Sortition is a tool and not an end in itself. For that matter democracy, a super tool, is not an end in itself either. What is an end in itself is the welfare of all, not of the few, nor of the many, but for all people in a community, in a region, in a nation, in the planet. This can only be achieved if the well-known axiomatic principles of democracy can be satisfied. Having this always in our mind we will avoid into falling into a dogmatic trap, into which Adam Smith and his followers or Marx and his followers fell.
The introduction of sortition with constraints to politics was done by the ancient Greeks in Athens, around 509 B.C., for the purpose of serving the first democratic system of government instituted by Klisthenis. That first experiment of democracy was partially successful, mainly because sortition was used to select political officers. What prevented it from succeeding in all of its objectives were the workings of the citizens’ assembly.
The objective of using sortition in politics is to obtain assemblies of political officers that will be free from any dependence, especially the type of dependence that is a result of collusion or corruption. On the basis that the tool of election, always, produces collusion and corruption, if we really are for democracy, the option is one that of sortition with appropriate constraints. The use of constraints is necessary in order for the process to be completed successfully and thus for those noble objectives of democracy to become a reality. The constraints come in the form of prerequisites which have to be satisfied by those who will be allotted for the assembly.
Today in most of the countries of the planet political parties is the basis of all political activities. So, if we want to make a peaceful transition from today’s so called democracies to real democracies, we have to start with what we have. The first job we all have to do is obtain, eventually, political parties that will be freed from all the types of cliques that dance with collusion and corruption, so as to operate democratically. This can be achieved by using an appropriate sortition process, instead of elections, for selecting the members of all the party organs. This constitutes a major step towards democracy, which will bring more people to party activities which now stay out of them because of the operations of the cliques. A development of this type will further enhance the quality of representation, which will be also reflected in assemblies like parliaments and city hall councils. Changes of this sort in party operations need no constitutional changes for them to proceed. Political parties may not like this idea, but they may be forced to follow once new parties start appearing with these new democratic face. More details on this can be found in my book A Therapy for Dying Democracies, published by Dorrance Publishing Co., USA.
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Equality by lot 
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> The objective of using sortition in politics is to obtain assemblies of political officers that will be free from any dependence, especially the type of dependence that is a result of collusion or corruption.
This is rather vague. What does it mean to be “dependent”? It seems to me that the problem is that political officers represent certain narrow interests. This is not so much because they “depend” on those interests, but because those interests are their own. The advantage of sortition over other methods of appointment is that it creates an alignment between the values and interests of the political decision makers and those of the population.
> prerequisites
What are those prerequisites?
> parties
This is a rather problematic idea. Sortition works well when it has a high resource organization behind it. Such an organization can supply the conditions required for a meaningful operation of sortition – namely the opportunity for an allotted body to reach informed and considered decisions and the authority to marshal those resources to the ends decided upon by the allotted body. However, by the time a party has enough resources so that it can employ sortition meaningfully, it is already controlled by an elite that would resist relinquishing its power to an allotted body.
Instead, it seems more likely that public pressure could be applied on the state itself to set up allotted bodies with limited purview – most profitably maybe, anti-corruption tasks. Then once such bodies gain a reputation for representing the interests of the people, being a counter-force to the established elites, pressure can be applied toward expanding the role of allotted bodies in society.
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Yoram asks: What does it mean to be “dependent”?
The existence of dependence in this case is associated with certain type of vested interests which are satisfied through collusion or even corruption. Now why dependence does appear to exist in this case? A candidate, say for parliament, who has an aspiration to become a parliamentarian needs to be voted by a sufficient number of voters. Especially nowadays this process, namely of making the candidate known and at the same time likeable to the voters, costs a lot of money. For a rich guy there is no problem, but for a non-rich candidate the problem is there. The problem is solved by finding some supporter or supporters. In most cases this support is provided on the condition that the future parliamentarian will in return provide to the supporter some services. In this way the parliamentarian does not serve only his own interests, which may extend beyond just that of being elected or reelected, he has also to serve some of the interests of the supporter and that is why the dependence is created, for otherwise he diminishes the chances of being elected.
Therefore, I propose the use of sortition in order to take collusion and corruption out of the political system. The word politics comes from the Greek word πολίτης (politis)= citizen and in a democratic system of government every citizen is a politician. Aristotle in fact, many years ago, said that man is not only just a social object he is also a politician. The alignment to which Yoram is referring will exist in todays’ social jungles only if the rules will be kept. The existence of the process of control and accountability from down up and vice versus is not a luxury but a necessity. That is what I also propose in my system of government.
Now Yoram’s claim, that sortition works well when it has a high resource organization behind it, it means what? What is this high resource organization and how does one constructs such an organization? If he means the people generally, then that organization can only promises a pie in the sky. Right now the only resource organizations that exist and operate by the participation of millions of people that follow them are the political parties, which also have the possibility, provided to them by the existing constitutions, to acquire the necessary power and to make changes. In my view sortition applied in a political party can work excellently without starting from scratch. If the followers of the existing parties don’t like sortition and prefer election, then there is nothing we can do at this point except that we can create new parties that will work with sortition.
Yoram’s fears that such a party at some point will resist relinquishing its powers to a legislative body by lot has no base, because in the new party the local organization, that is the people-members of the party, who in the first place became members because they believe in sortition, has absolute power regarding the local party development program and all the one term members of all organs of the party are the result of using sortition, while the leader is elected as a specialist by the regional assemblies, where the voters are the one term members by lot of the regional party organs. So, on the one side we have people that have power and on the other people, Yoram talks about, that will pressure the state for the purpose of improving basically the façade of the operation of the existing system.
The prerequisites constitute the filter that ensures that in every level the organs have the appropriate mix, regarding representation-geographical, gender, areas of production in the area, experience, knowledge etc,-, so that the deliberations of each organ will meet the required standards, besides protecting it from the danger from someone to acquire the upper hand. The followers of election claim they get the best for the job. Followers of sortition say we plan so that we make sure we get the best for the job. Equality, after all, means equality among equal peers.
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[…] my article Democracy through sortition I mentioned that sortition is a tool and not an end in itself. That means for sortition to work it […]
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