It works exactly like this all the way up from local through to federal politics. We Can't Have Nice Things in democracies, because of a small number of people willing to commit their entire souls, lives and money to some niche cause that's a net-bad, and they won't quit, even after losing 50 times. All it takes is that 51st time, and they'll definitely be at the fight.
> We Can't Have Nice Things in democracies, because of a small number of people
I wonder if this is more a problem with representational government. In a democracy there would be no council to influence, instead everyone would have an equal vote on the issue.
The thing with direct democracy is that we'd really need to implement like a 20 hour work week to make it work. Everyone would need to find the time to get up to date on all of the issues. Or you'd end up with a minority of people who happen to know and care about each issue controlling that issue... which maybe that's okay, actually.
It would be really interesting to see how a true direct democracy behaved at the government level. I've seen it work at the level of a workplace or a housing cooperative. And it does work, it's effortful, but it works. But I dunno if it's ever really been tried at the level of a government.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#Selection...
It is quite possible that it would not scale to larger population and general voting rights.
I don't really care for it, although I will have to say it would probably work better in the case of opaque public bodies very few people vote for elections in (e.g. a local American school board)
Switzerland has a lot more democracy than any other western government that I know of. Switzerland is a federation of cantons, each averaging 300k people, each with it's own constitution and parliament, collecting its own taxes, administering its own health care, even entering into certain treaties with other countries, etc. Each canton is subdivided into municipalities, some as small as a few thousand people, that decide more local issues including police, schools, etc. Divide and conquer, so that people can decide things for themselves. The magic seems to be that the people, via referendum, can add and/or delete laws they don't like [0]. So they have representatives but the people have ultimate direct power over them. Higher levels of government are involved only where necessary, for issues involving multiple lower levels of government. Seems to work well for them.
Many people seem to believe that government needs to be big to be effective. The opposite may be the case, as Leopold Khor convincingly argues [1], that "bigness" is the cause of many problems.
[0] https://wolf-linder.ch/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Swiss-poli...
This is also true of California; that's not the magic. I'd say identifying bigness as the problem is much more on target.
I would think that this would tend to force issues that are not agreed upon down to a more local level, which doesn't sound like a bad thing.
However I do not disagree with you that the scale California often operates at may be too large.
I don't understand what you're trying to say. This is also true of California. (Well, not the part about representatives worrying about it, but all that that demonstrates is that the claim you repeat is not true. The ability of the people to remove laws isn't forcing representatives to do anything.)
> The magic seems to be that the people, via referendum, can add and/or delete laws they don't like.
I'm saying that this cannot be the magic, because this state of affairs obtains in California, and it does not have the results which are, in Switzerland, ascribed to it. Those results do not come from this; they come from something else.
- .6% signatures required for a local referendum, 2% at federal level (somewhere else I saw 50k or 100k signatures required federally, some with 100 day time limits)
- referendums can occur between parliamentary elections (I read somewhere else that it might be typical that a citizen could vote 3 or 4 times per year)
- as per the constitution every tax is subject to a referendum, taxes are (mostly?) collected at the canton/municipality level, given the smaller size of these units people are engaged when their vote is more closely tied to their taxes and services.
- 295 referendums launched at the federal level since 1980, 124 gathered enough signatures, 14 passed, many more were withdrawn before a vote, the gathering of enough signatures having had the desired effect on parliament
- about 50% of the 124 referendums that got enough signatures had a direct or an indirect effect on parliament, many without ever needing to come to a vote
- 9% of laws decided by parliament end up subject to referendum
- parliament tends to form majorities on a per issue basis, and tends to design laws to avoid provoking a referendum
- there is no federal court to adjudicate the constitutionality of referendums, some referendums pass that cannot be implemented due to this, this was identified as a shortcoming (other shortcomings were the influence of money in politics and keeping the public informed on issues)
I'm not sure of the details and effects of California referendums, in comparison. The information above are my notes from the linked youtube unless otherwise indicated.
I personally would tend to agree with you on the specific issue we were talking about. I'm personally a fan of the way Japan does zoning, which allows for growth (more height and more retail) when the population density grows (industrial separate).
The documentation I had showed that the Swiss set the principals for zoning at a federal level, and zoning is actually administered at the most local municipality level.
I'm not sure of the Swiss implementation details. But in my ideal world that would mean a Japanese style zoning principals at the federal level, administered locally. A municipality can decide where they want industrial areas, and how to tax for their infrastructure, but local NIMBYs would have no power over what can be built on a specific plot (the federal principals would control that).
There's a lot of ways to be democratic. For example, perhaps our block elects a representative to attend council meetings, who will inform our group on issues in front of council, maybe someone else contributes with some extra research, etc, then we decide how our block will vote in council. Just one of many possibilities.
The problem is how to get people to think about the issues? Too many fail to realize the unintended consequences of their vote. Too many vote for what they think is popular not what is right.
The only leverage we have is our greater numbers, which doesn’t count for much if we don’t organize.
Tangentially, the NREL recently developed an app that streamlines the rooftop solar permitting process by integrating with the Accela city administration product. Permitting time has gone down from weeks to days (or sometimes minutes). [4] Progress is possible.
[2] https://developer.accela.com/
[3] https://www.gsa.gov/blog/2021/02/18/logingov-to-provide-auth...
[4] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nrel-solar-app-rooftop-resi...
I think that matters less than you might think.
Most decisions of any import are done by city and county staff, a few by appointed organizations like planning commissions (usually filled with yet more activists, each with their own activist kink), and finally an elected official(s) who spends most of their time handing out awards and declaring civic festivals.
It's really hard, as one of those activists, to not burn out and get cynical. Those who have theirs, are quite comfortable with the way things are, and do not want the smallest amount of change are often also retired and have infinite time on their hands - which they can use to great effect to lobby local governments and organize with their friends.
It's really hard to effectively organize against that among people who are trying to get themselves established in their careers, or who are starting/raising young families, or who are on the career grind. None of us have the time or energy to stay on a council meeting until 3 am every week.
But we've finally gotten fed up to the point where we're starting to put together an organization that looks like a political party with in a political party (our city is a one party town so we have to operate with in that party). It will canvas and organize volunteers and build a database we can use to simply overwhelm that loud minority. It's going to be a fuck ton of work, and it may fall apart before it gets going, but this seems like the only way forward.