Ministry Voting: a model for
democratisation
How to solve institutional democratic problems of national governments by breaking up election, debates and coalition formation into issue-specific Ministry Chambers
Philip van Houten 11305533
55 % of Dutch civilians believe people similar to themselves do not have any influence over governmental policies (I&O Research et al. 2018: 32)1. Confidence in democratic politicians, parties, and parliaments has been decreasing worldwide for years but most people remain committed to the democratic ideal (Dalton 2004: 47). Smith (2009: 4-6) points to a growing gap between civilians and representatives and argues that democratic innovation is needed. He argues that the innovations which are already put to use are insufficient to bring together the now separated democratic deliberation and decision making (idem: 196). In this thesis I work out a new electoral system with the aim of solving the institutional democratic problems of the Dutch national government. I call this system Ministry Voting.
The crux of Ministry Voting is that there is no longer one House of Representatives in which one majority coalition is formed which chooses all ministers and agrees to support policies for all ministries. This Tweede Kamer, or ‘Second Chamber’, as the Dutch House of Representatives is called, is replaced by multiple parliaments which I call ‘Ministry Chambers’, among which the power over all ministries is divided. Like members of the Second Chamber, members of a Ministry Chamber have to form coalitions, choose ministers and back policies, but within the boundaries of the relevant Ministry.
Prior to elections, every individual Ministry Chamber candidate is obligated to compile a list of candidates who they think is best suited for a seat in a particular Ministry Chamber. Consequently, all candidates must have a list, which I call a ‘ballot list’, with one unique candidate for every Ministry Chamber, of which only one can be themselves. When candidates are in the act of writing their ballot list or campaigning for their own, I call them
1 When I read this research paper, I found out the percentages of people agreeing with this and another statement were mixed up on page 31. I contacted the authors, who confirmed the mistake.
‘ballot heads’. For the Ministry Chamber they want to be elected to themselves, their ballot list can consist of multiple candidates, similar to party-lists in current proportional representation systems. To find the best persons for their ballot list, they may choose candidates from their own political party and candidates outside of their party. During an election, if a voter chooses to vote for one candidate, the individuals on the ballot list of that candidate receive a vote automatically. This is comparable to how political parties are automatically assigned a number of seats representative for the votes they received in current party-list proportional representation systems. However, party-lists cease to exist in Ministry Voting. Additionally, voting can be done for a custom ballot list: Voters can choose to alter a candidate’s ballot list by replacing one candidate by another who they agree with more on issues concerning one Ministry Chamber, or choose to fully compile a list of candidates themselves.
After an election, the Ministry Chamber of Finance decides the budget of all ministries. The Ministry Chambers choose ministers and spend their budgets independently. All Ministry Chambers have their own coalitions and oppositions who debate on issues relevant to the ministries which they are responsible for. Laws are passed by majorities in Ministry Chambers independently of other Ministry Chambers. The ministers are held accountable by the chamber of their ministry.
For the design of Ministry Voting I combine aspects of existing democratic innovations: Firstly, a modular voting system, in which voting is done per ministry (Direktdemokraterna 2015; Staatscommissie parlementair stelsel 2018: 7). This idea has not been implemented anywhere. Secondly, Liquid Democracy (Cammaerts 2015), in which voting can be done for separate subjects (ministries) or, which in the current system is the only option, for one politician, giving a mandate to that politician for all subjects. Thirdly, giving voters a choice between voting for a premade list or voting directly for preferred candidates, giving them a stronger mandate than preference votes (Burgerforum Kieststelsel 2006: 7-8). Fourthly, adjusting the division of power between Ministry Chambers is done using binding referenda. This guarantees the independence of the Ministry Chambers. Fifthly, the government budget is divided between independent, thematic governmental bodies similar to how participatory budgeting is done in Porto Alegre (Smith 2009: 35-39). Finally, the premier and vice-premiers are directly chosen. The premier will be responsible for the communication between Ministry Chambers.
Nothing academic has been published about the idea of voting per ministry. The effects of Ministry Voting can be tested using experiments, but this lies outside the scope of this thesis. This thesis will explore the possibilities of Ministry Voting, on which hypotheses for experiments can be based. Firstly, the institutional democratic problems within political parties and within coalition formation will be set out. Thereafter it will be determined what aims democratic innovation should have to combat those institutional democratic problems. Based on the literature on aims of democratic innovations the model of Ministry Voting will be worked out. This will be visualised by examples of how Ministry Voting would work in practice. Then some objections to Ministry Voting will be addressed. Finally, I argue that that the incentives which the implementation of Ministry Voting would institutionalise, would make the Dutch national electoral system more democratic.
Problems with Current Political Coalition Formation
In Dutch politics, two currently prominent political parties who disagree on a multitude of issues were founded to combat democratic problems for which they gave similar descriptions. Half a century ago, Democraten 66 co-founder Hans van Mierlo spoke of “het oude vastgeroeste partijpatroon” (D66 1967), which literally means “the old rusted up party pattern”. More recently, Forum voor Democratie co-founder Thierry Baudet has entered politics with the promise of breaking “het partijkartel” (Baudet 2017), which literally means “the party cartel”. Both parties have indicated an elite group of established political leaders that prevent democratic rule. The discussion on this problem is as academic as it is political. Political theorist Robert Dahl described even the most democratic countries in the world as polyarchies, ‘rule of the many’ as opposed to ‘rule of the people’. In polyarchies, political and bureaucratic elites are “far more powerful” than ordinary citizens because of the “enormous discretionary authority” which is delegated through elections (Dahl 1998: 113-114).2 By voting for someone on a list of a political party, a mandate is given to the leaders of that political party to decide on the party’s priorities in coalition negotiations. After elections, a trade-off has to be made on the basis of values in coalition formation that takes place behind
2 This concerns legislative discretionary authority as opposed to judicial discretionary authority, which is the space left for an administration to interpret laws written by the legislative branch (Vitanski 2015: 27).
closed doors, which leaves all authority over priorities to leaders of political parties. Very few people have direct influence on what issues have priority and what issues can be used as bargaining chips. The same group of a few political leaders exclusively has direct influence on what ministerial positions have priority and what ministerial positions can be used as bargaining chips. Coalition governments are arguably inherently defective because of the necessary compromises that are thought to be undemocratic “for it is assumed that they necessarily involve braking electoral commitments” (Bellamy 2012: 442).
However, compromises are necessary in any parliament that holds any number of executives accountable, since multiple individual representatives need to agree to a multitude of aspects of implementation. As long as individual party members can have their own opinion, even in a two-party system, there will be compromises within the ruling party after elections. This discretionary authority to compromise after elections exists because implementation of policies by ministers can be challenged by unanticipated situations. In all current multiparty systems, every individual who wants to go into politics can consider joining an existing party or starting a new one. Theoretically there might be a ruling political party one agrees fully with on all issues. In that case, the only point in going into politics is getting into office. When starting a new political party, there might theoretically be enough people who want to support an individual’s stance on all issues to fill a majority of seats in all parliaments. In any other case, compromises are inevitable in a representative democracy where coalitions need to be formed. Voters can decide not to vote for political parties which, according to those individual voters, did not have their priorities straight during the last coalition formation. However, they cannot vote on what compromises they find acceptable during the process of coalition formation. Therefore the pitfall of compromise after elections, the possibility of unrepresentative priorities revealed only after coalition formation, is an institutional democratic problem. This problem cannot be solved by leaderless democracy, direct democracy, sortition, fewer parties, a larger amount of parties or internal democracy for reasons I will now explain.
Inherent to the electoral systems of current statutory governments is that there have to be leaders who supposedly represent a significant part of the people on a broad array of political issues. Because of the earlier mentioned institutional democratic problems, it is possible that political leaders have priorities that do not adequately represent the priorities of voters. But removing the position of political leaders from the equation does not solve the
problem. Some Social Movement Organisations like Anarchic Student Group and Environmental Group 1 have managed to find ways to abolish leaders and reach goals in a democratic way (Sutherland et al. 2014: 774-775). However, inherent to statutory governments in general is that a broad array of political issues need to be addressed. This cannot be done without leaders because single leaderless organisations can only accomplish goals if they stay “small scale or short term” or (Grint 2010: 103). Leaderless democracy therefore is not an option for long-term rule and rule on a large scale like national states.
Referenda too do not solve the institutional democratic problems. Within indirect democracy, the lifespan of the voters’ mandate lasts from election to election, which is made clear by institutions. To decipher the lifespan of the mandate given by voters in referenda, it would be necessary to set up regular referenda on the same policies. This is unpractical because the amount of policies on which referenda would be necessary would keep piling up and voters would lose track over the mandate given by them. Moreover, ministers need to be selected to lead and be responsible for the implementation of policy, even if policies would all be chosen through referenda. There need to be institutions for choosing these ministers who personally support the chosen policies for the same reasons as the voters which, indirectly or directly, chose the policies. Otherwise, proper implementation of those policies could be intentionally or unintentionally sabotaged. The referendum is a “mechanism for letting out political steam” (Qvortrup 2014: 12) and without representation nothing more than that. As Thomas Christiano has argued, full-time professional politicians have more time to consider policies and therefore might be better suited than the average individual citizen to choose the right means to reach the ends chosen by voters. Members of parliament therefore should not just hold ministers accountable but be legislators who deliberate “about means and bargaining with other legislators […] to achieve the best possible compromise among citizen’s announced schedules of trade-offs” (Christiano 1996: 218). The problem remains that ‘announcing schedules of trade-offs’ is not possible for individual voters in the current electoral system. It would be better if individuals could be chosen on the basis of their own personal views on acceptable trade-offs, so that they understand its reasoning fully and implement it as voters would have. Referenda on specific policy issues are perhaps suited to prove that on a certain moment there is a democratic deficit but referenda are not suited to manage implementation of policy.
Michels’ (1925) iron law of oligarchy claims that all organisations inevitably become oligarchic. Diefenbach (2018: 546) points out that Michels’ theory of the iron law of oligarchy has been confirmed by many researchers, but that there do exist organisations that have successfully resisted oligarchisation. According to Diefenbach (idem: 550), the managerial tasks within an organisation can be assigned to people on a rotating basis. Therefore, organisations can stay democratic as long as rotating leaders renew the democratic customs. Bouricius (2013: 13-14) proposes multi-body sortition system with a rules council that can change democratic procedures, which will be put into force only in the next sortition cycle to prevent representatives who are assigned by lot from accumulating power personally. Such a sortition system might suffice to organise the political agenda and propose laws on a national level. Van Rebrouck (2016: 143) argues that the chance of incompetent rulers in sortition systems is not problematic, as ministers currently can change ministries from one day to the next and still function, because they have a professional staff who brings in technical expertise. However, those ministers are currently selected on the basis of managerial capacities, which is why they are not completely incompetent. Finding individuals with managerial capacities who agree with the policies they need to implement, and keeping those individuals accountable, is a task which cannot properly be fulfilled through sortition. A bureaucratic staff might correctly inform uneducated individuals on policy but could also corrupt their expectations on how much money and time it would take to implement them, as that staff would be part of the bureaucracy responsible for implementation. If sorted representatives need professional advice from outside the government, lobbyists could corrupt them. In any case, informing sorted representatives influences their vision and therefore makes them no longer representative. Those who keep ministers accountable should independently study bureaucratic procedures prior to being assigned a position to represent the people in their judgement of whether implementation of policy is done adequately. Therefore, a democratic legislative power that holds an executive power in check requires elections. Vandamme and Verret-Hamelin (2017) propose combining a randomly selected chamber with the power of initiative and an elected chamber keeping the last word, to “provide some kind of – albeit deficient – potentially universal (opportunity for) participation” (idem: 16). If there has to be an elected chamber, the opportunities for participation should be as abundant as possible.
The fewer the political parties, the bigger the responsibilities which individual political parties have for priorities during coalition formation but also the more power per individual party leadership. When one party reaches majority rule, coalition formation and as a consequence, the setting of issue priorities after elections, is no longer necessary. However, selecting party leaders prior to elections within political parties still is not transparent. One of Michels’ arguments for his iron law of oligarchy is that leaders will only be voted away if they fail to fulfil multiple functions (Wippler 1984: 120). In a heterogenous society with different value systems and a few big political parties, there is so much ideological difference between those parties that voters will not jump from one to another. Party leaders therefore have little to fear from voters who disagree with them on a minority of issues.
Diefenbach (2018: 548) claims that if democratic organisations turn into oligarchies, “they will probably cease to exist, at least in its originally intended form”. The question is, will organisations that have turned oligarchic be replaced by democratic ones fast enough to make sure organisations in power are democratic? In a multiparty system like in the Netherlands, old political parties can and have in the past been replaced by new political parties. Rochon (1985: 421) distinguishes two types of new parties, namely mobilizers, who “stress new issues and have a new vantage point on old issues”, and challengers, who claim specific old parties “no longer properly represent the interests of their support base”. Challengers can gain supporters quickly but loose them easily too if old parties change their policy standpoints. The more convincingly a new party takes the role of mobilizer, the easier it is for them to take root in politics (idem: 423). If the main difference between the two is how likely they are to take root, there must be a challenger-mobilizer spectrum, since challengers can prove to represent a distinguishable set of issue standpoints by settling in politics. There have even been ‘one-issue-parties’ who received enough votes to secure seats in the Dutch House of Representatives throughout consecutive elections (Berg 1997: 588). This suggests three types of democratic crises: Firstly, the established parties were failing to represent a significant portion of the populace in such a way that one issue standpoint was enough to persuade those voters not to vote for any established party that had detailed plans worked out for a multitude of issues. Secondly, there were more common sets of standpoints than political parties. The only alternatives to this are that either old parties could have prevented the loss of seats by adopting one issue standpoint, or that political leaders were not representative of their supporter’s set of standpoints. Thirdly,
one-issue-parties were successful even though in theory there could have been other new one-issue-parties sharing the same important standpoint along with a developed set of stances on other issues which would have given them a clear electoral advantage. This means no new political movement at that point had enough resources to build up a party that could compete with established political parties based on who better represents voters instead of who has the most resources.
The only other possible explanation for the success of one-issue-parties is populism, in the sense that millions of voters would be irrationally choose a charismatic leader because they feel relatable. Mudde (2013a) has defined populism as a ‘thin layered ideology’ and has argued that there lies something deeper behind the success of populism than sheer identity politics and charisma (Mudde 2013b: 167-168). Voters generally do not simply punish established political parties for crises that they may or may not have been responsible for. ‘Populist’ parties whose main goal is closing the gap between politicians and the will of the people are described by Hobolt and Tilley (2016: 985) as challengers. Their survey strongly suggests that voters are “choosing challenger parties on the basis of policy” on both ends of the political spectrum (ibid). These policy issues are fundamental to democracy itself, such as constraining immigration and remaining national sovereignty over fiscal policy.3 If these issues are not addressed properly, democracy becomes more and more difficult because democracy requires a demos, a people capable of overcoming divisions between various ethnic, cultural and religious groups (Bellamy 2000: 216; Bellamy 2012: 465). It would be sanctimonious of established political parties to address the success of challenger parties to irrationality and regard the remainder of their voters as homo economicus. Some issues are worth fighting for even if it means voting for a party that, on other issues, does not have one’s personal, immediate, economic interest in mind. The current democratic institutions force voters in some cases to choose between voting purely in their own interest and voting against their personal interests in order to preserve a chance for a form of democracy in the future.
The Dutch political party Partij voor de Dieren considers itself a testimonial party, which means it promises not to use its main issue, sustainability and animal rights, as bargaining chips to change policy on other issues (partijvoordedieren.nl 2011). This one-issue
3 According to Hobolt and Tilley (idem: 972), the first of these issues belongs to right-leaning challenger parties and the second issue belongs to left-leaning challenger parties.
party, which did not have a very broad party program in the first years of its existence, has proven that there are a significant amount of people who will vote based on one issue that they think is not addressed properly by the established parties. Moreover, the party has proven that this issue does not have to be an existential one concerning democracy or democratic sovereignty. The 2006 party program has only one chapter with general opinions about issues not concerning sustainability and animal rights (Partij voor de Dieren 2006: 38-44). Nevertheless, the party won two seats in the Dutch House of Representatives and had significant influence on policy concerning sustainability and animal rights (Otjes 2016). The 2017 party program goes deeper into issues not concerning sustainability and animal rights, including privacy, international trade deals and national democratic sovereignty (Partij voor de Dieren 2017: 30-35). By going deeper into a broad range of issues, the party has become less of a one-issue party. It remains a testimonial party though, having one main invaluable issue but never fully implementing its preferred policies. Most political parties do not like promising to implement any specific issue policy as an essential part of the coalition formation, as “politicians know that unforeseen events make such promises rash” (Bellamy 2012: 461). Regrettably, refusing to use one or multiple issues as bargaining chips in coalition formation makes entering the government difficult in current democratic institutions.
Newer and smaller political parties are more likely than older, bigger political parties to mobilize all members of the party for leader nomination procedures (Voerman et al. 2004: 90). These small, new parties can get more power when more new parties together have a significant part of the seats in the House of Representatives. It seems like fragmentation should therefore create more social mobility for individuals to enter politics. However, a consequence of fragmentation is that during coalition formation, there is a larger amount of parties between which there have to be made compromises. This makes it more difficult for voters to hold political parties accountable, as it becomes less clear which parties are responsible for what changes in policy concerning what issue, as it is not just a trade-off between two opposing actors. Additionally, small new parties, which start off as one-issue parties, in the current electoral system are each other’s competitors. This is because, assuming these one-issue parties have a different main issue, they can only gain votes by convincing voters their main issue is more important than the main issue of other parties. Voters can only vote for one party which is then forced to represent them on all issues. It is possible that these parties will after coalition formation claim that the compromises made
have been “an opportunity to combine” the best of all coalition parties’ visions (Bellamy 2012: 444). Sadly, prior to elections new parties have to either have artificial debates on issue priorities even though it then still is unpredictable how much power they will have on compromises during coalition formation, or merge and set forth a leader who will during coalition formation decide what issues have the highest priority. Therefore, a larger amount of political parties does not solve the institutional democratic problems.
Internal democracy within political parties will not automatically lead to a more democratic government formation process. Only 2.5% of the electorate in the Netherlands is a member of a political party (Voerman 2018). This means that the biggest part of society does not have direct influence on party programs. Even if more people would get more direct influence on party programs, this would not necessarily lead to more democracy. After all, if big changes would occur within parties, it is unpredictable what parties stand for. If every member of a political party can co-decide on coalition negotiations after elections, changes in issue positions can occur which voters did not know about prior to the election. If members of a party do not have influence on what compromises, which are made during coalition formations, are acceptable, the power on issue priorities is left to party leaders. Therefore, rather than trying to create a horizontal power structure within political parties, social mobility of new political movements needs to be increased institutionally in order for political movements to have direct influence on coalition formation.
Oligarchy does not have to be a conscious conspiracy. The current institutions are favourable to political parties at the expense of individuals who potentially could represent voters better. Seats in parliaments are now scarce products for which the demand is so large that having to work up into an existing political party or having to build up a new one is a barrier to the people, which institutionalises oligarchy rather than democracy. The institutions that reinforce the concentration of power need to change in order to enable individuals who are knowledgeable in a particular field of expertise to politically compete with political parties on that particular field.
In order develop a system that combats the institutional democratic problems as just described, clear aims have to be set. According to Dahl (1998: 110), effective participation can only truly exist in democracies on a small scale because only then there is enough time to let everyone speak in parliament. Within a democratic state on a big scale there will always be coalition negotiations between representatives, which cannot be perfectly democratic. However, a consensus among political theorists can be found on what goals a political system should be aimed at to approach the ideal of democracy. The clearest accounts of these are by Fung (2006), who distinguishes three dimensions in his ‘democracy cube’, Smith (2009), who evaluates a number of democratic innovations on the basis of ‘democratic goods’ and Warren (2017), who proposes a ‘problem-based approach to democratic theory’. These prevalent goals of democratic innovation are: inclusiveness, democratic authority and focussed communication.
Inclusiveness
Fung (2006: 67-68) indicates a spectrum of more exclusive and more inclusive participant selection methods. The ideal is a ‘diffuse public sphere’, in which all stakeholders get equal chance to participate. According to Smith (2009: 20-22), inclusiveness means to what extent all civilians and all social groups get a representative chance to participate. It is unlikely that the government takes into account groups which have difficulty to enter politics (Phillips 1995: 13). It is of importance to look into the selection mechanism and institutional incentives that have influence on the way of participation of certain social groups (Smith 2009: 21). Warren (2001: 71) argues that societies which prioritise creating a shared identity have a low capacity for cooperation and coordination. On the contrary, for civilians it is important to feel having the possibility of personally influencing “collective actions if one chose to do so” (ibid). Within a democratic institution with a high degree of inclusiveness, all participants are individually powerful.
Democratic Authority
A lot of democratic innovations used in practise do not prevent decisions from being ignored or manipulated by political authorities (Cooke and Kothari 2001). For instance, the main
pitfall of mini-publics is having little political impact (Michels & Binnema 2018). The extent to which decisions made in new democratic institutions will be binding, Smith (2009: 22-24) calls popular control. Similarly, by ‘the extent of authority and power’ Fung (2006: 69) means the firmness of the link between what participatory bodies say and what authorities or participants themselves do. Warren (2017: 44) summarizes the literature on this concept as being about “getting things done”.
Focussed Communication
Smith (2009: 24-25) defines ‘considered judgement’ as to what extent civilians are enabled to individually make decisions regarding policies. The objective here is to make sure every civilian has equal access to relevant information and can understand each other’s reasoning (Arendt 1968: 220). Obligatory transparency of authorities who are in the process of making final decisions is a prerequisite for considered judgement (Smith 2009: 25). Considered judgement is about whether civilians and their representatives are enabled to properly form an opinion, whereas ‘modes of communication and decision’ is about how effective communication is likely to be between authorities and civilians who want to bring forward their solutions (Fung 2006: 68-69). The combination of these can be named focussed communication. Fishkin (2013: 495-496) sets the goal of enabling public input that is informed on policy and on the opinions of others on policy, in order for voting to have effect. According to Warren (2017: 40), “voting is a low information, nonpropositional means of communicating” and therefore “functions poorly as a way of developing collective agendas and collective wills”. Nonetheless, an electoral system can enhance the opportunities of forming collective agendas and wills if it allows participants to focus on specific policy issues rather than a distinctive identity. Communication can only be focussed if what each other thinks a particular democratic action is about, is understandable to civilians and authorities.
Ministry Voting: the Model
The just described aims of democratic innovation will be an important factor in my development of a model for Ministry Voting. I take the electoral system of the Dutch Tweede
Kamer der Staten-Generaal, which uses party-list proportional representation to assign seats (Wilder 1999), as a starting point to make clear what institutional changes will be gained through Ministry Voting. Appendix 1 clarifies the role of existing Dutch political institutions in the context of Ministry Voting. Appendix 2 shows the chronological order of the election cycle in Ministry Voting. Ministry Voting consists of Ministry Chambers, ballot lists, political movements, binding referenda on changes in ministries and a directly chosen premier. Now I will expound on how these elements of Ministry Voting cooperate to advance to democratic goals.
Ministry Chambers
All Ministry Chambers have 150 seats that will be allocated through elections using ballot lists as described earlier. Debates and votes on propositions can be held in the plenary chamber or different halls as is currently done frequently by the Dutch House of Representatives. It is important that Ministry Chambers are treated as equal to prevent that certain policy issues are postponed indefinitely. The premier is responsible for planning when roll-call votes can take place. For this to be possible, all members of a Ministry Chamber need to be present. Since representatives can have a seat in multiple Ministry Chambers, roll-call votes cannot be held simultaneously in different Ministry Chambers.
The Ministry Chamber of Finance decides the budget of all other ministries, but the Ministry Chambers spend their budgets independently. Therefore, the Ministry Chamber of Finance can directly influence the limits of the scope of policies proposed by the rest of the Ministry Chambers. If other Ministry Chambers go over the budget, the Ministry Chamber of Finance can order the Minister of Finance to limit the availability of funds. To protect the independency of Ministry Chambers, threatening to reduce the budget to influence policy and proposing to change policy in exchange for a higher budget must be prohibited.
Ministry Chambers choose ministers and keep them accountable. A minister has to agree with the coalition agreement of the one relevant Ministry Chamber and may not interfere with powers of other Ministry Chambers.
The ballot list is a list of candidates who are deemed best suited by the writer of the list for particular positions. To make the ballot list clear, I distinguish leading representatives and supporting representatives. There is no institutional difference between them prior to elections. Leader representatives are representatives who have received a lot of preference votes in the last election, enough to individually win one or multiple seats in a Ministry Chamber. Supporting representatives are representatives who fill additional seats which a leading representative has won. The ballot list consists of four parts:
1. Ballot list – premier: On every ballot list, there is a first choice and second choice candidate for the position of premier, who is chosen directly. Premier-candidates write a ballot list, on which they are the first choice candidate. The second choice candidate slot is for their preferred vice premiers.
2. Ballot list – leading candidates: On every ballot list, there is one unique candidate for every Ministry Chamber. These are the ballot list writer’s preferred ministers and/or preferred representatives.
3. Ballot list – supporting candidates: Every Ministry Chamber candidate adds a list of other candidates who they agree with on issues relevant to their Ministry Chamber. These supporter candidates can be running for member of the same Ministry Chamber or running for member of another Ministry Chamber or running for premier.
4. Ballot list – backup party candidates: Supporting candidates can be members of political parties which the ballot writer is not a member of. If the candidate on top of the list does not get enough votes to individually win a seat in the relevant Ministry Chamber, the votes for them go to the next candidate on their list, possibly someone from another political parties. Unlike electoral alliances between parties (Banerjee & Mukherjee 2019: 17-18), it is made clear what individuals from other parties might benefit from a vote for a ballot list with backup candidates.
When a candidate receives enough preference votes for multiple seats in a Ministry Chamber, the seats are assigned to the supporter candidates in order of that candidate’s ballot list. If a leading representative becomes a minister or in another way resigns their seat, that seat is filled by the next supporting candidate on the leading representative’s ballot list.
Campaigning and Elections
In Ministry Voting, the dominant people in campaigns for general elections are ballot heads rather than party leaders. A ballot head is someone who has compiled a ballot list and campaigns for it. All candidates must compile a ballot list but can choose to campaign for some other ballot list, supporting a ballot head. Any civilian can create a custom ballot list, altering a candidate’s ballot list or compiling one from scratch. A ballot head does not necessarily have to be a candidate, as political commentators or anyone who feels like people should vote for their custom ballot list, but does not want to be elected personally, can openly campaign for their custom ballot list and be a ballot head. Ministry Voting encourages holding thematic election debates rather than broad discussions between party leaders, as voters can make a separate choice for every theme. When a voter walks into a voting booth, they can either choose a full ballot list written by a ballot head or create their own custom ballot list. After that, votes are counted by the same institutions as in the current system.
Political Movements Enter Politics Easier
In the Netherlands, civilians can theoretically stand for election without being a member of a political party, and some successfully start a new party, but most new politicians join an existing party (houseofrepresentatives.nl W.D.). Ministry Voting aims to make entering politics without joining an existing political party easier. For every Ministry Chamber for which a political party stands for election, the party needs to find a unique leading candidate. A vote for a party for one Ministry Chamber stands alone from the rest as that vote does not have any influence on other Ministry Chambers. Voters no longer have to choose between party programs as a whole. Even though civilians can still assemble in broad political parties,
that becomes unnecessary. Forming a political movement to address one or a few issues can influence policy and does not require compromises within the association.
By dividing the power over governmental policy, the negotiation position of small parties improves because they can choose to leave coalition negotiations in one Ministry Chamber without also leaving coalition negotiations in other Ministry Chambers. The current institutions give big parties the initiative over all issues and force small parties to compete among themselves to enter the coalition at all, whereas Ministry Voting would give small parties multiple chances to directly influence policy. After all, in Ministry Voting there are coalition negotiations for every Ministry Chamber independently, which forces parties to reach a consensus on all policy issues. This is an institutional incentive that will release voters from the fear of not having any influence when voting for a small or new party. As small parties can choose not to negotiate on any issues but their main issue, they can convincingly promise voters to be predictable and responsible in coalition negotiations. This makes it easier to enter politics and thus easier to introduce new policies and issues to the political agenda. ‘Non-decisions’, whereby the power over the political agenda is distributed unequally (Bachrach and Baratz 1962), are prevented by dividing power among independent Ministry Chambers.
Institutionalising Ministry Chambers makes it easier to enter politics as the barrier of having to work up into an existing political party or building up a new one. New parties can choose in advance to elections not to stand for elections personally for some Ministry Chambers. Or they can choose to stand for election for only one Ministry Chamber. This makes them political movements rather than parties. This makes it possible for individuals to build up a base of supporters without having to work their way up into existing political parties or compete with existing parties for representing supporters best on all issues. Social groups which are underrepresented in established can stand for election specifically for Ministry Chambers which have the most influence on them. Ministry Voting therefore makes elections more inclusive.
When individual politicians are not recruited by existing parties and instead are enabled to start a political movement by themselves, it is a clear case of “diffuse public sphere” (Fung 2006: 68). Additionally, the way of communicating becomes more focussed, because individuals which are elected to a Ministry Chamber are there specifically for the policy issues of the relevant ministry. As in current Houses of Representatives, members have
the right to introduce motions and have the time to back up their statements in debates. Established political parties which are divided into individual representatives by the institutions of Ministry Voting, have to vote or abstain from voting on new motions introduced by new political movements. This leads to more transparency because it shows their opinion or lack of opinion. On top of that, individuals who are knowledgeable in a field of expertise do not have to deal with as much barriers to enter politics and now have the chance to debate within that field of expertise. Therefore, Ministry Voting hits the ideal form of communication and decision, namely “deploy technique and expertise” (idem: 69). Finally, political movements can have binding influence on policy, which improves democratic authority.
Binding Referenda Concerning Changes in Ministries
In Ministry Voting, creating, abolishing, merging and splitting up ministries and changing their powers can be only done through binding referenda. This is because Ministry Chambers and the premier do not have power over different Ministry Chambers. Referenda can be initiated by civilians or by two-thirds majority in all separate Ministry Chambers which would be changed by the initiative. Two Ministry Chambers could agree that exchanging some powers would be best, but still a referendum is needed to make sure the decision is acceptable to the voters.4 In case of a disagreement between Ministry Chambers concerning
4 Examples of possible Ministry Chamber changes for which a referendum would be needed are changing the amount of seats in a Ministry Chamber; deciding the Ministry Chamber of Social Affairs (rather than the Ministry Chamber of Finance) should have the power over income tax or wealth tax; deciding the Ministry Chamber of Health should have the power over excise tax; splitting the Ministry Chamber of Foreign Affairs into the Ministry Chamber of Foreign Trade and the Ministry Chamber of Foreign Relations (which would get the power over embassies); turning the Ministry of Social Affairs into the Ministry Chamber of Universal Basic Income and assigning it the task of debating what necessities should be affordable with a UBI; adding a term limit for ministers or even members of Ministry Chambers; creating a Ministry Chamber of Ethics, which would have the power over abortion, euthanasia and other specific policy issues; deciding seats in such a Ministry Chamber should be (partially) assigned through yearly sortition.
the division of power between them, the Council of State can draw the border between the ministries or initiate a referendum. The outcome of a referendum initiated by the Council of State becomes active immediately. The outcome of referenda initiated by civilians becomes active during the next election in order to make sure the referendum is purely about the best division of powers and cannot be used as a protest against the outcome of one coalition agreement. It is a possibility that a Ministry Chamber decides to divide its tasks into separate parts and choose multiple ministers responsible for those separate parts. For this, a referendum is not necessary as the responsibilities of the members of the Ministry Chamber stay the same.
A short history of public responsibilities in the Netherlands shows why referenda about changes in the power of ministries is vital to ensure the voters’ political control over the political agenda. In 1965 the national budget was considered high enough to think about aesthetics and in the public space together with this new task the Rijksplanologische Dienst gained a new name: Public Housing and Spatial Planning (VRO). In 1982 this ministry was renamed Public Housing, Spatial Planning and Eco-management (VROM), which coincided with the introduction of a new political issue: the environment. (parlement.com W.D. a) In order to put new issues on the political agenda, it is necessary to be able to assign responsibilities to existing Ministry Chambers or establish a new one.
The Cabinet Rutte I added two ministries and abolished four, among which VROM. The responsibilities concerning energy went to the new Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation. The responsibilities of the Minister of Youth and Family were distributed among the Minister of Social Affairs and the Minister of Health and Justice. Spatial Planning and Eco-planning were assigned to the new Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment. (ANP 2010) With the disappearance of the explicit naming of the responsibility of the exterior of the public domain, it became vague what ministry was responsible for the exterior of the public domain. With referenda, voters can prevent that the diversity in political issues is confined after elections.
By determining the power over structural changes to ministries to binding referenda, not just the democratic authority increases but also the transparency because politicians and political parties have to be open about what governmental tasks are most important to them. Since parties form a coalition within one Ministry Chamber, the amount of issues between which compromises can be made is limited by the power of civilians to split up
Ministry Chambers. Currently, leaders of political parties can choose not to be transparent about their considerations about what issues have priority during coalition formation. In Ministry Voting, voters can keep representatives accountable in every issue separately. This improves democratic authority and focusses the communication between authorities and voters on policy.
The Kiesraad (Electoral Council) has advised against an election threshold for referenda because it causes a perverse incentive: Opponents of the proposal in a referendum are incited not to cast a vote in order for the threshold not to be reached, so politicians can ignore the outcome when the outcome of the election is positive (De Vries 2016). Instead of an election threshold, a ‘winning threshold’ should be used, whereby only the votes in favour of the proposal count to reach the threshold. A winning threshold does not incite people not to vote.
Directly Choosing the Premier
In Ministry Voting, The minister-president becomes responsible for the communication between the Ministry Chambers. The premier is also Minister of General Affairs, a ministry which mostly just helps fulfilling the premier’s responsibilities (parlement.com W.D. b). Unless voters find it necessary to found a Ministry Chamber for these responsibilities, the premier has to be chosen directly during general elections. Moreover, the premier has to represent the nation as a person instead of being the face of policy and can, with a grand vision as a leader, bring every part of the government together. The premier can be kept in check by one or multiple Ministry Chambers of different ministries. The Ministry Chamber of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry Chamber of Home Affairs both have a clear connection to the responsibilities of the premier, so this power to bring a motion of no confidence to vote can be given to them. If such a motion of no confidence reaches a majority in one of these Ministry Chambers, it will lead to a dismissal of the premier and the next vice-premier in line becomes premier. Choosing a premier and vice-premiers is a more complex process but voting stays simple: Voters get the option to choose a first and a second choice.
Directly choosing a premier is a winner-takes-all process, because only one individual can hold the office of premier. This makes it vulnerable to the spoiler effect: The introduction of a third candidate results in candidate A winning against candidate B even though
candidate B would have won if the third candidate would not have stood for election (Buchler 2011). The threat of the spoiler effect causes another problem: That people instead of voting for their favourite candidate, make a strategic consideration and go on to vote for a candidate which they agree with less but whom they expect has a better chance to win. To reduce strategic voting, Australia uses instant-runoff voting (ISV) (instantrunoff.com W.D.). ISV gives voters the option to, instead of voting for one candidate, rank two (or more) candidates. When counting the votes, the candidate with the least votes is first eliminated from the race. Who had that candidate as their first choice, did not throw away their vote because that vote is given to their second choice. This is repeated until there are two candidates. The one with the most votes becomes premier and the other becomes vice-premier. Voters should not have the choice to rank more than two candidates in their choice for premier because this would reduce Condorcet efficiency (Grofman and Feld 2004: 647). Condorcet efficiency means to what extent a candidate that would win in a head-to-head election against a second candidate, in reality finish higher than that second candidate.
ISV decreases the spoiler effect but does not fully solve it. With Single Transferable Vote (STV), no rational reason to vote ‘strategically’ remains (Bartholdi and Orlin 1991). STV is used in parliamentary elections in Ireland, which has a district system. To be elected, a candidate has to reach a threshold based on the amount of voters and the amount of seats. The votes which that candidate has gained more than is needed to reach the threshold are distributed proportionally to the other candidates. This distribution is based on the second choice candidates of the voters who had the already elected candidate as their first choice. This is repeated until nobody reaches the election threshold. Then, just like with ISV, the candidate with the least votes is eliminated from the race and the votes are permanently distributed among the candidates who are not yet elected or eliminated.
I will now apply STV to elections of undividable functions such as that of a premier. The threshold in that case is not based on the amount of seats, because there is only one function to distribute. Firstly, the amount of candidates (favourites) which are minimally needed to reach more than half of the first choice votes I call α. Half of the votes plus one and that divided by α is the threshold (β). Next, the votes from above the threshold are temporarily added to candidates (underdogs) who did not reach the threshold, representative for the second choices of those who voted for the favourites. The single highest reached amount of first choice votes minus β is the maximum amount of transferable
votes (γ). Β minus γ is the threshold for underdogs. The votes above this threshold are temporarily added to the favourites, representative for the second choices of the voters who had the underdogs as their first choice. Next, the one with the least votes is eliminated from the race and the votes of those who had his or her as their first choice are permanently transferred to the second choice candidates who have not been eliminated from the race. The temporarily transferred votes are returned and the cycle begins again. When two candidates are left in the race, the one with the most permanent votes becomes premier and the other becomes premier. Finally, the other candidate premiers become the next vice-premier in line.
Possible objections to Ministry Voting
I will now explore several objections to this proposal. Firstly, critics might contend that it is too expensive: 150 seats times 10 Ministry Chambers results into a total of 1500 seats. While it is technically possible that all those seats will be filled by unique representatives, this is not necessarily the case. For every political party, there needs to be one unique candidate in each Ministry Chamber but representatives can have a seat in multiple Chambers as supporting representatives. Also, 150 seats per Ministry Chamber is not a fixed number, as this can be changed through referenda. More representatives might need to be paid, but the exact number is decided by voting.
The second possible objection to Ministry Voting could be that it is too complicated for the average voter Not everyone might be interested in all issues that are discussed in all Ministry Chambers. This is not a problem, as they can choose to vote for a full ballot list, which, like in the current system, is a vote which influences policies of all issues. Alternatively, they can choose to create a current ballot list and only vote for Ministry Chambers which concern issues that this voter is interested in.
Thirdly, E-democracy would be needed to implement Ministry Voting: It is possible to use paper ballot lists but Ministry Voting would make it more complicated as voters have the option of creating their own ballot list, making counting the votes take longer. Also, calculating the result of directly choosing the premier using STV is possible without using computers. It does make it easier to make use of E-democracy and that does not need to increase the risk of the election getting rigged. The experiences with i-Voting in Estonia have
showed that the verifiability of votes and the use of end-to-end encryption are essential to make sure that elections are fair (Nurse et al 2016: 11; OSCE/ODIHR 2015: 6).
Fourthly, Ministry Voting would be inefficient, as coalition negotiations would have to take place in all Ministry Chambers separately. On the contrary, this would make coalition negotiations more effective, as groups of negotiators can focus on a few issues simultaneously. The premier is responsible for making sure that coalition negotiations of separate Ministry Chambers do not overlap. If a contestation of power arises between Ministry Chambers, the Council of State either judges where the border between Ministry Chambers lies, or initiates a referendum.
Fifthly, the Ministry Chamber of Finance would have too much power, as it decides the budget of all Ministry Chambers. This does not have to be the case because of the prohibition of policy negotiation between the Ministry Chambers, as described before. Additionally, the power of the Ministry Chamber of Finance can be limited by assigning the power over certain types of taxes to other Ministries, who would then add the revenue of that type of tax to their budget. As a consequence, Ministry Chambers could be completely independent. The arrangement of Ministry Voting can be altered to fit the time and national democratic culture.
Conclusion
This thesis has put forward a model for Ministry Voting and explored which incentives would be institutionalised by the implementation of Ministry Voting. Ministry Voting will lead to a better negotiation position for new, small parties, which will lead to more inclusiveness. Similarly, political movements in which there is much knowledge about a certain field of expertise can enter politics easier, what can lead to more focussed communication. Ministry Voting will lead to more transparency because coalition formation is only done within the clear borders of independent Ministry Chambers. Unlike many older democratic innovations, Ministry Voting enables strong democratic authority over the political agenda, which is protected by referenda on changes in the responsibilities of Ministry Chambers. The premier, who is responsible for the communication between Ministry Chambers, can be chosen directly without the threat of the spoiler effect.
Prior to implementing Ministry Voting, an experiment has to be done to prevent unforeseen consequences. Specifically, does the way of applying STV to choosing a premier really decrease strategic voting more than ISV? It can be that voters still think that voting ‘strategically’ makes sense. Nevertheless the combination of the described incentives form a
strong substantiation for the hypothesis that implementing Ministry Voting will have normatively positive influence on Dutch democratic institutions. Hopefully that would earn back the people’s trust that they can have influence on governmental policy.
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Appendix 1: Existing Dutch Political Institutions in the Context of Ministry Voting
Institution Definition within Ministry Voting
Cabinet The combination of ministers and secretaries set forth by Ministry
Chambers, led by the premier, who is responsible for the communication between the ministers and the communication between the Ministry Chambers. The Cabinet as an entity is not as prominent as in the current Dutch system, since ministers are held accountable by separate Ministry Chambers.
Candidate Anyone who stands for election for one or multiple Ministry Chambers
or for the position of premier. A candidate does not have to be a member of a political party.
Coalition Majorities within a Ministry Chamber who choose a minister and pass
laws.
Formateur There is no longer a formateur who helps coalition party leaders divide
the ministerial positions. Within a Ministry Chamber, majority coalitions have to be formed to assign a minister.
Informateu r
Ministry Chambers choose an informateur to explore possible coalition formations within that Ministry Chamber. The newly elected premier is responsible for the communication between informateurs.
Opposition Minorities within a Ministry Chamber who do not support the minister
or do not support passing certain laws.
Party list Civilians can still assemble in political parties. Political candidates have
the choice to make their ballot list identical to the party leader’s ballot list. If all candidates of that party do this, voting for any of them has a similar effect to voting for a candidate on a party list in the current Dutch electoral system.
Preference votes
A voter can express their support for a ballot head by choosing their ballot list. This does not give the ballot head institutional power, just prestige. What matters is that if the candidate earns enough preference
votes for multiple seats, the additional seats are assigned according to the candidate’s ballot list.
Roll-call voting (hoofdelijk stemmen)
Every member of a Ministry Chamber has the right to demand a roll-call vote in their own Ministry Chamber, which means that all members of that Ministry Chamber must individually announce their vote on a proposition.
Speaker Every Ministry Chamber chooses a speaker and a number of deputy
speakers. A speaker will have the same tasks as in the Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal, but just for one of the Ministry Chambers.
