Varoufakis explains how citizen councils can revolutionize democracy

Posted on April 21, 2023 by Yoram Gat

It was recently noted here that Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece and leader of the Greek MeRA25 party, proposed a “monetary supervision jury” for controlling the central bank. It turns out that for Varoufakis citizen councils should serve in similar roles controlling public sector entities across the state bureaucracy.

A short clip on the YouTube channel of the DiEM25 movement shows a segment from a speech by Varoufakis in the Greek Parliament advocating for wide use of citizen councils, “mostly allotted but with elected members as well”. Varoufakis proposes that such bodies should select the managers of public sector organizations and monitor their performance. According to Varoufakis deliberative citizen councils would provide an alternative to both the corruption and inefficiency of capitalism and the corruption and inefficiency of statism by combining “the best of the state with civil society”.

Filed under: Elections, Proposals, Sortition |

2 Responses

Yoram Gat, on April 24, 2023 at 5:23 pm said:

In my opinion the fact that a prominent political figure like Varoufakis puts the institution of (partly) allotted bodies for controlling the entire state bureaucracy as a main part of his agenda is a very significant development. It is much more significant, it seems to me, than the the various low-powered applications that have become the standard agenda of sortition advocates, and possibly even more important than the occasional somewhat high-prominence (but narrow-agenda and short lived) bodies such as the Irish constitutional bodies or the French CCC.

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DiEM25 creates a deliberative democracy collective | Equality by lot, on May 12, 2023 at 9:49 am said:

[…] Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. In a recent speech in the Greek parliament, Varoufakis presented allotted bodies as a central proposal of his […]

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