How to punish elected politicians in a more effective way?

Question

How do we punish elected politicians in a more effective way?

(Or at best, how do we avoid voters being willing to punish the whole political class in general?)

To briefly explain what I mean:

Exhibit 1: "In 2010, Gnarr, a stand-up comedian, stood as mayor of Reykjavik. It was a satirical gesture, designed to protest against the political class blamed for miring Iceland in the financial crisis. To his horror, and the horror of the establishment, he won." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/15/jon-gnarr-comedian-mayor-iceland

Exhibit 2: Recent Italian constitution referendum: "While the reform has some intrinsic merits, the domestic debate is centered on the effort to unseat the prime minister. At the same time, financial markets see the vote as a test of the appetite of reform in the country" http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/30/italys-referendum-explained-what-you-need-to-know.html

Exhibit 3: Holland referendum of 2005 concerning EU constitution: "According to a poll [1] by Maurice de Hond, 30% of the Constitution's opponents used the referendum as an opportunity to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the government, instead of confining their deliberations to the contents of the treaty that was put before them. At the time of the referendum, the Netherlands' centre-right coalition government, led by Jan Peter Balkenende, was suffering a period of unpopularity as it tried to push through cuts in public spending, and there was widespread disillusion with the country's political elite." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_European_Constitution_referendum,_2005

I picked those examples because it is a more clear case then deliberating whether some populist politician got elected to punish the establishment, or maybe indeed to his voters the program was indeed realistic and reasonable.

The problem, that I would like to tackle is the following - voters see a government that in their opinion seriously underperform. Possibility to elect another mainstream party with a not-so-different program seems not specially tempting. There may be also a problem of some undesirable changes that may be beyond blamed politician (either caused by long term changes or external factors), the voters do not bother analyse such minuscule details carefully; they just want to punish the person is in charge for not fixing the problem.

And then a referendum comes (on absolutely unrelated stuff), and they finally have a chance to say this guy in charge or whole political class a big "NO".

Could there be a method to satisfy voters bloodlust ( ;) ) in some way that would not derail unrelated projects or replace already not specially professional establishment with even less competent populist? Some way of punishing politicians and calming down before relevant election / referendum? Or maybe some way to avoid the whole problem in more creative way? Or maybe such few derailed project should be just accepted as collateral damage?

(Assume contemporary tech level; country neutral answer; just something that generally could work in a Western democracy. If there is a way to solve it then I would presumably have to put in the background of my story.)

Answer 1

"Punishing" politicians can be a very slippery slope. Allow me to explain.

Politician X is democratically elected. One problem which a significant portion of the Western World runs into is that citizen votes are not equally weighted. Instead, we each cast our vote for a certain representative in a certain sector, and the party with the most elected representatives wins.

So in practice, in a lot of Western Countries, it's not the most popular politician who gets elected, but the party leader who managed to get the most seats. For example, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won a majority government with something like 39% of the votes. That means that 61% of voters did not support him.

He then goes and implements (to varying degrees) some of the policies which he promised he would. But those policies may very well be upsetting 61% of the voting-age population (if we extrapolate)! Because most of them did not want him to win in the first place.

So at this point, do you "punish" the politician for implementing the policies which got him elected in the first place? Would you make it so that only people who voted for him get to "punish" him? Neither is a good idea because, although his actions may be unpopular with some segment of the population, there is more to all this than meets the eye:

• Circumstances change all the time, and governing a country is very complex. Maybe his election promise (assuming he made it in good faith) is simply not realistically achievable in the political climate which he inherited. If the leader is constantly afraid of being punished for "not doing what he promised", governments will severely lose effectiveness.

• Leaders often make decisions based on far more information than the public. Some of that information may be highly specialized and difficult to understand, but it may also be classified. The media, or certain interest groups may spin these decisions as racist, evil, or incompetent, however the leader of the nation can't hesitate to make some of those important decisions simply because he is afraid of being "punished" by the public.

And so, the very concept of "punishing" our leaders is very tricky. They should definitely be held accountable for doing anything illegal, or otherwise manipulating the system for personal gain, etc. However, politics, by its very nature, is a divisive topic, and punishing political leaders simply because you don't agree with their policies or decisions would result in complete chaos, and ineffective governing. In fact, it would lead to nothing more than mob rule, and a complete breakdown of democracy.

Answer 2

Three procedures applicable and actually applied in democracies:

• In ancient Athens, ostracism was a procedure in which the citizens could vote to banish somebody for a limited time. There was no need to prove guilt; in was not a trial, but simply a vote. If a majority of voters (but not less than a certain minimum number) vote to send the person away, away they went. While in ancient Athens anybody could be ostracized, it is easily conceivable a similar law applying only to politicians; and in practice ostracism was used mainly against politicians.

• The same ancient Athenians had another nifty legal procedure, the graphê paranomôn, a lawsuit against a law, or, as we would say in Civil Law countries, an extraordinary recourse in the interest of the law. Any citizen could walk into a court of law and file a suit against a (relatively) recently promulgated law or in general any bill passed by the assembly, declaring it to be unconstitutional. As soon as the suit was filed, the law in question was suspended; the suit was tried by the Heliaia, the supreme court of Athens, which had the authority to rescind the law or bill in question. The defendant was the politician who had proposed the law or bill; if they lost, they had to pay a fine or they could even lose the right to vote and to run for office, and of course the law or bill was rescinded. For added popular appeal, the judges/jurors of the Heliaia were not politicians but ordinary citizens, selected by lot from those citizens who manifested their wish to serve.

• In our time, Californians (as well as the citizens of other American states) have a legal procedure called a recall election, which allows the citizens to depose the governor. Any citizen may initiate a recall campaign; if they gather a certain number of signatures, the state is compelled to organize a recall election, which is essentially an anticipated election combined with a referendum. Notably, this is how Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California in 2003, replacing the incumbent Gray Davis who was deposed (or "recalled") by the vote of the citizens.

In states which are not democratic politicians may meet their just desserts by means of much abbreviated procedures...

Answer 3

The main question, do you want to educate the population to use their vote wisely, or do you want to give the mob an outlet for their anger? Since we're on Worldbuilding SE, the site for the setting of fictional stories, I'll focus on the latter.

• Allow "recall" votes against legislators, governments, and Santa Claus. If the recall gets enough votes, there is a snap election for that position.
• Make it easier to run a "recall" vote than to vote on any substantive issue. That way, malcontents will cast their against vote directly against the persons they're upset with.
• Make it easier for legislators to depose governments. A proportional representation system rigged to produce many small parties, plus easy motions of no confidence. So you don't even need a general election to get a new president or prime minister.

Answer 4

2 options:

1. Have a "none of the above" option, or count non votes as a vote for none of the above. Establish a threshold %age, and a strong consequence of hitting that threshold.

It has always struck me as strange that in democracies where voting is compulsory you are essentially forced to vote for a candidate, even if you don't want them to represent you. Alternatively in democracies where voting is not compulsory, more than half of the population can choose not to support any candidate, yet some candidate ends up winning.

It seems to me that if >50% (generic round figure) of the population voted "none of the above"/failed to express support for any candidate (or if "none of the above" received more votes than any single candidate), then a new election should be held with new candidates, or the winning candidate is elected but for a reduced (half?) term.

As a circuit breaker to this process (to hedge against perpetual "none of the above" votes) random citizenry are selected for representative duties, similar to jury duty.

2. Have elections on a policy basis, instead of a party basis.

Let's say there are 5 candidates, who each hold different positions on particular issues. Have a question on the ballot, with people voting for each position (candidate not listed). The candidate who's own positions most closely represent that of the voting public gets the spot (or some similar mechanism). There may need to be some sort of open source/public/bottom up process for generating questions to go on the ballot.

Answer 5

"Punishment" may not be the thing you want, but many people consider dealing with the consequences of their decisions to be punishment, so let's use it as a blanket term.

First, you will need to be able to identify what constitutes fault, then how to rectify fault, and thereafter, how to conduct routine maintenance of the issue.

1. Identify what is fault

Faulty systems are those, which produce results that do not satisfy the intentions. So the first step is to clearly define the goals which are imposed on politicians, so that when they endeavour an action which does not benefit the goals, it will be clear. Unfortunately, this will require a rigorous process of evaluation and a considerable literacy on account of the general population.

Besides that, you will need to recognise where exactly the politician is responsible for generating fault. Where there is personal responsibility. The nature of political work is that politicians exercise discretion in order to create and maintain laws. Where did the politician overstep the discretion permitted to them?

2. Rectify fault

Fault creates undesirable circumstances and our duty is to rectify the situation, change the circumstances to desirable ones. Sometimes it is not entirely possible (death is a good example, replacing family members is impossible or maybe rectifying unhinged minds). In any case, there are reasonably predictable ways to make sure there are no further adverse consequences (understandably, a single abused childhood may start the demise of an entire community). So, you will need some way to figure out how to rectify and then make the person responsible for generating fault carry out the rectification. Same way as cleaning up after breaking a coffee mug. You broke it, you clean up.

Political positions are positions of power and their responsibility is management, the government of small and large institutions. Clearly, a politician who is shown to generate fault is not capable of carrying out such responsibility, so there must be management installed to oversee and direct their progress, make sure they don't screw up the rectification.

3. Routine maintenance

With enough data, you can reasonably identify common traits by which people who tend to generate fault can be identified and then prevented from occupying positions of power. Of a person is not unlucky, but is systematically faulty, they are obviously not suitable for power, and should be reassigned to positions which do not involve applications of personal discretion to others' livelihoods.

4. Bonus: systemically-induced fault

Sometimes you will not be facing "one bad apple". Instead, you'll see systemic fault generation, where positions of power attract specifically such people who are not suitable for power. This will happen when such positions are attached to benefits which do not directly relate with the carrying out of responsibilities of the position. Such that for example in the Soviet Union: people who occupied high government positions gained access to special products, such as rare caviar and cold cuts, not available to general public (regardless of available funds). In order to remove this, you will need to disconnect such benefits from positions of power and make them available to people regardless of the nature of their employment.

Corruption and crime are also generated through inability to gain sufficient means to acquire desired benefits by application of one's personal skillset. This means you will need to ensure that everyone's skillset is employed to the fullest: that there is a place for genius extortionists and contortionists in your society alike. If there is not, they will start applying their skillset in illicit ways, which will include conning their way into positions of power and leveraging that power to gain desired benefits.

Answer 6

1) Make it a crime for a politician to vote for an obviously illegal law. If a court strikes down a law by at least a 2/3 majority they have the option of declaring that the politicians should have known better.

2) Every year every sitting elected official not up for re-election instead faces a recall vote. Recall votes must state a specific action that was unacceptable and that action must have occurred (or become public knowledge) since the last time that politician faced the ballot box. The reason must be true, definitely possible and asking for something legal. (Thus Obama could not have been kicked out for failing to capture Bin Laden, or, had he captured him, failing to execute him by drawing and quartering.) If a politician gets tossed out this way all his votes since the last election go with him. Laws that were passed but now would fail are immediately struck from the books and all convictions based on them are tossed. (But the people are not eligible for wrongful-conviction compensation.) If a measure would now pass it is treated as having been passed on the date of the recall election and proceeds through the system from that point.

(Note that while on the surface this looks to involve an awful lot of work there's no need to look at the reasons unless the total is over 50% and in that case computers can chuck a lot of bad ballots. When humans analyze the ballots they'll no doubt see invalid reasons and computers could recognize many of them. (For example, chuck any Obama-recall votes with the words "birth certificate" or "Kenya".)

Answer 7

A good first step might be creating a standard agency similar to many advertising or broadcasting standards agencies. The sole purpose of this agency would be to make sure that things said by politicians (and all circumstances in which they find themselves thereafter) were accurately recorded, noted and weighed against the actions taken by the politician.

While this in itself won't satiate anybodies bloodlust, it will create a situation where many who would otherwise rise to power with no intention of following through on their promises will instead self-select themselves out of a political career.

If you also give people the ability to interact with this agency (IE to lodge complaints of 'they aren't fixing my street fast enough' or 'they said that there would be 37 billion moneys for my city and there isn't' then people will have a course of action to take that isn't just 'vote against the establishment'.

Then make knowingly lying to the public a crime (fraud, perhaps). By this point you should have people in power who genuinely want to make the world a better place/push a specific agenda, and you'll have plenty of information on what they said, to whom, and who doesn't think they're doing their job. If what they're doing matches what they said they would do, or there is evidence that they're at least pushing for it, then they're fine. Disagreements between politicians are expected, disagreements between people and the politicians they elect even more so.

If they've blatantly lied, said they were going to build a million houses and then shown no evidence of actually trying to do so: Bring in the evidence.

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The downside to this approach is that the entire thing will then become politicised and used as just another tool in a good politicians arsenal. It completely removes any way for there to be under the table dealmaking and backchannel negotiations(which you may view as either positive or negative, depending upon your political leanings) and will add considerable strain to any governing body.

Oh, and it would cost the taxpayers money, which could be better spent on regulatory bodies for toasters.

Answer 8

The question presupposes that the people as a whole made a bad choice. That presumes that the masses shouldn't have self rule directly -- the ruling class needs to know the people's wishes in order to best fulfill them, but the people are incapable of choosing the actual method of fulfillment.

So, let's work with that.

The easiest answer for me is to offer the people only non-binding votes. Bread and circuses. If your fictional Machiavelli needs the populace to have an outlet for its anger, give them a Brexi... er... I mean... referendum that doesn't commit the government to any action. Then with the full power of your charisma, you can tell the masses, "We hear you are unhappy and we are going to do something to improve it."

It's like being a good lawyer: never ask a question if you don't already know the answer. In this case, never hold a vote that commits you to an action.

But I caution you... many scholars have suggested the best leaders for a republic are those who don't want the job. So maybe the vote in Iceland or elsewhere was actually exactly what needed to happen. Maybe the populace can govern itself. Maybe they really are as racist/mysogenistic/etc as the extremist party they voted for. Never discount the possibility that they know what they do.

Answer 9

In most parliamentary systems, political parties can vet their own candidates and the elected officials in parliament from a political party who know the potential leaders personally, elect the parliamentary leadership (and critically can eject the parliamentary leaders and replace them with other members of the same party if the rank and file loses faith the parliamentary leadership), so this tends to be less of a problem than in a U.S. style system when an unvetted candidate not backed by the party itself can be elected on that party's ticket.

In most U.S. style systems, politicians are loathe to attack their allies since that turns an incumbency into an open seat which could be lost by the party. Colorado has a system where vacancies in legislative seats are filled by the member's party, which reverses the incentive - your own party pushes you out if you are weak so they can have a stronger candidate when there is an election, while an opposing part wants the weak candidates to stay in so they have ammunition in the next election.

But, since parliamentary systems don't usually give citizens any direct say on the leadership chosen by elected members of parliament, when the parliament elects bad leaders voters have no safety valve to override parliamentary decisions on leadership, and so they use any referendum that comes along.

One tool that is common in the Western U.S. that could focus these issues would be to create a recall election option by filling out a sufficient petition. Then people wouldn't sublimate their efforts to express themselves to other fora. In a parliamentary system, in addition to a recall, there might need to be a way to force a snap election by petition.

Answer 10

Sometimes the old ways are best. The standard way to punish politicians throughout history has been killing them, and sometimes replacing the whole government or governmental system. (Why not, while you're at it, right?)

Say what you want about the French, but they devised a very effective way punish their political leaders when they'd had enough monarchy.

You can spend a lot of time analyzing and studying the problem here (how to hold those in power accountable for their actions), but ultimately, fundamentally, you encounter a very large, mostly unresolvable problem in that people are self-interested, and people in power have the means to protect themselves by virtue of being in power. So at a very basic level, it's nearly impossible to do what you want to do "within the system," precisely because those in power use the system to protect themselves. In modern times, that means a massive government and the resources of millions of people they can levy to their defense. Therefore, if you want a way to actually, effectively punish those in power at any kind of scale, you have little option but to burn the system down with them... at which point, you can round them up and cut off their heads, or levy whatever other punitive measures you have in mind.

Answer 11

Skin in the game

Pay them at wages competitive with private industry -- contingent on good performance. And then, have the voters decide that by popvote.

Or whatever. I'm just looking for a pretense to have a tickable box on the ballot specifically for venting approval/disapproval of the government -- so they don't misuse the category where they select Candidate Blue or Candidate Orange.

Answer 12

Politicians are a product of society, in the same way physicians, teachers, etc. Punish does not solves anything, and can make it worse; one focus on politicians beacause, the greater the power, the more obvius the weaknesses and corruption.

The most effective way is to truly and sincerely commit with sanitize society. Starting with self, but not stopping there. Before blaming politicians of corruption (which is not only stole money), stop doing corrupted acts and take actions in order to those around us stop doing it, as well.

Example: If someone suspect that his/her children cheat at school, comfront it so (s)he understands and recognizes the error, and rectify it; And talk to the authorities, seeking avoind future cheats.

At the same time, one must seek, all the time, for better controls. Politicians must have a contract with objective goals (specifiying objective measure methods). And it they can't achieve them, must resign or be dismissed (and can be candidates again with other objectives, as long as they don't perpetuate).

And how avoid that some sociopath inadvertently takes control and then it is too late? Well, because commitment within political structures is a fundamental part of any commitment for a better society. As a quote atributed to Pluto said: The penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by the worst men.

Every people must engange in some sort of political activity, say one hour a week at least. It can be control some politician's act, design something, etc.

Answer 13

Make it illegal for anyone to run for office who hasn't written a legally binding contractual list of promises, e.g. if I get into office I will reduce unemployment to 5% by 2018. Something quantifiable and easily measured.

If they do not fulfil their contract the wronged party (the public) can take legal action against the politician, starting with removing them from office but being anything in the normal range of civil actions / torts, etc. (e.g. probably fines, prohibitions against running for office again, etc.) If a politician had to publicly state which campaign promises they were or weren't prepared to add to their contract you'd get a lot less of the promising-the-earth style politics that can see any prat end up in office.

Accountability in short, the kind of accountability businesses have to provide but governments don't. After all, you wouldn't sign up for a monthly broadband contract without knowing the provider was legally obligated to actually provide you with working broadband, as long as you pay your bill. Why shouldn't it be the same for governments if you're paying your taxes?

Answer 14

Allow voters to vote in a special advisor to the leader. Once a year there would be an election where advisors pushing for certain agendas can run for this role. Voters get to vote yes/no on each advisor. Once elected the leader would be obligated to meet with the advisor on a regular basis and report on progress. This advisor would server for 6 months and could be highly annoying to the leader during that time. Over 50% of the voters would have to approve of the advisor, to prevent intentional harassment of leaders by voters that don't really care about an issue.