Normative Models of Democratic Governance: Decentralism, Centralism, and Centripetalism

Why are some democratic nations better governed than others? What kind of institutions promote better social outcomes? This paper outlines two normative models of democratic governance, decentralism and centralism. It then proposes an alternative model, centripetalism, which proposes that good democratic governance arises from institutions that successfully meld two goals: authority and inclusion. Democratic institutions work best when they bring together a wide array of diverse interests into a single locus of effective authority. In practical terms, we suggest that unitarism, parliamentarism and proportional representation together promote these goals. An empirical test of the impact of a variable combining historical measures of these three institutions on six indicators of governance across the world suggests that centripetal institutions promote good governance. 3 Plurality which does not reduce itself to unity, is confusion. Unity which is not the result of plurality, is tyranny. Of the many analogies that have been remarked between Law in the Physical and Law in the Moral World, none is more familiar than that derived from the Newtonian astronomy, which shows us two forces always operative in our solar system. One force draws the planets towards the sun as the centre of the system, the other disposes them to fly off from it into space. So in politics, we may call the tendency which draws men or groups of men together into one organized community and keeps them there a Centripetal force, and that which makes men, or groups, break away and disperse, a Centrifugal. A political Constitution or frame of government, as the complex totality of laws embodying the principles and rules whereby the community is organized, governed, and held together, is exposed to the action of both these forces. The centripetal forces strengthens it, by inducing men (or groups of men) to maintain, and even to tighten, the bonds by which the members of the community are gathered into one organized body. The centrifugal assails it, by dragging men (or groups) apart, so that the bonds of connexion are strained, and possibly at last loosened or broken.. . Accordingly, the history of every community and every constitution may be regarded as a struggle between the action of these two forces, that which draws together and that which pushes apart, that which unites and that which dissevers. What is the best way to organize a representative democracy? How should democracies be designed? Historically, the question of how …