One of the most common criticisms against sortition is that there is no accountability, whereas election allegedly does have an accountability mechanism. What is the appropriate rebuttal to this criticism? I have tried to answer this poorly in a blog post here. I make up a matrix of hypothetical, idealized scenarios and assess elections vs sortition. I find that elections only achieve accountability contingent on high voter competence. When voter incompetence is assumed, I find that sortition will lead to better outcomes.
In other words, I find that sortition only makes sense in worlds where we do not have competent voters. Moreover, I find that sortition fails in worlds populated by solely Machiavellian personalities (maybe you could call these people homo economicus).
Voter incompetence is manifested as the inability of voters to control and create representative political parties. And their inability to wrest electoral power away from elites. Or their incompetence in participating in the right political primaries or the right elections. Or their inability to effectively compete against wealthy special interests. The public lacks the capacity to win the electoral contests.
Filed under: Sortition, Theory | Tagged: Accountability |
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John,
Regarding accountability, please have a look at a pair of posts of mine on this subject: Democratic accountability, part 1 and part 2.
Regarding competence: Elections are never a democratic mechanism for selection of decision makers (in a large polity), no matter how “competent” the voters are. The reason for that is “the principle of distinction”. A normal person cannot be elected, which means under elections government is always in the hands of an elite, which will inevitably promote its own interests and values, rather than those of the public at large.
Regarding “Machiavellian personalities”: Yes, for sortition to produce good results for the people, it is necessary that the allotted perceive their interests as aligned with those of the people. In a society where there is no widespread sense of solidarity, any power can be expected to be abused for narrow interests.
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>Regarding competence: Elections are never a democratic mechanism for selection of decision makers (in a large polity), no matter how “competent” the voters are.
You make an exception for “small” polities. Why? For me, the costs for determining the trustworthiness of individuals in my own community are low. I already know these people and have already gathered the necessary information from day-to-day interactions, before the election campaign has even begun. Elections are acceptable for (some) small polities because voter competence is sufficient to allow for it.
Is there another reason why elections are acceptable for small polities?
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The reason elections can work in a small group (where “small” is at most a few hundred people) is that in a small group most people know a large part of the other members of the group. In such a situation normal people – people who are typical of the group as a whole – can get elected, and thus the principle of distinction does not apply.
In a large group only very atypical people are known to a non-negligible fraction of the electorate. Since being known to a non-negligible fraction of the population is a necessary condition to being elected, in a large group only atypical people can get elected. The atypical people therefore form a political elite and naturally use their power to promote their atypical values and their narrow interests, often at the expense of the large majority of the population.
This effect has nothing to do with “voter competence”, unless by “incompetence” you mean the siutation in which one is only familiar with a small fraction of the people in the polity. Once you can only elect atypical people, being able to assess the qualities of the candidates very accurately would not help much since none of the candidates would serve the people if elected.
Furthermore, as we discussed before, if there are any good candidates on the ballot, only a minimal amount of competence (namely, being able to assess whether one’s own situation is good or bad) would be needed in order to select the good ones over time, by using a simple “throw the bums out” strategy.
(Rereading the thread I link to I see that we have been over this entire discussion before :-). Electoral theory become so much clearer once one keeps the principle of distinction firmly in mind. No more need to tie oneself in knots trying to explain why people vote for the “wrong” candidates, if one keeps in mind that there are no “right” candidates on the ballot.)
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Yoram, it would really help to know why you insist on the axiom that people will always seek power in order to promote their narrow interests. (While there is some empirical evidence to support this, with you it is an article of faith — an absolute precondition) This rational choice perspective aligns you with (liberal) advocates of the economic theory of democracy, as against republican theorists who valorise the general good as being more than the sum of individual interests.
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The two broad answers to accountability are:
1) Elections have proven repeatedly to offer no actual accountability. It is only an illusion. Voters never know what deals are struck behind closed doors (which are far more consequential than the roll-call votes); All parties may have similar policy preferences on a key issue (no better replacement available); Each candidate (and party) encompass a group of positions, which a voter may like some and detest others; Voters can’t know whether the politicians had control over the issue of concern, or if any other politician could have done better; Throwing the bum out often turns out to have a replacement that is far worse.
2) Sortition is about what the community when well-informed as a whole prefers as revealed by a representative sample that can learn and deliberate. Accountability exists because the regular rotation means that the next random sample can change decisions made by a previous random sample.
The final three sections of chapter 13 of my book (“The Trouble With Elections: Everything We Thought We Knew About Democracy Is Wrong”) is all about accountability. It is posted online for free here: https://democracycreative.substack.com/p/the-trouble-with-elections
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Sortition guarantees that the people get the government they deserve.
For good or ill, this is justice.
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Deep Dark,
I’d say, sortition creates government by the people, for the people (as they themselves judge things).
For good or ill, that’s democracy.
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Sutherland,
> why you insist on the axiom that people will always seek power in order to promote their narrow interests.
The axiom is that people and groups use power to promote their values and interests (V&Is) as they see them. Whether they perceive their V&Is narrowly or broadly may certainly vary. It may be argued that the Western elites of the decades following WWII thought about their V&Is rather broadly (or least much more broadly then the think about them now). It may also be argued that the present Chinese elite has a fairly broad perception of its V&Is.
Over time, however, elites – groups of people who maintain a hold on power for extended periods – tend to start perceiving their V&Is narrowly. As I pointed out several times before, we take this situation of the self-serving elite for granted when it concerns “dictators” and “authoritarian regimes”. Somehow when it comes to our electoralist elite, this becomes controversial.
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