One of my favourite discussions so far with journalist, scholar and gentleman Hugh Pope. As readers of this site will know, Hugh has just brought to publication The Keys to Democracy: Sortition as a Model for Citizen Power, a book written by his father in 1990. But being well ahead of its time, the book was unpublishable. It pursued Aristotle’s point that elections installed a governing class and were therefore oligarchic. The institution that democracy represented the people was selection by lot as embodied today in legal juries. And it has a delicious fondness for G. K. Chesterton’s idea that, like a hostess, “democracy is bringing the shy people out”. You’ll also see me learning profound new things — like the fact that one of the things democracy is about is how you change your mind.
If you’d rather just listen to the audio file, it’s here.
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
Jochen Krattenmacher
johnedwardtaylor
johnhuang865
Jonathan Crock
keithsutherland
Jacob Richter
kkoreilly
lukewhito
SimonPek
Nathan El
Nicholas Gruen
Owen Shaffer
Patrick Chalmers
Paul Gölz
peterstone
Pierre-Etienne Vandamme
pronfeld
Emil
rcaze
richwbrown
Roger Knights
roslynfuller
Pierre-Etienne Vandamme
shaharavin
tbouricius
Ted Wachtel
Joshua Laferriere
theodorestathis
towardsautonomyblog
Wayne Liebman
Yoram Gat
Oliver Milne
Equality by lot 
Hugh ended on a very good point. Sortition was not “forgotten” or “lost” because it did not fit with the notion of rationality, or with the notion of consent of the governed. It was deliberately suppressed because it is democratic and therefore antithetical to the objectives of the powerful. Thus the intellectual endeavor undertaken by various writers (including, by the way, Maurice Pope) of trying to “understand” why sortition was not part of the political landscape of the 19th and 20th centuries is a distraction.
This is also a reason not to be so buoyant about the various applications of sortition of the last few years. Are we really supposed to think that the Macrons of this world are happy to let go of their oligarchical power? Is it a mere coincidence that Macron has set up an end-of-life citizen assembly, but did not set up a retirement citizen assembly? Let’s be realistic about what those in power are trying to do with sortition. This is not about striving toward a more democratic system. It is a way legitimate their own power, just like elections are a way to legitimate it.
(By the way, I think that the “People like us” slogan is a really good one. It stops in their tracks very many of the elitist reflexes people have against the idea of sortition.)
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Thanks Yoram,
As ever, you’re very binary about these things. I always try to see people from their point of view. This isn’t me being ‘charitable’ particularly.
The German philosopher Gadamer wrote:
I don’t know how cynical Macron is. He’s a successful politician and he’s interested in power. No surprises there. He may think that sortition is a powerful and useful way to govern in the age of the yellow vests and BLM when protest movements tend to foreground their rage and not so much what they want. And ‘usefulness’ will, presumably be mostly ‘usefulness’ to himself. But knowing plenty of politicians myself, most of them would also like to do a good job by their constituents rather than a bad one. The question is how much. We don’t know, but few politicians are utterly cynical, and almost none start that way.
Macron may want to do as much as he can on climate, but he also doesn’t want to commit electoral suicide. In this sense one can say that the citizens’ assembly he convened is ultimately not being held responsible for its recommendations — it can say what it likes and it’s Macron who’s responsible. It’s Macron who loses if the assembly fancied a bunch of things in its recommendations but those things are not supported by the community when they’re done.
In Australia something like 60% of people were in favour of strong action on climate change in the 2007 election. But when you polled them further you found that that ‘strong action’ didn’t involve them being any worse off. If you took that into account support fell closer to 40%. One of the many, many downsides of an electoral democracy is that it enables the people to outsource responsibility for this kind of ambiguity to their politicians. The politicians always get to be the bad guy while the electorate are as pure as the driven snow — hard working American families — yada yada.
At least from what I’ve seen, Macron’s behaviour is consistent with a good faith politician doing what they can — short of losing power — to do the ‘right’ thing. It’s also consistent with someone far more cynical than that. Who knows. I’m certainly not going to be doing anything assuming Macron is doing his best, but nor am I going to assume he’s not — until and unless I get more information.
And so we continue working away, with whoever might help us to make the world a little better with sortition.
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Yes indeed, I’m with Nick here. The cynics who claim that politicians are only motivated by self-interest need to explain why independently wealthy people like Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt would devote their life to public service.
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Nicholas,
> I always try to see people from their point of view.
A commendable attitude, which I certainly try to abide by. In this case, I am striving to see things from the point of view of politicians and of the elites they are allied with. From their point of view, their power is applied for the good of society and any dissent and any demands for democracy are merely due to an unfortunate ignorance or misunderstanding on the part of the population – a misunderstanding that sortition may be able to fix by changing people’s perceptions. From their point of view, applying sortition to democratize society is an absurd and dangerous thing that no rational person would want to do.
You, as opposed to me, are trying to impose upon politicians and upon the elites they are allied with a point of view that is alien to them – i.e., a democratic point of view – according to which their power is illegitimate and is self-serving and therefore should be eliminated (or significantly reduced). Thus when you are talking about “trying to do the right thing” you are assuming that “we” and they have the same notion of “the right thing”. This is quite the opposite of trying to see things from their point of view.
A side point worth noting is that assessments about “trying to do the right thing” are plentiful when considering our own Western elites, but are somehow very rare when thinking about our official enemies – the Saddams, Kaddaffis, Assads, Putins, Xis and Kims of this world (or even the Trumps of this world). Why don’t they get such heartwarming apologias? Somehow, in those cases it is very clear to us that what they consider as the right thing is very different from what we consider as the right thing.
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>A side point worth noting is that assessments about “trying to do the right thing” are plentiful when considering our own Western elites, but are somehow very rare when thinking about our official enemies.
Fair point. Charitable hermeneutics should be applied across the board.
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You’re just repeating yourself Yoram. Not much point in doing that. Show this exchange to a friend and ask them if they think you got on my wavelength.
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Hmmm… That’s rather dismissive, Nicholas. Could it be that in this case you are not living up to Gadamer’s dictum of “seeking as far as possible to strengthen the other’s viewpoint so that what the other person has to say becomes illuminating”?
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Indeed it could be. I thought it was the reverse, but there’s no knowing for sure :)
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Yes, there is. I engaged with your argument. You simply dismissed mine.
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You disagreed with my view as is your right. As I was arguing, I don’t’ think you engaged with it.
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> As I was arguing, I don’t’ think you engaged with it.
No, you did not argue this. You merely asserted this.
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There are certainly some tendencies among those who seek and win election (more likely to be narcissists, over-confident, etc.), but I think Yoram is stereotyping too broadly about their motivations and interests. They vary.
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[…] notable books dealing with sortition published this year were the late Maurice Pope’s The Keys to Democracy that was originally written in the 1980’s and Yves Sintomer’s The […]
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