Doughty does not go into the polemical question of whether or not the elimination of hereditary peers is a good idea (for the record, it isn’t…)
If we are proponents of hereditary roles, why not go full hog, and just have the monarchy control the show?
Why isn't it a good idea? Whatever qualities or services performed by the original person probably didn't pass to the children
> Whatever qualities or services performed by the original person probably didn't pass to the children
IMO the quality they have is not being career politicians or business people.
The same goes for the remaining bishops and other representatives of religious groups.
They are also not under the control of party whips as the house of commons is.
You could probably do better by appointing a bunch of random people instead, but what we have is better than an elected second chamber that would just replicate the Commons.
> Why isn't it a good idea?
I had the same question.
> Whatever qualities or services performed by the original person probably didn't pass to the children
Maybe if you subscribe to the hard times theory. There’s plenty of reason to suspect that certain aptitudes can be genetically heritable, and that doesn’t even address the issue of skills transferring by osmosis or deliberate instruction in the household.
The aptitude for having one of your daughters be the King's mistress may not be of particular value as a legislator.
That isn’t what is being discussed here. An inept man could conceivably have a sexually attractive daughter. From a meritocratic perspective, it would be a mistake for a king to install the inept man as an advisor simply to gain access to the man’s daughter.
What we are discussing, however, is the existence of a man who has been identified as possessing some competency, and his office passing to his offspring on his death, on the basis that his children may have inherited the competency genetically or via an informal education. Heredity isn’t as simple as that, but at the same time, it isn’t clear that competencies “probably” do not pass between parent and child.
> Heredity isn’t as simple as that, but at the same time, it isn’t clear that competencies “probably” do not pass between parent and child.
We have several thousand years of history recorded where people tried this and the failures vastly outweigh the successes.
> We have several thousand years of history recorded where people tried this and the failures vastly outweigh the successes.
Tried what?
Selecting children for leadership positions becausr of their parents.
The majority of all successful civilizations on earth have done this and even those that did not have the usual patrilineal inheritance we associate with European cultures usually had a mechanism for the inheritance of land, title, and status. The idea that this would have bad outcomes only really emerges during the Enlightenment Era, and it only became a mainstream cultural attitude in the last hundred years. Even today, after 60 some-odd years of civil rights legislation, meritocracy is more of an idea than a reality. It conflicts with a cultural imperative to build legacy through one’s children, and the institution of private property that facilitates building this legacy. You could theoretically do away with these norms as they are not culturally universal, but then you probably are looking at living in the paleolithic era (which will also not be meritocratic) or utopian ideologies like communism.
Well that is the question, isn't it. What qualities are passed on to their children? It is actually fairly common to see ideological continuity between parent and child (eg, most members of a religion had parents from that religion). So there is a case to be made that if you have a subgroup of society with unusually clear governing principles it makes sense to put them in change and have their children continue to be in charge because it has a chance of preserving the principles. In the optomistic case they can propagate for generations. That does actually appear to be what happens historically in successful countries where a hereditary or semi-hereditary ruling elite form with strong capabilities and shepherd everyone to success for a few generations before their abilities mean revert.
That being said it is comparatively a terrible way of doing things vs a more mathematically and psychologically sound system. Electing people really is the way to go, all these "stable" political systems are stable at being worse than just letting people vote for everything. As the saying goes, dead is stable. Stable isn't great if unstable means the capacity to rapidly improve.
I always chuckle (or squirm) when someone suggests “picking a random person to be the president” rather than our current broken campaigning system.
Far better than that option, would be for a random family to inherit that power forever, than for a different random family be chosen every 4 years. Because at least then the “royal” family has some accountability to govern for long-term success, lest their descendants be dragged into the street and hung by an unhappy mob with pitchforks.
> lest their descendants be dragged into the street and hung by an unhappy mob with pitchforks.
The idea that a monarchy sees itself as accountable to the people is hilarious. They have a record of ruling with an iron fist and killing opposition.
It’s hard to grasp in a post-Westphalian world but killing opposition and governing with accountability to the people were not always considered opposing ideas. Loyalty to the king was a two-way street, noblesse oblige, etc
So if we are after accountability, in what way is a monarchy superior to a democracy?
I wasn’t making that argument. I’m rather inclined to Jefferson’s ideas (himself a severe anti-monarchist) of promoting individual human dignity and capability; the critical role of moral virtue and education; “small republics” and self-government:
“ When people witnessed our first struggles in the war of independence, they little calculated, more than we did, on the rapid growth and prosperity of this country; on the practical demonstration it was about to exhibit, of the happy truth that man is capable of self-government, and only rendered otherwise by the moral degradation designedly superinduced on him by the wicked acts of his tyrants.”
Thanks for that quote. It almost sounds Libertarian.
Well, your way means there's a succession unpredictably every ~20 years instead of predictably every 4.
Whether that's a point for or against depends on whether you think policy thrashing every 4 years is a good idea.
The generational succession is VASTLY more predictable than a random one, considering the successor comes from the same house and has literally spent his entire life being groomed and prepared to rule.
We, humanity, have literally ALREADY TRIED THIS.
This isn't some kind of super hypothetical what-if scenario. We have historical records.
It went poorly.
We tried the random thing?
> The generational succession is VASTLY more predictable than a random one
Is it? Plenty of wars have been fought over succession.
Imagine a system whereby you could pole everyone and get a dud leader removed, rather than keep them until they die.
There have been a fair few elections with orderly transitions between governments.
What counterexamples do we have of the random method, to compare? I can’t think of when it’s been tried by a consenting people
Having an apolitical (or unelected) and slow changing second chamber is a useful counterbalance to elected officials running amok. There’s no “great” answer to this that I’m aware of but it has been a viable compromise.
Apolitical? Hardly. They are literally politicians, just unelected. It’s all the worst aspects of elected officials with added nepotism and no ability to remove them.
It’s monarchy-lite.
They are not political appointees, so have a lower chance of being correlated with whatever movement of the moment and so serve as checks and balances. The fact that they can’t be replaced is a feature.
Are you talking about a specific example or a hypothetical?
I’m referring to the House of Lords. They are affiliated with political parties.
In terms of them not being swayed by ‘movements of the moment’, you are quite right. They are stuck in the past. 6% aren’t white. 26% are female.
https://www.democraticaudit.com/2018/10/02/audit2018-how-und...
>>They are stuck in the past. 6% aren’t white. 26% are female.
If you excuse me, I just don't understand the implication here - if they were exactly representative of British racial demographics and exactly 50/50 men and women, they would not be stuck in the past?
I’m not intending to imply anything, I’m trying to state it.
Having political control of the country being hereditary, male and white is something that does not represent the make up of Britain. It represents the way Britain was run a long time ago and the current political infrastructure is not a strength.
If political control was actually democratic and representative of the country, I don’t think the situation would be worse.
It’s a non sequitur and not with engaging with. The purpose of a second chamber is temporal representation, as in the makeup is “stuck in the past” (more of a moving average) and not subject to the whims of the day. Some idea of forcing it to be composed based on arbitrary and irrelevant personal characteristics would accomplish nothing for the state and would be as stupid and in democratic as trying to do something like that for elected officials.
Ironically the the post appears stuck in 2021
How is a hereditary representative of anything other than a narrow gene pool?
You can’t think of anything better?
Why have anyone elected at all?
> Some idea of forcing it to be composed based on arbitrary and irrelevant personal characteristics
I can't think of a more arbitrary or irrelevant personal characteristic than being born to a family that inherits a political post.
> In terms of them not being swayed by ‘movements of the moment’, you are quite right. They are stuck in the past. 6% aren’t white. 26% are female
You think this is an argument against the lords but for the people on the other side they think you are supporting them with these points.
Britain was white country for the last 12,000 years and had primogeniture for the last 1,000+. The UK today is a proverbial pale blue dot on the timeline
Let's go even further back. Why not to when we were wearing skins and foraging for food. Or even further, when we were plain slime.
And if skin color and political decisions of people 1000 years ago controlled us today, this might be a reasonable point.
But they don't so it's not.
> so have a lower chance of being correlated with whatever movement of the moment
Correct, they instead have a 100% chance of being correlated with what is good for the aristocracy.
Technically they are mostly affiliated with one or other political party. It's even a convention for the internal elections that select which peers sit in the Lords, to only have candidates from the same party as the one being replaced, to maintain the ratio set by New Labour in the nineties.
Was that always the case? I took from TFA that some number are purely hereditary and that all of them used to be before a recent reform.
Or was it that one has to be a hereditary peer in order to be a government appointee?
Either way, the greater the barrier to the house of sober second thought being stacked by whoever is currently in power, the better. I’d also favor people being randomly appointed for life.
Yeah it was 100% hereditary peers plus some bishops before the 1999 reform act:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords_Act_1999
Labour had campaigned for years to abolish the Lords but when they got the chance Tony Blair decided on a watered down reform instead. Now the bloody place is just packed with political stooges and party donors. Over 800 of them. It's corrupt as hell.
The hereditary peers are now a much smaller bunch, apparently there are 92, elected from the larger number of 800ish who are theoretically eligible.
Before 1993 all of them could hold seats.
The majority of the house these days is made up of life-appointed peers, who are nominated to the house by the commons. There are also 24 bishops.
There are moves afoot to remove the last hereditary peers, though I’m not sure of the current status of that bill.
If Labour get re-elected in a few years, they have made muttering about further second-house reform, but no plans or commitments at present
I was speaking purely of the 92 hereditary peers.
> Having an apolitical (or unelected) and slow changing second chamber is a useful counterbalance to elected officials running amok.
Then just have people chosen at random from birth to become lords. That makes as much sense, unless what you're interested in is a mechanism that helps powerful families to remain powerful
Another compromise in the same vein was (until 1913) the U.S. Senate, elected by the state legislature rather than direct election and for terms 2.5x as long as that of a House rep
To me (a non-American), that actually makes a kind of sense. Have people in the federal Congress whose job is to speak for their respective state governments. Instead of duplicating the House of Representatives with different electoral boundaries.
Quite like the European Council. Well if it was the state governors flying in to DC once a month, so maybe not exactly like it.
A hot take I support is that switching to popular election of Senators was a mistake. We should go back to the state legislature method.
3 times as long (6 years for the Senate vs 2 years for the House)
The USA's Fedederal vetocracy gauntlet is composed of Senate, POTUS, and SCOTUS.
I'm very curious about comparisions between governing systems. But am noob, so haven't gotten very far.
I too value -- without evidence pro or con -- some balance between fast, slow, and middling.
Senate was designed to counter balance the House. I'm very skeptical of its benefit; both in principle and in practice.
Our State's patchwork of arrangements is probably informative, in the small. Somehow rank States by legislative output, (their) Supreme Court's actions, lag time in pivoting to adopt norms (marriage equality), or some such.
There's a Harvard researcher (on mobile, can find cites later if needed) who concluded that most all national (democratic) govts eventually adopted norms. On the time span of decades and generations. Regardless of their system. Strongly suggesting that public pressure and need to maintain legitimacy do matter.
I've since wondered if we're just too impatient. I certainly am. Or if that thesis is even true. For example, the USA's Jim Crow era endured for 100+ years. And still remains contested.
Would appreciate any insights any has to share.
Randomly selected peers would be better than hereditary peers.