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"Democratic Revolution in an Age of Autocracy"
Thomas Jefferson said that "a little rebellion now and then" might be a good
thing. He was right, and we need such a rebellion now: a democratic revolution that will
reinvent and rediscover democracy. All sorts of latent energies are waiting to be tapped.
But they will never be released by simple exhortations to "good citizenship," or
by celebrating the values of civic engagement, praising a thousand points of light, and
hosting quadrennial candidate forums.
Instead, reinventing democracy requires that we create new tools of empowerment: new
mechanisms of civic communication, political organization, government assistance, and
legal rights that can advance the distinct interests of citizens, taxpayers, consumers,
workers and shareholders. These structural and procedural reforms will help to foster a
new "fifth estate" of individual Americans, capable of acting independently from
entrenched institutional -- that is, chiefly corporate and governmental -- power. Pursuing
new forms of joint action, we can reclaim our government from the oligarchy that has made
it a caricature of the Jeffersonian vision and overcome the sense of powerlessness,
alienation, and fatalism that threaten to erode the commitment to democracy itself.
Here, then, is the North Star of a democratic revolution: reassert democratic principles
by giving the ideal of self-government new and creative applications in everyday life.
What follows are ten urgent, practical empowerment strategies that will help to advance
the democratic promise by reclaiming democracy and checking corporate power.
1. Facilitate voter initiatives. The 1992 campaigns dramatically illustrated the depth of
voter disillusionment with politics as usual and the deep yearning of ordinary Americans
to participate in the democratic process. Unfortunately, except for a few media-driven
vehicles such as call-in talk shows and candidate forums (which, significantly, were
convened by candidates, not by voters), citizens have few opportunities to take the
initiative in bringing issues to public attention.
One of the best tools for breaking this logjam is the voter initiative -- the process by
which citizens may enact or reject laws directly through the voting booth rather than
through elected officials. The process is simple: citizens gather a specified number of
signatures on petitions. An initiative then appears on the ballot, and is enacted or
rejected by popular vote. Through this initiative process citizens can propose new laws,
state constitutional amendments, or city or county charter amendments.
Citizen initiatives are an important democratic remedy for unresponsive state legislators
or city officials. Without initiatives, self-government all too often means only giving
voters a choice of electing the lesser of two evils. With the initiative process, voters
can control specific policies of government, and even change its structure. Frequently,
just filing an initiative petition inspires legislators to pay attention to a citizen or
community campaign. Government becomes more responsive. Political power cannot be so
easily monopolized by a few influential officials. New and often crucial items can be put
on the political agenda. And citizens, reacting to direct democracy, are more likely to
participate in civic life.
Any politician who is serious about rejuvenating our democratic traditions must promote
the use of the initiative process. Where initiatives are not now permitted -- at the
national level and in some states -- this means changing the rules that prevent them.
Congress, by majority vote of both houses, could create a non-binding national initiative
process or mandate national advisory referendums on any subject at any time. This act
alone would send a powerful message to the American public: that democratic principles are
indeed valued; that citizen-driven participation is important in our public life; and that
legislators are willing to be directly responsive to the public will.
2. Reform our corrupt campaign finance system. It is now a well-accepted fact that our
system for financing presidential and congressional campaigns is fundamentally corrupt and
pernicious. The only way to ensure effective and honest representation by lawmakers is
through decisive campaign finance reform, with public funding of campaigns. Ellen Miller's
article on "Money, Politics, and Democracy" (in this issue of the Boston Review)
presents one proposal for such reform.
An important first step in the campaign to limit the impact of money in politics was taken
in February. A major coalition of 300 citizen organizations launched a massive "Clean
Up Washington" campaign, announcing its own 800 number to marshal citizen support
(800-847-6611). The object of the campaign is overall spending limits for congressional
races, a reduction in the limits on P.A.C. and individual contributions, a ban on
"soft money" contributions (which are channeled through political parties), and
the elimination of special tax breaks for lobbying. By loosening the grip of entrenched
interests, these reforms promise to unleash other new possibilities for the culture of
citizenship.
3. Set term limits for Members of Congress. Few issues have so galvanized spontaneous
citizen action as the idea of term limits. The chief value of such limits is their ability
to liberate new energy for political elections. A fresh crop of candidates can emerge --
and win -- and more citizens can become excited recruits to electoral campaigns. Because
incumbents typically have a hammerlock on re-election, ordinary citizens who used to
participate actively in campaigns have largely given up. They reasonably say, "Why
bother? How could I possibly make a difference? There's no chance that a
challenger-candidate could possibly unseat a well-funded lifetime politician."
Limiting terms to twelve years changes this equation. Congressional elections matter
again. New blood enters the democratic process. Diversity of representation is enhanced.
Legislators can be elected who have energy and determination, who are not burnt out or
bought off. Newcomers will generally be closer to their constituents than the career
politicians of Washington. Their arrival can help end the reign of the ruling cliques,
whose entrenched power is such a potent barrier to progressive change.
Opponents of term limitations warn that inexperienced citizen legislators will be at the
mercy of special-interest lobbyists and that the voters will lose the experience and
wisdom of career lawmakers. This argument is not convincing, given what the established
"experience and wisdom" has accomplished in Washington. There were a lot of
amateurs in Philadelphia 200 years ago; they didn't do too badly. Constitutional
objections may be more formidable. Some experts argue that congressional term limits
require a constitutional amendment, and not simply legislation in individual states. This
was the method used to limit presidential terms in 1951. At the very least, however, it is
clear that the states can limit the terms of state officials. Twenty-three states already
limit the number of terms that their governors can serve.
Members of Congress are not likely to approve a constitutional amendment limiting their
own terms. So attention must turn to ways to compel Congress to act. The 22 states with
the initiative/referendum process -- where voters have direct access to the ballot box --
will have a head start in organizing term limit campaigns. These states account for nearly
half of the House of Representatives, and 44 of the nation's 100 senators. A
state-by-state blitz of term limitation initiatives will create tremendous national
momentum to limit Congressional terms, even in the 28 non-initiative states. In those
states, citizens must demand that their legislators vote for term limits, or that the
question be placed on the ballot for the public to make their voice heard.
4. Expand citizen standing rights. What can be done when government itself becomes
lawless, flouting the very Constitution and congressional laws that it is duty-bound to
uphold? This is one of the most important yet neglected problems of self-governance of our
time.
Historically, one important tool for citizens and taxpayers has been a broad right of
legal standing -- a right to gain access to the courts to sue the government and challenge
its arbitrary and capricious actions, its failure to enforce existing laws, and its
illegal behavior. The Supreme Court recognized the importance of broad taxpayer and
citizen standing in a series of decisions in the 1960s and early 1970s. They upheld, for
example, the standing of taxpayers to challenge expenditures of tax revenues that were
alleged to violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and the standing of
ordinary users of the environment to challenge the legality of environmentally harmful
government regulations even though the interest of the particular plaintiffs was
generalized and diffuse.
Unfortunately, since the mid-1970s the Supreme Court has reversed this tradition, and
developed an increasingly restrictive law of standing. Narrowing citizen access, the Court
has transformed the law of standing into a smokescreen that masks and sanctions many
governmental misdeeds. The Court has refused, for example, to grant standing to taxpayers
who were challenging government spending alleged to violate the Establishment Clause, or
to taxpayers arguing that secret C.I.A. funding violated the Constitution's requirement of
a public accounting of public expenditures. These changes in effect license government
officials to violate the law whenever it is expedient for them to do so, because no one,
except perhaps an attorney general, will ever be able to hold them accountable in court.
This is no way to promote official compliance with law or citizen confidence in the
operation of government. If public confidence in the legitimacy of government is to be
restored, Congress must immediately enact remedial legislation that gives taxpayers and
citizens broad standing to sue government. Such a reform would be a virtually cost-free
way to improve the quality and responsiveness of government operations. It would also send
a strong message that our nation is indeed governed by law and not by the arbitrary
caprice of political officials or government bureaucrats.
5. Regain control over "taxpayer assets." On behalf of the American people, the
U.S. government owns and manages a wide variety of taxpayer assets: national forests,
grazing lands, mineral deposits, power projects, information resources, research and
development rights, broadcast frequencies, among others. The Reagan and Bush
administrations boasted of their intention to run government "like a business"
-- before proceeding to host a massive fire sale of taxpayer assets to assorted corporate
interests. Here, too, citizens and taxpayers must be empowered to stop the widespread
abuses of government stewardship of publicly owned assets.
The federal government has historically funded about half of all U.S. expenditures on
research and development (R&D) -- some $74 billion in fiscal year 1992. Over the past
twelve years, the allocation of property rights in these research projects has
dramatically changed. Before Reagan/Bush, the government generally sought to have research
products enter the public domain, or to patent its inventions or license them on a
non-exclusive basis. Exclusive licenses were used, but only sparingly, and often for
limited terms. After 1980, however, a series of statutes, rules, and policy memoranda
sanctioned a broad use of exclusive licenses. In effect, taxpayers invest billions of
dollars in R&D every year -- and then the returns on these investments are privatized.
One of the more egregious abuses of taxpayer assets involves azidothymidine (AZT), the
A.I.D.S. treatment developed chiefly through government grants. Despite the government's
development funding, Burroughs Wellcome later gained monopoly rights to the drug,
initially charging $10,000 ($3,000 today) to A.I.D.S. patients, many of whom have no
health insurance.
This same pattern is replicated in the government's stewardship of federal information
resources, many of which are available through electronic means. The U.S. Government is
the largest publisher of information in the world. Yet the government has raised prices
sharply for these taxpayer-sponsored information resources; has given them away to private
vendors who sell the identical materials at inflated prices; and has eliminated many
publications altogether, effectively barring public access to government information and
policy.
One partial solution that deserves immediate congressional action is pending legislation
that would require the Government Printing Office to set up a one-stop-shopping program
for on-line access to hundreds of federal databases. The service would be free to 1,400
federal depository libraries, and would be available to everyone else through
subscriptions priced at the relatively low "incremental cost of dissemination."
Another way to help taxpayers defend public assets against waste and abuse is to create a
taxpayer watchdog group, in the form of a set-aside program, as a requirement for all uses
of taxpayer assets. This money -- say one or two percent of a given subsidy -- would
finance ongoing citizen oversight of private use of taxpayer assets. Like other
accountability mechanisms, this expenditure could be one of the most cost-effective ways
for the government to prevent waste and abuse of public assets.
The government does seem newly receptive to such ideas. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt
recently announced, for example, that the U.S. Government will no longer charge nominal
fees for grazing rights, mineral rights and other private exploitation of federal lands.
Instead, taxpayers will begin to receive market rates, and that will encourage private
users to treat these resources more responsibly. Whether President Clinton will be able to
overcome the cattle, farming and mining interests is, of course, another matter -- which
is precisely why democratic reforms are so vital.
6. Reclaim the public airwaves. The privatization of the broadcast airwaves -- one of our
most important taxpayer assets -- has caused serious deformations of our politics and
culture. The basic problem is that private broadcasters control what the public owns. And
in return for free licenses to use taxpayer property, broadcasters give us a steady stream
of increasingly coarse, redundant, superficial programming and, of course, exclusively
decide who says what on our public airwaves.
The result is that there is no place to hold a public discussion. Ordinary citizens can
speak to their neighbors, but they cannot speak to millions of their fellow Americans
without paying a giant toll and obtaining the permission of large corporations. The
grotesque paradox is that a First Amendment originally intended to empower citizens for
self-government is now being used to shield business entities, who control the major
channels of communication and have little interest in using them as public fora. (See Cass
Sunstein's article "Is Free Speech the Enemy of Democracy?" in this issue of the
Boston Review).
To give the audience access to the airwaves that it already owns, Congress should create a
new broadcast vehicle, the Audience Network. A national, nonprofit, nonpartisan membership
organization, Audience Network would be granted one hour of prime-time television and one
hour of drive-time radio on every commercial channel each day. It would function as a
separate licensee, airing diverse programming shaped by the membership, which would be
open to all citizens over age 16 for a nominal fee (say, $10 annually). In addition,
Audience Network would represent consumer interests before the Federal Communications
Commission (F.C.C.), Congress, and the courts. This would redress the long-standing
disenfranchisement that millions of viewers and listeners have suffered under the current
regulatory regime.
The Audience Network would be democratically controlled. The Network and its professional
staff would be managed by persons accountable to the membership through a direct elective
process. Besides membership fees, it could lease some airtime back to stations or
networks. This would help assure the Network's financial security, and allow it to avoid
paid advertisements. During its time slot, the Audience Network could air a variety of
cultural, political, entertainment, scientific or other programs that it produced or
obtained. Freed from the constraints of corporate advertisers, the Audience Network would
air major abuses which are not publicized for years by the commercial media.
Over time, Audience Network would transform a powerless, voiceless audience, conditioned
to a debased regime of programming, into an active audience with the ability to initiate
innovative and consequential programming and reforms. Its open programming by diverse
non-commercial groups would greatly invigorate the civic marketplace of ideas -- a signal
challenge for our times.
7. Create shareholder democracy. Corporate democracy has been an illusion for nearly 100
years -- which has not of course deterred business executives and the New York Stock
Exchange from annually proclaiming its vitality. What is the scope of management power and
what are the checks upon it? In nearly every large American business corporation, one
person or a small coterie of executives have unquestioned operational control. In theory,
this small group of managers serves as an agent of the board of directors; in reality, it
is just the reverse. The chief executive or executive clique chooses the board, and, with
its acquiescence, controls the corporation.
The legal basis for such a consolidation of power is the proxy election -- what British
law professor L.C.B. Gower calls "this solemn farce." Given the nearly
insuperable barriers faced by insurgents challenging management, it is no surprise that
the board of directors has ceased to perform its statutory function of "managing the
business and affairs of every corporation." Indeed, it is often hard to tell whether
the boards of many corporations perform any independent function at all.
"Directors," William O. Douglas complained as early as 1934, "do not
direct." Management control has overwhelmed the rule of law.
Such autocratic corporate governance imposes serious economic and social costs -- in terms
of self-dealing, inefficiency, and illegality. Even Business Week now concludes, "So
much of this trouble for America's corporate titans [General Motors, IBM, Westinghouse,
American Express] might have been avoided had the same parochial perspectives not clouded
the judgment of many outside directors. They simply failed in their duties." Many
institutional shareholders such as the California State Employees Pension Fund, newly
aware of the long-term economic costs of unaccountable managements, have mounted campaigns
to oust lackluster management teams. This is a step in the right direction, but the
impulse needs to be taken much further.
What is needed is a Corporate Democracy Act to give all stakeholders in corporate
decision-making a real voice in corporate governance. Redesigning the rights and
obligations of shareholders, boards of directors, and executives can make giant companies
both more efficient and law-abiding. Critical to this task is installation of full-time
outside directors selected by beneficial owners in elections entirely funded by the
company. To short-circuit wasteful competition among states to woo corporate investment --
by sanctioning unfair labor practices, pollution, and wasteful subsidies -- federal
chartering of corporations with minimum national standards are essential. Moreover,
victims of corporate malfeasance -- workers, consumers, local communities, shareholders,
and small businessmen -- should be accorded greater access to the court system to redress
their complaints (see point 9 below for more details).
Adding together all the social costs of our baroque, ineffectual sham of corporate
governance, it becomes clear that corporate autocracy is not conducive to a prudent,
productive economy -- nor to socially benign corporate behavior. But this will not change
until corporations begin to abide by minimal national standards of business responsibility
and shareholders are empowered to gain greater access to reliable corporate information,
participate in fair elections for board seats, and exercise meaningful oversight of
management.
8. Establish a new model of consumer representation. Mancur Olson, in his excellent book,
The Logic of Collective Action, asks, "Why is it that throughout history large
numbers of people are preyed upon by small numbers of people? What is it about the victim
class that makes it incapable of asserting itself?"
One answer is that the "victim class" has great difficulty in bringing itself
together, as a group. If only because of sheer numbers, it typically lacks organizational
means for asserting its collective will or developing a common identity and culture. This
dynamic is played out in dozens of milieus in our political economy. For example, sellers
-- who are consummately capable of organizing themselves to protect their interests --
develop myriad means to exploit buyers -- who have preciously few means of organizing
themselves. Public interest groups can help, but they often cannot provide a consistent
presence that is technically competent, financially stable, and directly accountable to
consumers.
The 1980s saw the emergence of a promising new solution to this classic problem. The
Citizens' Utility Board, or C.U.B., is a model approach for bringing together large
numbers of diffuse consumers into a voluntary organization, which can then pursue a common
citizen/consumer agenda in banking, insurance, housing or dozens of other arenas. It is
the "silicon chip" for the citizen movement because it is a low-cost, high
versatility, powerfully effective device.
How does a C.U.B. work? Typically, residential consumers lack the organization, resources,
or expertise to respond to utility arguments on such matters as ratesetting and safety.
C.U.B. offers an ingenious way to provide effective citizen representation. By authority
of state legislatures, a C.U.B. is given the right to enclose notices inside certain
company and state mailings to invite the public to become voluntary members of the C.U.B.
for a modest annual fee of $5 to $10. C.U.B. pays for this enclosure. This
"piggybacking" on state mailings provides a convenient, effective way for the
C.U.B. to organize a membership and to communicate with it, and a basis for
self-sufficiency and financial accountability.
All members of the C.U.B. have the right to vote in the election of the C.U.B. Board of
Directors. This process ensures that the leadership of C.U.B. reflects the interests of
the ratepayers. The Directors serve without pay and hire full-time staff of accountants,
attorneys, economists, organizers, and lobbyists. The staff can intervene, for example, in
rate proceedings; advocate before the legislature; research issues of concern to
consumers; survey public opinion on energy and telecommunications issues; analyze the way
the utilities are handling complaints; and provide information and assistance to consumers
interested in conserving energy.
Illinois C.U.B., for example, attracts tens of thousands of members and has blocked
literally billions of dollars in gratuitous rate hikes. It would be easy to apply the
C.U.B. idea to organizations like the Social Security Administration, the Veterans
Administration and the U.S. Postal Service. Big mailers (magazine publishers and the
direct-mail industry) routinely use lobbyists and trade associations to advance their
interests in postal commission rate hearings. Don't residential mailers deserve their own
independent voice?
The beauty of the C.U.B. concept is that, as a voluntary group, it costs taxpayers
virtually nothing. It is anti-bureaucratic, because no new government personnel or
procedures are needed. It enhances civic participation, because the C.U.B. depends for its
success on the energy and vision of its members. And it counters the massive inequities of
power that afflicts consumers in their dealings with government and business.
9. Protect victims' rights. Another constituency of individuals that is increasingly
impotent are the innocent victims of dangerous products, unsafe workplaces, toxic waste,
and other hazards. In recent years, insurance companies, manufacturers, and other
corporate interests have waged a massive campaign to roll back the legal rights of
plaintiffs to obtain full compensation for their injuries. In one of the most unprincipled
public relations scams in the history of American industry, this coalition has pursued a
draconian package of changes that it calls "tort reform." Among others, the
proposals seek to place arbitrary caps on "pain and suffering" awards; eliminate
punitive damage awards (often the only effective deterrent against intentionally unsafe
practices); impose mandatory limits on plaintiff lawyers' contingency fees (without
setting any corresponding limits on fees for defense lawyers); eliminate strict liability
(one of the most effective deterrents against unsafe products and workplaces); and
restrict the role of both judge and jury.
The coalition's fundamental message is that the jury system is out of control because the
common law and jury awards are so unpredictable. Claiming a ruinous "litigation
explosion," insurance companies dislike the jury system because they cannot precisely
budget damage awards as a cost of doing business. But this unpredictability is the very
essence of deterrence -- a function of the civil justice system which is just as important
as compensation and which, like the system's other social benefits, cannot be precisely
quantified in dollars and cents.
A citizen empowerment agenda must deal with the structural problems of the insurance
industry. Congress should repeal the industry's exemption from antitrust laws, federal
regulation, and Federal Trade Commission scrutiny. A cycle of surge-and-decline of cash
flow almost every decade has precipitated the bogus "insurance crisis." Congress
should also establish a federal office of insurance to monitor the industry and establish
standards for state regulators to follow. Voter Revolt, a California-based citizen group,
broke important new ground by mobilizing broad-based support for Proposition 103 -- an
initiative measure that reformed the property-casualty insurance industry in California
and rolled back excessive insurance rates.
At the state level, insurance companies must be required to disclose routinely how much
they take in on premiums and investment income, and how much they pay out in verdicts and
settlements (plus reserves and other expenditures). State insurance departments need more
authority and funding, and consumers need greater consumer representation before insurance
regulatory bodies. Insurers should be required to engage in greater loss prevention
efforts, and to disclose evidence of known defective products or hazardous conditions to
appropriate law enforcement and regulatory authorities. And, C.U.B. style
insurance-consumer organizations should be established to enable consumers to grapple with
this powerful industry.
Eroding basic victims' rights will not stop premium-gouging and policy cancellations. Only
effective insurance reforms will stop the cyclical insurance crisis which leads to the
volcanic eruptions of premiums and contracted coverage.
10. Ensure an hospitable environment for whistle blowing. Alfred North Whitehead wrote,
"Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events." Since the
early 1970s, this insight has given rise to the ethics of whistle blowing -- the lone
individual of conscience within a corporate or governmental organization who sees wrong
and tries to right it, often at great personal risk.
Society has an acute interest in fostering a more muscular whistle blowing ethic.
Corporate and government employees are among the first to know about fraud and corruption,
industrial dumping of toxics into waterways, defectively designed automobiles, or
undisclosed adverse effects of prescription drugs and pesticides. They are the first to
understand how to prevent existing hazards. But they are very often the last to speak out.
There is a great need now to extend the reach of this ethic into such organizations as
corporate and governmental bureaucracies. But the ethic will only flourish in these
settings if employees have the right to due process within their organizations, and if
rights now used to protect people from state power -- for example, the right to speak
freely -- are expanded into protections from corporations and comparable bureaucratic
powers. Large corporations should have a bill of rights for their employees and a system
of internal appeals to guarantee these rights. Unions and professional societies should
strengthen their ethical codes. The courts, professional and citizen groups, the media,
the Congress, and other sectors of society must actively work to prevent the trammeling of
a fortified conscience within their midst.
If carefully defined and protected by law, whistle blowing can become another of those
adaptive, self-implementing mechanisms which distinguish a free society, which empowers
people to govern themselves instead of being subordinated to autocratic controls.
The tools for democracy have fairly common characteristics. They are universally
accessible; they provide instruments of self-funded voluntary community action; they can
make government deliver, and have constructive effects on other areas of policy. Without a
reconstruction of our democracy in order to ensure facilities for informed civic
participation to all citizens, no ambitious program of political and economic change will
succeed. Nor can worries about poverty, discrimination, joblessness, the troubled
conditions of education, environment, street and suite crime, budget deficits, costly and
inadequate health care, and energy boondoggles be addressed in a constructive and enduring
way. These facilities are the magnets for the genuine exercise of rights, remedies, and
responsibilities.
So it is time for a civic rebellion, Jefferson style.
Originally published in the March/ April 1993 issue of The Boston Review.