The following letter was published in The Guardian on Fri 15th Sept
Dear Editor, Except for big political parties, nearly all democratic organisations hold AGMs and annual elections. Hence the party leadership struggles: Thatcher, Kennedy and now Blair. Is there any chance that the forthcoming annual conferences could turn themselves into proper democratic AGMs?
Yours
Dear Editor, The 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement outlines a referendum on autonomy in 2010. The 2002 Machakos Protocol for South Sudan promised a similar ballot on independence in six years. So if one part of the country can break away, why not another? And was the latter Protocol for the SPLA/SPLM in Juba a cause of the former conflict by the SLA/SLM in Darfur?
In 1999, Rambouillet proposed a referendum for the independence of Kosovo after three years. Earlier, the 1991 Badinter Commission suggested every ‘people’ aspiring to break away in what was still Yugoslavia should have a referendum. The result was a spate of such polls, because for every majority which wants to opt out, the corresponding minority wants to opt back in again; and to quote Sarajevo’s newspaper Oslobodjenje, “every war in the former Yugoslavia started with a referendum,” (7.2.1999).
Is it not time to question the use of this simplistic and divisive device? After all, it only encourages each ‘people’ to draw its own border in which to (fight and then) vote, while the respective government, not wanting to see the dismemberment of its own country, fights back. So Khartoum blocks any initiative in Darfur (Sudan throws out Darfur peacekeepers - 5th Sept.), while the ‘people’ of Republika Srpska still look to Belgrade (Serb move may trigger new war - 6th Sept.).
Yours
If Northern Ireland is ever to have a power-sharing arrangements which functions successfully, considertion should be given to a form of multi-option preference voting, instead of thinking that EVERY political question is a dichotomy! Accordingly, we recently sent the following letter to the press.
Dear Editor, Current proposals for decision-making in the seven super councils (envisaged by the Review of Public Administration) talk of 75% weighted majority voting. A disadvantage of such a system is that, in effect, any group of 25% or more can exercise a veto. And as was said some years ago, a veto is like a pistol in a Chekhov play: if it is on the mantelpiece in Act I, someone will use it in Act II.
Another more fundamental disadvantage of the weighted majority vote also applies to the consociational mechanism of the Belfast Agreement. Both of these methodologies are dichotomous: they both reduce every discussion to a majority vote or to a series of majority votes. So everything is either “option (or amendment) A, for or against?” or “option A versus option B”. In other words, the question is always a closed one.
In conflict resolution work, in contrast, professional mediators rely on open questions. If a similar approach were adopted in our political institutions so that contentious decisions were subject to a multi-option vote, then, by asking the councillors to express their preferences on a range of options, it would be possible to identify that option which was the most widely acceptable, i.e., the option which got the highest average preference.
In both weighted majority voting and consociational voting, there may be winners who win everything, and losers who get nothing. Consensus voting, in contrast, is inclusive, and because the outcome is an average, (and an average, by definition, involves everybody), it means that (almost) everyone wins something but that no-one wins everything. Furthermore, by establishing a minimum average preference rating, councillors may know, without any resort to ‘designations’, that the winning option has sufficient cross-community support.
Yours
On 24th August, during the annual Journées d'été des Verts held this year in Coutances in Normandy, the de Borda Institute gave a presentation to the French Green Party on decision-making. It went well and, as a result, one person even suggested that the majority vote should be re-named "le système napoleonique"!