As kids, we’re told only people who go to college/university for politics/economics/law are qualifiable to make/run a country. As adults, we see no nation these “qualified” adults form actually work as a nation, with all manifesto-driven governments failing. Which to me validates the ambitions of all political theorist amateurs, especially as there are higher hopes now that anything an amateur might throw at the wall can stick. Here’s my favorite from a friend.
My ideal form of government would be a bottom-up consensus-based democracy.
People organize themselves in groups of about 100 people who meet weekly to discuss topics related to their immediate surroundings (a group of neighbors). They make up all decision-making rules for their group themselves, and choose a speaker.
Immediately afterwards, the speakers from 100 groups meet to discuss larger issues in an assembly representing a town or suburb of 10000 people. This assembly also chooses a representative and has limited authority to enact binding rules for the smaller groups.
Those representatives basically work as part time politicians (like a mayor) and are paid by the state accordingly.
They have regular meetings with each other in groups of 100 which decide on rules governing a million people (a city or county).
And each of those groups again chooses a speaker for a national assembly, working full time and representing 100 million people (a country).
Each assembly has limited authority over the group of people it represents and can enact binding rules, while the largest assembly focusses on the topics concerning everyone, like a constitution, education, taxes, welfare, defense, border security, etc.
The leader of the national assembly is only a figurehead, their duties are to shake hands and speak with foreign dignitaries. All decisions are made by the assembly as a group. If any speaker in any group doesn’t represent their contituents, the process to replace them has to be extremely easy, for example a scheduled vote at the next meeting. That way, anyone willing to abuse their power can be stopped quickly.
This is pretty close to how the US government is organized.
But not how it works in practice.
I like this - as a fan of democracy.
Democracy costs, I think it’s OK that it takes a bit of time, more representatives, more votes is OK.
More civic engagement is a positive. Hearing the viewpoints of your neighbour is positive.
A really interesting dynamic, is that you would be creating a strong pipeline of leaders/representatives developing bottom up.