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Improving the Performance of National
Governments through Factor Monitoring
Introduction The IBF System was first proposed by Dr. Sondlo Leonard Mhlaba in 500 Years of Eurocentric Diplomacy: Prospects for the 21st Century which first appeared in 1999 as a retrospective on the 20th Century. The 2002 edition of the book has been published by Surgebooks in soft cover and is available in many bookstores. Upon the establishment of The New Franchise Institute, the Board of Directors adapted the IBF Model for its democratization efforts. The author of the IBF Model takes the view
that democracy is more than "adult
suffrage" or "one
adult, one vote," or institutional
frameworks such as "the balance of power" between the
executive, legislative and the judiciary. He sees democracy as a
tool to achieve tangible results in the lives of citizens. In his
paper that follows, the author proposes an Incentive-Based Franchise
(IBF) System to effect these democratic outcomes, and demonstrates
how the IBF System might be applied to the United Nations. By taking
the model of incentives that has proved its worth in economics and
applying it in politics, the IBF System offers a self-directed,
and self-perpetuating approach to democratization, thereby avoiding
the, often, ineffective bilateral or multi-lateral, stick-and-carrot
approaches that the US and other Western democracies often employ.
Improving the Performance of National Governments
through Factor Monitoring The new millennium finds the world awash in refugees living in squalor far away from their war-ravaged homelands, or trapped in what a UN report calls "debt-bondage and other slave-like conditions", or helpless victims of incompetent, or corrupt governments in the lands of their births. To say that the world turns a blind eye to these sufferers would be inaccurate. Hundreds of local community organizers and staff members of international organizations (many of them Americans) devote their lives to improving conditions of life in these countries. Some give up in despair. Whether they fight on or give up, these soldiers of peace may be excused if they, at times, find their work hopeless and endless; perhaps no less endless than the proverbial onion. Peel after peel, they descend to the core, only to find another onion. What is the United States answer to these and related problems of the world? Our answer is, often, Democracy. "If only these countries could adopt our democratic form of government", we implore, "then their problems would gradually disappear". What we do not admit to ourselves or to the world is the fact that our Democracy is too young and too imperfect to qualify as the best form of national governance. Perhaps we forget that many great moments of American history, including the emancipation of slavery, and America's wealth and power that helped save the world from tyranny in two world wars, had very little to do with our democracy. To a great extent, our democracy is an idea in our heads and not a reality in our political lives. Listed below are several principles that are supposed to characterize American democracy. One-Person-One-Vote Democracies are supposed to ascribe to the principle of One-Person-One-Vote, but there is no universal agreement as to what constitutes a person for the purposes of the vote. When the United States Constitution was ratified, women were not "persons" for the purpose of the vote. A hundred years passed before the United States Congress could consider the possibility that women might be worthy of the vote. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, giving women the vote, was debated throughout the country for 42 years, before it was ratified in 1920. Other countries have not done better, as the following table illustrates. When Women Gained the Right to Vote*
*Adapted from Gale Country & World Rankings Reporter, edited by Charity A. Dorgan, (Gale Research, Inc., Detroit, MI, 1995) When the United States' founding fathers wrote, "We the people. . . ", they did not have women in mind, as we have noted, and they certainly did not include Black Americans. Although the 14th Amendment on Citizenship and the Non-Discrimination provisions of the 15th raised the status of Black Americans to the level of "persons" for the purposes of the vote, it took another 95 years for Congress to pass the enabling Voting Rights Act of 1965. It wasn't until the 26th Amendment of 1971 that the definition of "person" was completed, with 18 years as the minimum age requirement. That American democracy is, very much, a work in progress was best demonstrated by the irregularities of the Florida vote in the 2000 Presidential Election, and the fact that Candidate Albert Gore won the majority vote and lost the election to George W. Bush. Minimum Votes Required to Elect In a report of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, the United States ranked in the bottom 50% in voter turnout for national elections. I know of no minimum voter turnout requirement for the United States, even in presidential elections. As an illustration, suppose the US had 50 million eligible voters and 40% voted in a two-way presidential race. Suppose the winner received 10.3 million votes, or 53% of the votes cast. In effect, that President of the United States would have been elected by 21% of the eligible voters (10.3 million out of a possible 50 million voters). How would the average American judge the presidential election of some African or Asian country where the leader was elected by 21% of the eligible voters? Probably he or she might consider such an election undemocratic. Voting as an Individual Act The right to vote is considered to be one of the most cherished possessions that America grants to its citizens. In my hometown of Newton, Massachusetts, I exercise my right alone, curtains closed, in a small booth about one square meter. Unfortunately, the US does very little to assure a fair fight for citizen votes. Consequently, powerful interests are free to use their financial and other resources to dominate the message waves and influence votes, even when such a vote turns out to benefit a small percentage of the population. Moreover, we have not done enough to make voting easier and less prone to error. A Government of Checks and Balances Our concept of checks and balances among the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary, is strewn with holes. Each of the dominant political parties, the Republican and Democratic Parties, spends inordinate amounts of effort to keep the legislature and the Presidency in the same Party. Among the benefits of such control is that the ruling party then has an easier task of influencing the selection of members of the judiciary, when vacancies occur. So much for checks and balances! If such checks and balances were truly intended, a structure would have been created to ensure that the three branches are, indeed, separate and equal. We Still Can Teach Others a Thing or Two The United States is not the only developed country
with deficiencies in its democratic practices. Other countries have
their own problems. What America lacks in democratic perfection,
is probably compensated for by our tireless efforts to be better,
and our openness with our problems. We are, in many ways, a good
country, and perhaps a lucky country. In April 1865: The Month that
Saved America, Jay Winik say it well when he writes: Winik opines that part of the answer to America's luck was good leadership; selfless leadership; visionary leadership at a critical juncture in America's history. From that day on, America has continued to grow in power and, perhaps in virtue too. But our answers for America may not serve other societies as well as they have served us. Our democracy, at whatever level of purity, may not be transplanted in every country. But we have the right to want a better world, even better countries, for others. Perhaps more than any other nation, Americans have a hereditary claim to every country on earth. We Can't Fight Sovereignty For all our economic and military power, and our good intentions, America cannot dictate how the rest of the world should govern its peoples. Even when we impose economic or diplomatic sanctions to influence domestic outcomes in other countries, our efforts are often rendered ineffective by the actions of other countries, including our allies. Many developing countries often resent our efforts very strongly, viewing them as representing a condescending top-down, white-to-nonwhite, north-to-south attitude. Our efforts are, ultimately, victims of "national sovereignty and territorial integrity," a concept that has become the bane of modern international law and diplomacy-but one that is unlikely to be abandoned for the foreseeable future. What then can America do? What should responsible governments around the world do to protect the helpless who, through the accident of birth, are victims of thugs hiding under the cloak of sovereignty? I find my answer in two developments of the last 60 years. The first is the evolution of a global consensus on several values that underpin modern democracy: a) human rights, the rights of children, women, minorities, labor, and so forth. These rights have been formulated, debated, and ratified by the international community through the United Nations. The nations of the world, large and small, wealth and poor, can now talk of "international norms." The second is the success of the Free Enterprise System of Incentives. That system has built the Western world to its present dominance. In eighty years of trying to beat the Incentive System with Communism, the Soviet Union has been forced to give up and to join the winning model. I propose use of this winning model in politics. That system is the Incentive-Based Franchise model (the IBF System). The IBF System that I propose does not depend on prescribed "democratic" processes or structures. Each country is left free to devise a system of recruiting and installing its leaders and ensuring that its government practices are consistent with international norms. The Basis of the IBF System I came about the IBF model when I observed the American experience. It seemed to me that American democratic processes and structures were not as influential in America's political evolution as were American values. Those who believe otherwise argue that the founding fathers created the American government structure to be deliberative in order to prevent destabilizing swings. Closer to the truth however, is that the structure facilitates the maintenance of the status quo and is, at times, inimical to the interests of the powerless. When powerful interests want change, change can occur quickly. This fact explains why it took over 40 years to ratify women's right to vote, and over 90 years to give black Americans the right to vote. The "powers-that-be" were not ready. Where the opinion-makers and people of influence were ready, change happened very quickly. A good example of fast action was the repeal of the 18th Amendment (the Prohibition Amendment) that was ratified in under a year-proposed on February 20, 1933 and adopted on December 5 of that same year. In this case, the powerful "intoxicating liquor" interests wanted their drinks or profits, and no checks-and-balances, or deliberative bodies could delay the process. I also noticed that, in the Declaration of Independence, the founding fathers specifically desired the right to determine how to recruit and install their own leaders. They had examples of how to do it from England, France, and several American colonies that had been self-governing. But they wanted the government of their new union to reflect their culture as a people and to be responsive to their needs. " . . . governments are instituted among Men", they wrote, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of People to alter or abolish it, and to institute [a] New Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness". In other words, they were more interested in outcomes, than in prescribed processes or form. They reserved to themselves the right to decide the form and principles to guide such a government. America has remained true to that vision. Our government is not like that of the British or the French, or the Germans, but is democratic in our own way. It suits us fine, and changes as we change. We need not try to force our form of government on others. We should, instead, continue to promote the values that have made us great: justice for all, equality of the sexes, protections for minorities and the powerless, and so forth. When we impeached President Nixon for the Watergate Scandal, we showed the world that nobody, not even the most powerful leader in the world, was above the law. Other countries followed our example. Even among the Western democracies where the corruption and indiscretions of the powerful were, often, pushed under the rug, our example has been heeded. We may have invented "Affirmative Action" and "Transparency," or popularized them through our own actions here at home. Now many countries of the world have adopted these ideas for themselves. Many of these values have found their way into the United Nations and have become part of international norms. The IBF System is, thus, a creative way of using the power of political incentives to encourage governments to continually improve their adherence to international norms. Once the idea of the IBF Model was clear, its implementation remained a challenge. Solving the problem of implementation turned out to facilitate UN democratization as well, a worthy goal in its own right. Implementation through the United Nations also helped to overcome the problem of sovereignty. No individual country was dictating how another country should govern its people. Instead, each country was free to devise its own method of achieving international standards of care for its own citizens. The IBF System assigns votes to UN-member states based on two classes of factors: 1) actual or potential capacity to lead, as reflected by population size and gross domestic product, and 2) relative compliance with specified international norms. These factors have been broken down into measurable criteria, each carrying a minimum of 1 vote per Member State and a maximum of 100 votes per Member State. These votes then become currency for decision-making in the UN. In this initial draft, six factors are offered:
The United Nations of 2001 has 189 member states. All 189 members have a seat in the General Assembly where they exercise one vote per member, irrespective of the member's population size. Major decisions of the UN have to be approved by a 15-Member Security Council that has five permanent members: the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, and China. Each of the five permanent members of the Security Council has veto power over the actions of the UN. In addition, the five permanent members also have exclusive rights to own nuclear bombs. This undemocratic structure, especially the exclusive "Nuclear Club" status of the permanent members of the security council, became the source of a major diplomatic row between the United States and the two countries: India and Pakistan in 1998. The IBF System would resolve these inequalities
in the UN's own structure and, at the same time, help member states
to become more responsive to the needs of their citizens. Here then
is the IBF System, with all its imperfections. I invite the world
community to help make it better and fairer in its scoring, and
to push for its implementation. Once established, the system would
be self-regenerating, causing countries to continually strive to
be more responsive to the needs of their citizens. |