The Iowa Caucuses: Lessons for the world

Five things stood out for me when I covered the much storied, much fabled and much talked-about Iowa Caucuses in America more than a decade ago.

In this piece, I discuss my observations from the Iowa Caucuses and the lessons Ghana and the rest of the world can learn from them. 

Deliberation

One of the key elements in the democratic experiment is the necessity to have robust contestation of ideas through discourse.

 The Iowa Caucuses encourage this well-regarded element of democracy because it encourages caucus goers to deliberate and discuss relevant issues even on the night of the caucuses.

Precinct leaders and candidates representatives are allowed to all set forth their case and stake their agenda. 

Caucus goers are encouraged to talk to one another and to try and win one another to their respective positions. 

The room buzzing with great conversations, call to action, multiple speeches represent a modern-day version of Athenian democracy.

To my mind it represents the idea that democracy should not be fought through guns or violence or insults but through civil, respectful and vigorous deliberations and debate.

Kitchen-table and issue-driven elections

To be successful at the Iowa Caucuses, you cannot just address issues in a broad-based banner-head manner.

 One would have to actually know the issues of concern to the everyday person, what voters are worried about, their fears, hopes and expectations — the much talked about kitchen table issues.

This cannot be done from daises of presidential rallies or platforms.

This cannot be done by sitting on a high throne in the capital city and this can certainly not be done in an arm-chair, know-it-all manner.

A successful caucus candidate must be knowledgeable about the intricate, top-of-the-table, everyday issues citizens are concerned about and address them head-on. 

Direct democracy

Because politics is expected to be people centred through a bottom-up approach and not assume a top-down approach, the caucuses format presents the opportunity for candidates to be on the ground, meeting not just political elites, delegates or party executives but also everyday people.

In fact, this is one of the greatest things I admired about the caucuses. 

Because presidential candidates are aware of this nature of the caucuses the effort to prevail starts months and months before the very day of the caucuses.

This means candidates have to be on the ground to have a personal touch and they have to make this a contact sport.

Personally, this gave me the opportunity to meet Presidential candidates like Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards and Chris Dodd in a very close-up manner sometimes more than once. 

Compromise

There comes a point during the night of the Iowa caucuses that candidates who do not meet a certain set threshold or viability level (due to very low and almost negligible support) have to try and align with others.

The process of finding other candidates to align with is a political beauty to behold which reveals one of the enduring features of a respectable democracy: compromise.

In order to find other candidates to align with, there is a level of positive compromise that takes place, where candidates convince others to join their team, caucus goers find a candidate whose positions appeal to them and various discourses and discussions take place.

This process shows that democracy should not always be about insults, hate, negativity, violence and conflict.

People should be able to communicate, debate, discuss and come to positions that will enhance the collective will or encourage the idea of working across partisan divides.

In the end, it shows a certain culture of unity rather than division, peace rather than conflict, and deliberation instead of provocation. 

The Politics of Representation

When all is said and done, we must remember that at the core of the caucuses is the idea of representation.

The caucuses make democracy real, visible, relatable, and useful to the everyday person.

These caucuses are a real-life experiment that show that politics and democracy is not just about deal brokers, a certain special group of delegates or elites, but about the grassroots.

Because of this, control of the outcome is shifted from the influence of big money to individual voters who feel very much a part of the process.

The causes are a true advertisement for civil education, democratic education and political education for the young and the old.

To be successful in this system voters have to be listened to, giving a voice to the everyday person and thereby producing a set of active voters.

In so doing, issues are discussed in an informal way, often broken down to the level of the everyday person. 

Our society is all the better for it because it helps democracy and politics, at the core, to serve the interest of the people. 

The writer is a political communication analyst.

He covered the 2008 Iowa Caucuses at Iowa State University. 

He's the author of the book "The Afrocentric Obama and lessons on political campaigning".

Writer’s email: gsikaetse@gmail.com