The "armies of the disaffected" and the need to reform representative democracy.

Halstead and Lind talk about the armies of the disaffected as the new mainstream of American politics:

For good or bad, the Information Age has changed the nature of American democracy. In most high-profile matters, the public is no longer a passive bystander —its voice is heard through almost instantaneous public opinion polls, focus groups, and various public interest organizations. As Newt Gingrich and congressional Republicans discovered in the mid-1990s, those who veer from the new center pay the price, as Mr. Gingrich did with his political life. America's silent majority is no longer so silent.

These armies of disaffected, independent-minded voters, together with a large number of centrist Republicans and Democrats, are neither conservative nor liberal in the traditional sense. Polls show there are majorities of Americans who are socially tolerant yet supportive of law and order, fiscally conservative yet accepting of government intervention to ensure economic fairness and security, committed to racial unity yet skeptical of race-based affirmative action, concerned about the strenght of our economy yet equally concerned about the health of our environment, and deeply committed to both electoral and educational reform. Needless to say, Americans who share all these views do not feel at home in either of today's major parties.

(Halstead & Lind: p. 216).

This is also a contemporary trend that is happening elsewhere. Many American analysts tend to be quite inward-looking, assuming that most social trends they notice in the US are either unique or perhaps even the direct consequence of some sort of mythical American creativity. In reality, societies are evolving in a similar manner here and there. There are, of course, different stages of development from place to place, but once two countries reach a given state of development they experience similar social, political and economic trends. It's the labeling that may be different —and that, incidentally, may also lead to some confusions about the uniqueness of the underlying phenomenons. Here in Europe, political analysts are more prone to refer to these armies of the disaffected as non-partisan or even new middle class. Yet, the reality they are referring to is about the same: individuals who are less prone to see things through the ideologically charged visions of yesteryear, centered on a pragmatic approach to the problems that prizes the search for solutions rather than the discovery of all-encompassing systems of thought and, above all, more difficult to predict when it comes to their voting patterns. The situation, then, is pretty similar on this other side of the Atlantic, which also makes our challenges about the same: how to adapt our political institutions (i.e., representative democracy) to live up to these new expectations generated by the information society and a more educated, more sophisticated population. We need to reform democracy to adapt to these changes, and so far there are few radically innovative proposals in this regard that I am aware of. Halstead and Lind are no exception to this either.

Reforms in the 21st century.

According to Halstead & Lind, we may be about to face a big era of reforms similar to the one we witnessed at the beginning of the 20th century:

Clearly, the first years of the new millennium are not one of the great ages of political reform, like 1782-1800, 1860-76, or 1932-68. Rather, the first years of the twenty-first century in the United States can be compared to the first years of the twentieth. Then, as now, the challenge was to adapt American society to a new phase of technological civilization —the second industrial era in the 1900s, the Information Age in the 2000s. Then, as now, it was becoming clear that systemic change, not merely incremental reform, was in order.

But then as now systemic change was not yet possible. The reformers of the late nineteenth century like the Mugwumps and the Populists shared a vague sense that things were not right, but they failed to correctly analyze the situation. The Mugwumps, ignoring the transformation of the industrial economy, tended to assume that most problems resulted from political corruption. Their favored forms were important but limited to the democratic process, like the secret ballot. The Populists, by contrast, feared industrial progress and sought to preserve an America of family farms. Like the Mugwumps, they tended to blame the side effects of industrialization on elite conspiracies rather than on structural change. Populists therefore favored this or that crackpot panacea —the nationalization of the railroads, or a currency based on bimetallism. The parallel with the 1990s and the first years of the twenty-first century is almost exact. The contemporary equivalent of the old Mugwumps were obsessed with campaign finance reform and gimmicks like term limits, to the exclusion of more important reforms. And the hard-core Populists of our time, represented by Patrick Buchanan, sought to restore an earlier economic and social order by means of industrial protectionism.

(Halstead & Lind: pp. 212-213).

I still think Gramsci described it best when he tried to define the concept of crisis:

When the old is dead, the new cannot be born.

That is precisely what happened at the beginning of the 20th century, and it's now happening once more: the old is dead (or about to die), but the new is not fully born yet. We can already begin to see the shapes the new world will take, but they are not completely defined yet. On the other hand, while it's becoming increasingly obvious that the old way to deal with things is not acceptable anymore (i.e., it's not sufficient, it fails to provide us with the answers we need), we still stick to them out of fear not so much of what's to come as fear of the unknown. We are indeed in the middle of a large transition between two different forms to understand and organize the world, moving away from the old industrial paradigm and closer to the information age. We can already see some of the characteristics that will define the new future, but cannot fully grasp them yet. Thus, our reaction is, at least partially, one of fear and disbelief. We cannot rule out desperate attempts to hit the brakes and return to a more comfortable past (i.e., populism and protectionism in a different, more up to date guise). But, in the end, the new information age and its new rules will come one way or another. Our best bet is to adapt to it by implementing the needed reforms. That's what Halstead & Lind propose in their book. When everything around us falls apart, we cannot stay put. There are basically two possible reactions: either we make a desperate attempt to hit the brakes, and we will be smashed to smithreens by the unstoppable advance of social and economic evolution, or we make an effort to constantly ascertain the main features of that new world that's fastly taking shape in front of us and implement the reforms to adapt to it and make the best out of it.

Sometimes it takes those who oppose the reforms to consolidate them.

Sometimes it takes those who oppose the reforms to consolidate them:

Each of the three American foundings has come to an end when all parties accept the rules of the new system and agree to abide by them. Often this "ratification" of the institutional revolution takes the form of the election of a president representing a faction that had bitterly fought against the reforms only a few years before. The founding of the first republic, for instance, was ratified when Thomas Jefferson became president in 1800. Many of Jefferson's supporters had fought against the adoption of the 1787 federal Constitution, but when he captured the presidency, they changed their strategy to one of working within the system rather than working to undermine it. A presidential election also marked the ratification of the second republic of the United States, which arose from the carnage of the Civil War and Reconstruction. In this case, southern Democrats acquiesced in naming the northern Republican Rutherford B. Hayes as president in return for the end of Reconstruction in the South. From that time on the southern elite would work using the new rules of Lincoln's second republic. Then the election of 1952 marked the ratification of the third republic, whose framework was built by Franklin Roosevelt and his successor Harry Truman beginning in 1932. Throughout the thirties and forties, many Republicans had bitterly denounced the New Deal for creating a tyrannical federal government. As president, however, Eisenhower signaled the acquiescence of the Republican majority by refusing to undo any major New Deal program.

(Halstead & Lind: p. 211).

Over time, this concept has become a truism of political science. For example, it wasn't until the fiery anti-Communists Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger decided to establish diplomatic relationships with China that most Americans came to accept it. Likewise, it wasn't until Bill Clinton and Tony Blair changed their own party policies that Labour and the Democrats finally accepted the reforms introduced by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, thus allowing them to return to power and move on from there. In the end, the best way to return to power is to accept whatever decisions the opponent took from government that may have improved society as a whole and work not against them but with them, from the newly established position. Or, in other words, the best way to guarantee a safe return to power is from moderate positions, instead of promising to undo what the opponent did.

Conservatism and reforms.

Politics is full of contradictions. The common assumption is that traditionalists want to maintain the status quo and, therefore, supporting them is the best way to guarantee that things will continue to be as in the past. Yet, as Halstead and Lind explain, perhaps reformism is a better way to implement changes in a non-intrusive manner while keeping the essence of what worked in the past:

Indeed, it is reformers rather than reactionaries who have a better claim to the label of conservative. Who are more conservative —those who would sacrifice the part to save the whole, or those who would prefer to lose the whole rather than to alter it in any way? The true patriots in American history have always understood that when conditions change it is necessary to pursue perennial goals by new means. Renovation is conservation by means of innovation.

(Halstead & Lind: p. 208)

It's, after all, Giuseppe Lampedusa's old statement, according to which "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change". The conservative approach, desperately hanging onto any and all tradition as if they are supposed to be considered good simply due to age, regardless of whatever else changed in society and people's minds, is, contrary to what some people believe, the best way to promote radical changes and revolutions. And these, for the most part, have never brought about anything worthwhile other than in the revolutionaries' feverish imagination.

Intergenerational divide.

There is so much talk about racial, gender and economic discrimination that I had never considered the possibility of what Halstead and Lind label as "generational apartheid". Yet, it tuly is a clear trend not only in the US but in contemporary society in general —although it may take slightly different forms in different societies, obviously:

Another major barrier standing in the way of intergenerational harmony is physical, resulting from outmoded zoning laws. As we have noted, our system of generational apartheid segregates neighborhoods by age as ruthlessly as racial apartheid used to segregate neighborhoods by race. A typical American may grow up in a middle-class suburb, and spend the college years in an "apartment city" surrounded by tens of thousands of single young people, before moving to a neighborhood for young couples with "starter" homes, followed by a more prosperous middle-class neighborhood for families with children, and finally by a neighborhood where virtually everyone is old. This bizarre pattern, in which each stage of life is accompanied by a physical migration, is not the result of "market forces", inasmuch as real estate is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the United States. Rather, this generational apartheid is the result of ill-considered zoning regulations and development policies that mandate that all housing in a particular neighborhood be similar, and that the functions of dwelling, work, and education be kept far apart.

(Halstead & Lind: pp. 187-188).

The fact is that traditional societies promoted an almost permanent communication across generations that has been eroded as we moved to a more complex, more fluid, more dynamic type of society. Together with the cult of the youth and practices such as ageism, we have also witnessed an increasing lack of consideration towards experience and seniority that has ultimately led to the segregation of the elderly in pseudo-internment camps. The fact is that, in today's society, we appreciate novelty for its own sake. The old avant-garde mentality that prizes whatever is new above all —including, yes, the primacy of anything that's shocking simply because it is so—, has seemingly spread to society at large. As a consequence, the elderly have ben left out of society and play almost no role.

Now, according to Halstead and Lind, the government is to blame due to "outmoded zoning laws". I beg to differ. This social phenomenon is too extended throughout the world to allow us such an easy way out. The fact is that societies where such zoning laws don't even exist —for instance, in most of Europe—, there is still a clear tendency towards segregating them in special residencies and, above all, to keep them out of mainstream society. There was a time, not so long ago, when age and experience were attributes that made it easier for a candidate to win an election. Today, on the other hand, a certain youthful exuberance is almost a sine qua non for success.

The immigration debate and the increase in social and economic disparities.

In discussing the issue of immigration policies, Halstead and Lind mention a very uncomfortable truth that is avoided all too often:

The reason the immigration debate is so contentious is that any policy choice inevitably involves significant trade-offs. There is simply no such thing as a win-win immigration policy; whatever choice is made, there will always be winners and losers, both domestically and internationally. For instance, high levels of low-skilled immigrants (most of America's current immigrants fall in this category) tend to benefit domestic employers and capital owners, as well as the poor from abroad who come to our shores. However, the same policy also tends to depress wages for America's current working poor, and to increase the disparity between our educational and economic haves and have-nots. In studying this matter, the National Academy of Sciences concluded that increased immigration tends to disproportionately depress the wages and economic circumstances of low-skilled and low-income workers, while benefiting the wealthiest Americans.

(Halstead & Lind: pp. 176-177).

They are right. Our media still discusses these issues from the anticuated perspective of right versus left. Thus, defending a stricter immigration policy is usually equated with conservatism, while a more loose policy is normally seens as more liberal or progressive. However, this barely scratches the surface of the problem, which is far more complex. What if, as suggested above, the constant influx of immigrants into our countries acts as an influence to lower the wages of those whose incomes are already at the bottom of the ladder to start with? What if it's precisely the business owners who benefit the most from this trend by lowering costs here, without a need to even take the jobs offshore? How does this affect the welfare system that we had built in the last few decades? More important still, what is the impact on our middle class, which had expanded during the heady years of the postwar, leading to a more stable society? All these are questions that need answers, and the answers cannot follow the traditional right versus left approach. After all, how progressive is it to support lower wages for our working class while the wealthy business owners benefit from it? It's no surprise that populism and the far-right are growing so much precisely among the displaced working class of the developed world, those who have seen their wages decrease and their hopes of becoming middle class someday wither away. These are the true issues we have to cope with, and we have to do so without prejudices and old assumptions. It's no secret that the social and economic disparities have grown in the US in the last two or three decades. What's not so well known is the fact that the main cause may have not been the "neoliberal policies" everybody likes to blame, but rather a high level of immigration and the pressure of the global markets. Exactly, there goes another cherished dogma of the left!

Interracial marriages and the concept of the "melting pot".

In spite of the bad image the US has abroad as the land of racism and segregation, the truth is that interracial marriages are far more widespread than most people —including many Americans— think:

Recent immigrants from Latin America and East Asia are intermarrying with the post-European white majority at a remarkable rate -one in two Asian-Americans, one in three Latinos. The younger Americans are, the more likely they are to be in transracial marriages. In 1990, for example, only 53 percent of married black Americans under the age of twenty-five were in black-black marriages —compared to 84 percent of blacks over the age of sixty-five. Nothing short of a complete reversal of today's high intermarriage rates can prevent the formation, at different rates in different regions of the country, of a mixed-race majority in the United States in the long run. The golfer Tiger Woods —who jokingly describes himself as "Cablinasian", by which he means a fusion of Caucasian, black, Indian, and Asian— may well be a forerunner of the "average American" in the centuries to come.

(Halstead & Lind: p. 173).

There are a couple of issues to consider here. First of all, contrary to the myth many Americans like to believe, the US is not the first society that has managed to build a sense of community from people with different ethnic origins. Far from it, this has been the norm throughout history. As a matter of fact, the concept of nation-state, firmly linked to that of a single language or ethnic identity, is quite recent. It doesn't go further back than a few centuries. Regardless, the only reason why we consider the French, the Germans or the Italians to have some sort of ethnic homogeneity is because they started their own particular melting pot hundreds of years ago. Other than that, genetically speaking, they are far from homogeneous. In other words, countries like China, Italy or Turkey are what the US may be like in a couple of centuries, the result of all these interracial marriages and the peaceful —and not so peaceful— coexistence of many different ethnicities on the same soil.

The second issue to consider is how this trend will affect racial policies, in special affirmative action. In this regard, one has to agree with Halstead and Lind that such policies will make less and less sense as we move towards a society where the different races are mixed. The idea is pretty much anathema to today's liberals, but it's difficult to think how else the racial policies we have been implementing so far —clearly based on a static sense of identity— can be applied to a fluid society like the one that's to come. Simply put, a policy such affirmative action that assumes that each individual will be identified with a single ethnicity has little future in a global world, it seems.

Theories of social reform.

Halstead and Lind briefly discuss the different theories of social reform:

The problem is as much conceptual as practical. For centuries, philosophers have debated the legitimacy of different approaches to social change. Some, like the Marquis de Condorcet, Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Jeremy Bentham, and other rationalist philosophers of the Enlightenment tradition, have sought to reform existing institutions in light of an abstract ideal or goal by deducing first principles of social order. Pragmatists, like John Dewey and Richard Rorty, have rejected grand master plans and called for ceaseless experimentation in the design of institutions. Skeptical thinkers, like David Hume, Edmund Burke, Isaiah Berlin, and John Gray, have criticized the notion that society can be redesigned by either abstract reason or pragmatic experimentation. Society, they have argued, is not a mechanical construction but an organic entity, based on gradually evolving traditions. The task of reformers is to water and fertilize —and now and then prune— a growing plant.

(Halstead & Lind: p. 167).

As it tends to be the case with secular debates, the reason why different schools of thought have persisted over time is usually related to the fact that they all have something to offer, I think (or, as some other people would put it: perhaps all of them are right in some sense). For example, it should patently clear by now that without a will to apply social reform and improve our societies we would have never made it too far. I'm not referring only to the fact that we might still be living in caves and hunting wild animals out there, but also to the fact that most of what we hold dear these days (democracy, solidarity, education, compassion, comfort...) would have never existed should humans have taken the conservative approach according to which it's always best never to mingle with things and carry out social experiments. On the other hand, perhaps the main lesson to be learnt from our tragic twentieth century is precisely that shaping societies after abstract models is not a good idea. Traditions exist for a reason, after all. They have evolved over centuries and, one would suspect, respond to some very deep need of human nature. Yes, we can change them, but it's something that we should never do willy-nilly. Finally, we have what Halstead and Lind call the pragmatists, who are skeptical of grand projects and prefer a more modest (although continuous) experimentation that tries to improve our lives. Of all the approaches, I definitely choose this latter one. As usual, the middle ground appeals to me.

An alternative to the sales tax.

In the vein of offering new and innovative solutions to today's problems, Halstead and Lind come up with an alternative to the sales tax:

Here's a concrete alternative. Why not replace our fifty separate state sales tax systems with a single and simple national consumption tax, whose proceeds are rebated to the states on a per capita basis? Unlike regressive sales taxes, a personal consumption tax can be made highly progressive by exempting a certain amount —say, the first $15,000 of consumption— so that the average cost of basic necessities like housing, food, and transportation would be free from taxation. At the same time, such a system would remove all tax collection burdens from businesses and ensure a level playing field for both "brick" and "click" industries.

A person's annual consumption could be calculated based on a simple formula: income minus savings and investment equals consumption. For example, if, after income taxes, you made $45,000 in a given year, saved $10,000, and spent the remaining $35,000, then with the $15,000 deduction, your taxable consumption would be $20,000. Naturally, the exemption level should be increased somewhat for each dependent. Because the sales tax does not differentiate between individuals with dependents and those without, our system would become more family-friendly in the process of becoming more progressive. A consumption tax designed for the new economy should also be education-friendly, given today's need for constant skills upgrading. Accordingly, education expenses might be viewed as investments rather than as consumption, and thus exempted from taxation.

(Halstead & Lind: pp. 131-132).

This proposal would be a significant change not only in the US but also in the EU, where the value added tax (VAT) is still the main source of revenue. It certainly sounds more fair, although we would obviously have to study its effects more in detail. Would it allow our governments to raise a similar amount of money, for instance?

Representative vs. direct democracy.

The problems experienced by the traditional systems of representative democracy in the last few decades has led to a renaissance of proposals that put forward direct democracy as the solution in one form or another. We are told that electing political representatives who don't always vote what their own base supports somehow distorts democracy, and we are also told that representative democracy always leads to the creation of a "caste" of "professional politicians" who quickly forget whom they represent and what brought them there. Yet, all this was already debated a long time ago, and pretty much every political scientist thought that we had reached a consensus that was widely accepted as logical and sensible by the vast majority of citizens in our advanced democracies. As Halstead and Lind state:

In essence there are only two theories of democracy: representative democracy and direct democracy. Representative democracy is based on the idea that voters do not choose policies, they choose policymakers. It is these policymakers who choose policies —after debate and compromise with other elected leaders. Ideally, elected representatives should act on behalf of the values and interests of their constituents —not on behalf of their opninions, which may be based on ignorance or prejudice. Elected representatives, in this view, are like doctors or lawyers; their duty is to tell those who hire them the truth, even if it's something the client does not want to hear. Great leaders, be they legislators or chief magistrates like presidents and governors, are those who are willing to risk their political careers in order to promote the long-term interests of their constituents and their nation, even when that interest is not yet understood by a majority of the public.

(Halstead & Lind: pp. 125-126).

Beyond the idealization of direct democracy as a political nirvana, we should realize that it is often little else than a finely veiled form to sustain tyranny (Muammar al-Qaddafi and Hugo Chavez are perhaps the best examples of this). But why is this? There are, as usual, multiple reasons. I'll try to summarize at least a few here. First of all, direct democracy assumes that there is such a thing as a clear, already finalized public will that's somehow immutable and solid as a rock. It doesn't allow for any sort of flexibility, fluidity or, even worse, change of mind. It doesn't allow either for the typical give and take that has become to characterize complex societies, where different interests and social groups are constantly re-defining their relationships with regards to the others and also with regards to the policies. On the contrary, the theory of direct democracy assumes that there is such a thing as a public will and a public interest that can be set on stone once and for all. In this sense, it shouldn't surprise anyone that those thinkers who strongly defended these ideas —it all started with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but many of the Bolsheviks also spoke up in favor of direct democracy— ended up justifying totalitarianism in one form or another. After all, what reason is there to allow those invididuals who stand for ideas that run against society as a whole to live a free life? Once we manage to find out what the public will is beyond any doubt, we have laid the first stone of the totalitarian State. Second, and directly related to the previous point, direct democracy does away with the need for dialogue and political consensus. Since the citizenry can directly decide what it thinks about any particular piece of legislation at the ballot box, there is no need for people who represent the different social and economic interests to negotiate and make any effort to reach an agreement that satisfies all parties involved. Why bother? Let's just vote and figure out what the citizens decide without any further wait. In doing so, direct democracy increases the polarization of the citizenry and favors the dictatorship of the majority. Third, let's be honest, direct democracy is the best way to let demagoguery run free in our societies. There is nothing easier than stirring up people's hatred with rhetorical masterpieces that blame the escapegoats —usually those who think, act or look different— in order to solve all our problems. Just get rid of all the Jews, all the blacks, all the gays, all the immigrants or whatever else, and our problems will automatically go away. Besides, anyone who has assisted to an Assembly of students while in College knows how easy it is to manipulate people's views when they are burning to find someone to blame for their problems. Fourth, and finally, there are quite a few technical problems that make it direct democracy in any advanced society. It sure doesn't make much sense to implement direct democracy on nation-states with millions of citizens. How do we do it? Using the Internet and new technologies. But are we sure that people truly want to spend hours after hours doing the work that requires to decide between different pieces of legislation —not to talk about the work that's needed to put them together?

Let's be real. In the end, the only solution that makes sense is what we already have: a representative democracy with some elements of direct democracy via referendum and similar. Our political systems are not failing due to a lack of direct democracy, but rather due to a whole slew of other issues that we have been discussing in other entries: the excesses of party discipline, the importance of money to launch a campaign, the problems with electoral systems that distort what citizens think, etc. That's where we should do the work, instead of wasting our time with a concept —direct democracy— that would quickly morph from a dream to our worst nightmare.

Coalition parties in the US.

It has become a common assumption these days that bipartisanship is almost impossible in the US. Ever since the 1980s or so, both parties have made huge efforts to dig their heels behind the trenches and consolidate their own world visions without conceding anything to the opponent. In other words, politics has become far more ideological. A pragmatic politician, the one who could reach agreements across the aisle in order to promote a broader interest, is invariably call a "flip-flopper" these days, derisively painted as someone without convictions. And yet, as Halstead and Lind state, American politics worked best when Democrats and Republicans could reach such agreements, when neither party had a firm control of every single representative in Congress and convincing members of the opposite party was at least theoretically possible. Or, to put it a different way, when party discipline was far more loose than it is these days.

The attempts by liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans to make the two major parties in the United States more ideologically uniform have had two results. The first result has been the alienation of a growing number of American voters, who cannot find even a faction within a major party with which they can identify. The second has been the debasement of our political discourse and the emergence of a political cultura based on partisan scandal-mongering rather than bipartisan achievement.

When the US Congress worked best —from the mid-1930s until the early 1970s— the House and Senate functioned in a fluid, kaleidoscopic manner. Conservative Democrats often sided with conservative Republicans; liberal Republicans voted sometimes with liberal Democrats; sometimes liberals and conservatives, in the same or opposite parties, cooperated. Indeed, if we look at the major congressional achievements of the twentieth century —Social Security, the Marshall Plan, the enabling legislation for NATO and the UN, the GI Bill, Medicare, Head Start, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts— we find that they are concentrated in this era of weak parties and strong cross-party coalitions. Democrats may have controlled Congress, with a few brief exceptions, during this period, but much of the credit for these landmark achievements goes to Republican lawmakers. For example, as a result of the number of segregationist Democrats in Congress in the 1960s, Republican members of Congress were more likely to vote for the historic civil rights legislation than Democrats. Moreover, the great House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, who worked comfortably with members of the other party as well as with their own.

(Halstead & Lind: pp. 116-117)

There are two issues that are worth considering here, I think. First of all, we have witnessed in the past few years an overall tendency towards an excessive partisanship and, even worse, a clear polarization of the political debate in two blocks —one conservative, the other socialist or social-democratic— inescapably opposed to each other. This trend can be observed in the most recent period of elections in most countries (Germany, United States, Italy, France, Spain, Mexico...), where one or the other side won by a very narrow margin after a campaign that has always been characterized by an embarrassing lack of serious debate over the issues and an exchange of insults that does little but turn the citizens away from the political process. The second issue is the worrisome trend, parallel to the polarization mentioned above, towards the imposition of party discipline over the individual conscience of the political representatives, which is putting an end to a real pluralism within the political parties. While our societies are becoming more fluid and complex, the organizations that supposedly represent their interests and ideas in the political institutions appear to be moving in the opposite direction, promoting the lack of debate and the homogeneity in the name of appearing "strong" during the campaigns.

Down payment for newborns and other highly original ideas.

Halstead and Lind come up with some interesting proposals every now and then. Proposals that may sound as highly innovative or the unintended consequence of smoking some illegal substances, depending on your point of view. For example, in order to promote financial independence, they propose to create what they call a down payment for newborns:

What if each American newborn were given a onetime gift of $6,000, at birth, as a down payment on a productive life? This is the amount that would be required for all Americans to have approximately $20,000 in their own capital accounts by the time they reach their eighteenth birthdays. Given the number of babies born each year in the United States, such a plan would cost surprisingly little —about $24 billion annually— and if the program were means-tested, it would cost even less. But the potential rewards could be astonishing.

(Halstead & Lind: p. 100)

Can we truly consider US $24 billion a year to be "surprisingly little"? That would be roughly $100 billion per presidential term, and I didn't notice the authors explaining where the money would come from. Sure, the idea sounds intriguing and it might even do wonders for millions of American kids who (as in any other developed society) are sentenced to a life of relative deprivation and low expectations. After all, our governments already give tax credits and use other policies to promote natality. This idea to give a down payment to newborns wouldn't be, in a sense, but a variation of the traditional policies, with the additional advantage that it has a far more important long-term impact. Still, one cannot avoid the feeling (with this and several other proposals put forward in this book) that the authors are behaving a bit like divine figures who can afford to discuss about the topics without a need to pull up the sleeves and go down in the mud. It always happens that wonderful ideas get all blurred when someone tries to implement them. The devil is usually in the details, and Halstead and Lind never have to deal with that. They can just look from a distance and give advice, which is at the same time this book's strength and major weakness.

Give wage-earners a stake in the system.

The same as American society as a whole, Halstead and Lind are also obsessed by what we can call the "stock market myth":

What would be the twenty-first-century American equivalent of the Homestead Act of the nineteenth, and the home mortgage interest deduction of the twentieth? Both were tremendously successful in democratizing access to economic wealth and opportunity, and both did so by broadening ownership of assets in the form of real estate. In the Information Age, however, it is the ownership of financial assets that most needs to be broadened. Those who have benefited disproportionately from the new economy are those with significant assets in the financial markets, not those who derive their income solely from wages. The most obvious solution for lifting all boats in the new economy is to turn all Americans into owners of financial capital. In the twentieth century, public policy cushioned wage earners against shocks from the economy. In the twenty-first century, public policy should go one step further, and give all wage earners a stake in the system.

(Halstead & Lind: pp. 98-99).

First of all, I find it quite interesting that the same people who criticized the concept of self-management that became popular among leftists in the 1960s are now proposing... well, a limited form of the very same idea. Or, to be more precise, self-management without the power. Actually, what they propose is more like sharing part of the workers' rents with the company in the form of purchases of stock (for that is what it amounts to in the end, let's be clear) without having any say whatsoever in the way the companies are run.

Who hasn't heard these wonderful speeches about how capitalism is becoming "more democratic" as of late because more and more Americans invest in the stock market? And how about the idea that companies themselves are far more scrutinized today because there are more stock holders who, supposedly, keep a close eye on the top executives? Let's be real. The vast majority of companies are still under the control of a bunch of capital owners. And, to make matters worse, the stock holders meetings are pretty much useless. Most of the decisions are made, as in politics, behind the curtains and by those who hold the higher stakes. It's not how many Americans hold stocks that matters, but rather the percentage of stocks that they hold that matters. Obviously, that little detail is ignored in the wonderful rah-rah rhetoric.

To put it a different way, it sounds to me as if Halstead and Lind have drunk the Cool-Aid of the stock market speculation that has been raging through the financial markets during the last twenty or thirty years. They have come to believe that the current state of affairs truly is normal.

Philosophy behind Social Security system.

Halstead & Lind are clearly in favor of reforming Social Security to promote self-reliance and diminish the importance of the intergenerational transfers:

The major reason for replacing, rather than reforming, the Social Security system inherited from the New Deal era is as much philosophical as it is pragmatic. A public pension system should be based primarily on individual savings rather than on an intergenerational transfer system; it should encourage individual self-reliance, with assistance when necessary from the government, not paternalism by an all-providing government. Many on today's Left, believing that the oversized welfare states of northern Europe should be the model for the US government, defend Social Security on the grounds that it provides a sense of shared citizenship among Americans. This sentiment, common among social democrats, was quite alien to the thinking of mainstream American liberals who originally devised Social Security. Franklin Roosevelt thought of Social Security as insurance, not as a sacred political expression of egalitarian solidarity, and went to his grave hoping that it could be fully funded like a conventional insurance program. The genuine heirs of FDR are not the old-fashioned leftists who idealize Social Security but the pragmatic reformers who want to achieve the goal of FDR —preventing destitution in old age— by methods better adapted to the Information Age.

(Halstead & Lind: p. 86)

Yet, they don't truly address the issue raised by those "old-fashioned Leftists" they deride so much. The fact that the founders of the system intended this or that shouldn't matter at all, unless one assumes that they were right for the simple fact of being the first to propose something (or that they knew better because they lived earlier than us, which is the way many nostalgic conservatives would have it). What should truly concern us is the best way to guarantee a decent retirement to our elders at the same time that we make it just and fair, in the sense that those who are in the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder can also retire and enjoy some minimum living standards. That, and nothing else, is precisely the objective of the system as it was first implemented by FDR. Any reforms that keep that as the main objective are more than welcome, although what is presented to us as "reforms" usually amount to little else than a hidden privatization of the whole system that will only benefit the wealthy. That's the danger. And that is also the main reason why the "old-fashioned Leftists" feel a bit skeptical of any such talk of Social Security reforms.

How the American health system came to be.

I found the following paragraph quite interesting:

The employer-based portion of America's current social contract is not the product of intentional design but rather of historical accident. During World War II, wage and price rationing prevented American companies from raising wages. In order to attract workers, companies began taking advantage of a loophole in the tax code that gave them a tax break if they provided health insurance for their employees. This minor loophole then expanded to become the basis of the American health care system for the adult workforce, creating a type of welfare capitalism without parallel in other societies. Subsequently, the major reason for the failure of repeated attempts —by Presidents Truman, Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton— to establish a single-payer system like those of other advanced technological societies was the fact that many Americans already had health inurance through their employers.

(Halstead & Lind: p. 66)

Taking into account how strongly Republicans advocate the current system, one would think that it somehow reflects a very deep American conviction over how these issues should be managed. Yet, it seems that the system came to be in a very haphazardly manner. I suppose it is one of those instances where today's reform (or even revolution) will be tomorrow's status quo, firmly defended by conservatives as the "traditional way to do things". One way or another, it definitely puts things in perspective.

Labor market policies in the Information Age.

Halstead and Lind clearly state the dilemma of any labor policy in the Information Age:

The central challenge of the new Information Age social contract is to destroy less-productive jobs and less-productive businesses, without destroying lives and livelihoods. There are two sides to this challenge: the need of America's employees for greater security in the new economy, and the need of America's employers for greater flexibility in the new economy. A failure to meet either side of this challenge will ultimately hurt all parties involved. That is, if reliable and flexible safety net program do not make it easy for workers to move from one job to another or one sector to another, without devastating losses in income or gaps in insurance coverage, then voters will pressure politicians to preserve outmoded jobs and antiquated industries, thereby threatening the very engine of our prosperity. Likewise, if our social contract does not afford modern corporations the increased speed and flexibility they so need to succeed in the new economy, then our engine of prosperity will suffer just as seriously.

(Halstead & Lind: p. 63)

Certainly, as our economies have become more open and global in nature, the need for flexibility has increased. It is simply not possible to run businesses the way they were run during the heyday of the large corporation back in the 1950s and 1960s. The post World War II era was truly unique on two counts: first of all, it created solid, stable and comprehensive institutions that made it possible to organize and channel the collective interests of the citizens (trade unions, employers' organizations, political parties...), providing stability to society as a whole along the way (well, at least to the most advanced societies); and, second, it also strengthened the importance of the nation state as a consequence of the Cold War alliances. It was the combination of these two factors that made it possible to build a new social contract based on political consensus, collective bargaining and the type of welfare policies that brought about the longest period of economic and social development ever seen. But there was also a price we had to pay for all that. We built some humongous, hiper-bureaucratic institutions that could get out of control at any time. Our societies became too sclerotic, too used to the excess of red tape and overregulation. Our companies (and all other institutions) were simply too slow moving, too big to adapt to rapid changes. As long as these didn't happen, there was no problem. However, as it ought to happen, more and more social and political changes started mounting in the 1960s and by the late 1970s they had reached such a proportion that it was patently obvious how the old system didn't work anymore. Things had to change, and that's precisely what Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan promised to bring about. Change.

Now, after a few decades of neoliberal economic policies, it has become clear to us that while we managed to streamline our economies, the same has not happened in the political field, where our institutions still expect the sort of large collective action of yesteryear. Worse yet, liberal de-regulation has widened the social divide back to what it was during the pre-war years, undoing a good part of what was done by the New Deal. Needless to say, all this has increased the amount of instability in the world as well as in our own developed countries, where we have witnessed a rise of populism without precedent since the 1930s. To a great extent, both the anti-globalization and the anti-immigration movements are a direct consequence of this.

So, here we are in a situation where, on the one hand, we have to provide the amount of flexibility that our businesses need in order to stay competitive in a global economy and, at the same time, we also have to respond to the clear need the citizens have for a minimum amount of job security that guarantees a decent standard of life. In other words, we have to find the way to provide the competitiveness of the 1980s and 1990s together with the job security and social policies of the 1950s and 1960s. Halstead and Lind have clearly reached this conclusion, as did millions of other people who felt comfortable with the levels of social, economic and political development we reached in the post-war era (i.e., all those who felt represented in the social contract reached by Christian-Democrats, Social-Democrats and social liberals in the 1940s and 1950s). They are not discovering anything new. We are all familiar with the main outline of the analysis. The problem, of course, is to offer a workable solution to the dilemma, and that's where Halstead and Lind definitely fail short for they offer little else than the overall generalities quoted above.

So, is there any solution? How do we square the circle? How do we provide, at the same time, flexibility to our businesses and security to our workers? Sometime ago the Danish came up with something they call flexicurity, a combination of pro-active labor market policies that allows for easy hiring and firing as well as high benefits for the unemployed. While the policy has worked marvellously in Denmark (their current unemployment rate is 2.8% as of the end of 2008), it is not clear yet to what extent it can be applied to other countries. In any case, it relies on a the previous existence of a highly educated working force (as is the case in Denmark, of course) as well as a solid and dynamic education system capable to train those who lose their employment. The high benefits for the unemployed, therefore, are not limited just to financial support. Rather training is understood as a right and a duty of the unemployed. Obviously, as we just mentioned, this assumes the previous existence of a dynamic education system that is capable of taking on this task at a decent cost.

Two social models: safety net versus universal provider.

Halstead and Lind distinguish between two clearly distinct social models, clearly placing their bets (and that of what they call "the radical center") with one side:

Implicit in this Radical Centrist philosophy is a new conception of the role of government. There are, in essence, two models through which a government can provide basic economic security to its citizens: the safety net model and the universal provider model. The former assumes that public benefits should only go to help the neediest, while the latter assumes that public benefits should accrue to all citizens, regardless of need. The New Deal philosophy, in its most familiar version —epitomized by programs like Social Security and Medicare— is based on the universal provider model. The Radical Centrist philosophy, by contrast, is premised on the safety net model.

(Halstead & Lind: p. 22)

Really, what Halstead and Lind call the "safety net model" is no different than the traditional concept of subsidiarity, a concept very dear to liberals . The so-called welfare state originally started as an attempt to provide a safety net to those individuals who might fall through the cracks of an economic system that promoted fast-paced change and led to social inequality. It was a way to promote equality of opportunity in capitalistic countries without guaranteeing a more clear-cut equality of outcome, which would be closer to the Communist or traditionally Socialist approach. However, as many critics of the welfare state point out, the original intent was somehow distorted and quickly derived into a free-for-all approach where even the richest individuals could benefit from the Government services. Now, perhaps there are certain fields (education might be one) where this policy makes sense, since choosing the universal Government-backed service may be the consequence not only of a personal preference for a given service quality but also for a given philosophical approach that perhaps cannot be found anywhere else (in the case of education, it's not easy to find a secular approach to education outside the public school system in most developed nations). Yet, the unintended consequence of applying the universal provider model to most services is that even those who are rich enough benefit from it.

Now, this is one of the key differences between the classical liberal school and those who prefer to follow the Christian-Democratic and Social-Democratic traditions, with the so-called social liberals somewhere in between. One could argue in favor of the universal provider system on several grounds: first of all, clearly distinguishing between a public system for the needy and a private system for those who can afford it will most likely end in underfunded and poorly managed public system; second, while it is true that the better off benefit from a Government backed service, they pay for it via taxes, so it's not as if they get the service for free, they pay their proportionally equal share of it; and, finally, it can also be argued that by providing certain benefits to society as a whole regardless of income, our systems promote the idea of citizenship and belonging to the same community.

One way or another though, the pragmatic approach ought to take into consideration not only these philosophical reasons in favor of one approach or another, but also the practical conditions under which they are implemented: to what extent can we fund the universal provider system?, what is the overall quality of the system?, etc. As it tends to be the case, the answer to very old questions (and, let's face it, humans have been dealing with this one for quite some time now) rarely involves a clear "yes" or "no" universal answer. It all depends on the particular society we want to implement the policy for and its particular set of circumstances. Personally, I find it more interesting making an efffort not to rule anything out than to stress a single answer as the magic solution that will come to solve all our problems across the globe. Let's just agree to consider all the possibilities, take the time to obtain the data, review it, discuss it, and then make a common decision that counts with the largest possible support. All this, by necessity, has to be done individually in each society, which also rules out any universal solution.

The three spheres of American society: business, state and community.

Halstead and Lind define three spheres that, according to them, combine to form American society. The description obviously responds to traditional liberal political theory:

In our opinion, America's unique ability to remake itself and thrive during each successive wave of technological change —past and future— stems from its core commitment to a division of social authority among three distinct realms of society: the market, the state, and community. Our nation's history reveals that these three sectors —the private, the public, and the communal— are interdependent, complementary, and mutually supporting. For our nation to flourish, all three must be in relative balance with one another, so that each may perform its unique functions, and provide its unique form of freedom.

The core value of the market is liberty, and its core functions are to promote wealth creation and the efficient allocation of resources. The core value of the state is equality of opportunity, and its core functions are to promote the public good, maintain civil liberties, and preserve law, order, and national defense. And the core value of community —which encompasses the realm of organized religions, voluntary organization, customs, and traditions— is solidarity; its core functions are to preserve communal bonds and national unity and to nurture civic virtues. Each provides a unique form of freedom: The market provides freedom to enrich oneself through hard work, the state provides freedom from oppression and destitution, and the community provides freedom of association with like-minded people. The precise form and makeup of each of these three sectors have changed dramatically throughout our nation's history, but their core values and functions, as well as the freedoms they confer, have remained constant and, it may be hoped, will for the foreseeable future.

Rather than to any particular ideology, it is to our nation's ongoing commitment to this unwritten division of authority between the private, public, and communal spheres that we owe our historic success both in balancing and expanding our competing goals of liberty, fairness, and unity. This is not to suggest that American history has been unidirectional —to the contrary, we have progressed in fits and starts, at times moving forward and at other times moving backward. But taken as a whole, there is little question that our nation's relatively short history has been characterized by an unmistakable upward mobility on the axes of individual freedom, social equality, and national unity. Any particular program must be judged on the basis of its success un promoting improvement in all three realms of American society, not just one.

(Halstead & Lind: pp. 14-15)

In other words, Halstead and Lind don't only take this as a description of American society as it is today, but also as a recipe for the best way to organize its future too. Again, in this sense, they are being completely consistent with classical liberalism, or perhaps a moderate form of social liberalism. I agree with their position on this issue. Contrary to what conservative Republicans state these days, the US has not traditionally stood for unfettered market capitalism, but rather for a far more fluid, dynamic and to some extent unstable relationship between the three spheres described by Halstead and Lind.
There have been some changes in regards to the upward mobility and social equality lately, as the authors themselves bring up later. Yet, the very fact that this mode of organization cannot be easily described as a set of simple rules makes it difficult to be adopted as a political dogma, which is precisely the reason why said conservatives dislike it —this is not to say, of course, that there aren't any sensible conservatives, nor does it mean that dogmatism doesn't exist among liberals or progressives, quite the contrary.

In any case, be it liberal, conservative or whatever else one may consider it, this approach to social and political organization does appeal to me too. I agree that a society where these three spheres of activity share a healthy existence, enriching each other, is the way to go. It is, I believe, a centrist (or moderate) approach to politics that solves more problems than it creates, allowing people from different political allegiances to chip in. Perhaps in the US they have overdone it a bit by letting corporations (i.e., the business leg of the tripod) extend its power too much, but the fact is that in Europe we may have also overdone it by letting the state spread too far at the expense of the other two legs (especially at the expense of a healthy, thriving civil society).

Reforming the Social Security system.

Halstead and Lind quickly introduce two key issues that have taken the center stage in the American political debate for the past couple of decades:

Many of the New Deal programs of the industrial era are now as obsolete as they are entrenched in our two-party structure. To appreciate the depth of this disjuncture, we need only take a quick look at many of the inherited assumptions and institutions that both parties take for granted, and ask ourselves: Does it still make sense to go on organizing our society this way in the twenty-first century?

Let's begin with our basic social contract —an arrangement inherited from the mid-twentieth century— which is premised on an intergenerational public pension program and an employer-based health care system. At the birth of the New Deal, it made sense to structure Social Security as a transfer program in which current workers pay for current retirees —so long as the working-age population greatly outnumbered the elderly whom they subsidized. Indeed, the system worked remarkably well for the first generation of retirees to benefit from it. Today, however, the rapid growth in the ratio of retirees to workers threatens to bankrupt both Social Security and Medicare, or to impose crippling taxes on the young and the employed. What was the proudest achievement of the New Deal era is fast becoming a sobering liability in the information era.

At the height of the Second Industrial Revolution, when most employees aspired to lifetime employment with a single firm, it also might have made sense to link the provision of health care benefits to one's employer (although even then a series of American presidents tried and failed to create a single-payer universal health care system). In the turbulent economy of the early twenty-first century, however, when average job tenure is only three to five years and the proportion of contingent and part-time workers is high, does it really make sense to maintain this industrial era linkage between health insurance and employers? Doing so only makes changing jobs that much more disruptive, and breeds a profound sense of insecurity in a workforce that is increasingly oriented toward a free-agent model. Our basic social contract, then, is being undermined by the inescapable forces of demographics and economic change.

(Halstead & Lind: pp. 8-9)

While most other countries in the world aren't as affected by the problems concerning the health care system (they do, although in quite a distinct manner that we will discuss later), the issue of how to avoid the bankruptcy of our pension systems is certainly widespread in the advanced industrial world. The reality is that medical, social and economic advances have lengthened the average life expectancy of most people in our countries, which in turn (and coupled with the obvious fall in our birth rates) has increased the financial burden that our public pension plans represent for our Government finances. We can discuss forever how to solve this problem, whether the pension system needs to be fully or partially privatized (or not privatized at all), whether the retirement age needs to be pushed further or not, etc. However, what we cannot do is dismiss the problem and play the ostrich strategy. We cannot simply ignore the current state of affairs and pretend that if we look a different way the problem will get solved somehow. Today's public pension system in economically advanced nations is as unsustainable as our current levels of pollution and the release of global warming contributing gases. Denying the reality because we don't like it won't get us anywhere closer to the resolution of the problem.

So, what do Halstead and Lind propose? A return to FDR's original plan: a retirement plan that relies on what the retirees saved during their working life, more than on transferences from the younger to the older generations. They would establish a system of mandatory retirement savings backed by Government transfer payments in those cases where the individuals didn't manage to save enough. The Government would establish the bare minimum that individual citizens would have to take out of their paychecks and save towards retirement, and the future retirees would get to choose where to invest that money. In this sense, the system would be privately run but highly regulated by the Government. Additionally, the Government would also step in to supplement the retirement of those who didn't save enough in order to promote social justice. Altogether, then, is a mixed plan, a plan that cannot be legitimately labeled neither conservative nor liberal according to the traditional political distinction. A system not so different after all from the one that has already been implemented in Chile or Australia.

Now, the thorniest problem facing any attempt to move from the current system to the one laid out by Halstead and Lind involves how to finance the transition. After all, our retirees depend right now on the influx of money from those who are contributing to the system. If we were to allow those who are currently working to take the money away, save it and invest it somewhere else, who would finance the cost of today's retirees? As the authors point out, it's a problem that has already been faced by other countries where the transition took place. There are multiple ways to solve it: first of all, we can begin the means-testing part of the plan immediately (i.e., the Government would stop paying for those retirees who can afford to live comfortably from their own savings, which is something not currently happening); second, retirement age can be gradually extended; and, finally, the amount of money contributed to the Social Security by today's workers is actually larger than what would be needed to guarantee a decen retirement for them in the future, therefore allowing us to still use the difference to pay for today's retirees. Would all of this work? I don't know. I'd have to look at it with more time. However, it sounds reasonable and, above all, as Halstead and Lind rightly argue, there are countries that have already transitioned.

Let's finish this post with some brief comments about the national health care systems and their shortcomings, as I promised above these lines. Halstead and Lind discuss the problems currently affecting the US health system at length. In general, most of the issues they raise were solved a long time ago in Europe by what Americans quite often derisively refer to as socialized medicine. Socialized or not, the fact is that it solved the very issues Americans are dealing with right now. However, this shouldn't lead us to feel superior in any way for our publicly funded systems have a whole slew of different issues to deal with: excess of bureaucracy, inefficiencies, inability to choose between different types of service, etc. All these are issues that we should wonder about and strive to find solutions for. A creative approach, free of ideological prejudices, like the one taken by Halstead and Lind may do us some good here in Europe too.

The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics.

Ted Halstead and Michael Lind propose to take the US in a completely new direction, away from the "rigid two-party cartel" dominated by Republicans and Democrats. While the vast majority of Americans label themselves as independents, both parties appear to be leading in the opposite direction: quickly moving towards the extremes in an attempt to clearly establish their identity in opposition to the other party. But in order to respond to the challenges of a new world characterized by the increasing influence of technology, globalization and all the changes they are bringing about, Halstead and Lind think that the US needs to adopt a new set of ideas, a pragmatic mishmash that blends already existing proposals from here and there depending on their merit, and not any ideological prejudice.

Technical description:
Title: The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics.
Author: Ted Halstead and Michael Lind.
Publisher: Doubleday/Random House
Edition: first edition, New York (USA), 2001.
Pages: 264 pages, including index.
ISBN: 0-385-50045-9

Find it on Amazon (US, UK).