At present, the governance of human societies is essentially a practice of representative social governance, whereby the community, through...
At present, the governance of human societies is essentially a practice of representative social governance, whereby the community, through a more or less democratic process, selects and appoints individuals from among those who apply for leadership roles to guide the functioning of society by representing the interests and intentions of the members of the community.
In principle, this method could be suitable for the proper governance of society, but in practice it is generally incapable of functioning effectively, basically because of typical human nature. Until a more suitable method of governing society is developed, the representative social governance already in use should be made as suitable as possible to function properly.
Although the role of voters in the functioning of representative social governance is in practice episodic, voter behavior has a significant impact on the shaping of the system. In representative social governance, voters typically have indirect control over the functioning of social governance, through the possibility of electing a new, more suitable representative for the leadership role when the actual mandate expires. Consequently, from an electoral point of view, in order to achieve better representative governance, the method of selection must be the most appropriate to ensure that the most potentially suitable representatives are placed in positions of governance of society.
The actual peculiarity of the system is that in the practice of the applied electoral process the selection of candidates is usually not based on the justification of the representation of the appropriate goals in the social leadership role, but depends on the choice of the community from among the usually self-nominated candidates, who typically focus on defeating other candidates and try to actively manipulate the voters, convincing them that their own person instead of others is the most suitable candidate to govern society and represent power.
This procedure, as it is currently practiced, certainly does not guarantee the selection of a suitable person for a leadership position for the benefit of society. However, in order to reduce the effects of manipulative influences on voters in the election process and to select a more suitable leader, sufficiently competent voter behavior can play a fundamental role. What kind of voter behavior would allow for the selection of those who seem to best meet the needs of society for leadership positions in the community, practicing the electoral methods currently in use?
The optimal voter behavior seems to be when each voter votes specifically for the candidate who aims to solve the voter's personal, real, current problems, and who proposes and pursues a concrete program that seems realistically feasible, and if the voter does not find a candidate who is suitable for this task, the voter should not vote or, if participation is mandatory, should cast an invalid vote.
The current prevailing view that voting is a civic duty and that anyone who renounces this right cannot express criticism of the leadership is a false argument, because in this way the voter votes even if there is no suitable candidate for him or her, choosing the least unsuitable among them. As a result, the voter's vote legitimizes the election of a leader who is not suitable for the voter. Deliberately not voting is as legitimate a way of expressing the voter's will as voting for candidates.
Responsible voter behavior is when the voter considers only those promises made by the candidates that are of personal relevance specifically to the voter, and the voter does not consider other statements, such as those made by competing candidates that are trying to discredit each other. The responsible voter disregards those information as irrelevant to him or her in considering the choice of representatives, and only considers information among the promises that is in some way specific to him or her, appropriate to him or her, and contains a reasonably feasible proposition. And if the voter does not find a suitable candidate on the basis of this requirement regarding the information provided by the candidate, the voter does not contribute with his or her vote to the empowerment and legitimacy of an unsuitable candidate.
With the application of this method, populism, political behavior which offers social programs with general, fictional goals, which are popular, but not feasible or do not offer reasonable and realistic solutions to real problems, can be reduced, because in the case of the application of responsible voter behavior, the candidate must offer realistic solutions to the most present problems, which are also current and concrete for the voter, in order to be elected.
This electoral behavior at the community level can ensure in an emergent way that the intentions of the representatives entrusted with leadership, based on demonstrated promises that also include solutions, are the most appropriate to social needs.
The necessary conditions for the functioning and effectiveness of responsible voter behavior in relation to the electoral process are that:
- enyone should be eligible to be elected,
- those standing for election should be able to communicate freely,
- a successful election should be linked to a defined minimum threshold of valid votes.
These conditions are more or less present, at least at some level, in democratically functioning electoral mechanisms, so that generally recognized responsible voter behavior that fulfills the defined objectives potentially can create a significant impact on political empowerment by providing a more capable class of leaders, even under the current method of representative social governance.
If the necessary conditions are present in the electoral process, responsible voter behavior could lead to unsuccessful and therefore repeated elections, but this is not a flaw in the electoral system, it is a feature of the system that allows it to function more properly by this way making actually more possible the selection of suitable leaders among the candidates, because an inconclusive election demonstrates the social inadequacy of the currently presented candidates. Inconclusive and repeated elections can also contribute to the development of the better nature and social usefulness of election campaigns.
The proposed responsible voter behavior is in principle an obviously expected and trivially necessary behavior toward voters, but its rigorous practical implementation and strictly followed practice requires consciously recognized, deliberately controlled, personally developed voter behavior by the members of the society.
The fundamental problem of representative democracies - that the will of society is not expressed directly in the leadership process, but only indirectly through the actual intentions of the elected leaders - does not disappear with the thorough implementation of responsible voter behavior, but at least with this voter behavior the actual will of society can be expressed more closely by the actually elected leaders. By practicing responsible voter behavior, candidates may also be more committed to the realization of the represented social goals because it is more likely to match the candidate's own real intention, and by doing so, the candidates who have the most concretely demonstrated intentions to meet this social need may be selected for the leadership role, reducing populism and the importance of candidate contests focused on defeating each other, and presumably reducing the likelihood of moving toward authoritarianism as well.
The proposed voter behavior, if widely applied in society and rigorously followed by voters, could significantly improve the functioning of otherwise suboptimal representative social governance.
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