Democracy needs a redesign

Representative government in the form of a federated constitutional republic was the crowning political achievement of the enlightenment. For the first time in history, great masses of men were free to choose the laws which governed them, and they chose to enshrine as fundamental rights life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This was the American experiment.

In the two hundred years since the founding of America our system of government has held up remarkably well. In that time, the United States has grown from a provincial outpost in the wilderness to the most powerful nation on earth. The world has changed a great deal in that time as well. Technology has advanced from wind-up pocket watches to mobile phones equipped with microprocessors, from sailing ships to rocket ships, and from balancing humors to designer biologic drugs. In the meantime, the Constitution has been amended and many new laws have been passed, but the basic forms of representative government have changed surprisingly little. It is no wonder then, if our system of government is showing a little wear.

It is the belief of us at EngineerDemocracy that the system is showing wear and that the fundamental problem is an excess of partisanship, which breeds division among the people and leads to dysfunctional government. This is not a problem that can be fixed by electing someone different. Politicians are shaped by the forms of representative government and the system puts certain stresses on them. If a bolt at a particular location in a bridge repeatedly fails, the solution is not to find a better bolt, but to redesign the bridge such that less stress is placed on individual fasteners. Democracy¹, too, needs a redesign.

It is also our belief, however, that the solution is not a revolution or other wholesale change of government but a careful adjustment of the one that has served us so well for so long. Representative government is a form of technology like any other, and we believe it is time to re-engineer it.

This page proposes what we believe to be the best remedies for partisanship and the extremism that accompanies it. We hope that you will take a moment to read our proposals and ultimately that you will join us in helping to make change happen.

1 We use the term democracy here in the general sense of government by the people. For our views on direct democracy (which we don't advocate) see our page on sortition.