Making Sense of Britain's Strange ‘Brexit’ Parliament

Making Sense of Britain’s Strange ‘Brexit’ Parliament William Kingston English parliaments have been known by many names, including ‘Reformation,’ ‘Cavalier,’ Long’ and ‘Rump.’ The one which has just been dissolved will surely have the title ‘Brexit’, because it was so dominated by the issue of leaving the European Union. Its failure to settle this reflects a mismatch between direct democracy and representative democracy, which can be understood through a concept developed by Garret Hardin, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’.1 This must surely be the most influential social science article ever written by a biologist. In it, he used the analogy of a pasture open to all to describe the effect of self-interest in any situation where there is free access to a resource. Such access becomes disastrous as soon as the limits of the resource are reached, because ‘the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another ... But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.’2 Contemporary and vivid confirmation of Hardin’s ‘herdsman’ observation can be found in what happened to the Newfoundland cod fishery. This was once the most prolific fishery in the world, but it was a ‘commons’, as there was free access to it. Consequently, it paid every fishing firm, in its own interest, to invest in the biggest boats and the most advanced gear until it was completely fished out. Universal suffrage makes government a ‘commons’ The relevance of Hardin’s insight to economics is immediately evident, but Studies • volume 109 • number 433 54 Studies_layout_SPRING-2020.indd 54 Studies_layout_SPRING-2020.indd 54 27/02/2020 13:59 27/02/2020 13:59 its application to politics has been overlooked. We have not noticed that the resource of government becomes a commons once universal suffrage gives everyone access to it. This puts it in danger of being ruined by voters’ selfinterest , when the law of the jungle must prevail. Such a result can in fact be seen in many ex-colonial countries that were established on the basis of one-person-one-vote. These moved quickly to some form of autocracy, as parliamentary democracy failed them. Their experience illustrates why a political commons cannot work when the number of voters is large. Some situations where access to a commons does not result in Hardin’s tragedy show why numbers are important. In the Swiss Alps, farmers move their flocks in summer to common pastures, and in the Yukon, miners worked out ways of peaceful sharing of access to veins of gold before any system of legally registering claims was established. In each case the numbers were small enough for mutual knowledge and trust to act as a counterbalance to individual self-interest. Monastic influence Some form of counterbalance is found in every case where any form of democracy has worked. In Greece’s cities, the numbers were small (there was of course no question of giving the vote to slaves) and the counterbalance to self-interest was the distribution of public offices by lot. In many forms of assembly democracy, the counterweight was the power of anointed monarchs, whose support from religion helped their wishes to be seen as the public good. In fact, assemblies or ‘parlements’ came into being in Europe through nobles asserting their power against the absolute power of a king, as in Magna Carta. This is the first time that a basic principle of democracy, that government depends upon the consent of the governed, can be seen in the secular world, but monasticism had prepared the ground for it. Everyone in medieval Europe could see all around them places where people were living under an elected Abbot. The explicit provision in their Rule for this made...

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