?

[Drake Tungsten]

What do you think of it ?

Make Arnold governor for life of California and you'd have this system in place.

[Berzerker]

In our current form of democracy, we elect leaders so that they can follow the policies they please within the bonds of a constitution.

You must not live in the US.

[Spiffor]

I was speaking in theory. I don't expect any politician to follow the bonds of the law or the constitution

[Rufus T. Firefly]

In the US, counties (I'm not sure what these are called in France; it's bigger than a city but smaller than a province; district, maybe?) often are run by a "county executive"; this is an elected post, but otherwise it is somewhat like your idea.

[CerberusIV]

Interesting.

What happens in the UK is that our political parties publish manifestos containing promises of what they will do if they get elected. Then they get elected and drop the difficult promises and fudge the others. It would be very interesting if they had to commit to carrying out their promises and faced some sort of sanction or penalty if they failed to do so.

[VetLegion]

I once had the idea, that every smartazz who wants to go to
war should be forced to actually fight in the first line. After a week or so, we would have world peace.

Am I smart or what

[GePap]

The thing is, how does one hold the unelected offical accountable for how they carry out a policy? And can voters actually make policy decisions? Working in gov now I can tell you that any action has a dozen and one different reprecussions, and god knows how many different people need to do it. At best voters could chose only broad strokes policy, which would mean unelected and hence unaccountable individual would be left to chose the particulars. I see no way to get around this problem.

[VetLegion]

First thing we need, and with the technology at hand we can achieve it, is to cut the average term in office from four to one or two years. We can build on that.


There are elections in my country soon, and I am thinking about the futility of it all

Four years, damn, they will steal a fortune from me in that period plus none of the things I want implemented will get implemented, since most of our politicans are still stuck some time back in the seventies mentally. Today, the bastards forbade the stores to work on sundays!

I want change and I want it now.

[Space05us]

I once had the idea, that every smartazz who wants to go to
war should be forced to actually fight in the first line. After a week or so, we would have world peace.

Am I smart or what

or what. us smarter people always find a way of conning you more special people into doing our bidding

[Odin]

Re: A new for of democracy ?

Originally posted by Spiffor
I have recently thought about something.

In our current form of democracy, we elect leaders so that they can follow the policies they please within the bonds of a constitution.

I have thought about making it different: why not have an unelected executive who is bound to follow a definite policy ? People would be voting for said policies (between programmes every few years, said programmes being developed by parties), and they'll be voting for specific policies through referendum.

I don't think such system is better or worse than the current form of democracy, but it sure is different. I actually don't see it as less democratic than our current form.

What do you think of it ?

That is what they do in many countries with a parlimentary government, there is no distinction between the executive and legislature. The US and most Latin American countries use the Presidential system, where the executive and legislature are seperate and co-equal. Both systems have thier advantages and disadvantages. The parlimentary system has little or no bickering between the branches of government, but there is more chance of "Tyranny by Majority". Vice versa for the presidential system.

In Europe, people usually vote for a party and not for a single canidate. I don't think this will work in the US because a lot of people loath the "party bosses" here in the US and view the two main parties as "undemocratic oligarchies" (listen to our country's Green party leader, Ralph Nader, the party establishment are hated venomously ).