Maurice Pope’s The Keys to Democracy is now available

Posted on March 18, 2023 by Yoram Gat

Hugh Pope writes:

I’m writing to share details about the publication of the book that has been my special project over the past 18 months: The Keys to Democracy: Sortition as a New Model for Citizen Power, by my late father, the classicist Maurice Pope.

The back story: my dad wrote the book in the 1980s, but, perhaps because it was ahead of its time, his usual publishers wouldn’t take it. We had thought the work was lost well before he passed away in 2019. But two years ago, while sorting through his library, my mother found the typescript.

As my brother Quentin and I edited the text, we consulted several experts and were urged on by messages back telling us that the book was “masterful”, “bold”, “visionary” and more (you can see all their endorsements here). Dr. Hélène Landemore of Yale University and Cambridge classicist Dr. Paul Cartledge generously wrote a preface and an introduction. With many such helping hands, we found a publisher at UK philosophy specialists Imprint Academic. The book went on sale on 7 March.

Back in the 1980s, few others proposed that randomly selected citizens could, after proper information and deliberation, reach better decisions than elected politicians. This open field is perhaps one reason for the book’s unique and accessible combination of the history, mathematics, philosophy and future of sortition. My dad’s ideal – in which random selection could be the decision-making heart of all branches of government – also makes him more radical than most other thinkers writing today.
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Filed under: Academia, Books, Proposals, Sortition | 2 Comments »

Sintomer: The Government of Chance

Posted on March 17, 2023 by Yoram Gat

French political scientist Yves Sintomer has published a new book dealing with sortition called The Government of Chance: Sortition and Democracy from Athens to the Present.

The publisher, Cambridge University Press, provides a(n apparently auto-translated) book description:

Electoral democracies are struggling. Sintomer, in this instructive book, argues for democratic innovations. One such innovation is using random selection to create citizen bodies with advisory or decisional political power. ‘Sortition’ has a long political history. Coupled with elections, it has represented an important yet often neglected dimension of Republican and democratic government, and has been reintroduced in the Global North, China and Mexico. The Government of Chance explores why sortation is returning, how it is coupled with deliberation, and why randomly selected ‘minipublics’ and citizens’ assemblies are flourishing. Relying on a growing international and interdisciplinary literature, Sintomer provides the first systematic and theoretical reconstruction of the government of chance from Athens to the present. At what conditions can it be rational? What lessons can be drawn from history? The Government of Chance therefore clarifies the democratic imaginaries at stake: deliberative, antipolitical, and radical, making a plaidoyer for the latter.

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Filed under: Sortition, Athens, Elections, Books, Juries, Academia, Deliberation | 4 Comments »

Seminar: CAs instead of elections?

Posted on March 11, 2023 by Owen Shaffer

Democracy Without Elections is sponsoring a seminar titled “Citizens’ Assemblies and Lottery Selection as the Democratic Alternative to Elections.” It will be led by Terry Bouricius who, along with David Schecter, developed the nested assemblies model that was the basis for their implementation in the Ostbelgien region of Belgium. Topics include:

  • Why elections don’t work
  • History of democratic lotteries (sortition)
  • Why replacing elections with lotteries does not work
  • Transition possibilities from elections to lotteries
  • Using lotteries in boards, co-ops, condo associations, etc.

In this 4 hour seminar, you can review what you know and deepen your knowledge. Invite other folks who may be interested!

It will be held on Saturday 8 April at 12:30pm Eastern, 9:30 am Pacific, 6:30 pm Central Europe. Sign up here in advance.

Filed under: Elections, meeting, Sortition | 4 Comments »

“A Random Group of People” editorial in Seattle and town hall on Citizens’ Assemblies

Posted on March 5, 2023 by Ahmed R. Teleb

the Stranger, perhaps Seattle’s most widely read newspaper, has recently published an editorial by Ansel Herz, a former Congressional staffer in DC, now serving as communications director for Democracy Next, recently founded by Claudia Chwalisz (of OECD & Parisian Citizens’ Assembly fame).

In fact, this is what “democracy” actually is. In the 5th century B.C., the Greeks of ancient Athens coined demokratia to describe their carefully designed lottery system, under which any citizen was able to serve in parliamentary, administrative, and judicial bodies. Demokratia is not politicians, elections, and parties; the Greeks would have abhorred those, as many ordinary people—perhaps even you—do to this day.

“Their greatest gift was their passion for democracy,” observed the Trinidadian writer C.L.R. James in his 1956 essay, “Every Cook Can Govern”. The Athenians believed that elections were undemocratic; Aristotle called them “oligarchic.” It’s common sense that when only a handful of people can hold power, corruption is likely.

The Greeks recognized that whoever runs for elected office in the first place usually projects a peculiar power-seeking personality type. Having spent a lot of time around candidates who’ve won and lost, let me tell you: the Greeks were right.

After introducing sortition, Herz mentioned America in One Room, the Irish Citizens’ Assembly, and Brussels’s recent introduction of its own permanent CA.

In 2019’s “America In One Room”, for example, Stanford researchers organized an assembly of 526 Americans to deliberate for a long weekend. The group did not combust from anger and tension, nor did the participants retreat to their bubbles and cling to their beliefs. They found common ground around issues of trade, wages, immigration, and more. Democrats reported a 13-point increase in positive feelings toward Republicans; Republicans felt 14 points more favorably toward Democrats. Ninety-five percent of participants said they “learned a lot about people very different from me,” and 98 percent said they found the experience “valuable.”

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Filed under: Athens, meeting, Participation, Proposals, Sortition, Theory | Tagged: , , , , , , | 9 Comments »

Using sortition to select Board Directors

Posted on March 5, 2023 by Owen Shaffer

Democracy Without Elections uses sortition to select all directors of its governing board since the beginning, December 2020. Are there any other boards that exclusively use sortition? Is sortition used to choose members of governing bodies in nonprofits, education or business anywhere else? Are there examples of using sortition to select some members?

Filed under: Applications, Sortition | Tagged: , | 4 Comments »

Hugh Pope on the Belgian Citizens’ Dialogue

Posted on March 1, 2023 by Yoram Gat

Hugh Pope has a piece in the The New European about the permanent allotted body in the German speaking community in Belgium.

If we are trying to fix our “broken politics”, is the solution really just another set of politicians? If the electoral system is at fault, might the process of government work better if it were run by a group of randomly selected citizens?

Liesa Scholzen is a politician whose constituents are the 70,000 German speakers on Belgium’s eastern border. People with an interest in new political systems are paying close attention to Scholzen’s hilltop parliament in Eupen, Ostbelgien. That’s because in 2021, as part of its Citizens’ Dialogue initiative, Ostbelgien inaugurated the world’s first official, permanent legislative body chosen not by votes, but by lottery.

“The Citizens’ Dialogue” […] is led by a standing council of citizens, drawn by lot. The 24-member council serves for 18 months, and they choose the topics which are then debated by separate Citizens’ Assemblies. These assemblies have 25-50 members, also chosen by lot, who make their recommendations following two to three days of deliberation. Members meet in the evening or at weekends, and receive expenses plus €50 to €95 (£44-£84) per session. All participants are chosen from the German-speaking community.

An interesting paragraph discusses the matter of the rate of acceptance:

[O]nly 5% to 10% of invitations to attend Citizens’ Assemblies are initially accepted. This is because people have no knowledge of them, no time to spare or just think the invitation letters are a hoax. Organisers usually ensure that those who do volunteer are representative through “stratification”, a second layer of random selection that balances gender, language, age, education and other criteria. But [activist Juliane] Baruck from Es geht LOS [a German organization promoting sortition] goes out knocking on the doors of those who don’t respond. “We trust the lottery to get a truly representative sample, so we keep trying,” she said. “I don’t try to convince those chosen. I ask them: ‘What do you need to join in?’ Already, we’ve got the positive response rate up to 22%.”

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Filed under: Applications, Press, Sortition | 25 Comments »