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[Owlbread]

Preferably individuals. I wouldn't go so far as to -ban- representatives from being party members, but it wouldn't be part of the system.

The idea being "I want this party/ideology in control of the government (senate), and I want this fellow/fellette here to speak for my neighbours and I in the government(house)."

There is always the idea that the people could directly elect their representatives along those lines for an upper house in the UK. You know, elect our own Lords and so on.

[Helgoland]

XXSockXX, yeah, I meant the Bundestag - got confused there for a sec...
And sure, you'll find some pretty conservative types in academia - my own dad's a good example; but they are generally at least partly progressive, mostly pragmatic (can't do science without a healthy dose of scepticism) and trained in abstract thought. I wouldn't want them as legislators, but they make for a pretty good check on them.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You see some bizarre stuff among academics (I've heard of professors who demand hand-written papers exclusively, despite the fact that typewriters would have been common in academia when they were students).

[Helgoland]

That's why they shouldn't be legislators

[BlindKitty]

Well, I've been actually thinking about the political system for quite a few years now, and I'm lately biased towards the opinion that we forgot one very important thing. Every field of human activity, aside from lawmaking, is specialized. Education, industry - everything but the parliaments. And that's the major problem with the system; even assuming that democracy is a good idea (I don't think so, but let's not go into it now) electing a bunch of people who get to decide about _everything_ must end up badly. That's because they are no experts in _most_ things they decide about; art history professors aren't economists, and economist don't know a thing about protecting old architecture. But that could (in theory, at least) be averted... But from it stems even bigger problem. If there is only a few representatives I can choose from, voting for my parliamentary representative, I can't actually find anybody among them I think represents me well. I can only choose the one who has least conflicting interest with me. Maybe some of you don't have this problem, but I actually have, and I know loads of people who do. Thus, it should be possible for people to choose their representatives with respect to specific fields; my first idea was to organize small 'parliaments' for each area of competency that is now a ministry in a given country. Each would consist of relatively small number of people, and in every voting a person could vote for their representatives in those areas of competency they choose (so if they for example have culture up their nose, they don't have to vote for this parliament at all). To pass a law, it would be necessary for it to pass in every parliament that has competency over some part of this particular law (for example, if the law is costly, the Parliament of Finance needs to pass it, and if it requires changes in criminal law, Parliament of Justice). This way, every representative only votes in what he sees as his area of competency (as he can be a representative only in one parliament at a time), and voters can represent their views and believes much better than now.

[Sheb]

The French got something like you Council of Elders Helgoland. Its role is mostly to check whether a law is constitutional before its signed (but after its voted). They're the one who struck down Holland's 75% tax for example.

It's made up of 9 appointees (Every three year the President, the speaker of the National Assembly and the speaker of the Senate appoints one. A recent change make it so the appointment have to be validated by parliament.) plus any retired President who wants to join. Should be noted that members have to step out of politics if they do join.

[XXSockXX]

XXSockXX, yeah, I meant the Bundestag - got confused there for a sec...
And sure, you'll find some pretty conservative types in academia - my own dad's a good example; but they are generally at least partly progressive, mostly pragmatic (can't do science without a healthy dose of scepticism) and trained in abstract thought. I wouldn't want them as legislators, but they make for a pretty good check on them.

Really, not the Bundesrat? Well, doesn't matter...

Ironically most of our legislators have actually seen a university from inside for a time, IIRC more than 2 thirds of german MoPs have either a law degree or are teachers.
Academics do make a good check on legislation, but there are already many instances where they provide these checks, a lot of first draft lawmaking is actually "outsourced" to specialists. Still they sometimes end up miscalculating (we talked about the laws regarding prostitution in this thread a while back) or with laws that need to be revised constantly (we are still reforming the Agenda 2010 stuff from 15 years ago).
You can see academia in action in many things Merkel does (being progressive in the sense of not being ideologically stuck, very pragmatic, sceptic, abstract, long-term oriented thinking), but there is also a certain lack of perception problem with boring everyday problems of the ordinary people. I consider many academics (Merkel not necessarily) as pretty - for lack of a better word - weltfremd.

[Sheb]

"Removed from the world"?

Anyway, being an academic doesn't mean you don't make mistake. The prostitution laws looked like a great idea on paper and some might argue it's still not that bad.

[XXSockXX]

"Ivory towery"?  Caught up in theoretical thinking, impractical, idealistic, inexperienced with the harsher realities of the ordinary plebs, being too much in their own heads. Something like that...

Yeah, that's what I mean, stuff that works great on paper, but turns out to not work as intended. And sure they can make mistakes, I was just arguing that academics already have a lot of influence and that giving them more power wouldn't necessarily make things that much better.
Just playing devil's advocate, maybe I'm thinking too academically myself. 

[10ebbor10]

There's a difference between living in an Ivory tower and simply not being a plain populist.

[Max White]

The thing is that most of these real world problems face are because past politicians were too focused on the short term and kicking the can down the road. It is all very well to complain about ivory towers every time you are personally inconvenienced...

Personally I don't trust anybody that promises to lower my taxes.

[XXSockXX]

Sure, that's the good thing about academics, they tend to not be populists. They are more willing to experiment. This can however lead to "lost generations" who happend to live between two reforms (I can think of plenty of examples in the school system and in other areas) that were planned by academics and turned out to not live up at all to their theoretical expectations. Not saying non-academics would do any better, it just doesn't seem as if academics were the solution to all our problems.

Personally I don't trust anybody that promises to lower my taxes.

The only (?) party that promised lower taxes in the last German elections got kicked out of parliament. This is Europe, if you wanna be populist, promise to not raise taxes that much. 

[Max White]

Welp, moving to Europe!
So where would I go if I only speak English and celebrated the death of Thatcher?

[XXSockXX]

Just take €650,000 ($873,000) from your piggy bank and you can go wherever you want inside the EU. 

[Sheb]

Scotland sound about right. Just hope you'll still be in the EU in a couple years.