Many of us are part of a movement that melds three ideas: sortition, deliberation and democracy. But we don’t have a widely-accepted name for our movement.
Deliberative democracy could be that term. However, it has a major deficiency: outside our movement it only means two of our three central tenets. I did not find any mention of the terms lottery or sortition in the entry for deliberative democracy in Britannica, Wikipedia or The Free Dictionary. In other words, the references that many people consult to learn about the topic don’t reflect our movement.
Is there an effort to make changes to popular reference sources? Is deliberative democracy the best term for our movement? Should the term deliberative democracy embrace sortition?
Filed under: Deliberation, Sortition |
Adam Cronkright
Ali
Ahmed R. Teleb
avanderven
avergne
Alex Kovner
azakaras
Brett Hennig
campbellwallace
Simon Threlkeld
Nick Coccoma
codyhipskind
Common Lot Sortitionist
Conall Boyle
constitutionalism
davidschecter
graytmatter
gtridimas
H.J. Hofkirchner
John Burnheim
jgarry20151
johnedwardtaylor
johnhuang865
Jonathan Crock
keithsutherland
Jacob Richter
lukewhito
SimonPek
Nicholas Gruen
Owen Shaffer
Patrick Chalmers
Paul Gölz
paulnollen
peterstone
Pierre-Etienne Vandamme
pronfeld
qcollective
rcaze
richwbrown
Roger Knights
roslynfuller
Pierre-Etienne Vandamme
shaharavin
tbouricius
Ted Wachtel
Joshua Laferriere
Wayne Liebman
Yoram Gat
Oliver Milne
Equality by lot 
I’ve been pondering exactly the same question for months. A commonly-used and familiar term would help to spread the idea amongst the citizenry that much faster, and thereby accelerate its implementation (hopefully!).
I evangelise to strangers whenever the opportunity presents itself, and I usually start with the term “citizens’ assemblies”, because that seems to be the most likely to have been heard previously by the person. I will usually then throw the word “sortition” into conversation after that.
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To be honest. I am a classical republican like Philip Pettit and people like us have been warming to the idea of sortition as an essential feature of our mixed regime. Maybe we should all be classical republicans?
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Most deliberative democrats have little interest in sortition, as their principal concern is the deliberative exchange between free and equal participants, rather than their representativity (statistical or otherwise). Bear in mind that deliberative democracy is the child of the Frankfurt School and people like John Dryzek view representative government as a sellout to liberal constitutionalism. They would also agree with Habermas’s put-down of Dahl’s original sortition proposal, in which he castigates him for ignoring the need for ‘rational’ deliberation, by concerning himself with ‘sociological’ representation, including such factors as ‘the statistical distribution of income, school attendance, and refrigerators’.
Ten years ago I organised a panel on sortition at the Manchester Political Theory Workshop and nobody (including the convenors) had ever heard of it before, but it has now become common parlance. We are shortly due to launch the Journal of Sortition, which will carve out a separate space from the Journal of Deliberative Democracy. The only deliberative democrat I can think of who pays anything more than lip-service to sortition is Dahl’s protege, Jim Fishkin. Although Helene Landemore has embraced it of late, she has no real interest in representation, or even democratic legitimacy.
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To be blunt, “deliberative democracy” is a worse than useless avenue or trend in political science. It obfuscationist rhetoric and endlessly malleable theory has never produced anything of theoretical or practical value. I don’t think being associated with this trend serves the cause of sortition or democracy. Names like “sortitionism”, “anti-electoralism”, or “democracy by sampling” would all be much more useful than trying to hitch our wagon to the term “deliberative democracy”.
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The terminology has been a perennial problem in the English language. Some (like Adam Cronkright) have settled on “civic lotteries.” (Note that the term “citizens’ assemblies” excludes non-citizen legal residents, which in some jurisdictions can be a huge portion of the population.)
I agree that “deliberative democracy” is a bad choice. While many sortition advocates, such as many of those in Democracy R&D have settled on the term, its origin has nothing to do with sortition, and some deliberative democracy theorists are hostile to it. While improved deliberation among the selected participants has been a major selling point for ADVISORY “citizens’ assemblies” in recent years, that is only a tiny sliver of sortition’s potential.
Sortition has other democratic benefits unrelated to policy making or deliberation, stemming from its anti-corruption, rotation and impartiality aspects, in addition to representativeness. For example, juries might be charged with regularly reviewing the performance of a police chief, with the power to fire them. Or a jury might recruit and hire a chief executive for a state, union or NGO, instead of using elections.
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Agree.
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It looks like there are 2 reasons to not use “deliberative democracy” in our movement. The lack of sortition in public reference sources is misleading to newbies. The ongoing disagreement in the deliberative democracy research arena is a distraction to our movement.
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I have been mulling about that one recently, too. My last experiment practically, as some of you may remember, came under “Open Democracy” (campaigned long before Landemore’s book). While currently am currently not very active on the topic, I think my next effort will be named on the key meta level above “sortition, deliberation and democracy.”
Let me explain: Meanwhile I have come to think that the biggest hindrance for such a system is particular interest. Political parties and actors everywhere try to rubber stamp their partial interest with citizen juries, Austria’s abomination of a supposed “climate jury” being a prime example. This makes our endeavour so difficult (including difficult to understand) in a system which currently balances partial interests.
The real change needed therefore is putting the utmost priority on a truly holistic “General Interest” of the Republic as a whole. This must be the exclusive yardstick of the sortitioned whose task it is to transform it to the (oft misunderstood) General Will which aims for it. Of course they may err, but as long as the goal is clear, they can work towards it.
In Austria, as speakers of the German language, we have the word “Schwurgericht” or “Geschworenengericht” for a “Jury Criminal Court Process” which emphasises their oath to follow the laws. On our topic, the sortitioned must be sworn to vote as per their sense of what the General Interest is, abstracting from individual and partial interest.
Hence, I am thinking of starting the next one under the moniker “Schwurdemokratie”, “Geschworenendemokratie”.
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>Political parties and actors everywhere try to rubber stamp their partial interest with citizen juries.
Yes, and this will discredit the sortition movement before it has even got of the ground. One of the most interesting papers at the recent Contre le Tirage au Sort? conference revealed that the recent Council on the Future of Europe was just another excuse for the EU to get its own way by recruiting an entirely unrepresentative sample, which was then informed and moderated by fellow travellers.
>On our topic, the sortitioned must be sworn to vote as per their sense of what the General Interest is, abstracting from individual and partial interest.
Not really feasible, as it presupposes people have the ability (or desire) to park their prejudices at the door. Rousseau acknowledged that it would require some highly illiberal interventions to ascertain the General Will, as people would need to be “forced to be free”. The aggregation of informed preferences is probably the best we can hope for.
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Hm. That may or may not be what happens in practice. If a stratified random sample of the populace makes decosions in its pwn interest, however, that is likely to be a reasonable indication of the public interest.
Most importantly, however, is the following question:
Would such a decision-making body be more or less likely to decide IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST than the existing handful of career politicians?
ie. Would it be an improvement?
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And how would you know (in any non-tautological way)?
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Keith: “And how would you know (in any non-tautological way)?”
By following Popper’s principle: A policy has an objective. An objective has ex-ante desired key results and undesired ones. Ex-post we learn the real outcome. By comparing the two, we know.
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Did Popper ever apply that principle to political decision making?
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No idea, Keith. But ignoring the persona, I trust it’s clear now how we’d know.
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It was a rhetorical question. I can’t imagine the author of The Open Society and It’s Enemies having any time for epistemic “democracy”.
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Hm. I quite like the idea of squeezing the word “civic” in there, for whatever common name we end up using.
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Keith: “And how would you know (in any non-tautological way)?”
Of course, I din’t know without evidence (yet), but it seems fairly intuitive to me that a group representing a populace would make decisions in the interest of that populace better than a handful of career politicians, all of whom tend to be in the same demographic as each other.
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The way to determine whether government is working in the public interest is to ask the population at large.
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el_gallo_azul
So majority preferences indicate the general good, and these are determined by demographic factors? Rousseau would not have agreed, and it’s worth noting that Surowiecki claimed that the wisdom of crowds does not apply to political decision making, as democracy is not a “mechanism for revealing the public interest” (2005, pp. 271). That’s why he described Fishkin’s project as “quixotic” (p. 260).
As for Yoram’s solution, it’s strange to hear this from the convenor of a blog devoted to sortition. IMO the best we can claim is that, subject to certain demanding conditions, sortition is a good way of determining (stochastically) the aggregate informed preferences of a target population. It’s certainly better than asking everyone (assuming we want to go beyond tautology), but whether or not that constitutes the “general good” is another matter.
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Yoram>> “The way to determine whether government is working in the public interest is to ask the population at large.”
So you are saying, “asking” the population “at large”? Let’s discuss this in light of the following evidence: “Public opinion polls have consistently shown overwhelming support (70 percent or higher) for what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.”
As a consequence, Yoram, would you conclude that the Russo-Ukrainian war is in the pubic interest?
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> As a consequence, Yoram, would you conclude that the Russo-Ukrainian war is in the pubic interest?
People’s privileged position about determining the public’s interest is in regards to their situation as a whole, not in regards to particular points of public policy. The public has no way to judge the effects of particular points of policy. That’s exactly what an allotted body is good for.
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Yoram> “The public’s interest is in regards to their situation as a whole, not in regards to particular points of public policy.”
We could discuss if the former is different from the consequences of a multiplicity of the latter, but let’s focus and stay on your track:
Can you agree that Mr. Putin is the top representative of the Russian government as a whole? Let’s use him as a proxy for the opinion of the population at large. Here is the evidence: https://www.statista.com/statistics/896181/putin-approval-rating-russia/
We can see from the chart that that the “population at large” when asked for their support for their government has risen dramatically since the start of the Russo-Ukrainan war, from a low of 60% to approximately 80%. (For comparison, Mr. Biden has 42%.)
As a consequence of this response to “asking the population at large” about “the whole”, Yoram, do you conclude that the Russian government is working in the public interest?
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Any changes since the start of the war are beside the point. They are based on unsubstantiated perceptions. What is important is the long term situation.
So, yes, to the extent that the statistics that you cite are reliable, the Russian government, with its ~70% approval, serves the Russian public interest significantly better than the US government, with its much lower approval, serves the US public interest.
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One small remark about the use of this example, we have to consider that there is no freedom of expression or free media in Russia. In any war the truth is the first victim.
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Paul,
> there is no freedom of expression or free media in Russia
The West does have free media? Just as a reminder: that’s the same media that tell us that elections are democratic.
As for freedom of expression: If the Russians are so oppressed as to feel uncomfortable saying their real opinions about their government, then they must be the bravest people on earth to have 30% of them defy the intimidation and express disapproval of their all-powerful government.
> In any war the truth is the first victim.
While it’s certainly true that war-related “information” is highly manipulative, it is important to realize that there is very little “truth” (i.e., a representative view of the world) in the media in “normal” days as well (but then again, “war” is our normal situation).
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Public opinion polls are an invalid means of judging anything. It’s the same way we advocate that instead of using simple referendums with advertising and off-the-cuff opinion, we use random selection that then includes becoming well-informed (not informed by the government officials or controlled media) and deliberating in developing proposals, etc. As Fishkin says, it is good to move from mere public opinion to informed and considered public judgment.
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The notion that people’s judgement of their own lives is systematically uninformed or unconsidered is thoroughly undemocratic. People may have, and often do have, uninformed or unconsidered views about matters that are beyond their personal experiences, but their judgement of their own affairs is authoritative.
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Yoram>> “their judgement of their own affairs is authoritative.”
Not really, Yoram, it has noting to do with “undemocratic”, Terry refers to a proven and scientific fact. It is simply a fallacy that asking people you will get your true answers, dozens of proven biases and distortions work against it. For the question which you seem to have in mind (their satisfaction or happiness), people have powerful coping mechanisms which distort objective analysis and measurement.
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What is in a name indeed. I don’t know what a “simple referendums” is. A plebiscite (referendum at governments initiative) is not regarded as a democratic instrument. For the deliberative properties of the “facultative referendum” see Alice el-Wakil https://aliceel-wakil.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2017-el-Wakil_The-Deliberative-Potential-of-Facultative-Referendums.pdf . For the different modes of referendum see Altman https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288427223_Direct_Democracy_Worldwide . All those different events have nothing to see with the “opinion poll” that gives us a “picture” at one moment with the information available.
And I have the impression that the “opinion poll” is what we are talking about.
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Having absented myself from this forum for a year or so, I’m disappointed (but unsurprised) to see that the debate has not moved on in any significant respect. This is one of the reasons for my scepticism regarding the potential of deliberative democracy. The forceless force of the better argument is still running into a brick wall.
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> people have powerful coping mechanisms which distort objective analysis and measurement.
From which the experts would be benevolent enough to liberate them so that they would be able to understand the world around them and to rule themselves. Democracy!
But maybe this supposed “liberation” would be just the opposite, i.e., manipulation? How would the people ever know if they are liberated or manipulated when they are so incompetent as to be unable to understand the world without being guided by others?
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Regarding Putin’s approval rating, part of that is likely to be the result of misinformation, and partly through self-interest.
For example, I suspect that Queen Elizabeth 1, Kings Georges, and Queen Victoria would have had very high approval ratings by the Brits, as the UK accumulated wealth and opportunities from countries around the globe, at the expense of the people from those source countries.
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El_gallo_azui,
If you look at Yoram’s writings you will see that the public approval and collective self-interest are synonymous. Whether there is any connection to moral concepts like the common good or the the general will is another matter. How to operationalise these moral concepts is even more challenging, assuming you don’t buy into Hubertus’s epistemic positivism. And all this is a long way removed from sortition per se.
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Yoram, I do not think that you really think that I think what I think that your sarcastic comment implies.
My point is simple: It is not enough to just “ask” them, it needs several specialised, much more involved deliberative or even contradictorial processes than one of those silly opinion surveys. Anybody who has ever done one practically (Terry?) knows the many issues.
And we need to root an important portion of these questions to comparing citizens’ ex-ante intended future vs. the world’s verifiable ex-post reality (which Keith usually will conflate with epistemic democracy regardless how often it is explained).
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Hubertus:> The real change needed therefore is putting the utmost priority on a truly holistic “General Interest” of the Republic as a whole. This must be the exclusive yardstick of the sortitioned whose task it is to transform it to the (oft misunderstood) General Will which aims for it. . .On our topic, the sortitioned must be sworn to vote as per their sense of what the General Interest is, abstracting from individual and partial interest.
Given that the oath no longer carries the binding force that it had in antiquity, this sounds fanciful. Given that Rousseau argued that the forging of civic republicanism required extremely illiberal measures, this would be even more challenging for modern deeply-divided cultures. It strikes me that the best we can hope for is informed preferences. That is Fishkin’s method — Surowiecki’s claim that his project was “quixotic” was on account of his resort to concepts like the General Interest.
>comparing citizens’ ex-ante intended future vs. the world’s verifiable ex-post reality
Sure, and that happens (to an extent) in any democratic system. Alex Kovner’s Superminority Principle argues any “team” (new-style political party) with a history of failed policies would be relegated to the bottom of the league table.
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> it needs several specialised, much more involved deliberative or even contradictorial processes than one of those silly opinion surveys
That sounds to me exactly like the “we will tell you how to think” that I was describing above.
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Yoram>exactly like the “we will tell you how to think” that I was describing above.
Interesting. So your accusation is not „we will tell you *what* to think” but „we will tell you *how* to think”?
While firmly rejecting the former, I indeed firmly espouse the latter for a true democracy.
Just like in a court case a fair trial requires due process, which needs exact and well crafted methods *how* to run and it properly, and it’s certainly not just like an opinion poll of the jurors.
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Hm. Would sortition be better or worse than living according to decisions made ny a small group of career polticians? I alwats bring myself back to this question whenever I get myself into a quandary.
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> I indeed firmly espouse the latter [telling people how to think] for a true democracy.
But then:
> How would the people ever know if [by being told how to think] they are liberated or manipulated when they are so incompetent as to be unable to understand the world without being guided by others?
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> Would sortition be better or worse than living according to decisions made ny a small group of career polticians?
The response to this question within the standard democratic dogma is that since those politicians were chosen by the people, and since they want to be re-elected, [note that these are two different arguments] then those politicians would do their best to act in accordance with the public interest.
But presumably here we are not making the case against elections (which is common ground here), but rather making the case for or against various alternative arrangements. The fundamental question seems to be “what is democracy?”, or, more practically, “how can we know if one system is more democratic than another?” It seems to me that the only real answer to this question is “by measuring the public’s satisfaction with the system”. Any other answer would imply that people are not able to understand their own affairs, which is an anti-democratic stance.
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True. In principle, it would seem that whoever best represents the general interest would win the election.
Leaving aside the fact that elections always seem to revolve around a few (3, 4, or maybe 5) topical issues, a two-party system actually leads to the governing Party striving not to do ANYTHING, as this might result in the Party being voted out.
This has resulted in every election in my lifetime being a question of whether or not the governing Party will be voted OUT – there is rarely a movement to vote either Party IN.
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Yoram> “by being told how to think … unable to understand the world without being guided by others?”
That sentence mixes up two entirely different matters:
*How* to think: Due process, codified before and independently from all future subject matters. It is led by a *moderator*. This is the methodic/process level.
*What* to think: Contradictorial *expert* witnesses deal with the “world” pro a proposal from a *proposer* or contra, i.e. for the status quo. This is the content/Topic level,
Since you are from IT: think: “Scrum Master” and the scrum process, which is likewise independent from the development at hand.
Clearer?
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> *How* to think [vs.] *What* to think
Determining “how to think” determines “what to think” (otherwise, what’s the point of learning how to think?). How are the people to know if the way they were taught to think (and the thoughts that it leads them to) is a liberating way (“the right way”) or a repressive way?
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> there is rarely a movement to vote either Party IN
Who is voted in matters very little since all parties are part of a ruling elite. Elections by their very nature put power in the hands of an elite. The voters can only choose factions among the elite. This is not a flaw. It is a designed feature of the system, a feature that the designers saw as an advantage over democracy.
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Dear Yoram> “Determining “how to think” determines “what to think” (otherwise, what’s the point of learning how to think?)”
Above, I defined the specific meanings of what you call ‘how’s and ‘what’s, therefore I will can now translate what you just wrote, so we all can understand it:
Yoram writes: “Determining ‘the due process’ determines the ‘pro for a proposal or the contra, i.e. the status quo’.”
Your assertion therefore is illogical. If some thing is ‘determined’ it must be one thing only. If it is still two things – which follows logically from the ‘or’ – it is clearly *not* determined. And obviously, one thing cannot be determined and not determined at the same time.
(PS: As your assertion is already logically flawed, its follow-on question does not make sense, in first place.)
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H.J. Hofkirchner,
What is the purpose of “due process” if not to lead to drawing the “correct conclusions” (in favor, or against) in any particular case?
But in any case, leaving the matter of conclusions aside, you focus on the “due process”, so it must be crucial. But if it is so crucial, then it is important that what is being taught as “due process” is correct. How will the people know if the “due process” that is being taught to them is correct or incorrect?
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Yoram, let’s not leave the matter of conclusions aside, let’s firm it up, before proceeding to this new question about due process.
So, can you agree that we reformulate in the following way: which allows us to perceive and analyse the development over time?
“The ‘due process’ (determined independently and prior to the proposal at hand) *produces* the ‘pro for a proposal or the contra, i.e. the status quo’ (which is still undetermined).”
Do you?
PS: The difference to metaphysical determinism in sloppy language: the improved phrase now can incorporate dynamic cause-and-effect in the real-world, the implications of time, uncertainty, and limited knowledge.
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I am not sure I understand your formulation, so let’s go a step further and use symbols. Let p1, p2 denote possible decision making processes and x1, x2 possible proposals. When we apply a process p1 or p2 to any proposal, such as x1 or x2, we get “in favor” or “against”. So, for example, maybe p1(x1) = “in favor” and p1(x2) = “against”, while p2(x1) = “against” and p2(x2) = “in favor”.
So, if the people adopt a certain process, p1, rather than a different process, p2, then this effectively determines the way that they would respond to any proposal. My question is how will the people know that p1 is “due process” which should be adopted, while p2 is a “false process” and should be rejected, rather than the other way around?
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I will give a hypothetical example to demonstrate why any body (whether allotted or elected) should not decide on the procedures they should use, but that these should be set by a DIFFERENT group of people (also selected by lot in a sortition democracy).
A panel that is exclusively dealing with setting optimal procedures for policy-making bodies selected by lot, has every incentive to assure the procedure will expose the members to a broad range of information, that there will be some sort of fact-checking, and that all members of that policy body will have equal power and access to information, and will not be able to accrue corrupt amounts of power. They want future such bodies to make the best possible decisions for society, not knowing what topics, or what people will be involved.
On the other hand, if a body gets to make their OWN rules and procedures and is going to make a decision on topic A, many members may have an opinion about A before they have been exposed to any contradictory information. An articulate member suggests that to save time they just have that one witness, that guy they recently saw on TV that seemed so smart, and agrees with the prior opinion of a majority of members. Many other members object, but they get out-voted. The efficient, feel-good ratification of their prior opinions carries the day. Since they are setting their own procedures and rules they also decide to double their pay, and extend their terms in office to life terms, arguing that no more such assemblies are needed, because they are doing such a good job (benefitting themselves).
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Yoram:> “How will the people know that p1 is “due process” which should be adopted, while p2 is a “false process” and should be rejected, rather than the other way around?”
I like that, Yoram, we can make things clearer like this. Now remember that our reformulated version helps us to deal with this over time, under limited knowledge and under uncertainty. So let’s add that to your formulation, ok?
Let’s reformulate then:
1. Let’s say that codified process P1 is in force at our current time t1. Ex-ante, the likelihood of a decision “in favour” to adopt X1 as promoting the Common Good is thus prob(P1(X1)). “Against” X1 it follows logically as its inverse which is when we stay with the current status quo X0, so we can also say P1(X1;X0).
2. This actual decision may be epistemically correct or incorrect, again with certain likelihood. This is because information is always incomplete, distributed, partially private.
3. Hence, after the decision we start the feedback loop where we look at predicted impact vs. real impact over time (until the prediction horizon t2 = t1 + some deliberated/ decided observation period an obligatory part of X1) and see what happens. Prediction verification results will be public knowledge by t2, learnings.
3. Rinse repeat for X2.
4. Now, people can err so there can be false positives, which we learn objectively over time until t3 by comparing predictions with outcomes (think OKR).
Now that we are all set, let’s look at your question:
A proposer comes a proposal to change process P1 to P2, arguing “false(P2)<false(P1)". So, our new X is P2. We now do P1(P2) which gives us "in favour" when predicted false(P2) is less than objectively measured false(P1).
So, that's how 'the people' will know that P2 may be a better “due process” than P1 and adopt it.
PS: Obviously, the people (the jury sample) can err with a likelihood of false(P1). If such error is observed (see 4 above) they could have a new proposal P3 where the alternative is to switch back to P1. (They learned objectively that P2 is worse.) Well then they do P2(P3;P1).
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Terry> “On the other hand, if a body gets to make their OWN rules and procedures and is going to make a decision on topic A, many members may have an opinion about A before they have been exposed to any contradictory information.”
Well said, Terry and let’s remember that the reality is even worse: as a recent example, I reported here on the fake Austrian climate jury. There it was not even the body which made its own rules which would have been bad enough. No much worse, it was the Climate Minister, a lady with a Global 2000 background and leading green party executive, who set the process-specific rules and processes. Figure…
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H.J. Hofkirchner,
IIUC, you are describing some supposedly rational and sensible mechanism by which people learn from experience and improve their decision making procedures. All this is nice and fine. But the point is that you asserted:
> people have powerful coping mechanisms which distort objective analysis and measurement.
Presumably these, according to you, will prevent people from employing such a rational and sensible mechanism. To overcome this hurdle, you will have to make an irrational and senseless public accept and internalize a rational and senseless mechanism. How can this be done? How will the people, being irrational and senseless, be able to judge whether what they are being made to accept is really rational and sensible, or mere manipulation?
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These psychological mechanisms (coping, defence, the lot) are not “according to me”, Yoram. Sigmund Freud’s 3-level model gets the honour, and maybe Dan Kahneman’s better evidenced but more limited System 1/2 model.
Why is “asking” satisfaction questions in a simple survey a futile endeavour? From my own (commercial) work on ‘satisfaction’:
a) We asked large samples of people in two culturally highly different countries how ‘satisfied’ they were with their cognitive abilities from 1 (very) to 5 (not at all). Their average was 2.4 (somewhat satisfied).
b) We split this by country, 18-25/35/45/55/65. Each self-report satisfaction average was 2.4.
c) We split this by age groups, 18-25/35/45/55/65. Each self-report satisfaction average was 2.4.
d) We split this by gender, m/f. Each self-report satisfaction average was 2.4.
We got a big surprise, however, when we asked only men how satisfied women are, on average. Or women, how satisfied men are, on average. Then the same across age groups. Feel free to take a guess what changed and how.
Here is another psycho-self-defense survey issue:
When we ask drivers “Do you sometimes exceed the speed limit?” only 10 – 20% answer “Yes”. If we ask drivers “How many percent of drivers sometimes exceed the speed limit?” they answer is very different: “80 to 90 percent do, yes.” So Yoram, which of these two very different survey results would a parliament now use in deciding new road regulations?
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H.J. Hofkirchner,
I note that you have not answered my question:
> How will the people, being irrational and senseless, be able to judge whether what they are being made to accept is really rational and sensible, or mere manipulation?
As for
> which of these two very different survey results would a parliament now use in deciding new road regulations?
let me repeat my point as stated in one of my comments above:
> People’s privileged position about determining the public’s interest is in regards to their situation as a whole, not in regards to particular points of public policy. The public has no way to judge the effects of particular points of policy. That’s exactly what an allotted body is good for.
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*** Russia is an hybrid of polyarchy and autocracy. Not a pure autocracy, otherwise Russians would be “the bravest people on earth to have 30% of them defy the intimidation and express disapproval” of their government, as says Yoram Gat
*** Our forum seems a strange place to discuss the exact formula, anyway not possible to translate into a percentage. I thought our forum is intended for debates about true dêmokratia, which is not a component of the Russian system.
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*** Yoram Gat writes, about a minipopulus drafting a procedure for choices on various subjects by other minipopulus: “How will the people, being irrational and senseless, be able to judge whether what they are being made to accept is really rational and sensible, or mere manipulation? “
*** People, including myself and others in this forum, are not “irrational” (level of rationality = 0), only they may have small or big defects in their rationality.
*** Defects of rationality in choices about a subject will come, at least for an important part, of emotional drives about this subject. Therefore it is not absurd to think that about an abstract subject as procedure these defects will be lesser.
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André,
> *** Yoram Gat writes, about a minipopulus drafting a procedure for choices on various subjects by other minipopulus
No – I was not writing in this context. I was responding to the claim that by H.J. Hofkirchner that people cannot be trusted to judge their own situation and that they need to be taught “how to think”. I was pointing out that starting from this assumption, there can be no democracy. (If people do not know how to think then whoever “teaches them how think” will determine what it is they think and they would have no way to judge if the way they are taught to think is liberating or oppressive.)
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Yoram, „ Hofkirchner that people cannot be trusted to judge their own situation and that they need to be taught “how to think”.
Yoram I strongly protest against your repeated misrepresentations. For example. I have explicitly ‚translated‘ your strange formulations above, yet you continue to misrepresent the establishment and continuous improvement of a citizens‘ parliamentary process by the people with the infantile and misleading ‚teach how to think‘. I am not sure it makes sense to continue such a debate.
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Andre:> I thought our forum is intended for debates about true dêmokratia, which is not a component of the Russian system.
Unfortunately the convenor of this forum defines democracy as any political system of which the people approve. Conventional structural distinctions (polyarchy, autocracy, theocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, etc) are just counting angels on a pinhead, as all these systems would be democratic if citizens believe that the rulers are acting in their interests.
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> Yoram I strongly protest against your repeated misrepresentations
I am not sure in what way “teach how to think” is a misrepresentation of your position. It seems to me I am essentially quoting you verbatim:
> So your accusation is not „we will tell you *what* to think” but „we will tell you *how* to think”?
> While firmly rejecting the former, I indeed firmly espouse the latter for a true democracy.
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So, “you are not sure” why you misrepresent? The several rounds of subsequent elaborations and clarifications were obviously in vain. You chose to “forget” that “how” means ‘due process’, you chose to “forget” even the formal notation. https://equalitybylot.com/2022/11/22/whats-in-a-name/?replytocom=48527#comment-48487
No, you simply jump back to from where we started. Did you also ‘forget’ the tale of Sisyphus in your reading of Classical Greek?
Be it as is, Classical Trolling is probably a better word.
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About the name.
*** I think the best name would be in French “démocratie par mini-peuples”, in Spanish “democracia por mini-pueblos” etc . There may be a problem specific to the English language, with the range corresponding to the word “people”. “Mini-people” could be dwarves, therefore Dahl used “mini-populus”, which is a latinism.
*** “Mini-populus” or analogous is good because it centers the idea on the populus and his sovereignty, and on the statistical representativity of an allotted sample, its mirroring of the populus, and does not center about lottery, randomness, chance etc with their ambivalent halo.
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H.J. Hofkirchner,
> subsequent elaborations and clarifications
Give me a break. At no point did you indicate that you are retracting your “firm espousal” of the idea of “teaching the people how to think”. If you now think this expression does not represent your position, have the intellectual honesty to make it clear that you have changed your position (or at least your terminology) rather than hiding behind “elaborations and clarifications” and pretending that you have been “misrepresented”.
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Troll,> “At no point did you indicate that you are retracting”
I retract nothing. Every single word stands.
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Let the record then speak for itself regarding your claim that your position was misrepresented.
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André: I believe “mini-publcs” would probably suit your purposes in English, but I think that “Democracy by mini-publics”, though correct and descriptive, is a bit ungainly, at 9 syllables’ length.
Perhaps merely the term “mini-publics” could be useful once the concept became widely understood. 🤔
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