Van Reybrouck: Belgium’s democratic experiment

Posted on April 27, 2019 by Yoram Gat

David Van Reybrouck has a piece in politico.eu about the new sortition-based bodies in Belgium.

Those looking for a solution to the wave of anger and distrust sweeping Western democracies should have a look at an experiment in European democracy taking place in a small region in eastern Belgium.

Starting in September, the parliament representing the German-speaking region of Belgium will hand some of its powers to a citizens’ assembly drafted by lot. It’ll be the first time a political institution creates a permanent structure to involve citizens in political decision making.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Applications, Press, Sortition | 1 Comment »

Delanoi: Sortition does not replace elections, it complements them

Posted on April 25, 2019 by Yoram Gat

Simon Blin interviews Gil Delanoi in the Liberation. Original in French.

Gil Delanoi, a researcher at Sciences-Po, a sortition expert, promotes this procedure as a fundamental improvement of the democratic system, provided that it is used in an ad-hoc fashion. [Editor’s note: This sub-headline seems to be a misrepresentation of Delanoi’s position – see below. – YG.]

Gil Delannoi, professor at Sciences-Po and researcher at Cevipof, has just published a new book Sortition: how should it be used? (Sciences-Po Press). According to him, this procedure, if it is well-established, could improve the representation of the diversity of the electorate.

How can sortition cure the malaise of democratic representation and participation?

As opposed to voting, sortition does not aggregate voices but rather subsamples people from a group in order to delegate a task to them, whether a deliberative, an advisory or a decision-making task. From this perspective, sortition complements voting because it allows breaking out of the legislative logic where only representatives make the law and are concerned with it and where the administration applies it. This way, sortition does not replace elections but completes them. It is certainly possible to combine the two processes.

What form should it take?

Sortition is adaptable. There are at least as many ways to allot as there are to vote. It all depends on the objective that is sought. Sortition can be mandatory or volutary. In the first case it is a duty, in the other it is a right. The size of the sample is also very important. If the allotment aims to construct a mirror of the population, it is preferable to have a large number of people involved in order to create a detailed picture. That said, even if we allot a few people, we already a sample that is more representative than that of a simple vote, particularly in terms of age, gender and profession. We may need allotments of size 10,000 or 1,000 people. Logically, the larger the number the more accurate is the representation. In the case of court juries, where sortition is regularly used in France, it is evident that the group must be able to really have a discussion. Here the optimal size is on the order of 10 to 50 people. The larger the sample, the more difficult this is.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Athens, Elections, History, Participation, Press, Sortition | 80 Comments »

The Principle of Rotation

Posted on April 24, 2019 by johnedwardtaylor

Let me share part of the section called “The Principle of Sortition” in E. S. Staveley’s 1972 book, Greek and Roman Voting and Elections. In spite of its title, the section might better have been titled, “The principle of rotation,” since Staveley argues that rotation in Athens was “more fundamental by far” than sortition. I am not an academic, and I would be interested in hearing what the reception was for Staveley’s thesis among his colleagues. Only a few reviews of the book are available to me, and they seem to have been written by specialists in Roman rather than Greek politics. He seems to be shooting across their bow. Was anybody listening?

It certainly stands to reason mathematically that the more posts are available only once in a lifetime, and the shorter their term limit, the more rotation would become the operating principle. This would set up what the Romans later would call a Cursus Honorum, a career trajectory where the average Athenian would gain active experience in every aspect of local governance, from finance to foreign policy. Unlike the Cursus Honorum, though, the order or life stage in which the citizen held a position mattered less than variety of exposure to various workshops in what Pericles called the “school of Athens.”
Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Athens, Elections, Sortition | 33 Comments »

Sénat Citoyen and Citizens’ Assemblies

Posted on April 22, 2019 by Yoram Gat

Sénat Citoyen is a French organization whose manifesto offers the following principle:

For every authority, government or elected assembly, there must exist an allotted citizen assembly which monitors, creates proposals and controls this authority.

Citizens’ Assemblies is a book by the Polish activist Marcin Gerwin which he describes as “a step-by-step presentation of how to organise a citizens’ assembly, with the primary focus on the city level”. It is available online for free in 6 languages.

On the website Gerwin lists “Basic standards for organizing citizens’ assemblies”, which are:

  1. Random selection of participants
  2. Demographic representation
  3. Independent coordination
  4. Citizens’ assembly can invite experts
  5. Inclusion of a widest practical range of perspectives
  6. Inviting all stakeholders
  7. Deliberation
  8. Openness
  9. Sufficient time for reflection
  10. Impact
  11. Transparency
  12. Visibility

Filed under: Elections, Proposals, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Politics as a profession

Posted on April 19, 2019 by Yoram Gat

In a recent debate with Etienne Chouard, among quite a few fallacies and hypocritical talking points, Raphaël Enthoven makes an interesting point regarding the role of training in politics (about 23 minutes into the recording) [my transcription and translation, corrections welcome]:

The fact is that, as Plato argues, politics is a profession.

[ Chourad interjects: “Plato was an aristocrat!” ]

Politics is a profession, even if you ask a democratic such as yourself. Even if you ask yourself. How would you explain the place that you accord in [your book] “Notre Cause Commune” [“Our Common Cause”], in your work, in your blog, always, since 2005, to constituent workshops? The fundamental role that you assign to instruction and to training of citizens? Isn’t it in order to give citizens the means to exercise correctly, properly and competently (if you excuse the adverb) the powers they were temporarily entrusted with?

It is obvious that politics is a profession and requires information. This profession, this information, must be open to all. There should be an equality of opportunity, there should be a wealth of opportunities for democratic practice and learning, including through sortition. Saying, however, that the equality of rights, the equality of competence would justify that each and every person would govern successively, as they did in Athens – a very small city – appointed by sortition and as a part time job, ignores the fact that it is the exercise of power that relieves incompetence, unprofessionalism, and lack of skills.

Filed under: Ballot measures, Books, Elections, Mass action, Press, Sortition, Theory | 1 Comment »

An unpublished column on sortition and Brexit

Posted on April 17, 2019 by Nicholas Gruen

From around January this year I’ve tried to get the column below published – in the Guardian UK where my previous column was published. Unfortunately, and even after endless cajoling via the Guardian at this end, I couldn’t get a reply which is piss poor but there you go. Martin Wolf tried for me at the FT. At least they responded – but with a ‘no’, which is fair enough given the oversupply of articles on Brexit. Anyway as it fades into irrelevance and the Brexit Brouhaha Burbles on I thought I’d pop it up here.

The result of the 2016 Brexit referendum looms over the career politicians assembled in the Palace of Westminster as the black monolith loomed over the apes in the movie 2001.

It’s taken over thirty months of thrashing through actual options – as opposed to the wild partisan imaginings in the campaign – for a ghastly, if entirely foreseeable realisation to dawn. Despite the people’s clear instruction to Leave, any specific way of doing so would command far less than the 48 percent vote for Remain.

In the teeth of the greatest crisis of British statecraft since World War II, the institutional imperatives of political combat ensure the politicians perform rather than deliberate. Not only Corbyn, but extraordinarily enough, May has clung to fantasies about getting a better deal, though the end game will presumably see her change her tune.

How did it come to this? Continue reading →

Filed under: Elections, Press, Sortition | 7 Comments »

Legislature by Lot: Transformative Designs for Deliberative Governance

Posted on April 11, 2019 by Brett Hennig

[This is repost from https://www.bretthennig.com/legislature_by_lot_published]

Legislature by LotLegislature by Lot: Transformative Designs for Deliberative Governance has just been published by Verso a few days ago. I contributed a chapter, “Who Needs Elections? Accountability, Equality, and Legitimacy Under Sortition” that questions the premise of the opening chapter of the book: that sortition should only accompany an elected chamber.

However, even as I’m excited by the publication of this new book, I’m thinking today about Erik Olin Wright, who conceived of the “Real Utopias” series and brought so many challenging and brilliant insights to this and his many other works, but sadly passed away recently. It was another book in this series, Deepening Democracy, which he co-edited as well, that started me down the path I’m now on. It was such an honour to meet him and get to know him – and to sing “Bella Ciao” together with him at his house a few short years ago.

Filed under: Academia, Books, Proposals, Sortition | 1 Comment »

55% of the online participants in the French Grand Debate support sortition

Posted on April 9, 2019 by Yoram Gat

Le Monde reports that 500,000 people have participated in the French “Grand Debate” by submitting an online form. Of those, 55% indicated that they would support “involving citizens in public decisions using sortition”.

Filed under: Participation, Press, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Sortition at the 2019 ECPR General Conference

Posted on April 9, 2019 by Yoram Gat

The 2019 ECPR General Conference will be held at the University of Wrocław, Poland in September. It will feature hundreds of panels and thousands of papers. One of those papers will deal with sortition:

Sortition as a Finalite Politique for EU Democracy
Paweł Glogowski, University of Wrocław

Abstract: The issue of democratic deficit in the European Union has been present in the academic and political debate for many years now. The first natural reaction to that complex and multilevel problem was to strengthen democracy known as a representative system. The cure was supposed to come primarily through better representation of citizens’ in the European Parliament. As we know, this has not helped the EU in solving the issue. In fact, together with the dynamic increase of EP powers, the voters turn out in European elections has dropped. In consequence, the Union proposed to fight the democratic deficit with participatory democracy, and such innovative tool like European Citizens’ Initiative. Seven years of experience show that this instruments has also failed to empower and engage EU citizens. Hence, this article will try to answer the question whether deliberative democracy is the last chance to solve the issue of EU’s democratic deficit. The author will examine the pros and cons of sortition on a transnational level, and if this kind of democratic innovation has any chance to heal democracy in the European Union.

Filed under: Academia, Sortition | 2 Comments »

McKay: Combining mini publics and multi stage popular votes

Posted on April 7, 2019 by paulnollen

The section ‘Combining mini publics and multi stage popular votes’ in Spencer McKay’s new paper ‘Building a better referendum’ presents an interesting overview of several systems where the referendum is combined with mini publics.

Pairing a multi-stage popular vote with a mini-public – a process I refer to as an iterated popular vote (IPV) – may aid in bridging the gap between micro-deliberation and macro-participation. The IPV is an attempt at institutional design inspired by the notion of “designed coupling,” which seeks to “find the optimal strength of linkages between different parts of a deliberative system” (Hendriks, 2016, p. 55).

Filed under: Academia, Ballot measures, Proposals, Sortition | 4 Comments »

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