Christina Lafont, in her 2020 book, Democracy Without Shortcuts, routinely asserts that, because a minipublic excludes the mass public, the mass public must “blindly defer” to its decisions. Those words at face value imply that the mass public would be blindsided by its decisions. That is not her full meaning, but I’ll criticize that part of it first.
There are four mechanisms by which the public could descry and/or influence the machinations of a lottocracy.
1a. By pairing and “checking” any lottocratic legislative chamber with an elected House.
Any legislation considered in, or passed by, a lottocratic House would be subject to public scrutiny when it reached the elected House, and even before that, during election campaigns for that House. The public would not be taken unawares (for what it is worth). The majority of lottocratic reformers, as far as I know, are only asking for this single-House, or half-a-loaf, power, so Lafont is not justified in insinuating that any empowered lottocratic legislature would be scarily secretive and all-powerful. It would only be influential, and it would have to negotiate openly in compromise-seeking conference committees with its elected counterpart.
1b. By allowing the mass public to veto, by referendum, objectionable minipublic measures. Or by requiring their endorsement, by referendums, by the public.
2. By giving the allotted only the power to elect legislators, not to legislate themselves, thereby potentially opening to public scrutiny the political debates among candidates for legislative seats.
Certain reformers (e.g., myself) advocate for this flavor of lottocracy. (One of its virtues is that among its electees the poor and marginalized would find advocates more eloquent than they themselves, and as equally eloquent as the advocates for other factions.)
The arguments of lottocratically elected legislators would be more publicly visible than the cozier intramural conversations of a citizens’ jury. Those politicians’ campaign speeches, reports to constituents, and tussles in their legislatures with other politicians could be as publicly available as those of current politicians (for what its worth). Only the internal deliberations of the Electors, and perhaps some subset of their dialogs with officeholders and candidates, would be private.
In other wordes, the proceedings of minipublics needn’t be confidential, or even obscure. They could be online, either in the summary form of “minutes,” or as full transcripts, or even “live,” like C-Span.
And mass awareness of lottocratic proceedings wouldn’t be restricted to persons directly following such information sources. News organizations and partisan websites would summarize those sources and alert their audiences to what was in-process or was likely to pass or be defeated. Lafont is thus, again, unjustified in insinuating that all lottocracies are inherently secretive.
3. By potentially enabling the general public to petition those lottocratic politicians, and even to dialog with them, by email and/or by app-facilitated online commentary.
The persuasive force of such outsiders’ arguments might sway a vote—or more than just a single vote, since multiple politicians could be targeted digitally.
Petitioning would be especially effective if the interactive software is that used by the Dutch government’s (now defunct) Climate Dialogue site.
That site was devoted to text-based debates between climatologists on selected topics in climate science, but allowed for the productive participation of spectators too. The screen was split. The upper half, which the viewer could expand to full screen, was reserved for the dialoging invited experts. The lower half, which could be similarly expanded, allowed comments by non-invitees, some expert but most not. These comments were reactions, pro and con, to what was written both above and below the line. The experts sometimes reacted to comments from below, which therefore enriched the discussion.
Even if there was no response from above, the text record showed if pertinent points from below had been overlooked, theoretically providing a basis for a directive from the Moderators to the experts to respond to those points, or for an appeal to a second round of debate.
Such interaction was facilitated by the limited, specific-topic focus of each Dialogue, which kept discussion “on point” and attracted specifically knowledgeable participants.
A lottocratic legislature could be similarly divided into specific-topic mini-legislatures, each elected by focused, specific-topic minipublics. The version of lottocracy I promote, “demiocracy,” is organized thusly. So it happens to facilitate this sort of public participation.
The particular specific topics would mirror those covered by our current standing (permanent) congressional committees. Google says, “Currently, the House has 20 standing committees and the Senate has 16 standing committees.” Each chamber has even more additional standing subcommittees.
Therefore, if legislative elections at the state and national levels were evenly spaced throughout the year (say about every two weeks), which is necessary to avoid overburdening the Secretariat, the general public would have an undistracted opportunity to monitor the whole spectrum of political topics over the year. “Political junkies” cravings would be sated.
If moderators were empowered to force politicians to respond thoroughly to below-the-line public concerns, this would accomplish most of what Lafont hopes to achieve by expanding the scope of public appeals to judicial review: a well-deliberated participatory democracy.
4. By giving five (say) ballots to voters, enabling the whole public to “approval-vote” for the fellow-citizens whom each prefers as proxies. Those nominated most often would be most frequently drawn by the lottery. (Up to some upper-limit cutoff on total nominations, enforced by the ballot-drawing computer, to deter excessive office-seeking.)
This drawing-from-the-approval-voted is a feature of my preferred lottocratic version, demiocracy. It meets the gravamen of Lafont’s blind-deference objection, which is not that the public would be uninformed under lottocracy, but that it would be ballotless, hence powerless. She writes (p. 8):
[T]o the extent that citizens maintain some capacity for control over these actors, they are not doing so blindly.
Whether or not blindly deferring to the political judgments and decisions of others is compatible with morality, it is incompatible with being an equal participant in the process of shaping those decisions as the democratic ideal of self-government requires.
The mass public’s ability to self-select and periodically re-select its minipublics’ Proxy Electors from out of itself would easily give it “some capacity for control over” its officeholders, and thereby a role, though indirect and often post-hoc, in “shaping … decisions.”
This feature should substantially satisfy Lafont’s requirements for unblind participation by the public. Of course the “ballotted” would have been selected primarily for their characters rather than their position on “the issues,” but Lafont elsewhere states that deference to a generally trusted trustee is acceptable.
In addition, to recap, each of the first three features also unblind the public, viz.:
- 1a) The co-existence of a mass-elected legislative chamber;
- 1b) The ability of a referendum to veto lottocratic measures, or a requirement for one to endorse them;
- 2) The election and oversight of legislators by their minipublics in an open-to-the-public fashion;
- 3a) The ability of the mass public to petition mini-legislators, and
- 3b) to dialog with them (assuming they are topically specialized) via the Climate Dialogue site’s software app; and
- 3c) even perhaps to demand, under the aegis of the Secretariat’s moderator(s), constitutional and/or rational answers to challenges to their measures.
Filed under: Academia, Books, Participation, Proposals, Sortition |
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Equality by lot 
What is to lotteries as political parties are to elections? The political parties have processes for engaging the full party in deciding manifestos.
I think the obvious way to include the entire population in politics is to have regular open agenda settings meetings. Kind of like going to church on Sunday.
the entire population can vote formally and regularly on what the topics are for discussion. Then mini publics are used to draft legislation. formally ratification can be through referenda for large enough issues or elected/selected panels for smaller bills.
I think that in a lottocracy the whole of society becomes the political party. And there can be voluntary processes that potentially could include input from everyone for important matters.
another method for including everyone is the idea of a “political return”. Like a tax return, everyone writes a yearly personal manifesto. And these are summed up across the population using language processing software to yield a national collective agenda.
Mini public’s can prioritize the agenda and draft legislation for referenda/elected/selected approval as above.
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More concisely:
public can elect topics rather than people. This mechanism Involves entire population in political process.
Orators can speak for issues not parties or themselves.
lottery chooses agenda prioritization cohort to set timetable for discussion.
lottery chooses legislative drafting cohort.
lottery chooses formal ratification cohort.
gov of the people by the people for the people!
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It all sound very complicated Roger.
Anon:> What is to lotteries as political parties are to elections?
Lafont and Urbinati (2024) argue that political parties are the modern equivalent of Athenian ho boulomenos. Alex and I argue that Superminority is the simplest (and most equitable) of instituting equal speech in large modern states as discourses will be represented in proportion to their prevalence in the full citizen body: https://equalitybylot.com/2021/01/19/some-problems-of-citizens-assemblies/
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What is wrong about “blindly” trusting an allotted body? I “blindly” trust the designers and the workers who built my car: i.e., I have no idea how it was designed and constructed, how it work, why it was built the way it was built, why certain hidden parts of it move in certain ways in response to certain situations. I trust my car and the people who were involved in its construction because the car works. It consistently delivers results that I consider as desirable.
I we insisted on not trusting people “blindly” (in the absurd way that Lafont implies this term works) we would be living in a radically anti-social, hyper-individualized world. No, if we manage to get to a society where government delivers consistently good results as most people see things, we would, and we should, call it democracy.
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You trust the designers and constructors of your car on account of their (presumed) expertise and track record. Take a look at the Simpson’s episode where Homer is invited to design a car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPc-VEqBPHI
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Lafont is concerned about allowing ordinary people who are statistically representative of the population, with expert witnesses and staff, making decisions for the community, since not everyone can participate in the deliberation. It is simply impossible to have millions of people learn the necessary information and deliberate together to decide the many thousands of policy issues decided every week at all levels of government. Delegation is essential. Calling this informed decision-making “blind following” is just name-calling. … But somehow Lafont seems unconcerned when a small cohort of politicians (ego-maniacs and elites) make those decisions… All because each person gets one vote out of millions to play a de minimis role in choosing which elite ego-maniacs are in control. Voting in mass elections provides no meaningful control or accountability. Nearly all important decisions are made in secret behind closed doors among politicians and lobbyists, such that it is impossible for voters to monitor what they are doing. The question is whether to delegate by mass elections, where money, elite manipulation and ignorance are inevitable, or fairly by lottery to avoid special-interest elite control and corruption.
I will add one more point, there is a severe downside of keeping partisan elections for one chamber in the mix as they poison public deliberation through partisan tribalism. This article of mine discusses that
https://www.academia.edu/37578530/Why_Hybrid_Bicameralism_is_Not_Right_for_Sortition
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Terry,
I think your point about partisan elections poisoning public deliberation through tribalism confuses cause and effect to a significant extent. Elections provide occasion for partisan polarisation and tribalism to occur, but underlying that polarisation is generally a contest over money and power that is going to occur regardless of the political system. The interests backing the different parties are not going to go away simply because the form of the political system changes, any more than they do when a state becomes a dictatorship and abolishes elections. Polarisation and tribalised contestation would take a different form in your lottocracy than they do in modern liberal ‘electoral democracies’, but I’m afraid the notion of a harmonious society without partisan contestation is a fantasy.
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Oliver,
Presumably Terry is not imagining a society without political contestation altogether but rather one where political conflict is not being artificially cultivated by an electoral elite for personal gain and for promoting narrow interests.
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Terry commented: “there is a severe downside of keeping partisan elections for one chamber in the mix as they poison public deliberation through partisan tribalism.”
But this split-chamber arrangement is an unavoidable steppingstone on the way to full lottocracy, it seems to me. I can’t imagine full lottocracy being approved in a referendum that totally eliminates elected parliaments. We will have to compromise, except in a very unusual situation.
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Oliver and Roger,
Yoram anticipates my response correctly. Partisan elections at a minimum FAN tribalism, because hatred and fear help drive partisan loyalty and voter turnout. But even worse than that, MUCH of the policy contestation (in the U.S. at least) is CREATED BY politicians for this purpose, and not fundamentally derived from a pre-existing societal division. Of course there ARE deep divisions in society on fundamental policy interests… but these are actually tamped down and hidden by politicians in the U.S. because both major parties are beholden to elites (whether wealthy donors, etc.) Essentially MANUFACTURED policy concerns monopolize the news and debate because politicians fear talking about the real issues. The partisan tribalism serves to divert attention AWAY from the more serious and REAL policy decisions that are needed. These are ignored by politicians until a crisis forces the topic forward. Congress had plenty of testimony from NASA scientists back in the 1980s that a climate crisis would be upon us by early in the 21st century unless urgent action were taken quickly. It wasn’t a useful issue to campaign on because it would require short-term hardships to avoid future disaster, so it was ignored.
As for Roger’s point… I have advocated that INSTEAD of creating two chambers dealing with the same bills (one elected and one allotted) it is far better to manage a transition by peeling away one policy domain at a time from the elected chamber and vesting it completely in a sortition democracy process, such that politicians no longer talk about or campaign on THAT issue. For example, We might move all healthcare issues out of “political debate” and instead have representative random samples of citizens make all decisions about healthcare. In the U.S. the rightwing doesn’t trust government bureaucrats making decisions about healthcare, and the left doesn’t trust profit-driven insurance executives making those decisions, but both might agree that letting a representative sample of ordinary people with expert witnesses and staff handle that policy domain solo. My analogy is let the elected chamber wither the way the monarchies of Europe did, with real political power shifting to allotted bodies.
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>Congress had plenty of testimony from NASA scientists back in the 1980s that a climate crisis would be upon us by early in the 21st century unless urgent action were taken quickly. It wasn’t a useful issue to campaign on because it would require short-term hardships to avoid future disaster, so it was ignored.
Isn’t that an argument against democracy, <em>tout court</em>?
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No, it’s an argument about the short-termism of electoral systems where policy makers are incentivized to prioritize only those effects that will be evident by the time of their next election. I know Yoram and others dismiss this argument, (suggesting it is only deep-seated elite interests that warp electoral systems). But the point is that even if elected “leaders” were well-intentioned, the electoral imperatives give them overwhelming incentive to ignore long-term issues. The evidence so far from hundreds of citizens’ assemblies, is that as ordinary people who gather information in such assemblies, are quite willing to make beneficial long-term decisions. This genuine, informed democracy might also violate Yoram’s unique definition that the achievement of democracy can be assessed by looking and current satisfaction in public opinion surveys, which like politicians’ short-termism, discounts informed long-term policy.
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Terry wrote: “I have advocated that INSTEAD of creating two chambers dealing with the same bills (one elected and one allotted) it is far better to manage a transition by peeling away one policy domain at a time from the elected chamber and vesting it completely in a sortition democracy process, such that politicians no longer talk about or campaign on THAT issue. For example, We might move all healthcare issues out of “political debate” and instead have representative random samples of citizens make all decisions about healthcare. In the U.S. the rightwing doesn’t trust government bureaucrats making decisions about healthcare, and the left doesn’t trust profit-driven insurance executives making those decisions, but both might agree that letting a representative sample of ordinary people with expert witnesses and staff handle that policy domain solo. My analogy is let the elected chamber wither the way the monarchies of Europe did, with real political power shifting to allotted bodies.”
Now I remember reading the in your book years ago—I’d forgotten. It’s a clever thought, but it may not be acceptable if opponents can, accurately, describe its first steps as embarking on a slippery slope. Or if an incoming government has plans of its own in the reassigned sector. Or if the time isn’t ripe enough for it, compared to a supplemental house. For instance, currently the Sortition Foundation is going to petition the Labour Party to add a House of Citizens in place of the House of Lords, presumably because the minds of men have become accustomed to the idea to a greater degree.
Another consideration is the opposition of Participationists like Lafont to the exclusion of the mass electorate from having an influence on ANY political domain. I was dismayed to read the numerous applauding reviews Lafont’s book received, which indicates that that faction is so strong that it must be appeased.
My hope is that, when the elected and “allotted” chambers disagree, the mass public, or at least their influencers, take the side of the latter, and that a retrospective view of their records will demonstrate the more statesmanlike behavior of the allotteds, thereby leading to the withering away of the power of the electeds.
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>the opposition of Participationists like Lafont to the exclusion of the mass electorate from having an influence on ANY political domain.
This is unlikely to abate any time soon. Superminority is also a bicameral system, the only difference being that the debate is in the same chamber (and the allotted participants get to make the final decision).
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Terry,
> policy makers are incentivized to prioritize only those effects that will be evident by the time of their next election. I know Yoram and others dismiss this argument, (suggesting it is only deep-seated elite interests that warp electoral systems)
I am not dismissing this argument entirely, but I think it is of much less importance than it is usually credited with. The elected have no problem inflicting a lot of short term pain on voters when their own interests require it. Yes, all else being equal, elected officials do prefer to have voters pleased before the next elections. But the “all else being equal” carries a lot of weight in this assertion.
> This genuine, informed democracy might also violate Yoram’s unique definition that the achievement of democracy can be assessed by looking and current satisfaction in public opinion surveys, which like politicians’ short-termism, discounts informed long-term policy.
The claim that the public discounts informed long term policy is yours, not mine. Indeed, the idea that the public is inherently short-sighted is a classic elitist, anti-democratic argument, which, being committed to democracy, I of course reject.
The reason that within the electoral system the public is focused on the here and now rather than on the longer term is that the public has learned, through a long and painful process of disillusionment, that it is being constantly manipulated and that no matter what the promises are, the system cannot be trusted to deliver good results in the long term.
As for my “unique definition”: What is the alternative that you offer? Presumably you accept that (1) people are the best judges of their own interests and values, and that (2) in a democracy the polity should be managed according to people’s interests and values. Doesn’t this lead inevitably to assessing the quality of democracy by asking people whether they are satisfied with the way the polity is managed?
(Naturally, by the way, looking at a long term trend of satisfaction is much more informative than looking at a single snapshot of satisfaction provided by a single poll.)
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Axioms, axioms, axioms. Unfortunately the study of politics is an empirical science and doesn’t lend it to deductive or syllogistic reasoning. The reason for rejecting arguments, elitist or otherwise, is because the evidence contradicts them, not because they are “elitist”, “liberal” or on account of some other definitional claim.
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Yoram,
The key is the detail in that axiom
>” (1) people are the best judges of their own interests and values”
But only when we are informed and have an incentive to think about it carefully… which is never the case in mass elections NOR in public opinion surveys.
Politician: “I am lowering your taxes significantly, because the government is wasting your tax money.”
Uninformed opinion: “Yes!” = approval
Informed opinion after study and deliberation: “Wait, the bulk of that tax cut is going to the wealthiest few, and you as the politicians are the ones who made the wasteful decisions about tax revenue, and if this tax plan is implemented our electric grid won’t be able to handle the needed electric load you say we need to deal with climate change, and disaster will result.” = disapproval
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Terry,
This argument fails on two counts.
First, the situation of being uninformed and unconsidered may very well apply to various questions of policy, but it can hardly apply to the question of personal satisfaction with the way the polity is managed since this is inherently a subjective question. Are you really claiming that people are unconsidered or uninformed about whether they are satisfied?
Second, even if we do accept this unlikely claim, then at most we would have to infer that instead of standard polling, people’s level of satisfaction with government should be elicited using a different technique – one which gives them the opportunity and incentive to form an informed and considered opinion. But this would not change the fundamental point, which is that those opinions are the best indicators of the democratic (or undemocratic) nature of the polity they live in.
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If it’s just a subjective preference then why is it of any interest? And what has any of this to do with whether or not the people have power?
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The denizens of Plato’s cave, shackled to the walls by the legs and neck and forced to view the shadows on the wall, provided for their entertainment by those oppressing them, were happy with their lot. What’s this to do with democracy?
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In short, does Yoram’s innovative definition of democracy rule out the notion of false consciousness?
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Yoram, I feel like you’re conflating satisfaction *in relation to the government* with satisfaction *in relation to life in general*. I think most people do have direct access to the information of whether they are satisfied with their lives or not, but satisfaction *in relation to their government* (or in relation to any other thing x) rests on their (possibly incorrect) assessment of how much impact it has in their general life satisfaction. This may lead to a situation where the self-assessed satisfactions *in relation to the government* and *in relation to their life in general* might be wildly different and unrelated. In this case asking someone if they are “satisfied” with the government is vulnerable to incorrect information and asking if that person is “satisfied” with their lives gives potentially no information on what they think about the government.
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>Yoram, I feel like you’re conflating satisfaction *in relation to the government* with satisfaction *in relation to life in general*.
Surely that would be true irrespective of the system of government (democracy, aristocracy, monarchy etc.)?
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Anonymous,
> I feel like you’re conflating satisfaction “in relation to the government” with satisfaction in “relation to life in general”
I don’t think this distinction makes much of a difference to my argument. On the one hand, “satisfaction” is subjective no matter whether it is satisfaction with life in general, with government or with anything else. In that sense, being mistaken about whether one is satisfied seems pretty close to a contradiction in terms
On the other hand, feelings of satisfaction (no matter on what matter) are based on some perception of reality which may be mistaken due to incorrect information or for other reasons. For example, one may be satisfied with one’s personal life only to later discover that they have long been taken advantage of by someone they trusted.
The point is not that people cannot be mistaken about satisfaction (in the sense that their [in]satisfaction is based on some mistaken notions about the world) but that such situations, although possible, should be seen as the exception to the rule that people are the most authoritative judges about their own satisfaction because they are the ones who are in the best position to judge those issues.
The alternative, that people are routinely mistaken about what’s good or bad in their lives (according to their own values and interests), is a radically anti-democratic position. Such a position would imply that people are better off having others (who know better) determine their lives, even against their will. This position has been traditionally held by elites throughout history, but today, as a result of the rise of electoralism, it is usually denied, at least in public, even by elites.
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