GOVERNMENT'S SIZE: More or Less or Better or What?

Before the last Niagara County Legislature meeting I had a good conversation with Rosemary Warren, one of our more responsible citizens in Niagara County, about the number of Legislators we have. Of course the issue was whether we should have less or maybe even more representatives. Mary thought less and I thought it wasn’t a matter of more or less. As my friend, the very censorial Hobbes over at NiagaraTimes, raises the question: “is downsizing good for democracy” or not? Let’s note here and now that we shouldn’t start this discussion with concepts or models taken from the world of business. Proper representation is neither a downsizing nor upsizing problem. Also more or less government and more or less democracy are two different though not necessarily unrelated problems.

As I suggested to Rosemary, the question isn’t ultimately quantitative in nature but qualitative. It’s much more a matter of “kind” than “amount.” If one favored dictatorship, that would certainly decide clearly the number of representatives. If one opted for local pure democracy as one’s system of government, then we would all be representatives. Here we should keep in mind that democracy doesn’t have to mean American mass moronic democracy. A form of pure democracy is still possible if authentic communities were reconstituted and a true Federalism were restored.

A Liberal Democratic republican form of government would require various numbers of representatives, the logical justification of each depending on various things such as whether we first are talking about local, state or national representation. Of course, then, either size of population or number and size of authentic communities does obviously have something to do with the size of representation.

Ultimately, “how much representation” first depends on how many concretely different communities or populations must be represented. When constituencies are divided relatively arbitrarily and abstractly according to legally constituted geographical districts, then representation is reduced to a more or less purely quantitative problem. This problem is probably not logically solvable, that is, as a quantitative problem. Ultimately, isn’t “representation” a matter of having both the right people and the right number of people to have the concerns and interests of a specific body of citizens fairly and justly represented. I think we can see this isn’t purely, or, at least only, a quantitative problem.

Kevin Gaughan’s analysis published a few weeks back in ArtVoice, is flawed at several levels. However, something interesting does arise out of his observations. We need not get obsessed as to his vulnerability to the machinations of our local little Hitlers and Machiavellis. In short he finds in his survey “tour of governments” in parts of Western NY that even though we dwindle in population and decrease in wealth and power, that is are disenfranchised economically and politically, the number of representatives increases. Of course the cost of such increase also increases.

But aside from the distraction of cost, why the supposed disproportionate increase in representation? Doesn’t it have to do with the fact that disenfranchisement and disempowerment is seen as possibly being overcome if we have more voices speaking to hierarchically removed power? After all 1 Maziarz and 1 DelMonte so far has not solved our economic difficulties nor our pollution issues? Do we need more of them or less? Apparently 1 Schumer and 1 Clinton has brought little action to deal with the same. Don’t we need more Schumers and Clintons? Less Schumers and Clintons?

Another dimension to the explanation of the proliferation of officials in WNY may be the unwillingness or inability of people to come together as a community and speak as 1 for change. They remain deluded, especially given the obstacles of bureaucratic hierarchical indifference and unresponsiveness not to mention the chasm of a class society, that more specially designated “officials” will get the job done for them. Of course they don’t. And the people can’t come together as a community because they are not communities. They are simply collections of narcissistically self-absorbed and fairly cretinized individuals coagulated in neighborhoods that aren’t always that neighborly and rarely sufficiently political. They remain misinformed, politically uneducated and culturally disengaged form the concretely continuous process of real political and governmental engagement.

So we do need to begin the process of questioning and creating what we think community and thus authentic self-determination and representation would be. We also need democratically educated and politically enculturated individuals who can feel and think beyond the walls of desires which are not even their own but those of the culture industry and commodified consciousness. Lastly, until government is genuinely re-Federalized such that political community can once again re-emerge according to the philosophy of our more astute founding fathers, “we the people” will continue to be conned and controlled by the smoke and mirrors show of the capitalist State and its desire to constitutively regulate every aspect of life into which they can insert another bureaucrat, Authority, police agency or lawyer.

The question of how much and which government or democracy must turn the clichés of “all politics is local politics” and “what can be done at home must and should be done at home” into the organizing principles and propadeutics that they really are.