Equality by lot

Sortition as a concept and as a method of selecting members of a deliberative group has been in the headlines for some time now and the most important gain the followers of sortition have gotten from it it is that more people now know about its purpose and of its use, especially as being a potential alternative to election for selecting members of a board of an organization or of other institutional bodies, as is the case of legislative assemblies for local, regional and national level.

The purpose of its use up to now, as far as I know, has been to bring into the deliberations of existing governmental legislative assemblies more democracy. This remains to be seen, for this new approach has first to be accepted by the present systems of government, which are based on their main futures on those of republicanism, which at the same time are being called democracies, even though they do not have any connection to democracy. Unless some of the followers of sortition have it as part of their revolutionary program through which they plan to get to power, even though revolutions have been abandoned even by the Marxists, since the time of Hitler’s lesson on how to grab power with only just through elections.

It is though about time to give more attention to the peaceful ways, which can lead to power without any revolutions and without methods creating abnormal conditions in the present republican systems of government, for the purpose of democracy is not to divide but to unite the people. That is what my approach, presented by articles and comments in this blog and in a more expanded way in my book with the title: A Therapy for Dying Democracies intends to do. In my view this approach has several advantages over other approaches on matters concerning the quality of representation and the method of materializing peacefully the objective, which is to have at last democracy at work.

The random selection of a deliberative group must ensure the quality of its representation, which means that it has to be an almost exact replica, on smaller dimensions, of the whole. In the sector of politics selected ideologies (I suppose we do not want to include fascist and alike ideologies in the deliberative group), gender, age, geography and areas of production must be taken into consideration in order to ensure an acceptable level of representation for the deliberative body. The local party organizations with members of up to but not more than one hundred present the best nucleus from which a deliberative group can be obtained by sortition. In addition a deliberative body is obtained that does not just present a request to those in power, but it claims power, in order for it to materialize its political objectives, namely to put real democracy in operation.

For these reasons I call upon the followers of Equality by Lot to consider seriously this approach for future fights, especially in those countries that are members of the European Union (EU), for the purpose of reaching the point of creating a European democratic party, made up of all such parties in the member states. I should add here that the EU uses specialists, appointed by the Council of the leaders of the member countries, to do the various jobs. Does this ring something in your ears? Such an evolution will be a real booster for other areas to reach in the future such objectives.

Filed under: Books, Elections, Proposals, Sortition |