Every so often, I hear the hopeful words “Technocratic Government” on the news about some corner of the world. They seem hopeful because they make it sound as if a government will finally be ruled by what the Greeks called Techne, practical skill rather than ideology. As an engineer, I’m always disappointed on hearing those words, because it always turns out that a supposed Technocracy is a mere bunch of economists who can barely be distinguished from any other kind of politician. However, it is interesting to wonder what a genuine technocracy might be like.
Since such speculations would probably be as long as Plato’s Republic, perhaps a good place to start is with how the current arrangements in the United Kingdom differ from a rational Democracy. That doesn’t mean run by Engineers, but it does mean one whose logical foundations don’t come to pieces in your hand as soon as you look at them.
The English-speaking world is full of Engineer jokes and sarcastic remarks about men in yellow plastic hats and greasy blue overalls. Actually, most engineers have never worn overalls, greasy or otherwise: they mostly wear suits. I generally wear a tweed jacket except when a suit seems vital. Not being in Civils, I’ve never worn a yellow plastic hat either, unless it was as a tourist visiting a bearing factory many years ago.
Anyway, now that I’ve established my sartorial position, how does Democracy look from this plastic hat-free zone? It looks very odd. If government is for the people, then why isn’t it proportional? Why is “Seats µ Votes” (or for any engineering readers, S = kV) so hard to grasp? Actually, the average bloke in a pub doesn’t find it hard at all. It’s just that politicians who benefit from Seats being greater than their rightful share find it convenient.
“Oho”, I can hear you thinking. “He’s going to argue for P.R. It’ll never work. Just look at Italy.” Well, let’s leave the P.R. can-of-worms out of this, and take an Engineer’s look at some of the many other peculiarities of our so-called Democracy.
Firstly, why do the Scots still have far more seats at Westminster than the English, per million people? Once upon a time, I’m told, this was because they didn’t have their own parliament. This led to the ’15 and the ’45 rebellions (that’s 1715 and 1745, if your history is a bit wobbly – I thought you arty types knew all that stuff?), implying a Scottish insurrection about every 30 years.
Anyhow, to minimise the repetition rate of such rebellions, The Powers That Were decided to give the Scots a loud voice in Westminster. So they got the vote, and lots of MPs from spacious but sparsely-populated constituencies. Only, today they do have a parliament in Edinburgh, so … it’s a rampant anomaly. And no, I’m not going to mention the West Lothian Question. Of course, it’s convenient for New Labour to have a ready supply of MPs and for that matter of ministers too.
Secondly, why doesn’t the Electoral Commission check and adjust the constituency boundaries before every election? It should be common knowledge that the boundaries for the last two general elections favoured Labour, through population movements. The result was that on less than 44% of the vote, they gained a crushing majority (and king-sized egos, to boot).
In contrast, the Tories won a small number of seats by ridiculously large margins, and lost many more by narrow margins. With redrawn boundaries, things will be fairer next time. And you thought that was all a matter of P.R.: it isn’t, and wasn’t.
Thirdly, why can’t we have an Upper House where most of their Lordships are fairly elected? What, you are starting to detect a pattern in these questions? Clearly, elections to the Upper House would indeed be by P.R. as anything else would be too embarrassingly like the shenanigans in and around the House of Commons.
I’m not sure, actually, whether it matters a jot what the percentage of elected Peers should be. To an engineer, there’s no special reason for arguing that it should be, say, 73.1415927% exactly. Any percentage from 50% to 100% might be perfectly acceptable, though the latter would be tricky to achieve. It would just be better to have SOME percentage elected: and it’s quite hard to find anybody (outside the Commons) who doesn’t think it should be at least 50%. You can probably see at once that this means that most voters want over 50% of the Lords to be elected. To an engineer, the arguing is essentially over, and the rest is a matter of agreeing a specification for the new system.
But when Robin Cook tried to get agreement on this issue last time around, parliament came up with an absurd voting procedure. Option A: yes or no. Option B: yes or no. Option C… This predictably led to ALL the options being voted down. We have now had years of absurdly anomalous voting rights. For example, the hereditaries now hold by-elections in which only hereditaries can stand for office! It’s worse than before.
So, why can’t parliament itself use a voting procedure that works? Cook could simply have arranged votes like this: Vote 1: Less than 50% to be elected (vote Nay); 50% or more to be elected (vote Aye). Suppose that the Ayes had Vote 1. Then in Vote 2: Less than 75% (vote Nay); 75% or more (vote Aye).
After just four votes the remaining margin of error is down to a few percentage points (6.25% if you’re interested, eg a range from 75% to 81.25%). I fancy most people would agree that was small enough to leave to the judgement of a parliamentary committee.
In a few votes, parliament would thus certainly arrive at a definite result. More rational, but not near so much like a ball (with apologies to Jane Austen – engineers do read literature by the way)? More rational, and a lot less like a balls-up, I’d say. But the voting procedure this time will be just as bad as last time’s. Technocracy? The sooner the better.
(c) Ian Alexander 2007