Equality by lot

Iain Walker, executive director of The newDemocracy Foundation, has an opinion piece in The Jerusalem Post. Walker offers Israel and its allies advice about what government they should set up in Gaza (once they tire of killing tens of thousands of its inhabitants).

Gaza needs democracy without elections

Instead of elections, Athenian democracy used a simple random draw among citizens (known as “sortition”).

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu receives regular criticism for failing to share the plan for Gaza after the military role concludes. The lack of an official position on this subject could stem from the fact that all over options are unattractive, and so a new approach is required.

Israel as an occupying force is undesirable, it would draw global criticism and simply push off the problem to a later date.

Equally, traditional electoral democracy is an unworkable option.

With polls reflecting up to 80% support for Hamas among Gaza residents, elections would only allow for some incarnation of Hamas to emerge newly empowered – an untenable situation following its acts of terror targeting civilians.

Such is the nature of elections: a limited menu of choices is put to a population in a contest of slogans rather than long-term solutions. The election process creates very clear incentives for candidate behavior, and in this case those incentives will be incendiary.

Look around the world: elections do not lead to harmony in society. Instead, they are a primary source of much of our division through a tone of debate which also paralyzes our democracies. They give concentrated power to a small group of people who benefit from amplifying division and demonizing rivals in order to win and retain office. In the West it is causing fractures; but in a society crippled by a debilitating war and ongoing heightened regional tension it is unfathomable to suggest that this method of democracy contributes to stability.

The prime minister should be encouraged to consider a third option: democracy without elections. Democracy does not simply equate to holding elections; elections are simply one method of delivering a representative group of people. Yet, surprisingly to many, they were not used in the democracy born in Athens 2,500 years ago. Athenian democracy foresaw this problem, and instead used a simple random draw among citizens (known as “sortition”).

The most likely objection will come from those who point out that with Hamas polls showing 80% support among the Gazan population, a random draw would deliver a body with 80% Hamas support. It is worth considering that polling offers people a simple, binary question and does not measure the depth of that support which will naturally span from the committed to the marginal. An election campaign captures those varying degrees of support and gives power, by definition, to the most extreme – those who lead the campaign for office within a party. It radicalizes a population. A random sample more accurately captures the variance across the population. Importantly, because it draws on people with day jobs and regular lives instead of professional politicians, they make decisions that they can live with and believe in, not decisions that get them a vote. Those can be two very different things.

The prime minister faces a challenging decision for what happens the day after the shooting stops. Two of the three conditions he has set – an end to Hamas as a political actor and the deradicalization of society – can be better achieved using this approach. Having a randomly drawn Council of Citizens rather than elections as usual is an option worth considering to deliver a lasting stable society. A nation’s citizens tend to want peace more than their political leaders, in which case this democratic solution offers a new path for a stable Gaza.

Filed under: Opinion polling, Press, Proposals, Sortition |