Agile Democracy

Florian Bonnet
5 min readJun 26, 2017

I would like to present here a new form of expression for democracy, one that would fit better citizens needs in term of representation.

The last two years have provided us with major, national scale, elections in some of the largest countries among which USA, UK and France. And each have revealed a deep and profound unease between the people and the result of such elections.
They showed signs that people are in need of more democracy, yet not this democracy as both, citizens on the losing side, and citizens on the winning side, were left with a bitter taste in their mouth.

Frustration is omnipresent in modern politics

On the looser side, we cannot wait 4 or 5 years to be heard again and in any case the winner is seen as not deserving a majority. Indeed, in France for example, a two rounds electoral vote means that usually the future President gathers less than 50% of the voters approval in the first round. As a consequence, the frustration, born in the defeat of their champion, feeds opponents’ need to counter any proposition of the new leader. Yet, would their candidate be elected in the same context, they would have brushed away their own gripe arguing that their candidate brings novelty and that we would need to let him try his ideas.
On the winner side, after sometimes dozens of years of waiting, people who voted for the new President expect to see her/his ideas applied to finally get a change in their country’s policies. However he/she has to compose with a Parliament that, more than often, due to large opposition representation obtained during subsequent legislative election, slows down, delays or imposes changes on any new law. This produces frustration amongst people that voted for a change and see that it is prevented from happening due to politician blockage.

This summarizes the main dilemma of democracy in our modern era. It is not possible for one candidate to reach complete adherence among 50% of its citizens. This is why we have legislative elections: to balance power. However, if they bring relief and consolation to the losers of the presidential election, they generate frustration on the winner side in case no, or too short majority is reach in each Chambers. To illustrate this point, it takes on average 2 years in France between the moment a law is presented to the lower chamber for the first time by a government, and the moment its application decree are voted.

This paralysis takes root in the fact that even if people voted for a candidate, they do not agree on his/her complete political line. This is also valid for A Chief of Government elected after general elections like in UK.

Thus, I propose to develop a new form of democracy, one that would offer more choice, more flexibility in people’s expression: an Agile Democracy.

Its guiding principle would be as follows: we should no longer vote for one person or one party depending on their conviction on all topics, but we should have a different vote for each Ministry (i.e sector of the Public Administration).

From a Presidential Election, to a Government election

In modern democracies, a government is chosen either by an elected President, or by a Prime Minister designated after a legislative election to represent the newly formed majority.
I suggest to change this and proceed to governmental elections that would take place at the same time as the Presidential election (or the legislative elections in countries like UK).
This means that on top of electing a President/Chief of Government, one would have the possibility to express its convictions for the choice of each Minister. No one can believe that today one party or candidate position fits all ones convictions. By voting for each Minister one by one, we will allow people to express their true opinion on each topic of their interest, instead of asking them to fall back under the banner of people that represent them only on the topic they think is major (employment, health insurance etc).

A flexible election removing abstention

This structure of vote will have multiple benefits. First, I truly believe it will have an important impact on the abstention that keeps rising election after election. By being allowed to vote on one Public Sector only, but a Public Sector that matters to them, people will feel more empowered, more heard and will go to vote. Of course some Ministry elections, like Agriculture for example, might get higher abstention than Employment. However the global abstention level, defined as the percentage of person who did not vote at all, will go down.

Second, by decoupling each topic from the others, we set the stage for the election of a Minister that is really representative of the opinion of the stakeholders of its Public Sector. Indeed, we can imagine that people having a direct interest in the matter will vote for this Ministry election while the people that are not impacted by it, or have not enough knowledge to take a decision, will choose not to vote. As a side effect, topics like research, most of the time forgotten in general elections, will finally receive the focus they deserve.

Finally, it will connect back people to the policies of their Ministers, which in turn will become accountable not to a President or a Chief of Government but directly to the people.

A plural government focused on action

In such government, each Minister will have a clear roadmap and will be able to focus on results as its has been given the confidence of the people directly. The President/Chief of Government will only be the responsible for arbitrations, general coherence of policies as a whole and, more importantly, will focus on International policies.

Would that remove the blockage between Governments and Parliaments? I believe so. Indeed, each Chambers are elected on a vote that allows the representativity of each political sensitivity, and each Chambers defines commissions/working groups that mirrors of the Ministries.
One can then imagine that Ministry cabinets on one side, and Parliament working groups on the other side, would gather as one and only team, made of power and counter powers, but both chosen by the people with a mandate for achieving results. The Parliament would have no choice than to collaborate in a constructive manner or it would face the risk of its constituents turning against them, the latter having chosen the policy to be implemented during the Governmental election. Moreover, each major party will probably have its chance to lead a Ministry, and thus a chance to show their value differently than by blocking the power in place.

Of course, implementing such system will probably lead to new challenges among which: how the Public administration is sliced into Ministries, how to keep overall budget coherence, or the complete political campaign by itself.

However, we have been hearing for a long time now that people want more democracy, and we have been looking for solutions around the axis power-counter power that have proven to be inefficient at best. It is time to explore another angle and stop looking at a country’s policy as a whole but start looking at it as a set of more independent elements on which we can poll people’s choice individually through a democratic vote that could bring several parties in office.

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Florian Bonnet

Product Leader | former PhD theoretical physics, strategy consultant BCG, data scientist, Head of CRM