On a small scale this is initiative and referendum. On the large scale this results in a small proportion of unelected people who have a lot of time on their hands controlling things. A large chunk would probably be relatively well-to-do retirees.
This is the terrible outcome of having tons of votes for so many offices on huge ballots, most people can not possibly track the positions of all the people they are voting for.
So that leaves a small number of highly motivated people to choose these commissions. And because it takes very few votes to change the commissions one way or the other every decision can now be swayed by whatever small number of people show up at random times during the day.
Small numbers of highly motivated people control these commissions. They rally a large enough number of people at the right time, and they organize, and they do have complete control of these decisions.
Meanwhile, those who are young and have to work, or those who have to work many jobs and have children to take care of, can't spend the hours per week it takes to give input.
This form of direct democracy ends up enfranchising those with the most time and power to follow minutia that's unrelated to their day-to-day lives. And it attracts the sort of people that like to stick their noses into all sorts of other people's business.
Another advantage is that if you pay random citizens full time to oversee the government, they will be able to talk and negotiate with each other directly, they will have the time to actually study and think about the issues, and they will be able to subpoena the information they need to take good decisions.
If you want people to vote meaningfully on issues, you have to empower them to cast the very best vote they could cast, and demarchy is basically the only way this could be done practically in a large society. The concept of a general election or general referendum is aberrant.
Could be that a lesser amount of people negotiate on an issue, which then gets voted on by everybody? I agree that the voters would need more time to learn about the issues they are voting on, but not everyone needs to be involved preparing an issue for a vote.
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.
The thing is, the last few times I recall when some have tried more direct democracy (Brexit, a few referenda in europe, california ballot measures) it seems to lead to decisions that seem rather sub-optimal. I am not sure the random citizen might actually be better at governing that a professional politician.
People elect goverment and officials, both at local and federal level to make informed decisions that weight in numerous factors. If people had more direct control over and line-item veto and vote, we may not make the best decision as a whole. At least for some contentious issues, you sometimes get to directly vote on state referendum.
A large non-voting would-be constituency means that there is little mandate for politicians to drive policy.
If say 90% of the population didn't vote, plus there were public demonstrations of discontent, officials would be so afraid of a revolution (or other radical action) it would in theory temper their ambitions.
Tocqueville touches on this in Democracy in America.
The problem with direct democracy is the same as for voluntary voting: voters on the fringe, who are more highly motivated, will come to dominate the polity.
Still the majority of the population, as it happens. If serious percentages (say, 60%) of a democracy want something enough that they make it a voting issue, it'll happen eventually. You'll get a candidate who is happy to do 'everything the other guy would do + X'.
The big thing with constitutional changes is that they will normally require serious unity amongst the population, most of whom will likely by default agree with the constitution.
The majority isn't greedy and evil, they just don't put up much of a fight when the politicians 'misunderstand' and implement policy that favours the majority without accepting the damage to a minority. There are a lot of policies like that, and in many cases one suspects the politicians know exactly what they are doing but the public is intellectually lazy.
I'd wager that there is some connection to the direct democracy thing: once you'd have any sizeable party in opposition they could abuse the referendum system to bring the legislative process to a near standstill.
It might be not the only reason for the way the executive branch is set up, but IMO it's an important part of the system as it is.
Delegation doesn't mitigate large groups' tendencies to, in moments of emotional fervor, make incredibly stupid decisions that they wouldn't if forced to the a few weeks to think about it.
This is the difference between e.g. the Californian and Swiss referendum systems [1]. California directly enacts popular thought into law. That makes lawmaking a game of finding moments when you can make the majority disinterested while sending an active minority ballistic, and then freezing that moment into law. Switzerland, on the other hand, lets leaders counter-propose and negotiate with the population. It also has mandatory waiting periods.
Broad direct democracy has a poor history because it tends to empower mobs. This is a bigger problem than the expertise issue that delegation addresses.
In Switzerland the half-direct democracy works very well. I wonder why no other countries have tried this system.
In direct democracy the people decide how the consitution gets changed. One guy can change it with a nationwide vote if he gets 100,000 signatures in a limited timeframe. And the populace will therefore carry the decisions made.
I believe a core part of the idea is that you can delegate someone to control your vote unless you override them. Most people would choose someone whom they trust to make appropriate judgements and delegate their vote to them. So I think there would be a number of who specialize in evaluating these laws and it wouldn't be just a few crazy people.
Hmm. In the UK we have representative democracy - the people choose to devolve powers to the leaders on the principle that they work full-time to make the best decisions for the population they represent.
This is a huge shift of power. But perpetual referenda doesn't seem workable with present technology so rule by the demos is always going to mean devolving power to a small group, which has inherent difficulties.
I like the system of the demos being able to force a referendum with a substantial minority, eg 5%. Then perhaps require a supermajority to pass legislation. This works to limit the power of the chosen representatives.
I would think experimenting with variants of democracy would be a more frequent event. Consider the small scale class president or family voting for a movie.
Swiss here, curiously interested, what does direct democracy in the US look like?
Direct democracy means a lot around here, like not having a single party long term in some control positions who could block or manipulate bills. Voting on topics instead of politians is only a small aspect of this all working.
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