Joel Wendt has posted part two of Hacking Politics:

The main psychological element then is habit. Things are done because they were done that way in the past. It is easy to just do the habitual. Those who benefit from the way things are can hardly be expected to want to change them.

So, if we are going to hack politics, then we have to deal with habit. Habit is like the Windows OS, kludge upon kludge that only runs because we are used to it. Now we need the open source ethic in politics, where everything gets done in a transparent way - visible to everyone.

Kind of reminds me of Rick Klau's story about Five Apes in a Cage.