Ultimatum Democracy

Just seems like a pointless intermediate power broken, which, ironically, also needs to be held accountable. If I gift my vote to an interest group and I trust them to use the power I have, in part, given them to hold politicians to account, then it rests on me to hold the interest group to account in doing so sufficiently. The model assumes interest groups are somehow inherently trustworthy. They differ little from political parties from what I can see.

How about I just hold the politician I vote for to account? If the argument here is that I’m bad at doing that, then why would holding an interest group account work out any better?

Additionally, it’s nice since I don’t need to find an interest group that represents me sufficiently for the current system to work. I can hold politicians to account completely on my own terms, and if those feelings are common enough, democracy will do its thing. I get to decide what politicians are accountable for. If they fail to meet a promise, I get to decide if that matters to me or not, not an intermediary. Seems like a simpler, finer-grained, and altogether better system to me.

Ultimatum democracy is a natural extension of selectorate political theory. Selectorate theory assumes a politician’s primary motivation is to remain in power. Helping people is secondary.

Ultimatum democracy applies this insight, allowing voters to collectively give an ultimatum: either enact my policies or we will vote to remove you.