What is Expert Government
Expert Government is new form of government. Broadly it is a technocratic democracy where authority is given only to specialists.
Expert Government is a self-organising system of many independent specialisms, each with many specialists that have equal influence and vote on policies they develop collaboratively. A set of generic rules define how specialisms must behave. Organisation emerges from the collective behaviour of those specialisms; it is not controlled directly.
Expert Government does not use dogmas.
Other important principles and features are:
- A Covenant that is enforced by law, delineates the rights and responsibilities of the government and people.
- Any citizen can propose changes to the Covenant, but change is authorised only by referendum, so that strategic control remains with the citizens.
- Any citizen can apply to be a specialist in government.
- Everyone has the right to make representations concerning government policy.
- An independent court of citizen jurors enables citizens to ensure government policy conforms to the Covenant.
- An independent court of citizen jurors enables citizens to ensure members of government are behaving correctly.
- Government is constantly policed to maintain its integrity.
- Extreme action by government is reserved for extreme circumstances.
- Government actively incentivises collaboration.
The name Expert Government reflects an aspiration to employ skilful specialists in government. It could also accurately be called Specialism Government.
Objectives of Expert Government
The principal objective of Expert Government is to improve the effectiveness of government. It also aims to reduce corruption and ensure government is adaptable to changing needs, circumstances, and understanding.
The principal objective for a form of government must be to achieve effective governance. In a representative democracy ‘the vote’ is the main means to achieve that objective. From the many governance issues we currently have it is evident that representative democracy is not delivering effective governance. We need a new means to obtain effective government.
Why do we need Expert Government
Democracy has improved the lives of ordinary people by progressing away from authoritarianism, but it needs further improvement. A continuous stream of problems highlight ineffective government as the main problem with democracy. As the world becomes increasingly sophisticated, so it becomes more complex. The old forms of government developed for a simpler world are becoming progressively less appropriate. They will fail increasingly often, and the consequences of those failures will become worse.
The three main problems with any government are ineffectiveness, corruption, and inadaptability.
These problems are not simply due to poor politicians and policies, they have deeper causes:
- Important decisions about the way a country is run are made by people who do not sufficiently understand the matters they are considering, because they are not specialists in those matters.
- Hierarchical influence structures concentrate influence toward the top of the structure. Higher levels of such a structure have a higher likelihood of corruption, and the damaging effects of poor decisions and corruption are greater.
- Dogma constrains policy decisions, which therefore inevitably become inappropriate as needs, understanding, and circumstances change.
Expert Government uses three techniques to minimise these three problems:
- Expert Government tackles ineffectiveness using the most successful technique humanity has yet developed for managing complex systems. Division of the system into many independent specialisms with many specialists in each.
- Human nature is corruptible. Expert Government confronts corruption by minimising the amount of influence each member of government has, giving them all equal influence, restricting their tenure, constantly policing them, and giving ordinary citizens the right to challenge their behaviour in an independent court of citizen jurors.
- Dogma is not allowed in any aspect of Expert Government. This allows government to remain responsive to changing needs, understanding, and circumstances.
People in Expert Government
All government positions are advertised. The most suitable applicants are appointed.
A citizen can only take a position in government once and for a limited term. This allows more citizens the opportunity to enter government and reduces the opportunity for corruption.
Three features of how citizens are employed in government advance the principal concept of democracy:
- Investing authority in many specialists relative to a few politicians is more democratic, because the opportunity to affect policy is more widely distributed.
- The increased turnover of people in government with a single limited term, relative to a system where positions may be occupied for multiple and/or unlimited terms, collectively ensures that more of the citizens get to influence government policy, and so is more democratic.
- Positions are offered only to citizens applying as individuals. This tends to hinder positions being monopolised by special interest groups like political parties. A political party system diminishes the principal of democracy. Firstly by making it difficult for individuals to get into government due to organised campaigning. Secondly by diminishing their influence on government policy through organised voting on policy. Influence for the individual is central to democracy.
How do we obtain a state conforming to Expert Government
A problem free transition is essential. In a representative democracy with political parties two steps are needed:
- A temporary transition party within the potential new government takes power using the existing voting system.
- The new government progressively replaces the existing state system with one that conforms to Expert Government.
UK government
UK politicians influence government policy based a number of concerns, particularly issues local to their voters.
Specialists are not constrained by narrow concerns, and by definition have a deeper understanding to make better informed decisions.
The UK's old form of government is increasingly inappropriate and will not be our last.
The sooner the UK embraces the need for the change to Expert Government, the sooner our future will improve.
Endorse Expert Government
It is time for a rational form of government designed to accommodate advancing civilisation. Please endorse Expert Government.