Responsibility and competence of political power

The absence of criteria ensuring the competence of politicians partly explains the systematic inefficiency of governments. Without ensuring the competence of the most important functions of any society, sub-standard outcomes are expected. Since the power of representative democracy rests entirely in its representatives, democratic theory must ensure their highest competence, integrity and merit. Two approaches to reach this objective are presented: professional political studies of the highest quality and the complete opening of political activities. The criteria of 21st century democracy are re-established in a philosophy leaning towards the future while retaining the lessons of the past.

Competence and political power

Modern democratic theory takes for granted quality and competence in political offices by presupposing a positive natural selection through the free competition of parties. Practice, however, has seldom given reason to this belief, leading rather to cynical quarrels and a theatrical rhetoric where the truth is exception rather than the rule. In spite of decades of practice, modern democracy is still hard pressed to show convincing results and politics is now one of the most primitive aspects of humanity. All sciences and arts have advanced at a much faster pace than politics, which stagnates miserably in its rigid mindset. Good ideas are rare and more efforts are carried out to convince of the value of ideas than to seek better ones.

Any citizen, without consideration for competence, judgement, integrity or knowledge, can essentially hold political office as long as they know and convince the right people. Such certainly explains the generally poor quality work of politicians and how the government can still be a laughingstock of inefficiency in spite of the greatest potential of any actor in society. Political theory prefers to discuss whether it is preferable or not to privatize certain government activities rather than understand why it must be ineffective, even inefficient, initially. Precisely, why must the government be ineffective? How is this inefficiency possible? Who is in charge? In what is it inevitable?

Without a formal approach to emphasize desirable criteria, it is money and marketing that determine the nature of elected officials. Access to the political power remains based on arbitrary criteria. Democracy is exaggeratedly tolerant towards its politicians, incapable of imposing them the standards ensuring competence and integrity necessary for their functions. Representative democracy concentrates all its powers in politicians elected by the population; it must thus ensure their highest competence, responsibility and integrity. A democracy that is unable to ensure highest criteria of its politicians wastes its potential and is consciously restricted to inefficiency.

Democracy has reached sufficient maturity to ensure competence and merit of the political power. It can achieve such by the establishment of objective criteria, such as is the case for doctors, engineers and several other professions. All important professions have a code of ethics and vocational training, politics does not gain anything by making exception. The profession of politician should be one of the most difficult to achieve, requiring enormous sacrifices and exceptional moral criteria. But how to define these criteria? What characteristics should a professional politician present? I have recognized four criteria of high importance, there are certainly others but those are necessary for professional political office: competence, integrity, judgement, responsibility. A politician must present recognizable competences for the functions he will occupy, which influence all aspects of society. A politician must have the highest integrity, which history shows cannot be reached on a voluntary base. A politician must exert a rational and objective judgement, ideology must thus disappear from political considerations. A politician must be personally responsible for all the decisions which he makes, which can be only reached in total transparency.

Responsibility and political power

Because of the importance of its functions, t political power should require the most complete studies and longest of all the professions, imposing an enormous sacrifice which would not be wasted for simple personal benefit. Political science is traditionally isolated from other academic fields whereas it should include them all. Politics deals with the best coordination of all the activities in society and should thus understand them all. Politicians cannot know only policy, they must know about the entire society. Political studies should thus relate to all fields of knowledge, offering a global overview of society through all sciences, natural and social, and a very thorough general culture. Politicians’ training will lead them to understand how company works, with all its different interrelationships and aspects. It would act primarily of the opposite of a doctorate, widening rather than specializing the field of study.

Since criteria would be higher regarding qualification level of the candidates, it would be justified to increase difficulty at the electoral level. Citizens should thus have the direct power to remove any politician from office when there is a strong majority of dissatisfaction, which could be formalized by an approval rating for each politician. If a politician would fall below a percentage, he would be removed and replaced. Those who were not elected to political office could work to justify their presence, seeking new ideas to improve society and offering constructive and apolitical criticism to politicians in function.

Centuries of political practice have shown that the integrity and the good judgement of the politicians cannot be assured in secrecy. Political theory does not provide any argument justifying this privilege which is not irrelevant against its consequences, from corruption, to war and genocide. Secrecy is the only necessary condition for all the immoral acts of political power; it does not have any legitimate justification. Political secrecy brings only cover to incompetence, inefficiency and corruption. Guaranteeing full transparency of government activities would ensure full competence and efficiency. The political high positions would be required to impose the sacrifice of private freedom. Soldiers already make such a sacrifice; it is perfectly justified for the circumstances. The enormous power of politicians would be thus accompanied by full responsibility for their actions and decisions, making integrity and competence a standard.

Direct access to the political power: technology and responsibility

The direct democratic capacity of the citizens can to be ensured by a digital gate, giving access to all the information of government and managing the votes of the population on the questions of law and order. All human knowledge could be entirely public there and accessible to all, independently of a political office or not. The Pentagon American has developed for a few years a rather sedentary system and reliable to direct several military operations directly ¹. It is possible to guarantee the perfect operation of such a system data processing, human and possible dangers being all only under cover of the secrecy. It would be justified to invest more in peace and the democracy that in the war. The digital communications only make to start, Internet is hardly today than than was the car hundred years ago. The digital possibilities for the democracy are immense and incredibly under-utilized; the direct access to a public political arena is possible with technologies present, under the condition which they are entirely opened. With such a tool with its range, the whole population could thus to form the second room of the legislative assembly, each citizen whom can to vote on each question legislative and being able to delegate sound directly to be able with another citizen. Any citizen could thus express his opinion without encumbering the daily newspaper too much, while having the capacity to vote directly when the stake would be important. These voters representatives could be compensated by the citizens who delegate their votes, then being able to work for their benefit. The nonsuspensive vote of this room would not prevent the action of the government but would indicate the terminals to be followed according to the will population. The government could go against the opinion public, but should answer of its decision and assume the responsibility in case of failure. The government would be thus responsible in front of the population.

Politicians of competence and integrity, legitimated by a free, equal population in front of the law and in opportunities, including/understanding really it for what she votes and having the permanent capacity of dismissal, as well as the total opening of all the actions and decisions of the government are the minimal criteria required for the democracy. Insinuations are thus a vocational training for the politicians, of the entirely informed elections, absent of all that is not strict objectivity and truth, the opening total of all that the said government, knows, decides and carries out. Others criteria supplement, but those cannot miss. No modern society could thus be considered really democratic, at best an altruistic oligarchy, but the changes necessary relate to only very few individuals. only changes for the population would be better information of political activities and a greater political responsibility, having it direct capacity to relieve the inefficient ones by an official political arena. The important changes relate to only approximately five to twenty people in all governments. The costs and technicalities are accessible and little complexes to be implemented.

Being of professional nature, this approach would thus eliminate the ideology from the political considerations, which does not have ever brought benefit to the humanity in any event. The political ideology it is to believe in something which one does not know, without including/understanding why and without need or benefit. The modern society is still young, it cannot to already answer all the questions. To believe blindly in answers imagined nothing positive brings to the political thought. Any idea is valid but not being a true field of science, the policy would not have never hardly more than to consider the ideas for what they are: ideas. There are always several ideal solutions, in the circumstances, and to be obstinated not to seek them on subjective constraints is the first obstacle of human manufacture. The ideology does nothing but impose blinkers unnecessarily, reducing the effectiveness, which must be defined in qualitative term rather than quantitative. The political effectiveness is often determined by speed of execution, criterion however unimportant. The important thing is to find best solutions, process accelerated by the presence of best conditions and the elimination of the obstacles. Qualified politicians and entirely honest, supplementing an educated, informed and free company form best conditions of the democracy and an environment favourable with better ideas.

The nature of an elite

The elitist nature of these ideas appears less democratic for some since it restricts the access to the capacity. The access to current capacity is however already, it is however determined by the money and social relations. The nature of an elite depends only on the rules on play. If the rules are the money and the public image, the elite will be rich and manipulator. If the rules are competence, the ideas, the judgement and the integrity, the elite will be made of such individuals. The sporting or scientific elite is seldom determined by criteria other than the professional talent of respective fields. The politicians are quite simply the elite of the company in its political aspect, like are the elite of any other profession. design of an elite to the capacity is in oneself a redundancy, any elite has inevitably a capacity, aspect political or different, would be this only by its influence. It is simply the rules of the game which define nature of it. Lessons of passed provide us much indices on what must be eliminated for to support the merit in policy.

The money must initially be completely without influence, as well for the access to a political office as to speak with the government. The vote being the only pledge of legitimate political support, contributions electoral do nothing but corrupt the process. The government also any more cannot to be one-way, the ideas of the population must be listened, population must be informed of all and must be able to express an opinion direct with the government. Any citizen should be able to propose an idea if it the support of several citizens would have, say ten, increasing the potential new ideas and solutions with the existing problems. One can limit it a number of judges, but one cannot limit the sources of creativity. politicians would be the judges of these ideas but the very whole population would work however to find them. Education misses certainly on the level citizens, but amply time ago to correct the situation. If one considers one period of studies of approximately ten years for the political office, there would be one reasonable time to catch up with the deficit of education. Information and knowledge will be the largest engines of the political power and economic for the 21st century, it is not absolutely necessary to establish a system policy able to make bear fruit this.

The transition could be done carefully. Graduated political school would occupy more and more of seats at the assemblies and governments, at each year graduating of new candidates. A transition carefully would allow to reduce the shock and to even compare quality directly deputies graduated of those which would not be it. If it proves that it is preferable to leave the money and the public relations to determine the functions the most important policies of the company, there will be to only turn over to these criteria. The way of professional education seems however much more favorable by a political elitism based on competence, integrity, the judgement and the responsibility that by a political elitism based on the depth for banking account and the best public image.

Notes

1. See DoD Directive 8100.1, Total Information Grid (GIG) Overarching Policy 09/19/2002. http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/html/810001.htm