Parliament of the Belgian German-speaking community
The parliament of the German-speaking Belgian community (Ostbelgien, 77.000 inhabitants) – which enjoys some political autonomy in the Belgian federal system – has officially and unanimously decided on February 25 to use sortition on a permanent basis, starting after the next elections in the fall.
Two different institutions will involve sortition. First, a permanent “Citizen council” (Bürgerrat) composed of 24 randomly selected citizens serving for 18 months. This council will have the mission to select topics and set the agenda, each year, for several “Citizen assemblies” (Bürgerversammlungen). These assemblies (maximum 3 per year) will be composed through sortition and age, gender and education quotas. The council will decide both their size (between 25 and 50 citizens) and the duration of their work (e.g. 3 weekends over 3 months).
These assemblies will produce recommendations to the German-speaking Parliament, the latter having the obligation to discuss the proposals (provided that they reach a 4/5 majority support in the citizen assembly) and to justify its decision to follow them or not.
Topics discussed in the citizen assemblies will usually concern the competencies of federated communities (culture, education, scientific research, development aid) but could exceptionally go beyond if the citizen council recommends it. Non-selected citizens can easily propose topics to the council, provided that they gather 100 signatures.
The selection method will be the following: First, a mail will be sent by the local parliament to a large number of randomly selected citizens. Second, a new public random selection will be made among those who responded positively, with quotas and a 17 years old threshold. Interestingly (compared to Ancient Athens), participation will be open to non-Belgian residents.
International experts such as David Farrell and the organizers of the G1000 deliberative experiment in Belgium in 2011 (Min Reuchamps, David Van Reybrouck) have participated in the elaboration of this very innovative project, for which the German community has granted a budget of 140.000 € a year. The publically stated objective is to be a laboratory for the rest of Europe.
This initiative could boost the Belgian debate on the transformation of the Senate into a randomly selected second chamber. Following David Van Reybrouck’s famous plea in Against Elections (published in Dutch and French in 2013 and 2014), the topic pops up quite often in public debates. Belgian philosopher Philippe Van Parijs also recently supported a similar reform in his new book on the future of Belgian institutions. According to a recent survey, at this stage, the population seems to prefer a “mixed” model with both randomly selected citizens and elected politicians (the Irish Constitutional Convention model). The survey also indicates high support for a randomly selected chamber among Green parliamentarians – currently the first party at the national level in pre-electoral polls.
Sources (in French and Dutch):
http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20190225_04206192
Filed under: Action, Experiments, Initiatives, Opinion polling, Proposals, Sortition |
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Very interesting initiative, yet only recommendation and no executive power.
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Thanks for this post, Pierre-Etienne.
What are the terms of service of the members of the permanent body? Is it full time service? What is the salary? Is there support staff?
(BTW, here is a PDF document in English about the new body. [Thanks, Matthew Saroff.])
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We can, as a test, evaluate the initiative on the Arnstein participation ladder. What is the score for you? (mine is a 4 to start, maybe 5 after evaluation of the results)
Click to access Arnstein%20ladder%201969.pdf
If you think Arnstein is outdated you can try to evaluate the initiative in the ‘particpation cube’ of Archon Fung.
As far as the evolution to ‘a Senate’ is concerned, the Senate in Belgium has no legislative power at all.
For us, as an organsation promoting an evolution towards democracy, it is a ‘red herring’.
Anyway, the panel is in no way ‘descriptive representative’, it is a ‘scientific sortition methode’ (no control possible), eventually corrected by hand. It is a kind of ‘improved’ petition system.
Any improvement to the current situation is an improvement of course. At this rate ‘democratisation’ will take centuries and I don’t know if our political system in Europe, and more specific in Belgium, will have that time.
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Apparently members of the citizen assemblies would be paid 37,5 € for 4 hours – amount doubled if it takes more than 4 hours. I don’t think that the service in the citizen council will be full-time given that they just have to set the agenda and supervise the selection. I don’t know about support staff.
I can see why consultative power is frustrating, but I would be very surprised to see the creation of such assembly with decision power from the start!
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yes, of course. That is why we proposed an evolution towards decision power whitin the electoral system where the citizens themselves can delegate the amount of power they want to an assembly appointed by sortition. But it would be also possible to grant decision power in ‘soft areas’ as culture, greening the environment, bicycle lanes, and so on. But even organised additional ‘frustration’ serves our purpose in the long term.
Nevertheless I think that even the sortinistas has to become more critical about the systems they support. We, as referendistas, are not afraid to say that a plebiscite (referendum at the initiative of the government) is not a democratic instrument (Brexit) but an instrument of dictatorial regimes and schould be prohibited. (it does not exist in Switserland and some other states with direct democracy)
https://independent.academia.edu/PNollen (Nederlands, Français, English, Deutsch) avec ‘grille d’évaluation’ https://www.academia.edu/38309642/Tirage_au_sort_au_niveau_législatif_-_grille_devaluation.pdf
et le document principal avec les critères et propositions https://www.academia.edu/37890007/Le_tirage_au_sort_puissant_outil_démocratique_critères_et_propositions_v_2018_11_21.pdf
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Paul:> Anyway, the panel is in no way ‘descriptive representative’, it is a ‘scientific sortition method’ (no control possible), eventually corrected by hand. It is a kind of ‘improved’ petition system.
Yes indeed, and that’s an important point (particularly given the very low ceiling for ho boulomenos petitions to the allotted petitioners. It will be interesting to hear the number who accept the original invitation (past endeavours have returned around 4%, so will lean heavily towards activists and political anoraks, rather than the Average Joe). Such a proposal has no democratic legitimacy whatsoever, unlike electoral representation or petitions with a high threshold + votational selection. This is likely to give sortition a very bad name.
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So people on a permanent body working part time would be setting the agenda for assemblies that would be expected to make a recommendation in a few hours? It seems unlikely that informed and considered ideas can come out of such a low-effort process.
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I think we have to look at it as an experiment and evaluate the whole procedure after some time. We can certainly learn from it but we have to ignore the propaganda part and evaluate the initiative for what it is, an attempt to improve the petition system. I am wondering, amongst other things, if we will be able to ‘follow the money’ (this was not the case in previous cases, G1000, parlement environnement,..). A lot of people and companies are interested in this new flow of ‘government’ (tax)money. I don’t say that they don’t deliver a good job in their field of activity but my question is : does it serve ‘democracy’ (or the evolution towards ..).
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>Yoram : The idea of splitting up the tasks (agenda setting and recommendation) is basically good and we can find it in many proposals with a sound motivation (Graham Smith et David Owen,.. ).
We also can see that it is not a ‘scientific experiment’, although this is difficult for me to assess (I am not a scientist). I am missing the ingredients James Fishkin used (control groups,..) to defend his working procedures.
Now that we have evaluated the initiative as a whole, as an ‘Arnstein step 4’ (A4) for the moment, we can start the evaluation of the ‘sortition part’.
Our ‘evaluation grid’ (for the use of sortition at legislative level, and soon also available in English, German and Dutch) can only be used with an adapted interpretation in this case. But nevertheless it can give an idea. We can evaluate the initiative also with the 4 basic democratic principles (Dimitri Courant ‘Thinking Sortition’), equality, impartiality, representativeness and legitimacy, and this for each panel.
But there is a lot of information missing to do so. For instance how will the selection procedure start? I can’t find so far that they have a legal access to the official data bank of eligible residents in order to start the first random selection.
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>Keith: I don’t think the participation rate is important here (4% for this kind of event is likely) because they even don’t claim representativeness. Sortition in the first selection step is only an exclusion mechanism in order to avoid participation by a certain class of people. The further selection is a mixture of random selection and ‘scientific selection’ with a ‘narrow’ representation possibility (for example the Oregon CIR claims demographic and geographic representation). Representation is not the same as representative. I can represent a geographic area on my own but this does not mean that I am in any way representative for this area.
This means that the sortition system is mainly used for exclusion and not at all for inclusion (one of the main advantages of sortition in politics, compared with the referendum and election systems).
Of course we can ask if representativeness and legitimacy is necessary for this specific purpose. The panels are only ‘informative’.
This type of instrument means that the results depends entirely on the people performing the selection and of course the people organising the information of the panels. Because the selection part is not to control or evaluate (for us as outsiders) we can only try to evaluate the results (as we do with the Oregon CIR).
The importance of the use of sortition in this case is rather marginal and can not be used as a reference for a ‘democratic instrument’. It can be at best be a ‘democratic element’, if carefully crafted, in the political proces, comparable with universal suffrage in the ‘aristocratic electoral’ system (Bernard Manin). A democratic element is not the same as a democracy of course.
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Paul:> Sortition in the first selection step is only an exclusion mechanism in order to avoid participation by a certain class of people.
What class is this? One can speculate as to what sort of person is likely to be a member of the 4% that take up the invitation and they are likely to be of a similar psychological profile to those attracted to standing in preference elections. This is just as important an exclusionary principle as socio-economic criteria.
>Of course we can ask if representativeness and legitimacy is necessary for this specific purpose. The panels are only ‘informative’.
They play a key role in agenda setting, so representative legitimacy is absolutely crucial (given that there is no subsequent popular check, as in the PC** nomothetai model).
**PP — Pre-Canevaro
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>Keith : I meant the exclusion of the ‘professional participant’ as we often see in those panels who are working with ‘volunteers’ (without ssortition).
As I see it the initiatif is only an attempt for improvement of the ‘petition’ system. For a “petition” there is ,at this moment, also no threshold or proof of representativeness. I don’t know the ancient Athenian PC nomothetai model so I can’t compare it.
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In the UK, petitions have a threshold of 100,000 signatures. In the Swiss system of votation, I believe all citizens choose which of the successful petitions should go forward. I don’t see how a threshold of 100 or consideration by a tiny and unrepresentative group of (effectively) self-selected persons is an improvement. My reference to the nomothetai model was that the final decision was in the hands of a large representative jury (unlike in this example).
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I don’t know if these are the latest rules about a ‘petition’ to our parliament but anyway, this is what I know of it:
CHAPTER IV
PETITIONS AND MATTERS CONCERNING THE COLLEGE OF
FEDERAL OMBUDSMEN (87)
Rule 142
Petitions must be addressed in writing to the President of the House.
They may not be remitted in person or by a delegation of persons.
Any petition must be signed by the petitioner and legibly indicate his
surname and first name, and his place of residence.
Only the constituted authorities have the right to enter petitions in joint
names.
A concise summary of the petitions addressed to the House since its
last sitting shall be appended to the Verbatim Report.
The President of the House shall send the petitions either to the
Committee for Petitions, or to the committee responsible for the matter to which the petition relates, or decide to table them before the House.
and so on .. http://www.dekamer.be/kvvcr/pdf_sections/publications/reglement/reglementE.pdf
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Every regional parliament has of course his own rules. Our regional parliament (we have 6 of them) has also specific rules about petition:
Active and assertive citizens :
As a citizen you have the right to submit a petition, alone or as part of a group. This gives you the right to petition the parliament.
When a minimum of 15,000 people have signed your petition, a committee must deal with your petition in detail. The first signatory of the petition may explain the question in the committee meeting.
We did this once (15 000 signatures) and never again. The only difference with some centuries ago is that we don’t have to deliver the petition on our knees to the sovereign but we can deliver the petition by mail these days :-).
The reception by the politicians was not with open arms, it was clear from the first moment that they did not appreciated that we came to tell them that they are not doing their job properly and that we think we know better.
Anyway it may be a bit more clear why I do see the ‘Ostbelgien’ initiative as an attempt to improve the petition system.
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> Pierre-Etienne : Of course we are following the ‘Irish citizens assemblee’ and indeed we do see a ‘pattern’ https://www.facebook.com/1YI.ie/photos/a.1567183223519967/2195013197403630/?type=3&theater . Needless to say that a recommendation to organise a referendum (Irish model) is a big step ahead of a recommendation for a discussion in parliament (Ostbelgien proposition).
I also read the book of Philippe Van Parijs with great interest (I am a basic income fan). I have send him some remarks and he responded very positive. I forward my review to you by mail.
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[…] bodies (e.g. Belgium) based on sortition are given a much broader mandate, but this has a drawback: there is no […]
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That is what I reject: …bodies based on sortition are given much broader mandate… The system used to select the candidates, although sortition is involved, is a highly manipulated (scientific) system, far from any representativeness or any other criteria for the use of sortition in a way that has a relation with ‘democracy’. It only claims some diversity by stratification (age, gender and education quotas). As far as I am concerned they don’t have any mandate nor legitimacy. It is not because there is a kind of sortition involved that they have.
For the moment our attempt to evaluate ‘sortition systems’ at legislative level is translated in English and I will post some of it for discussion on the blog later. https://independent.academia.edu/PNollen
As far as I can see it, the ‘Ostbelgien’ system is a costly improvement of their petition system. https://www.meerdemocratie.be/burgers-krijgen-de-macht-duitstalig-belgie-niet-dus (in Dutch)
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Paul:> The system used to select the candidates, although sortition is involved, is a highly manipulated (scientific) system, far from any representativeness or any other criteria for the use of sortition in a way that has a relation with ‘democracy’.
Well put. This kind of shenanigan can only give sortition a bad name.
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I don’t say that those ‘special sortition systems’ can’t be used at some level in the political area (let’s take the Arnstein levels for simplicity). For instance the information level (A3 – 4 and 5), be it information or recommendation for the citizen’s (Oregon CIR and alike) or for the elected parliament (Irish panel).
What I am missing is the possibility to evaluate that system. For instance, the Ostbelgien system starts with a two step random sampling.
‘ First, a mail will be sent by the local parliament to a large number of randomly selected citizens’
‘Second, a new public random selection will be made among those who responded positively, with quotas and a 17 years old threshold. Interestingly (compared to Ancient Athens), participation will be open to non-Belgian residents.’
I wonder what ‘a large number’ means, and what is the data base they are using to start with. The sortition system used can be a SRS (simple random sampling) at this stage but it is not specified.
Participation is voluntary, a ‘long term’ (to long in my view) mandate of 18 months, what might result in a very specific response (and also very low I presume). This ‘specific response’ (the professional ‘volunteers’) is countered with a second sortition step (exclusion), this time using ‘stratified random sampling’ of some kind with specification of the strata (age, gender and education). With 25 to 50 members of this panel the margin of error is between 15 and 20% if we can apply this calculation system (for SRS) to stratified sampling?
We have to ‘trust’ the people performing the selection ‘by hand’ for the most discussable stratum (education level??). Even a stratification by ‘gender’ is problematic these day’s. Trust is a very delicate property for a system to depend on in politics. A public bookkeeping is also one of those elements that is not clarified. What and to who are they spending 140.000 € / year ?
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Paul:> Participation is voluntary, a ‘long term’ (to long in my view) mandate of 18 months, what might result in a very specific response (and also very low I presume). This ‘specific response’ (the professional ‘volunteers’) is countered with a second sortition step (exclusion)
How so? What stratification system could counteract the “professional volunteer” characteristic, given that this is a psychological attribute that may not be correlated with age/gender/education etc. It would clearly over-select for citizens with an active interest in politics that would make the sample entirely unrepresentative of the target population. This criticism would apply irrespective of the role of the body (information, recommendation, judgment etc). For example the decision of the Irish sortition bodies to propose legalisation of same-sex marriage and abortion may not be proposals that are widely supported in the target population (if they were then elected politicians would have proposed them anyway). I would hazard a guess that professional volunteers and candidates for election are of a similar psychological type, the only difference being that the latter have to win the support of a plurality of electors in order for their proposals to be accepted.
“Deliberative” democrats, of course, don’t give a fig about representative fidelity as ‘deliberative democracy, when properly
conceived, is the rightful heir of the early Frankfurt School [of cultural Marxism]’ (Scheuerman, 2006, pp. 86). Deliberative democracy adopts a ‘critical approach to the liberal state and its political economy [capitalism]’ (Dryzek, 2000, p. 89). This is why progressives are so keen on constituting sortition bodies that privilege “professional volunteers”.
Refs
===
Dryzek, J. S. (2000a). Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scheuerman, W. E. (2006). Critical Theory Beyond Habermas. In B. Honig, J. S., Dryzek & A. Phillips (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory (pp. 84-105). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Yes, I only can agree. But this leave us with the question what selection system, using sortition, we can support for ‘informative and recommendation ‘ use. Politicians are (or can be) in favour of those systems because it does not compromise their decision power (Ostbelgien). We also notice support from the citizens if the system is used to inform them (Oregon CIR) or if it is a recommendation to initiate a referendum (Irish panel).
Jaques Testart claims that a panel of about 15 citizens appointed by sortition can be sufficiently ‘divers’ to be acceptable sociologically and psychologically (scientifically selected). About the volunteers he states that the volunteering has to take place after the first selection by lot. He is also in favour of a ‘short mandate’ (3 week ends max) and not payed except cost.
http://jacques.testart.free.fr/pdf/texte894.pdf (French )
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I don’t believe that sortition has any role to play in an information and recommendation role. Although my own preference is for an (Aristotelian) mixed constitution, I’m not aware of any democratic justification of sortition in anything other than a final decision function. As for Testart, I don’t know what planet he is on if he thinks there is anything descriptively representative about a panel of 15 people, and voluntarism at any stage of the process will distort representative fidelity. I agree with him about 3 weeks, but juror pay is necessary in order to maximise participation.
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This time I don’t agree. I think that sortition has a role to play in the political area other than at the legislative level (democracy). Even more important, it does play a role at this time. There is far more than the Oregon CIR, the Irish panel, etc… https://www.psa.ac.uk/sites/default/files/conference/papers/2017/Courant%20Dimitri%2C%20Thinking%20Sortition%2C%20version%20PSA%2C%2011%20A5%2C%202017.03_0.pdf ( Testart is in no way claiming descriptive representation). But nevertheless I think it is necessary to make a clear classification of the instrument that is proposed or installed (Arnstein). It is in our advantage that if sortition is used that it is carefully crafted so that it does not give sortition in general a bad name. This can only be in our advantage. We also have to avoid the propaganda as is used in the Ostbegien case (link in original posting).
‘Burgers krijgen de macht in Duitstalig België’ (Citizens gain power in German-speaking Belgium) and this for a ‘proposal to the elected parliament’. There may be indeed no ‘democratic justification’ for the use of sortition in informative panels but there is a justification nevertheless. And the results will reflect on the ‘democratic use’ of sortition. Therefore it is important to us.
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Paul:> There may be indeed no ‘democratic justification’ for the use of sortition in informative panels but there is a justification nevertheless.
So what is the justification — epistemic? If so then I’ve devoted a chapter of my thesis to refuting Landemore’s claim that sortition is a good way of enabling the requisite cognitive diversity for policy proposals. If not epistemic, then what?
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Keith:> For this I refer to the paper of Dimitri Courant ‘Thinking Sortition’ (https://www.psa.ac.uk/sites/default/files/conference/papers/2017/Courant%20Dimitri%2C%20Thinking%20Sortition%2C%20version%20PSA%2C%2011%20A5%2C%202017.03_0.pdf) :
.. But each thinker, experimentation, or militant group, is giving a different explanation of what sortition is, as well as why and how we should use it to strengthen democracy ..
And maybe this is what might start to produce an answer:
….
III- Democratic principles
I will distinguish four democratic principles, or values, of sortition: equality, impartiality, representativeness and legitimacy, each being subdivided in three elements. Thanks to those principles, sortition can produce a better type of representation, deliberation and participation. But sortition does not have a single nature, and its formal principles can be enhanced or diminished depending on the institutional architecture it is embedded in. Those principles are potentialities, there are not all or always present each time sortition is used, nor with the same intensity. However, those potentialities are to be compared to those produced by the other modes of selection ceteris paribus, in a similar deliberative framework, those four democratic principles would be stronger if using sortition. ..
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Thank you for the comments. I understand your criticisms, but I see some instrumental value in such modest experiments: raising consciousness about the plausibility of sortition. Before using sortition at a higher scale, with more representative samples, it seems important to me to popularize the idea, to make it seem attractive to both citizens and politicians. And in this regard, I’m not sure that such an experiment can only give sortition a bad name. This is your view as experts on the topic, probably not the general perception.
Keith, would you accept to share your thesis? I’m interested in your arguments against Landemore. If you agree, you can send it to pierre-etienne.vandamme [at] uclouvain.be
Thank you!
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And Paul: well received your email about Van Parijs, thank you!
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Paul:> equality, impartiality, representativeness and legitimacy
Dmitri and I agree on most things regarding sortition. An allotted group of 15 would satisfy the first criterion in that all citizens share the same (almost nonexistent) chance of being selected, so this is purely a technical point. As for the second criterion, an impartial selection method does nothing to ensure that the persons selected will behave in an impartial manner. And we both agree that the group will not be representative, and as a result it will have no legitimacy (and will therefore bring sortition into disrepute).
Pierre-Etienne,
I’ll email you a copy of my thesis — Chapter 6 is on Landemore’s claims.
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Keith:> I had to look up what epistemic means ;-)
To interpret a bit further the work of Dimitri Courant for this matters, the use of sortition at the ‘informative or recommendation’ level:
….
Finally, due to the “cognitive diversity” it provides, random selection can be an “epistemically superior mode of selection of representatives”, as “decisions taken by the many are more likely to be right than decisions taken by the few40. Indeed, sortition give an assembly with a greater diversity of experiences and social profiles creating a stronger collective intelligence. (competence and efficiency D. Courant)
….
Selection is an important part of social systems. The principle is simple: when there is something, a good, a task, a position, wanted by too many people or undesired but necessary to the collective, a selection process is needed … ( Modes of selection – D. Courant )
….
we distinguish four principles or potentialities of sortition:
– equality,
– impartiality,
– representativeness and
– legitimacy:
…. But sortition does not have a single nature, and its formal principles can be enhanced or diminished depending on the institutional architecture it is embedded in. Those principles are potentialities, there are not all or always present each time sortition is used, nor with the same intensity. However, those potentialities are to be compared to those produced by the other modes of selection ceteris paribus, in a similar deliberative framework, those four democratic principles would be stronger if using sortition (III Democratic principles – D. Courant) .
…
Then we have to compare the sortition system used with three other selection’s modes: election, nomination and certification …
….
The conclusion is that the system using sortition for a ‘selection’ has to be ‘better’ compared with the other modes of selection. Even when the use of it has no link with ‘democracy’ when we use the Arnstein ladder for the definition of ‘democracy’. Nevertheless it is in our interest (sortition at legislative level) that those systems using sortition are carefully crafted in order to avoid that those implementations give sortition a bad name.
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We’ve gone over this many times, but the key point is that none of the cases that Landemore cites indicate that sortition is the best way of harnessing cognitive diversity. And I’ve just demonstrated why none of Dmitri’s other principles apply to this example.
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Keith:> Well, like it or not, sortition will be used for all kind of purposes in society and we better try to find a way to evaluate those events. For our own benefit. Otherwise those events will stay an ivory tower for specialists who can claim and do whatever they want. I think that there are enough working examples and experiments we can use to develop such an instrument or at least we can try to do so. For me Dimitri’s paper provides a good start. Or at least what I read in it, maybe this is something else then he had the intention to write but that makes it interesting. (I think I have to (re)read Landemore ;-) )
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Paul:> we better try to find a way to evaluate those events
I agree completely — and this one fails all of Dmitri’s four tests.
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