A coincidence of great and minor powers

[David Hilvert]

Politics has interested (and irritated) me for a long time, and
political theory, while interesting, seems to have maddeningly little
effect on political practice.  As an example, we have works such as [1]
[2][3] suggesting that presidential systems have some tendency toward
producing coup d'etat outcomes, and yet, when practical debate over
presidential power arises, the possibility of presidentialism itself
producing the outcome of unilateral power grabs seems to never be
discussed.  Such is the fate of political theory, perhaps.  A lesser
example of the same sort would be ignoring works such as [4] when
copyright and patent law is discussed.  Rather than considering the
possibility that such laws are a form of corruption (nee 'rent-
seeking'), it is generally assumed that they produce some sort of
salutary effect, mostly because it has frequently been written that it
is so.  If such an approach were taken to biological science, we
would, almost all of us, be creationists.

On the other side, we have computer software development, where ideas
can rather quickly find their way into practice, and obeisance to what
is oft-written and oft-believed seems to be far more fleeting.
Perhaps it is a happy coincidence that free software has given birth
to environments conducive to experimental development, but, for
whatever reason, the common standard in software allows, in practice,
for diversity and experimentation, where the common standard in
politics, apparently, does not.

One thing that might perhaps be useful for both software and politics
would be to begin crafting political systems accessible via Internet
for the purposes of decision-making in free software development.  In
practice, we have such systems as Debian's constitution and (if I
recall correctly) associated Condorcet voting processes, but there are
probably other areas where some kind of decision-making mechanisms
(and, in particular, software mechanisms) could be introduced.  And,
if introduced, perhaps those skilled in software development would
also have some incentive to work on such political software.

Sites such as Slashdot appear to demonstrate that a well-designed
algorithm can select sufficiently well for well-liked comments as to
produce a high readership based on this.  Perhaps there are other
areas, as in software, as suggested above, that better decision
methods could lead to more productive, or more interesting,
communities.  This approach might, at least, offer a field of
experimentation for development of voting software, and might also
draw more developers, if such experimentation were successful.

It is my hope, at least, that political ideas might begin to have a
mobility and potency approaching that of software ideas, with the
better ideas finding greater success and currency.  Perhaps Votorola,
or a similar system, could make this happen; it seems, at least, to be
the most advanced software of the sort, and most scalable (compared,
e.g., to [5]), I have seen so far, and it would be nice to see it
applied in practice.


[1] Alfred Stepan and Cindy Skach. Constitutional Frameworks and
Democratic Consolidation: Parliamentarianism versus Presidentialism.
World Politics, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Oct 1993), 1-22.

[2] Filippov, Mikhail G., Ordeshook, Peter O. and Shvetsova, Olga V.
``Party Fragmentation and Presidential Elections in Post-Communist
Democracies.'' July 1997. http://www.hss.caltech.edu/SSPapers/wp1013.pdf

[3] Mainwaring, Scott. 1993. "Presidentialism, Multipartism, and
Democracy: the Difficult Combination," Comparative Political Studies,
26: 198-228.

[4] Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine.  Against Intellectual
Monopoly.  http://dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm

[5] http://gunnar.freeshell.org/Projects/RDDP/