Equality by lot

In 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 needs to be subject to certain constrains. This condition is neglected by many followers of sortition and that creates a problem, at least in when trying to make a political system to operate democratically. One such problem is created, concerning quality of representation in a legislative body, like a parliament, when sortition neglects to take into consideration the use of prerequisites.

Sortition was used in the first democracy in ancient Athens, in order to select, from teams of volunteers, 500 parliamentarians for a term of one year, 50 from each of the 10 districts with equal population. The prerequisites for one to be selected through sortition as a member of parliament in a district were: He had to be a Greek, a member of a district, 30 years of age and older among others. The question may arise as to whether these prerequisites were sufficient in order for the representation to be, concerning its quality, sufficiently appropriate. The operation of that parliament started around 509 B.C. and for more than half a century the parliamentarians, while working all year around, were not paid for their services. So the members of a district that were working for a living, even if they wanted to be among those in the teams of volunteers, it was, objectively, not possible and there were many of them. Another difficulty for the citizens to participate was the distance to Athens from the place they lived, which to many of them was a major obstacle. In any case the fact is that, even in the first democracy, prerequisites were used!

Filed under: Athens, History, Sortition | 14 Comments »