A radical centre constitution, rules 1–5: how radical centrism decides policy

The programme behind this site set a weekend exercise for its first week: write a two-page Radical Centre Constitution. Ten rules for deciding policies, and no policies at all. The point is to make the method visible. If radical centrism is more than splitting the difference, it should be possible to write down how it decides, and then to check each later proposal against the rules.

Here are the first five, drawn from the authors we have read this week: Isaiah Berlin, Amartya Sen, Mark Satin, and Ted Halstead and Michael Lind. The other five, from Matthew Miller, Anthony Giddens and Donald Warren, follow tomorrow.

Rule 1. Name the good each side is defending

Before choosing anything, write down what each camp in the debate is trying to protect, in terms its own supporters would accept.

This comes from Berlin. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains, he held that genuine values are many, that they often conflict, and that conflict between them is an intrinsic and irremovable part of human life. Liberty, equality, security and mercy are all real goods without a common unit to convert one into another. A rule that starts by naming the goods does two jobs. It forbids caricature, because you have to state your opponents' value fairly. And it opens the door to synthesis, because once the goods are named you can ask whether a design exists that serves more of them at once. The midpoint is what you get when you skip this step.

Rule 2. Compare real alternatives, starting with the status quo

Judge every proposal against the other options actually available, including doing nothing, and never against an ideal society.

This is Sen's rule. In The Idea of Justice he argues, as Charles Barclay Roger's review for openDemocracy sets out, that knowing what perfect justice looks like is neither necessary nor sufficient for ranking imperfect alternatives. Sen calls the search for ideal principles transcendental institutionalism and prefers a comparison of real outcomes, aiming for broad agreement that some options are clearly better than others. In practice this means every proposal comes with its comparison table: the current situation, the main alternatives, and what each would change for whom. A proposal that only beats a straw man has not passed.

Rule 3. Judge by results and borrow from any tradition

Hold proposals to the evidence of what they do, and take good ideas from wherever they come.

Satin's preface to Radical Middle calls for borrowing humbly from neoliberals, neopopulists, neoconservatives and transformationalists alike, and grounds his book in more than a thousand published sources. His subtitle, idealism without illusions, is the spirit of the rule: dare to propose real solutions without losing touch with the facts on the ground. Tribal consistency, sticking with a position because your side holds it, has no standing under this rule. If the evidence from a Swiss canton or a Danish municipality says something works, the fact that it came from the other camp's playbook is irrelevant.

Rule 4. Build on a fair start and a floor, delivered through choice

Every design has to show how it gives each person a fair start and protects a minimum below which nobody falls, and it should deliver that through choices people make for themselves wherever possible.

This rule is Halstead and Lind's. In Richard Kahlenberg's 2001 review of The Radical Center for The American Prospect, their core design principles are equity, including exposing hidden subsidies for the wealthy, and choice. Their proposals show the pairing at work: a Swiss-style system of mandatory health self-insurance backed by a safety net, compulsory personal saving for pensions with a means-tested floor, and a $6,000 endowment for every child at birth. Kahlenberg, from the left, worried that their faith in choice could widen inequality, citing evidence that unregulated school choice increased segregation in Chile, Sweden and New Zealand. The rule takes that objection on board. Choice is the delivery mechanism, and the floor and the fair start are the test the result must pass.

Rule 5. Decide in public and protect a minimum of liberty

Where a trade-off remains after rules 1 to 4, make the choice openly, say which good gave way, and never cross the minimum of personal liberty that belongs to everyone.

The first half is Sen again. He treats democracy as government by discussion, and open public reasoning as the source of objectivity in political judgement; agreement is not required for the process to be worth having. The second half is Berlin. The Encyclopedia notes that he was willing to restrict liberty to promote equality and justice and to protect the weak, and also that he held the preservation of a certain minimum of individual liberty to be a political priority. A radical centre will often have to trade one good against another. It owes citizens an honest account of the trade, and it owes every individual a core of freedom that no majority, however reasonable, can take away.

How the five fit together

Read together, these rules combine ideas from different traditions into one method. From the left comes rule 4's insistence that every person gets a fair start and a floor. From the right and the liberal market tradition comes choice as the main delivery mechanism and a protected minimum of personal liberty. And from Berlin and Sen comes the part that fits neither camp: values genuinely conflict, so you compare available options in public and admit what each choice costs.

Try them on any live Spanish or European debate, housing or pensions or migration. Rule 1 forces you to state what the other side wants protected. Rule 2 forces you to compare your plan with what exists. Rule 3 sends you looking for evidence from elsewhere. Rule 4 asks who gets a start and who is left below the floor. Rule 5 asks you to say out loud what you are giving up. A proposal that survives all five is already some distance from the midpoint. Tomorrow's five rules are meant to add the hard edges: fiscal realism, compensation for the losers, subsidiarity, experiments before nationwide rollouts, and a refusal to let concentrated power capture the result.