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Chapter 2:

“We recognise that referendums are not panaceas, not universal remedies for all the ills of
democracy. But referendums have been useful in ameliorating some crises and in resolving
some questions that established representative institutions could not manage. If hopes are
dupes, fears may be liars.”

Butler/Ranney

Charter of Rules relying on the Principle of the rational level of decision:
1.

All Europeans get a certain amount of votes for every decision.

The votes can be cumulated or spared for following decisions.

All Europeans can vote on all decisions (Territory is irrelevant).

New votes are distributed for every decision. After a certain time not used votes become
void (Abstention).

The votes decide if the competency to decide all cases of a certain kind is conferred to
another institution (Kompetenzenkompetenz in direct democracy). It can only be voted as
long as the decision is officially open to voting.

A decision is declared officially open to voting when a popular initiative reaches a certain
threshold.

Popular initiative must propose a democratically composed institution where the
competency can be transferred.

It is possible to propose a not yet existing institution.

If the outcome is that the competency shall not be transferred, it stays with the institution
that had the competency before (Default Rule: History).

10.If a majority of votes is given in favour of a transfer of competency to the designed

institution, the competency is transferred. (No qualifying quantity necessary, i.e. no
quorum)

Commentary to the corresponding rules:

1.

“All Europeans…”

In principle the system is able to integrate the globe, but it works also on the smaller scale of
Europe. It would be a perfect lesson in democracy if also non-Europeans, which have at least
some kind of justified interest to participate in the decisions, could vote. In this context we
should not forget that the EU is rather a new Empire

than a new nation-state: It has the

intention to expand and it has no a priori definition of itself

. The EU should welcome those

who are already within its borders to participate in the res publica and invite them, in analogy

David Butler and Austin Ranney (Ed.), “Referendums around the World”, p. 263.

The EU is exempted to decide where the borders of Europe are. These borders cannot be found in the outside world. Before

“historical incidence” or power decided. Today it should be the people.

Hannah Arendt, “The origins of totalitarianism”. Source according to Pfaff below.

to the “Civis Romanus sum” of the Roman Empire

, to say: We are Europeans. They could

keep their nationality and specificity as long as they commit themselves to the European
rights and duties. They are already exposed to most of the duties anyway. Under the pretext
that they are not nationals they are excluded from most of the rights, for example governing
themselves. And even if they could participate in the decision on the rational level of decision,
they will still lack representation in the parliaments. I personally would give them also the
right to vote for those, but this is another question.
“…a certain amount of votes…”
Every individual has the same interest to lead a happy life, so every individual is attributed the
same resources. To be able to weigh properly there has to be a higher number of votes,
according to the necessary fine-tuning of the weighing.

2.

“The votes can be cumulated”

Cumulating of votes is already reality in Bavarian local, regional and intermediary level
elections

. Experience has shown that the electorate has in principle no problem to seize the

functioning, although there are not only two, but up to several hundred alternatives and in
addition a maximum amount of accumulation for each alternative. Here would be only two
alternatives and the maximum amount of votes is given naturally through the voting resources
of every voter.

“…or spared…”

Not voting increases the own number of votes in the next vote.

3.

A categorical restriction is not necessary. If the decision is concerning a territory far away,
interest in voting will be small. Voters will therefore restrain themselves and need not to be
excluded. The scarcity of the votes recruits the actual electorate from the potential electorate.
Anyway no just criteria can be found for exclusion.
The rule foresees for example movement. If someone will soon move to a place, but is not yet
registered there as a voter, he is cheated of the chance to determine a part of his destiny. This
seems a very marginal problem, but with the increase of decisions and of movement it will
play a greater role in the future.

4.

The value of the votes decreases with their age. Example: Every European gets 40 votes per
poll. If they are not used they lose 50 % of their value and 20 will be left in the second poll to
be added to the new 40 votes. She can use 60. If she does not, again half of them can be taken
into the next poll and now 70 are available. This can go on until the loss equals the 40 new
votes coming in, so that the maximum of votes to be accumulated is 80

. The votes of the

first poll are consumed after six to seven rounds of voting

. The following table shows the

increase of votes.

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug Sep

I have got the hint from William Pfaff, “The wrath of nations”, Touchstone 1993 New York.

Gemeinderats-, Landtags- und Landratswahlen. Cf. BayGemO, BayWO and BayLWO.

Or 79 if a queer number of votes is cut down instead of rounded up.

Depending again on how half votes are dealt with. The forty votes go down to 20, 10, 5, (3), 2, 1.

The names of the months represent the fictive names of referendums.

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug Sep

Old votes

50 % of old votes

New votes’ plus

Totally available

This technique corresponds to inflation. The inflation rate is here 50 %, and gives a certain
incentive to use the votes.
The inflation rate is of utmost importance to optimise the relation between what can be called
the power of age (P

) and the power of propaganda (P

). The power of age is the relation of

maximum voting power V

max

to the minimum voting power V

min

(the incoming votes): P

a =

max

/ V

min.

is two in the example above (80 divided through 40 = 2). The number indicates

how strong the part of old votes in decisions can be. If votes can be accumulated to a high
degree, then old votes will decide to a considerable part. P

is the opposite of P

: P

p =

min

max

or 1 / P

. It indicates how easy it is to influence the decision by propaganda.

There are two disadvantages if P

is too high: Some voters, either because they are new in the

system or because they have newly released their votes, are nearly excluded from deciding.
With P

= 10, some voters are ten times more important than others. The risk that good

experts are excluded and the legitimacy of the decision as decision of the whole demos are
great. It resembles very much former qualifications for voting. The second, related
disadvantage is that buying of votes, lobbying and opportunistic use of votes increases in
proportion with the extent of control over the decision. Solutions can be adopted, which
would never be proposed under the critical eye of all citizens.
If P

is very low, and P

therefore high, there is not much sense in sparing votes, because

inflation takes most of them away. The situation is comparable to the low rate of savings in a
country with a high inflation rate, because it stimulates direct consumption. People will tend
to vote even in areas where they do not have experience or information and in this assumption
they can be more easily manipulated.
Nevertheless the negative influence of unconcerned voters falsifying the outcome is low. The
voter cannot foresee if future polls will not be of higher interest, because the polls depend
solely on popular initiative. To spare votes is in the voter’s own interest. The loss of not
having voted in an uninteresting poll is smaller than the risk of not having full voting power in
an important poll.
In both cases the quality of the information collected by the poll and integrated into the
decision on the competence is bad. In the first case because good information is unnecessarily
excluded, in the second case because misinformation is unnecessarily included.
The inflation rate is artificial and has to be adjusted according to the political system of the
concrete decisions, with particular focus on the proportion of old votes to new votes, which
should be generally around 1:1. The inflation rate is only one factor to influence that
proportion. It depends also of the quota of spared votes. This quota indicates if the current
level of voting power of citizens is in average low or high. From a comparable per capita
income, American people have in average only several thousand ECUs in reserve, whilst
Germans have several ten thousands. The same can be expected when these people participate
in polls. Different characters and different opportunities lead to a different quota of spared
votes, even with a stable inflation rate. The “American style” to use votes, i.e. to spend them
quickly, reaches a higher total of used votes, because fewer votes are lost through inflation.

Still, the “German style” to rather spare votes leads most probably to a higher effectivity of
every single used vote in respect of the political interest of the individual, because the level of
voting power is kept higher and participation in interesting questions can then be more
decisive.
If the voter perceives in average every seventh question close enough to vote, then the
inflation rate has to be 50 % to assure a relation of old votes to new votes of 1:1.

In poll six

and in poll eight there is grossly the same relation, so that the effect of differences amongst
the voters is lessened. If interesting questions are more frequent, the inflation rate has to be
higher; if they are less frequent the inflation rate has to be lower. It will not be so difficult to
hit the right percentage, because the voter will adapt her behaviour to the inflation rate.
The possibility to participate in relatively distant matters has however also a positive effect. It
promotes to a certain extent a public opinion, because the voter wants information what the
poll is about. In traditional elections people do not care very much about the polls, because
the vote is anyway gone after the poll. Here the votes are a scarce resource and the voter will
try to use it as profitable as possible. The citizen will want to be informed for the own
interest’s sake and will engage oneself more likely for a cause which she understands to be
hers, to be limited in scope and time and with higher chances that her engagement shows in
the result. The constellation can be compared to spontaneous civil initiatives
(“Bürgerinitiativen”), which have for the same reasons become so popular and successful in
the last decades. To a certain extent the reasons for their success are reasons for the crisis of
political parties.
Competencies are usually so general that a voter can hardly predict if there will not once be
made decisions on grounds of this competency which she might refer to her: A further
incitement to be vigilant.
The poll-register will have to keep track of the votes of every citizen. This involves a problem
of confidentiality of the vote, because the poll register shows exactly the preferences of every
citizen, which is not the case in traditional polls. Many technical solutions are applicable. I am
thinking of a personal code to open the “vote-account”. More futuristic is privatisation of
those accounts: They could be kept parallel to any bank account and the bank is responsible
for the secret. The public sphere would avoid temptations and safe money.
To keep administration-cost low only one deliberation per poll should be accepted, even if the
person has votes left.

5.

The competency has to be clearly defined in a text, because this text is proposition of a
constitutional law to be interpreted by a court in case of litigation.
The procedure will not be very different from elections to the European Parliament.
Electronic media might be used to lower the cost of the more frequent procedures. In this case
I am against voting at home, even if problems of control could be solved. Elections are the
most public of affairs and should happen in public spaces. The public sphere shall not
penetrate into the private sphere and vice versa. In addition it is a demand of equal chances
that everybody has to come to the town hall, even if she has private computer access.

6.

“The impact of the referendum device on the policies and institutions of democratic polities
depends on good part on the degree to which its use is controlled by elected officials.”

Hence the inflation rate has to be adapted to the subjective distance of the voter to the question. The objective distance is an

a priori categorization and thus rather fictive.

Butler/Ranney “Referendums around the World”, p. 258-259.

must be popular initiative and not any other mechanism that decides on what and when a
referendum takes place.
It is essential how the threshold is set. A number of mathematical models are available. A
pure quorum cannot be applied, because on local levels the number of interested persons is
naturally small and large-scale decisions would have an advantage. A purely differential
formula (a differential measures the degree of growth or decline) would allow a small but
homogeneous and concerted group to provoke a decision.
I propose the following: In a first step the electorate for the initiative stage is found. Only the
people who live under the actual competency or will live under the proposed competency if
the initiative is successful, whichever group is larger, will be taken into account. This does not
predefine the interest groups. It starts from an historical reality (where the competency
actually is) and is open to change (the possible new majority is in focus). Then the quorum
and the differential method combine: A certain percentage of the electorate has to pronounce
its interest in a certain lapse of time.
The quorum is of lesser disadvantage here because it is calculated in percents of the
appropriate level. The total amount of a large-scale quorum has to be higher. Chances will be
equal on every level, given the same subject.
Yet inequality seems to remain comparing different subjects. Questions of common interest,
e.g. penal law competency, will more easily rouse a certain number of people than those
involving by their nature only small communities, e.g. GATT-negotiations. But this inequality
is not irrational. It avoids splitting up society further than necessary. Every new institution
costs and the smaller the number of concerned persons the lesser this additional administrative
cost is justified through the possible win. Political experience has also shown that the friction
between competences becomes higher the finer the line of distinction between them is. As a
rule an already small competency should not be split anymore.
The differential method will work very much like shown in the schedule above. If a person
has pronounced its interest in a decision, it will not be treated like the signature of a petition,
which can be drawn up years, after it was made. Its worth will decrease over time, in an easy
example 50 % per month. This forces the popular initiative to motivate their supporters to
pronounce themselves in one month; otherwise it can be regarded as failure, because it
becomes increasingly difficult to get people every month to leave their pronouncement for the
same matter again and again. This method avoids that huge mechanisms are built up to go
around and collect signatures one by one. Either there is a relatively spontaneous public
opinion in a burning matter or the interest is too low. The problem that protest voting is
usually unreflected and emotional-irrational can still be filtered out in the actual poll. There
could be a preparation-time of one month for campaigning and information. In the first place
it is of utmost importance that the protest can be expressed in the political sphere. Protest is
meaningful and should not be despised. Again, it should be possible to utter this protest in the
town hall by signing the petition electronically. At this stage the use of private computers may
be allowed.
If need is felt there can be an evaluation of the power of vote of the electorate found in the
first step. This means that already in the stage of popular initiative more weight is attached to
the pronouncing of a person with leftover votes (= higher voting-power if the decision is
opened). Then the evaluation of the chances of the popular initiative will coincide closer to its
result. On the other hand it will lead to a decrease in the use of the votes, because they
become valuable instruments even when never used in a vote. Evaluation of the power of vote
can be kept as an option to fight eventual misfits of the popular initiative.
When this model approaches reality there is time enough to define first when it shall come to
a decision and then to seek the appropriate formula in the circumstances.

“Democratically composed” does not only mean Parliaments, and not any Parliament can be
admitted. Apart from representational units also expert-commissions

or even natural persons

can be proposed. The precondition is institutionalised change and the necessity to regular
renewal of the investment with power. The other precondition is that there is an independent
system of protection of fundamental rights.
To simplify the task of the popular initiative the official agencies should allow for statistically
significant test-votes to show which proposed institution has the best chance to unite a
majority.

8.

If the popular initiative chooses to propose a not yet existing institution, it has to propose at
the same time the constitution of it or through what procedure a constitution shall be
established. The voter must know what consequences an adoption will have. I can imagine
that the side, which believes to take an advantage through that, will order a preview of the
estimated additional cost.
If globalisation and deterritorialisation theories are right, then the proposed institutions will
not be merely new territorial spaces, for example a Parliament of the Basque Country. It can
be expected that non-territorial organisations, transnational corporations

like companies,

associations and syndicates emerge and take over political responsibility.
Questions of morality, such as euthanasia and gene-technology, are prone to special solutions.
Some countries like France or Germany have installed expert commissions with low
democratic legitimacy. Such panels could be given legitimacy if its members were elected
directly. But even the institution of direct democracy instead of a smaller organisation can be
a favourable alternative.

The people can give themselves the right to decide questions of the

first level through referendums: The sovereign delegates his power not entirely.

One of the options is always the status quo. If there is no majority for the proposal, the
opposition against the traditional solution is too weak and the status quo can be assumed to
be fair enough. This rule prevents a “big-bang” when the transition from the actual
distribution to the possibility of relocating takes place. The forces engaged will not call for a
vote without having prepared the electorate through some sort of campaigning. Other
calming factors will be that the procedure is so new, that the public forum lacks and that
people might prefer after all the known evil before the unknown.

10.
A quorum would be unfair, because competences with a lesser number of interested votes
could only be transferred with greater engagement of the concerned. A market price is as true
when the market is small as when the market is big. The small market has already the
disadvantage to be easier to influence. A low total number of votes does not necessarily hint
to a low level of concern of individuals. It could be that the concerned group is small.

Some examples:

Example 1:

Which is what the first “parlements” in history were: advisors to the French King,.

The terminology "transnational corporations" (TNC’s) is from de Sousa Santos op. cit. p. 253.

Cf. the AI-example below: It is possible to give the right to set a veto by referendum against certain decisions!

Consider the problem of whale fishing by an EU Member. The EU and the Member State both
claim competency, obviously because the Member wants to fish the whales before its coast
and the EU wants to forbid this for ecological or animophilic reasons.
The model works as following: A poll takes place, most probably by modern mass
communication instruments, and all Europeans can vote. This does not automatically mean
however that the EU wins, because the voting resources of the citizens are limited. An
unemployed mother of three children in south Europe will most probably judge the whale
problem of too poor importance to her in comparison with certain social policies the
“competency“ of which will be decided in a soon following poll. She will spare her voting-
resources for that. The whale-fisher though will invest the integrity of his annual votes
because this question is of overwhelming importance to him. Someone in-between, e.g. a
well-off intellectual in central Europe will give a certain percentage in relation to his other
interests.
It should be remarked that it is not the problem itself, which is decided, but only the allocation
of the competency. The decisions themselves are too numerous to be taken away from the
representative system. What is introduced by heaving the decisions on a second, more abstract
level, is similar to the famous ”veil of ignorance”

, except that Rawls‘ veil is virtual. Here the

veil is real. The people lack information about the actual cases that will be decided on grounds
of the competency-decision that they are about to make. It forces the people to make the
abstract rules as just as possible. On more abstract level decisions are fewer and direct
democracy is workable again

I have chosen this example, which involves current interests of Norway, a non-member state,
to show that such a system would allow for special regimes and would nevertheless not
endanger over-all integration. From the view of the whole system the Norwegian citizens are
as close to the centre than any other European. Everybody is and so the Norwegians are
preoccupied about their national (local, regional) identity. This procedure allows them to
preserve their specificity and be integrated at the same time. A ”Europe à la carte” is in this
context no danger to the “acquis communautaire” or integration as a whole.
What if people would use their votes only to express disintegration?
Such a tendency could be dealt with a reserved quota for the EU level, but I do not think this
is necessary.
First, globalisation processes favour the larger entity. Second, the number of decisions does
not mirror their importance. A hundred of cultural exceptions like the whale fishing do not
outweigh the integrating power of the competency over the European currency.
Third, the integrating forces will counterbalance the impact of disintegrating policies. In the
current EU are fixed four freedoms. All Europeans can therefore come to the region with the
favourable fishing-regulations and profit from it, and they will come indeed in proportion to
the estimated benefit. If whales promise such extraordinary revenue for the fishing-industry,
they will just buy a quota or get a license or whatever is required. The region risks the loss
(overfishing, unemployment in traditional sector of work, bad image in a tourist’s eye etc.)
without a chance to get the profit. If whale fishing is rather of importance for reasons of
tradition than profit, the tradition can be preserved. A Norwegian hotel-owner for example
might vote with vehemence for an EU competence: He wants to show his clients whales.

Example 2:

John Rawls, "A theory of Justice".

About the technical possibilities and procedural constraints: Ian Budge, “The new challenge of Direct Democracy”, with

further readings.

Amnesty International (AI) might get the competency to issue directives on criminal law and
criminal procedural law. This is unlikely. AI may get instead a veto right on any such law to
be issued in the EU. In the last assumption the competency would only partially be taken
away and such a proposition might be therefore more prone to be welcomed.

Example 3:

A certain decision is largely contested. The public wants to revise it. It has no direct influence
on the decision-makers in the EU, and elsewhere not before the next election. This day come
there will also be other behaviour to judge of and the decision-makers often stay in
responsibility because of their over-all performance. Here the public can take popular
initiative at any time, initiate a vote and give the competency over the complex (including the
contested decision) to another institution willing to revise it.
The clue is that the receiving institution does not have to have any territorial or functional link
whatsoever with the consequences of the decision. This sounds like a very bad solution,
because making laws for others usually leads to suppression of the others. But as there are no
consequences for the institution, there are no advantages either. Even if it may sound weird,
this tactics could be very rational. It would introduce a referee in explosive matters. Let us
assume that it is as devastating for the population in Northern Ireland when the English
govern as it is when the Irish do. A local govern government is in the intention of neither of
the sides and it would most probably be too small to resist the influence from the opponents.
Let us assume that the English Protestants hit once more the wrong string and the Irish feel
offended. Then this part of government, say the religious and cultural resort, could go to the
Parliament of the state of Luxembourg. They are on neither side, they are far enough not to be
corrupted and the world will watch them. Maybe they have proposed a good solution when
the popular initiative came through and Europe gives them the credit to try it out. Anyway it
can only be better than what has been done in Northern Ireland in the last century. Decisions
are easier to accept from a referee than from an opponent with a history of betrayal. Most
probably neither the English nor the Irish would like that either, but they would experience
that all Europe is very concerned about their ongoing civil war and that they are determined to
find a solution for the horrible situation of Europeans living in hatred and violence. And how
many Irish or English are really happy with the level the decisions are made at now? The Irish
feel ruled by foreigners, and many British people see no point in sending soldiers there which
every once and a while get killed. Neither side would vote ferociously against.

The Luxembourg National Parliament represents in this example an expert assembly with
democratic legitimisation, a combination rarely to find. In other settings expert institutions
could even reach a monopoly.

Example 4:

If the Dutch would dispose of a clearly superior strategy to fight drug-addiction, it would
most probably take the more conservative governments in the EU more than a decade to
implement it. What, if the competency to make laws in this resort comes to decide? The more
conservative people are in comparison older and live in rural areas, so they are less personally
confronted with the social problems of drug-addiction. Younger people may have a friend
who is hit and they may have tried drugs themselves, and city-dwellers feel the urge of the
problem every day. The progressive side has a good chance to win their case even against a
numerical majority of conservatives, because of the intensity of their opinion. The Dutch
Parliamentary system would be able to rule Europe’s drug policy because of their expertise.

Cf. the discussion if the Luxembourg Parliament as non-concerned institution has enough related experience (last of the

questions following these examples).

A possible objection is that a law works differently in different environments. Maybe the
Dutch have found a solution for their drug problem, but for particular reasons it is not
effective in Spain. Then the Spanish can opt out any time they want by the same procedure.
I tried to show with the example of Northern Ireland that the possibility that unconcerned
people get competency to rule is no harm as such. This is what happens every day in our
national systems. Most of the laws are previsibly never to be applied to those who vote them.
A Member of Parliament can say that she is member of the nation the laws are for and that
they are therefore applied to her. This relies on the assumption that all people in the territory a
law applies to are instances of this law.
To be theoretically objected to a law and actually experience the consequences of the law is a
difference. Commercial law or penal procedure laws apply to specific groups or situations.
The Member of Parliament means purely emotional ties to her nationals. She does not know
the members her imagined community, nevertheless she imagines having a common bond.
Communities depend on communication and both become dissolved from territory and spread
out.

Unconcerned rule is no harm when it is not uncontrolled. As long as a bad decision-

maker can be sanctioned and replaced, we must not fear her. Aristotle distinguished tyranny
from monarchy along the same lines: If a rule is good or bad does not depend on the
numerical composition of the ruling body. If one, a few or all steer the state is from this point
of view the same. The importance of democracy lies in establishing control over the rulers
and the therewith acquired legitimacy

. Consent to the rule legitimates the rule.

Example 5:

Imagine Turkey as a member of the system. It can be assumed that its differences to the rest
of the EU are greater than for the other members. The difference has the same extent from
either side. In terms of the model: Turkey will put, according to the difference to preserve, as
much votes against integration as the rest of Europe will put for it. The greater amount of
people of the western European side will consider the question of Turkey’s integration of
relatively low interest and the smaller amount of Turks non-integration of higher interest.
Popular initiative will not rise when the chances for success are so modest, because the
Turkish people would use their votes to opt out in every single question presented. They could
not influence decisions in the rest of Europe, and the rest would be excluded from deciding in
Turkey. There is no difference to nowadays under the Principle of Territoriality.
But the gate to integration is open. Turkey could become, despite and thanks to its position at
the periphery of the continent, the centre for the EU’s foreign policy in the Near East. When
Turkey is disposed to act more diplomatically with its brothers in belief, there is a good
chance for that.
An objection might be that the model is open to changes, but without a motor to catalyse them
unable to move from the status quo. The weak point in this objection is that the interest of the
people is calculated from an outside point of view as homogeneous. However it is not so sure
that all differences are so precious to all Turks. I can imagine that a Turk strongly likes to
preserve her religion, but is not at all attached to a despotic system of Justice with torture in
prison. It would be an absurd deformation to claim that one cannot go without the other. The
access to an effective instrument of change is in itself the motor for long-hidden aspirations.
Human Rights activists risk today quite a hard life in Turkey, but with the backing of the
international opinion, which might become the majorities’ opinion in the new Europe many,
more would dare to stand for Human Rights. In addition the know-how of a tradition of
Human Rights implementation in the western parts of Europe would immediately at the
disposal of Turkey, which is even today not really unwilling but rather incapable of enforcing

Cf. chapter 3: “How community is building” and “polycentricity”.

Karl Popper, “The lesson of this century”, p. 70.

Human Rights. Turkey would not have to feel under tutelage and deprived of its national
sovereignty, because with the votes the Turks spare on this occasion, they can influence the
“national” politics if other states, for example buy out an anti-Turkish measure of the Greeks.
It is in this meaning that national sovereignty is given up. Conceived to protect the nationals,
now it cages them in value-systems they do not prefer.
The model exempts the EU from deciding on the worth of group-specificities. Only the
groups themselves can. Who could have predicted how much the Norwegians love whale-
fishing, the Swedish “snus” and the French cheese of raw milk, all at a certain time questions
of “to be or not to be” a member. All or nothing alternatives never do any good in politics.
The Union will not shipwreck because of some exceptions, but they must stay exceptions and
be equally distributed. The proposed Constitution promises to do so.

Some questions:

•

Why should we bother so much about competency when it is the concrete decision, which
is only important?

A quick answer is Weimar-Germany’s Enabling Law in 1933. Unfortunately history is too
controversial to make good arguments.
Our situation can be compared to that of a very complicated game. Can we only control the
game if we decide everything ourselves? It is enough to choose among the presented referees.
And today’s governments have an immensely complex game to rule with much less power. It
is cleverer to police the referees than to do their job by ourselves.

•

Can the system work properly when it is constantly reformed?

On one hand side many polls show that the model works effectively, that there is a vigilant
civil society and that the old, rigid system needed reform. On the other hand side an excess of
polls is a risk to every continuous policy and threatens the whole system.
Considering that polls cure misfits, a number of polls will be necessary in the initial period.
After those are cleared out, there will be no poll until new problems arise. The system will
work just as well as any contemporary federal constitution (though it is in-between federal
and supranational), with battles of competency

every once and a while when new

constellations arise and processes of social change have gathered greater impact.
There will be less to decide than thought, because competences are not endless nor can they
be split to infinite small units.

•

Will more frequent lobbying, buying of votes and generally higher influence on the
electorate not outweigh possible advantages?

There are positive and negative sides. On one hand voters could not be protected against
massive campaigns and demagogic interventions as they are now in times of elections.
Otherwise the freedom of speech would be restricted too much, because a large part of the
electorate will not participate in the specific decision anyway. For their interest it is not
election time. Only small measures like the interdiction to publish opinion-surveys are
possible. Also the problem of buying votes emerges in a new light. Abstention is a system-
inherent technical measure to increase voting power up to a certain limit. When maximal
voting power is reached, but no decision of interest is coming up, then the cost of voting for
the sake of someone else is very low. The own votes cannot be increased further for the
moment and until the next relevant decision voting power will presumably be restored.
Foreign interest will motivate to vote.
Again, we have to consider that we are talking about decisions of competency and that the
actual decisions made on their grounds are hardly predictable. One of the concrete decisions
could apply, to the disadvantage of the voter. If a person is incited to make an irrational vote
for someone else, the person speculates.
To vote without having an interest can also be seen as positive: Morality and rationality are
always disinterested.
I think that the problem of lobbying would decrease, because to manipulate a certain decision
two levels will have to be manipulated. For manipulation of the competency decision the
access to the votes is easier and manipulation less controllable, but the success is more

The Constitutional Court to decide the hard cases is the European People.

difficult to predict. The huge dimension of the system makes it more resistant. The stock
market can only work because it is big enough to make it difficult to control sufficient capital
to influence the market price. The same is true in this model: The “lobby”

is too big. The

risk of not getting the desired outcome despite all manipulation makes manipulation not
profitable. And when groups like parties or Churches motivate their supporters to go and vote
in a certain sense, they function as intermediary institution and help the system work. After all
the participation and information will rise and public forums can build around these semi-
official opinions.
Finally spending limits for groups can be included in the referendum law. The Canadian
province of Quebec did so in 1978 (also in their standard election laws), compelling groups
wanting to take part in the campaign to join one of the two committees created for the
occasion (one 'Yes', one 'No'). A spending limit is imposed to these two committees. This
legislative disposition comes from a similar one used in England. My prophecy is that in a
setting of unlimited and uncontrolled information by Internet those rules will become both
ineffective and unnecessary.

•

Does the popular initiative have to be in the territory the competency is to that time or can
other Europeans take them their right to govern?

Yes, it is possible that others take the right to govern out of your hands. But as every
European gets the same amount of votes, governing the affairs of others is paid by the other’s
government in own affairs.
Sovereignty is redistributed. Not territory but rationality or simply will is the criteria of
redistribution. By definition sovereignty is complete, encorporating all competences there can
be. Thus in the perfect nation-states sovereignty meant the same for all citizens, no matter if
the citizen lived in a big or a small, in a rich or a poor nation-state, near the centre or the
periphery. When all competencies are redistributed, every citizen will still have the same
“amount” of “sovereignty”. The collective “nation” will have lost it, but other collectives the
citizen is part in will have won it.
If a Norwegian is ferociously against whale fishing, then she resembles in this aspect more the
“ecological international” and belongs to the community of their shared values than to the
community of shared values of the Norwegians. She will be happy to trade that part of
imagined but not factual community in for the right to belong to her community and decide
along with it. To give an example out of our own experience to illustrate the difference, we
can think of an excursion with our class and with our peer-group or club. In the school-class
we formally all belong to the same group of pupils of the same age and area of residence.
Nevertheless we share only with some of our classmates enough to become friends, whilst
others can even become enemies. In the peer-group or club, we have made a choice and
preselected the candidates of the community ourselves. Even if still not all will become good
friends, experience shows that it is easier to feel comfortable and have a common identity in
the chosen group.
This is what it will be like, even when the communities we are talking about here are huge,
imagined ones and we cannot possibly meet everyone and become friends.

•

Will the system not favour the politically interested and vigilant and exclude all those from
representation who do not keep track with the numerous polls?

Here in the sense of “entrance-hall”, where the parliamentarians were hassled to vote for what the interest representant

wants.

The representation in the decisions themselves stays the same. The model adds a
possibility to influence; it does not take away.

You only have to be vigilant in your own business, which most of the people will be

anyway. Every person has some things of importance in life.
3)

Nobody loses by not participating in popular initiative. It can be turned down later by

voting. Thus it is much easier to maintain the status quo than to change things.
4)

There are fewer participants in every single question on the second level, so the influence

of every participant is higher. Participation becomes more attractive.
5)

In political theory the Parliament represents the whole nation. In fact elections normally

reach a participation of around 60 % of the registered voters which in their turn are only a
percentage of the national population, which again is not equivalent with the whole
population. 25 % of the living souls determine the representants and nevertheless the
Parliament represents all of them? This is because representants are not bound by the will of
the voters.
In the proposed system the people who do not vote are not abstainer in the simple meaning the
word has today. Abstainers may very well be interested in the question and be willing to vote,
but there are other questions they evaluate as more important. By their absence on the
“market” they contribute to determine the “price” of the decision. The fact of non-voting
bears information about how the individual judges the impact of the decision on her pursuit of
happiness. Not every area is of equal importance for an individual’s happiness. Some persons
enjoy their hobby so much that they do not care at all about some other matters. Utility rises
when the result is more influenced by those who enjoy the outcome more than others.
To give no votes means to give consent to the others determining the outcome without regard
to her interests, which she herself judged not worthy enough to give votes. Every decision
relies on the entire functional participation.

•

A large number of polls about the distribution of competences between small entities will
increase the voting-power of everybody who is not interested in the region. Will this not
give her in European-wide polls relatively too much weight?

No. The large number of polls with small entities involved will be made by a relatively small
amount of votes, corresponding to the small impact on the lives of people.
It has to be considered that the representation of first level is in tendency closer to the interests
of the people, so that they do not risk too much even if they lose. This is exactly the advantage
of the market-system: The importance of questions does not have to be evaluated, the voting
does it itself.

•

A nation with an excellently working civil society and engaged citizenry will be able to
participate more effectively in the referendums and have a relative overweight over
disinterested, uninformed and cynic people. Does this not diminish the legitimacy of the
procedure?

There is a parallel to the consumer-market. Some people seem to spend their money more
effectively than others, by being informed of market prices or postponing the fulfilment of
desires for example. The freedom of not having to compare prices or to postpone fulfilment
has its price. The difference to the lower price is not wasted though. It finds its equivalence
not in the performance, but in the circumstances of the deal. Why should everybody prefer to
run around and look for the good deal to be able to afford two shirts before buying one, but
not having to bother about anything?

The differences in character are far more decisive for effective referendum participation than
national preconditions.

•

The model wants to leave irrational presuppositions, but it relies most obviously on the
functioning of new technical devices in the field of communication, especially the Internet.
Sabotage, manipulation and technical problems

will be a major catastrophe if the

organisation of the state relies on them.

Manipulation is always possible and not inherent to the use of a new technique. Yet there are
methods to cope with it, for example to make along with every official decision via Internet a
small-scale vote by traditional means as control-group to detect manipulation. Internet does
not depend anymore on overcharged cables; satellite access is reality already. Of course it has
to be admitted that accidents always happen, but I think that the impact on the organisation of
the state would not be so devastating. The closest to every-day life is administration and
government, then the level of concrete decisions and only in the third place the level of
competences. In this ranking a temporary loss of power is dangerous. For plundering a few
hours may be enough, for a coup d’état usually several days

and to destabilise the system on

the third level will surely take several months.
Actually we live in the scenario of destabilised organisation of the state described by the
question: Competences have not been very flexible for a long time now and this makes the
system tilt, even if different activities constantly try to fix (EU, EFTA, decentralisation,
privatisation etc.). The factors which change our system’s assumptions get more and more
impact (e.g. better communication leads to faster shifting communities and higher
differentiation) and the cycle of necessary revision is bound to become shorter.
The model’s mechanics of institutionalised automatic revision works like a valve: The system
can do without for a while, but not permanently.

•

Why are huge alterations necessary to cure the democratic deficit? Is this not
overreacting?

Both the European system and the modern world system are in crisis.
According to Prigogine

a system has reached a bifurcation, i.e. the zenith between a period

of stability and consolidation and a period of tension and fluctuation with major consequences
for the system as a whole, when three subsequently emerging factors can be found:
Organisational overcharge, system rigidity and system disintegration. With reason Lindström
recognises them in the driving-force behind recent development of the EU and its current
characteristics.

Increasing complexity overcharges the decision-making institutions, nation-

states bring rigidity

and the structure of west-European decision-making, based on national

territory, disintegrates. The system’s lifetime is close to the end, but the creation of a
qualitative new organisation takes its starting-point by taking over existing elements.
According to Wallerstein, the modern world system shows the same symptoms and has as
well entered a period of systemic crisis, which will stretch between 1967, and the middle or
the end of the twenty-first century. He refers to breaking points of a Kondratieff long wave
(1945-1995), U.S. hegemony in the world system (1873-2025) and the Modern world system

Predictions run that the Internet will sooner or later be overcharged and break down.

Compare: Jelzin’s kidnapping.

I. Prigogine & I. Stengers “Order out of chaos. Man’s new dialogue with Nature”.

Lindström op. cit. p. 28-30.

Through their hierarchic organizational structure and their territorial foundation.

(1450-2100) as such. This opens a wide terrain of social experimentation and real historical
choices.

When the whole system is in danger, to add an already known element in a different relation
to improve the interplay of the system’s elements is not too daring an experiment then.

•

If voter 1 prefers alternative A to B and B to C, voter 2 prefers B to C and C to A, and
voter 3 prefers C to A and A to B, there is a majority for A over B, for B over C, and a
majority for C over A.

A representative system can avoid this paradox, direct democracy

cannot.

There is controversy over the implications of the voting cycle. In the model weighing and
voting-tactics solve this problem.
It is improbable that voter 1 prefers alternative A to B exactly to the same extent as voter 2
hates A and loves B. Even if this should be the case, it is highly improbable that voter 3
cannot end the quarrel because she is entirely without opinion on alternative A whilst being
very passionate in the question as such. She would give just one of her 40 votes against B,
which has the only vice to be not alternative C, but she will not be as engaged as voter 1 and
therefore not use all her 40 votes. She knows that there will come other decisions where she
will be more concerned, for example when the question is: C or B, her objects of love and
hatred. And having spent only 1 vote in the last poll, she can easily win that one against one
enemy and one low interested.
In reality the number of voters will be much higher and the ranking therefore much clearer.

•

People may feel concerned, but when they have not also an own experience of the
problem, they cannot see the decision in its context and decide without the necessary
connection.

This critique can be developed on the emotional and the rational level.

1.On the emotional level can be argued: How can the city-dweller in her artificial
environment and with her neurotical idea of applying human values to animals ever judge a
Norwegian fisher, who is fighting every day against nature’s forces, who is not killing with
lust but with respect for the creation, and who is obeying to the inner law of nature by taking
what is needed to survive. In short: The whole ideological framework is different.
The votes are of the same value, but they are lying, because they do not mirror the steep gap
between the positions. The weighing indicates the importance of one matter in relation to the
importance of other matters for the same person, but not in relation to other persons. Attitudes
have no price in money or vote. The loser will not be able to accept the decision, because it
cannot be integrated in her view of life.
The same problem is already present in the political process. It will be alleviated by focussing
on general bundles of decisions, but aggravated by the extension of the system over societies
with greater difference. The problem by the different ideological backgrounds might exceed
the remedy coming through greater abstraction.

How can ideals be transported without the receiver to feel compelled, breaking up the
communication and starting a “propaganda and hostilities”-method in defence of the own
ideology? In diplomacy this problem appears regularly. The applied tactics are called

De Sousa Santos op. cit. p. 258-259.

The example is the voting cycle of Condorcet (1785), discussed by Budge op. cit. p.79-80.

The consequence could be that rational communication is initially impossible. Communication theory demands some kind of

common treasure to understand the transmission. Such a community can be assumed between two persons. Even when the
most different people meet, some kind of communication is always possible.

“Ostpolitik” or “critical dialogue” and consist of slow conditioning of the receiver. The
market in the model can do exactly that.
Ideologies form communities. Different communities have different interests and focus on
different fields of interest. In the example of the whale question the traditional fishers’ society
will not simply have a different opinion; this opinion will also be of incomparably higher
concern than in a technologically advanced society.

Members of the “modern” society (or

community) attach in their turn higher importance to other questions, for example
cryptography laws for modern media. The clash of ideologies will not occur.
When the interest in far away parts develops by and by, the historical community has time to
perceive itself confronted with the fact to become more and more minoritarian. It can react
and try to compromise to avoid losing control. Then it is corrupted into the direction of the
building majority. Even when the community shares emotional experiences, it is not limited to
emotional actions. It can of course try to defend an irrational presupposition with rationality
and “Realpolitik”. And it works, too, because in a critical dialogue the model every actor is
sender and receiver.
Every actor starts to argument from the silent assumption that the own ideology is better. The
caricature of the whale case above shows the preferences of the person who puts the argument
forward. The fisher actually kills the whales and this act has meaning for his whole way of
living, yet this is no reason why this person is more apt to build a correct evaluation about the
deed. It can be exactly the other way round: Having become used to it, there is not the
necessary distance to judge. No ideology has an a priori higher worth. If this is true, then
democracy has not and never had an alternative to adopting a mix of ideologies. The market
of ideologies can achieve that. Only then the Norwegians get really a chance to explain why
they kill whales when almost the whole world has stopped in doing so. Nowadays they have
only the possibility to say no to a closer connection with those who have a different ideology
in one slice of life. Yet exactly this contact with the opinion of the other can lead to a self-
critical reflection on the own values. This contact has to be a contact of the whole population,
not just of the leaders. Otherwise people may find themselves caged in a union they perceive
as threatening their values and ideologies, like many of the EU citizens feel today (cf. Ch. 1).

2. On the rational level the critique reads: Assume that some foreign agency, for selfish
reasons or because of fanaticism, manipulates Italians to massively vote for a transfer of
competences concerning the Irish conflict. Italians lack the local everyday knowledge that is a
necessary condition for a rational decision. In other words: Can own experience be substituted
by information and will it not be more prone to manipulation when the information provided
can in no single case be checked against a first hand view of the reality?
The problem is greater here: If experience provides any information at all, it is easily acquired
information which makes the involved person by nature a better judge not only in the matter
but also on the other information provided about the matter.
Expert knowledge in a certain kind of questions only exists if there is a category to describe
several concrete cases as having a connection. This knitting-together of concrete cases to
assign a certain sense to them is essential, because the involved persons in the events, the
experts of own experience, are then easily found. The traditional category is the geographical
space, but with more reason it should be the social space. To come back to the example: If the
problem is labelled “Conflict of Northern Ireland”, any Irishman is automatically an expert of
own experience, even if not familiar with the specific problematic. If the problem is labelled
“Conflict of not assimilated immigrants considered as occupational power, with not tolerated

The technologically advanced society has of course members in Norway, too. Society is here not meant to be restricted to a

nation.

religious difference and deep historical roots”, a Bosnian is the better expert. People should
categorise themselves, because they know best where they can be considered as experts.
Even then it might be questioned if this has to lead to the exclusion of the less good judges.
But the main argument is that it is simply impossible to predefine the persons who have the
high valued first-hand experience. It can be considered to take the group of people living in a
certain historically arbitrarily cut territory, for instance the city-borders of Belfast or Great-
Britain and Ireland. But just as well could be considered to take the group of scientists of
ethnic conflict or the group of people who have experienced a nationalistic civil war related to
religion, for example the Bosnians. There may be a better chance to get a well-informed
average in these groups, but the distribution of votes in democracy is not connected to the
duty to inform before voting. Today’s “expertocracy”

where the experts have special

“territorial knowledge” is less and less justified with the decline of territorial communities

A territorial predefinition of those who are “closer” to the problem is not possible. The
exclusion of experts is a greater loss than the inclusion of non-experts.

Points of critique on direct democracy as such:

I am following the useful systematisation in groups of arguments against direct democracy by
Ian Budge

. Budge defeats the critique, but he hardly gives convincing advantages of direct

democracy either. The proposed model combines the virtues of representative and direct
democracy and has therefore certain advantages. It should be kept in mind that it cannot
substitute democratic procedures of first level. The scheme on the next page shows the
conventional critics in the “Against”-column.

The philosophers in Plato’s state.

Cf. Chapter 3.

Ian Budge “The new challenge of direct democracy”, Chapter 3.

Against direct democracy

For the model

1 Elections under representative democracy

already allow citizens to choose between
alternative governments and programmes.

But they cannot choose between alternative
distributions of competences.

It is not possible to have direct debate and
voting in modern mass democracies, and
even less on an all-European level.

The percentage of participants in every
single debate and voting is considerably
reduced in comparison to both direct and
representative democracy by introducing
scarcity on the voting-power.

Without intermediary institutions no
coherent policies will emerge. Direct
democracy undermines intermediary
institutions.

Intermediary institutions will be necessary.
They can be created and adapted fastest by
the new media. Parties and governments
could play the same role as in representative
democracies, with other bodies joining them
and breaking up their monopoly of bundling
political interest.

Ordinary citizens do not have the education,
interest, time, expertise and other qualities
required to make good political decisions.

Only experts in their own cause will invest
their votes. They make no concrete decision
like in referendums, but judge on the quality
of past decision-making, similar to in
current elections. People do not have to
understand the political game, only their
specific role.

The best decisions derive from a balance
between popular participation and expert
judgement. This is representative democracy
where citizens can indicate the general
direction policy should take but leave it to
professional to be carried out.

Popular experts indicate the general
direction representative democracy should
take. The categories are all combined.

All collective decision-making can be
shown mathematically to lead to arbitrary
decisions in a high proportion of cases.

The problem is generic to voting procedures
as such. The hierarchy of voting procedures
and the introduced control of rationality can
reduce their effect though.

Those who vote against a particular decision
cannot be said to give their consent to it,
particularly if the same group is always in
the minority.

Permanent minorities get the chance to
submit the representation of their interest to
a special institution if their interest to do so
is high enough. Minorities in Parliaments
stay for a long time the same but change
here with the subject.

Citizen participation can influence the state,
but non-accountable bodies like
corporations and world markets have more
influence on citizens.

The model tries to get the “state”, i.e. the
decision-level to the necessary size to
influence non-accountable bodies.

Some of the critiques simply miss the point. This is not too surprising if we remember that the
definition of direct democracy is “direct influence of the governed on the creation of the will
of the state”, in opposition to representational democracy as indirect or mediated influence

It seems that the model has some new features, which require an adaptation of the critique.
One of those new features of the new combination of old mechanisms is the following:
Butler/Ranney

admit that decisions by representatives involve weighing, referendums

usually not. But the proposed market of unmediated interests can weigh even better than
representatives. It can for example react faster to changes in preference.

Bobbio

points out that there is not a qualitative leap between representative and direct

democracy, but a continuum. As an example for a halfway organisational setting he mentions
representation by mandate. The model is somewhere next to it, because the representative
bodies are subjected to referendums. The representation in a sector ends with the deprivation
of the mandate to decide that certain type of questions.
The critique of direct democracy is ill focussed when applied to the model, because the
referendum element has no preponderance. It only tilts the system back to stability when
accountability lacks (Cf. Chapter 1). To delve deeper into this critique is not profitable.

Friedrich Koja “Allgemeine Staatslehre”, p. 82, 83.

David Butler and Austin Ranney (Ed.), “Referendums around the World”, p. 17-18.

Changes in preference are more and more frequent. Status and class, ideology and life-style are increasingly unstable with

physical and psychological immigration and migration.

Norberto Bobbio “The future of democracy”, pp. 52-53. Original title: “Il futuro della democrazia” 1984.

The advantages of this model:

Members of separatist movements get an equal possibility to participate in the political

decisions. More than under the yoke of a nation-state that is not theirs. Less than if they
had been conceded an autonomous region inside a nation-state, where they are better off
than citizens of non-autonomous territories are. The centre-periphery problem could be
tackled.

The territorial principle would be softer, but conserved on the higher level of the EU. The

people would reacquire contact with the decisions that are taken in their name, also in
their name of “consumers”. The Shell-campaign of Greenpeace (especially in Germany)
shows that this is exactly what is needed today: Influence where your interests are. The
tiny adaptation of German every-day life inclined a powerful international oil-company.
No direct influence (mediator was the market, catalysator Greenpeace) or violence was
involved, the activation of the interested parties sufficed. The event gave the Germans a
feeling of “after all we the People (i.e. consumers) have the power”. And the outcome is
rational, too. The oil-firms add the recycling-cost of the oil-platform to the price of their
products and have no damage, and they can no longer pretend that they are driven by the
disinterested capital, that of the investors or that of the clients.

Territory is in today’s interrelated world no more the unfailing criteria for to determine
where your interests are. The Germans are interested in North-Sea oil-rigs, the British in
Irish tax-laws (their companies flee over the Irish Sea), those in their turn are interested in
Luxembourg’s “occult banking“ and so on. There are no new criteria and therefore the
“Kompetenzenkompetenz”, the power to assign the competency for a political question,
has to be given to the interested. As long as their interests remain on a national scale the
nation continues to be important. Beyond, it is a hindrance.

It would be clear who is responsible for what. This is one of the major points of critique

towards the current relation between the EU and the Member-States. Frequently the
member states make believe they account for every success, whilst any failure will be
blamed to the EU. Therefore periods of economic difficulty coincide with periods of EU
downturn.

Clear responsibilities are a vital factor for democratic accountability.

The competency of the nations can continue to fade away in the degree the decisions have

to be levelled up, down, or to new centres without breeding paradoxes with the concept of
sovereignty.

Decisions could be (hopefully) made more rational and meet the challenge of
globalization. Rationality means intersubjectivity, the sum of subjectivities. The
assumption is that an individual will invest only that amount of voting resources that
corresponds to the estimated concern of the individual with the outcome. At the same time
the allocation of competency would decide which entity gets the taxes. Many recent
popular decisions have been considered as irrational. Denmark’s “No“ to join the EU lead
to another vote few years later, because it deemed the political class that this blank answer
is a catastrophe for the country. The Swedish Nation decided to close down all Swedish
nuclear power plants. Here politicians try to play on time to avoid the enormously
expensive consequences. Independently if these cases are instances for irrational popular
decisions it can be stated that the premises for these decisions were false. It is not

George Ross “Jaques Delors and European Integration”, p. 233. A related explication can be found in Axtmann op. cit.: The

EU was from the beginning conceived as legitimate in so far that it can assure economical progress through a plus-sum game.

sufficient to formulate a question in a way that both options appear in the question to
make it a well-balanced question. I argue that popular decisions can only by accident be
rational, because they lack the most important virtue in politics: Weighing, which means a
sense for the feasible. Most alternatives have a chocolate-side, but the real question is at
what price it shall be paid. This is no Yes-No question and it seems that popular decision
must be disqualified as instrument to find rational solutions. The instrument to establish a
consistent pattern of preferences and extract more than 1-bit-information from polls is the
Market. The people weigh when participating in the voting-market and this information
should be used. Popular decisions are not irrational because the people are stupid. The
stupid mechanism distorts rational behavior.

It is possible to extend the model so that it gives influence on decisions of non-political
entities.

A solution of the “prisoners’-dilemma“ in the globalisation context could be resolved by
cooperation of the interested. Nowadays national identity determines the scope of
rationality.

Other interests could be communicated and lead to optimised solutions.

This model provides identities for supra- and sub-national communities. They can
cooperate instead of concurring and responsibilities would be clearer.

The national sentiments can continue to exist (as they will most probably anyway), but
they lose their legitimising function for the political system. To be a national patriot will
not be connected with being a “good citizen”.

10.

The model would give the European Parliament the necessary dogmatic argument to
demand real power of decision.

11.

Young voters could be taken slowly into the system: They could start with ten votes when
they are sixteen, get twenty per vote with seventeen and forty with eighteen. This would
increase their interest in political questions and show them that they become more and
more responsible for themselves.

12.

The pattern of the model follows the current modern tendencies to trust the market and
processualize Justice (Rawls, Dworkin...).

13.

The first level of democratic decisions became overcharged. The system has become too
complex to rule with direct democracy, and is becoming now too complex for a political
parliament. Today’s parliaments are decision-machines, in the best case filled with highly
differentiated and skilled management-experts for administration-technique. It is all about
“How much to get which effect?” and no more about: “After my conception of life we
should do this”. The level of Parliaments was once abstract enough to be the level of
political steering. Today it exercises mainly higher administrative tasks. Under these
circumstances many different actors participate in policy-making, whilst none of them can
really steer. The actors are driven by the dynamics of the system, i.e. the other actors and
technical constraints such as the economical system. To make political decisions possible

Therborn (1995) p. 232. Cf. below under the heading “democracy”.

Penal law uses the same method for oung offenders between non applicability of the penal laws and full applicability. The risk

is that the same method could be used to exclude other groups, at least partially.

again the second level of the “Kompetenzenkompetenz” has to be reintroduced. This level
has to be under control of the people to be democratic.

14.

Communication in civil society is enhanced, because who does not become active loses
influence. If the Norwegians do not vote for whale fishing to be regionally decided, they
will lose their case against the ecologist league of central Europe, which does care. The
next time the concerned parties will participate more attentively in the pre-electoral
discussion and promote their side of the story.

15.

Integration becomes flexible. No nation knew what development the EU would take after
their joining, and leaving has so far never been a realistic option. In Spain and Sweden for
example there were huge campaigns before the vote to join the EU, and once this was
settled huge percentages pronounced themselves as EU enemies. One of the reasons is,
that the people did not know what consequences a membership has for their every-day life
and to what extent they alienate the power to decide on future questions. When they
discover, they cannot back and feel trapped. If democracy is defined as being able to
change government peacefully

, then this proceeding is not democratic. If it is not

democratic, than it can neither give any legitimisation, even if it is accepted in that
moment. A contract where one side can not oversee the consequences and cedes the power
to make future contracts would not persist before any court.

Such major changes should be made one by one, not once for always, and they should be
reversible. The proposed system is flexible, open to changes in either the direction of
integration or disintegration. The models of integration for the EU discussed in Chapter 1
all conceive a one-way process. The capacity to allows for changing government (in the
large sense) unviolently (=democracy). Co-ordinated disintegration is one of the most
original features of the model.

16.

It will provide an antidote to the democratic deficit. The model introduces concurrence
between the EU, mainly its administrational power, and any other decisional body. It is in
the people’s hand to decide on the importance of democratic legitimisation, efficiency,
etc. In some sensitive areas they might prefer a parliament to have the competency to
decide. In technical issues they might not mind a technocracy to do it to economise on
resources.

17.

All the points together would give new legitimacy to the system.

At this point I would like to recall the conclusions of the first chapter. Most of the points are
so obviously realised through the presented blueprint and its explanation in this chapter that I
refrain from a repeated discussion. The interested reader will go back to chapter one to
subsume the model under the points of critique on the EU before entering the third chapter.

Karl Popper, op. cit.

Very similar problems appear in the transition to democracy and market-economy, for example of the ex-communist states.

The all-or-nothing method destroys more than necessary. I guess the principle underlying the presented model could be used to
give an answer to these problems, but here is no place to develop this idea.