All representative democracies suffer the same concerns. Sweden is no different. A gap is formed between those who rule and those who are ruled. We can, on the one hand, on both sides of this divide admit that this is a little practical and convenient for both parties. Those in charge do not have to care so much about what the governed think in every detail and those who are governed do not have to take responsibility themselves and can blame the problems on those who govern. But on the other hand, the arrangement has a disruptive effect on democracy in the long run. Long-standing and large differences in opinions on important issues between the governing and the governed create mutual contempt and mistrust.
For more than a hundred years, we have voted for parties that have put together their own packages of political solutions with which they compete for political power. A hundred years is a pretty long trial period and we can now safely say that the actual outcome has come a long way from what was once promised when representative democracy was introduced. These promises, which have not yet been fulfilled, was that over time, democracy would replace minority rule and that transparency and honesty would replace corruption and self-interest.
Since all public power in Sweden is to be based on the people, we need, in some way or other, sooner or later, change how we transform the people’s views into political reality. In the end, the gap must therefore be closed. There is no lack of ideas about how this should be done. Some think that everyone should be allowed to vote on all issues on their own and as they wish. That sounds really democratic, but is it really? For example, would these decisions enlightened and informed and would political equality really arise? These are two crucial criteria for democracy.
However, in order to convert people’s opinions to politics, we need to ask the people what they think and if we ask stupid questions we’ll get stupid answers. So what is the not stupid way to ask so that we can find out exactly what the inhabitants of a country really think about a certain political proposal?
It is mainly about three things.
1The first is, of course, how the proposal itself is phrased. We know that it is perfectly possible to make up leading questions so that you get exactly the answer you want. But when it comes to political proposals, that is actually less of a problem than one might think. Because when the the parliament will vote on whether a proposal should be approved or not, they have to decide on the whole proposal as presented and not just a cunningly formulated question. When you want to know what the public thinks about the proposal, you simply ask what they think about the proposal in its entirety.2The second factor is who gets to answer the question. If everyone gets to answer the question, those who are most interested in that particular question will answer to a greater extent. Then the answers, compiled at an aggregated level, will get very skewed. If you only ask soldiers or only people in childcare, you can also get completely different answers. In order to get a representative answer, and a credible view of the opinion, you need to ask a representative sample. It is also called probability selection and is made by random. There are many benefits to it. If you choose people at random, you can calculate a lot of statistical things such as error margins and confidence intervals. Most importantly is that you’re getting the result exactly right. With random selection everyone has the same probability of being chosen and everyone can be sure of that you have a true and fair view of what the public thinks about the proposal.
3The third factor concerns how well thought out, or correct, answers you get from the ones you ask. If they have a too little time to respond, the answers may be inconsiderate and hasty. Often people need to find out some extra facts before deciding what to think. Maybe they will first talk to someone they know who has been involved in the subject that the proposal is about so that they can get a clearer picture of it. With some questions it is just the opposite. There may instead be an inflamed social debate where resourceful organizations have been engaged in hard propaganda for a long time. In such cases, respondents may have to try to look behind these interests to get closer to their own well-founded view. So in between these extremes, the totally unreflected and completely distorted, there they will deliberate their way to their genuine opinion.
Dividing into four quadrants
This will be much easier and clearer if we draw it in a diagram like the one below. The actual wording of the question, which was the first factor, is already solved so we will only need two axes in the diagram.
On the standing y-axis we can place where the opinion is between the extremes unreflected and distorted. It’s best if it is in between. The opinion should be clear and definite and established on a basis that you believe in. It should preferably be subjected to some personal reflection but not be distorted, corrupted or built on falsehoods so that it ends up at the other end of the scale.
We have placed the representation on the horizontal x-axis. It should of course be as close to the rest of the population as possible, which simply means that it should be as high as possible.
So in the middle of the y-axis and at the far right of the x-axis we find our sweet spot. There, these ideal conditions are met in a small black dot in the diagram. We decide, for the sake of reasoning, that the opinions read here would give a decision quality with a maximum of 5 points. For each step away from this maximum value, the score becomes lower until we reach the completely white field outside the target which has zero points. Zero points is very little, but if you look at the diagram you’ll also see that it is only in question for dictatorships where decisions also rest on the worst possible conditions when it comes to opinion formation.
The diagram itself is a square divided into four quadrants. In these quadrants we can now put in various known ways of institutionalizing public opinion. We can look around and see what goes where.
Somewhere in the upper right quadrant we can place a referendum. It encompasses everyone and thus, potentially, has a high level of representativeness. But the answer from a referendum in our modern age is colored by a lot of lobbying, advertising and influence campaigns, spinning, true and false threats, pure lies, promises and rumors on top of each other. In addition, it is now used by many as an opportunity to protest against the political establishment. Thus, political equality is relatively high, but the result does not reflect the public opinion so well. It gets distorted. After experiences such as Brexit, there is among many, especially those who have political power today, a very low confidence that referendums give a legitimate result.
In the upper left quadrant we can, as an example, put our own Parliament. It shows a distorted picture of public opinion too. One that is influenced by a lot of other things such as lobbyism, personal contacts, self-interest, power play, pressure and holds. It ends up on the left because it’s looking for the answer in only a well-defined and special group of people who are selected based on membership, and fallacy of hierarchical climbing, in political parties. That is not a characteristic of the general public. We also have more than a hundred years of full-scale testing of this method and it, especially with those who do not have political power today, have very low confidence.
Here we also find such a variant as “liquid democracy”. It is a method that allows those who are extra interested and familiar with certain policy areas to vote themselves in those particular issues. Other issues, of which they are not as interested, may be delegated to other persons or organizations interested in those questions instead. Those organizations can in their turn delegate their accumulated voting power to whoever they want. Maybe the highest bidder. Thus, the individual will not even know what his or her vote has been used for. Liquid democracy is designed to increase the political power of those with strong opinions and great resources and has the potential to further deteriorate political equality while there is no one to point out or demand responsibility from afterwards. Liquid democracy appears here as a compelling alternative for those who think that today’s democracy has too much political equality, too much responsibility for decision-makers and too little power for interest organizations
In the lower left quadrant we’ll find, for example, opinion polls with a self-recruited panel. The views can be completely raw, without any reflection and the group is not the least representative other than for itself. The confidence of those who research public opinion is therefore very low for this method.
In the lower right quadrant there is the type of sociological research that is currently being done by social scientists with large arrays of questions. There, the representativeness is very good. Since the number of questions sent to each respondent is quite large, not every respondent may have the opportunity to go into the full depth of each question but may need to provide some unconsidered answers. In this quadrant there are also other reputable organizations that conduct higher quality opinion polls.
All of these ways mean that we can be positive too reach certain decision quality points, or legitimacy points. On the left half we are within the legitimacy restraint of the minority, and the maximum score is limited to only 2. At the right half, referendums may at best reach a 3. The only ones who can reach 4 or better are the sociologists, or the more serious opinion polling companies, with their scientific method.
Bullseye
No matter how you twist and turn the chart, it appears that social scientists and reputable pollsters come closest to the ideal anyway. But how do we get that last bit into four and five? And how big is the difference in outcomes when you are so close to the ideal point? That is to say: How much democratic benefit is there in trying a little extra to go the very last bit to reach 5?
Fortunately, there is research on this as well. And the really exciting and interesting stuff happens when you in a while combine what we have presented so far with what we will present now:
ICQ
Professor Peter Neijens at the University of Amsterdam has studied a method called ICQ, (The Information and Choice Questionnaire). In these studies, randomly selected respondents were given a week to complete and return their responses. The respondents begun by forming an opinion by being exposed to the various arguments that existed for and against the proposal. It was also necessary to make judgments about the probable consequences of the various alternatives. The results of the studies showed that when the respondent filled out the form, during the process, a well-founded view of the proposal based on the various arguments, and how the respondent estimatede the desirability of the various consequences, was formed. When the respondents concluded by making their final decision on the proposal, they had done so more consistently, than the control group, with what they stated to be the opinion of the various arguments presented. In this way, it could be shown that the respondents in the study made decisions that were of better and more informed quality. Instead of asking people what they thought when they did not think, they had to think first and then answer.
So this was a way to a more informed and fact-based decision, but what was the measurable gain so close to the ideal point? One can find a clue about it in the fact that as many as 50% of those who participated in the studies changed their decision after they had formed an opinion based on this process above. This means that there is a very significant, not to mention dramatic, opportunity for improving the quality of the decision when approaching 5. Half of the respondents had changed to a new, more thoughtful, opinion!
Not giving the respondents a chance to first form a well-founded view through information and reflection generates as much error as if half of the respondents had been given a simple question to answer but which they interpreted just the opposite. The effect was strongest on issues where there is not such a large public debate and public interest.
Does it feel like a great idea to let people speak and get involved and decide in a certain way if we know that half of them would actually have decided otherwise given enough information and a chance to learn just a little more on the subject ? It probably doesn’t. The fact is that it would be almost as bad as it is today. It would have been just another way of asking for the wrong answer to the questions we have about our own opinions. Ask a stupid question and you’ll get a stupid answer.
We need to understand the extent of this. For this knowledge affect our chances to improve democracy and cause it to produce an outcome that is closer to our expectations of it. We need to help democracy to fulfill its old promises. No one else will do it for us.
Folkstyret
If Folkstyret is elected to Parliament, Folkstyret will forward each proposal to a representative sample of those living in the country. Those who are selected at random, for each proposal, can be seen as a mini-public. They are a miniature population created just for the sake of measurement. They have no particular background, social affiliation or other specific trait. They represent only the population.
You are completely unique with your perfectly personal set of views on all sorts of issues and you have acquired them through the distinct network of information sources that only you have. It can be leading experts, researchers or professionals you have chosen to rely on in various subjects, or knowledge you have acquired on your own through your very personal experiences. But you always share your opinion about a specific political proposal with a number of other people in society. In a representative sample, the proportional percentage who think the same as you in the specific political proposal is equal to the proportion in the entire population.
Those who are part of the mini-public deliberating on the issue in question gets to familiarize themselves with the proposal and decide what they think about it. They respond on a five-degree scale from very poor to very good. Folkstyret finds out the statically normal attitude to the proposal and votes accordingly in Parliament. The difference of opinion between the governing and the governed in this particular question will be closed a little bit. The decision becomes more legitimate.
For every political proposal that passes through a parliament in which Folkstyret is elected, similar gaps in opinion are closed a bit more. Day after day, we take care of decision after decision until we discover that the outcome of democracy has become a bit more like what we thought. Folkstyret benefits from the fact that we are millions of people who can share the work by, occasionally, taking a tiny part of the responsibility. Folkstyrets policies derive from what we have in common instead of what separates us.
In the parliamentary elections, we, as voters, decide how representative, respectively elite-driven, we want the parliament to be by choosing how large Folkstyret, the democratic party, should be in relation to the usual political parties. Between the elections, as described above, and to the extent that we ourselves are determined, we are thus represented by representatives of ourselves.
