Alex Guerrero, Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University and a longtime sortition advocate, has written to announce that his book Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections (Oxford Press) is now out. It is available now in the UK from the publisher, and available for pre-order everywhere on Amazon.
The book, which has been more than a decade in the making, also has a website, https://www.lottocracy.org/, where highlights, excerpts and other information can be found.
I asked Alex what was new or different about his book compared to previous books advocating sortition. He called out 5 points:
- I provide a more detailed and empirically informed set of concerns about electoral representative democracy and a more detailed and multidimensional diagnosis for why electoral democracy isn’t performing well. In doing this, I make the case that there are no straightforward “fixes” for what ails electoral democracy. Chapters 2-6 raise these empirically informed concerns; Chapter 7 considers possible solutions and suggests they will be inadequate.
- Chapter 8 provides a comprehensive overview of the various suggestions for how sortition might be used in political institutional settings and makes the case that having elections as a significant component anywhere in the system will cause many of the problems already documented to remain. In making this case, I raise concerns about both one-off citizens’ assemblies and bicameral or tricameral legislatures that use sortition to select the members of one of the chambers with elections used to select the others.
- Perhaps the main difference between my book and any others is that it really aims to envision and argue for a detailed political system that operates entirely without elections anywhere in the system. Others have made suggestions and gestures in this direction, but nothing with enough specificity to take the idea seriously, and nothing with enough detail to really consider the possible advantages and disadvantages in a fair “apples to apples” comparison, taking seriously the problems driven by the size, scale, and complexity of modern politics. Chapter 9 introduces the basics of the system, and Chapters 10, 11, and 12 discuss specific key elements of the system, including the use of experts, the mechanics and merits of deliberation, and the specific new issues that arise when considering the use of single-issue legislative institutions.
- The other main difference between my book and what is out there is that it not only makes the case that lottocracy would perform well in terms of outcomes/instrumental performance (Chapters 13 and 14), but also that it would do well by core requirements of political morality, in terms of things like equality, participation and self-government, responsiveness, representation without excessive deference, accountability, and political legitimacy. Of course, others discuss these things, but often only briefly, and without much by way of detailed philosophical engagement or argument. Chapter 15 and 16 do this at length (and perhaps more in the philosophical weeds than is necessary for everyone).
- Finally, I think the book spends more time than most (all of Chapter 17) considering both the practical question of how we might transition from where we are to something like lottocracy, and the distinctive ethical and epistemic issues that arise when contemplating and pursuing such a significant change.
Alex welcomes discussion and will respond here and/or follow-up posts to your comments.
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Equality by lot 
I can’t wait to devour it ! 😛
Thanks a lot for that long work!
Hanspeter
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Holy sh… Not exactly a bargain: 154€… 😳
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The paperback and Kindle editions are $45. Still not cheap…
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It’s available now and less expensively in Kindle ebook format
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Thanks, Yoram, for the post, and thanks to all for engagement. I’m happy to answer any questions!
The book did end up being more expensive than ideal. I had negotiated a lower price for the paperback (and a contemporaneous paperback release) when the book was more in the 200 page/100,000 word range, but it turned out to be a much longer (and better for it, I think) book: 448 pages and 200,000+ words. So, $45, but I hope not an unreasonable price. They also are making an audiobook version of the book which will be out in December. And anyone with institutional access to Oxford Scholarship Online can already access it for free online.
If the price is prohibitive but you’d like to read it and you are someone who engages regularly here at the blog, please feel free to send me an email (posted on the lottocracy.org site) and we can work something out so that you can have access to it.
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Hi Alex, thanks a lot for your offer. I thought about asking for it, however I must admit I could never read a 400+ pages book on a screen. So, unfortunately, I’ll have to curb my impatience until the paperback comes out in January. 🙁
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Hi Alex,
Congratulations again for the book!
You mentioned to me that you are an occasional reader of EbL, so you may know that there are some perennial questions which I keep bringing up and to which I feel I do not get a satisfactory answer. I’d love to have you weigh in on these.
I’d like to start with a meta-issue that is connected also to the question of transition: Who do feel you are *primarily* addressing yourself to with your advocacy of sortition? The average citizen? Academics? Political elites?
I know that the natural response is “all of the above”, or “anyone who would be willing to listen”. But this answer avoids the crucial question of interests and social forces. “We” are not in this together. Some groups would benefit from sortition, while others would see their privileges erode. Even for those who stand to benefit, different audiences have different concerns and would therefore be addressed using different arguments.
Relatedly, I find the argument (which you make, but which is a standard “deliberative democracy” argument) about the supposed epistemic advantages of diversity to be problematic (and also self-contradictory, rather than complementary, to the viewpoint theory argument). Elites currently control government, you say, and I take this to be obviously true. As they control government they use it to promote what is important to them. Are you saying that due to a lack of diversity they don’t promote their own objectives effectively? If so, this is a counter-democratic argument, since in this case they form a group that is unable to represent its own values and interests. But if not, what use is diversity to them? It would just mean that they would have to take into account values and interests that are foreign to them.
In general, the epistemic argument for diversity adopts a version of the Socratic position that there are common values and interests which any person would adopt if they were not ignorant. According to Socrates it is philosophers who are able to devine these common values and interests, while according to the “deliberative democrats” it is through diversity and rational deliberation that these values and interests are discovered. This “deliberative democratic” position pretends to be inclusive and democratic but in fact it is, just like Socrates’s position, elitist, dangerous and false.
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Alex,
I and others have gone around and around with Yoram on several points, and his view that the epistemic value of diversity through sortition is “self-contradictory, rather than complementary” is one of those points. Yoram subscribes to the view that the problem with elections is that elites win, and they advance their narrow and specific interests at the expense of the interests of wider society. The reason I and others subscribe to the benefit of diversity through sortition, is that it leads to better decisions BOTH if this diversity merely is another way of saying the body is also more representative of the general population, OR if someone assumes that the elected representatives are well-intentioned, rather than self-serving. Diverse representative bodies make better decisions REGARDLESS of WHY current elected bodies make poor decisions.
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Yes, it’s possible that Mill and Marx were both right. Terry has illustrated this from his own experience (as an elected legislator) when he pointed out that his colleagues, as property owners themselves, just didn’t understand the perspective of renters, irrespective of whether their interests were aligned with the asset-rich.
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> Diverse representative bodies make better decisions REGARDLESS of WHY current elected bodies make poor decisions.
According to viewpoint theory there is no such thing as “better decisions” or “poor decsions”. There are only “better decisions for X” and “poor decisions for X”. Thus, this not a question of an agreed outcome (“what”) with a disagreement about the mechanism (“why”), but rather contradictory claims about what question is being posed.
Such distinctions apparently do not bother “deliberative democrats” who would rather gloss over uncomfortable questions, but I am hoping that a professional philosopher would be more committed to getting to the roots of things.
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Yoram,
There are many examples of elites, through ignorance and groupthink, failing to effectively pursue their own interests or intended goals. Look at the US invasion of Iraq, for instance. Had they somehow managed to assemble an allotted panel of Iraqis to willingly advise on the invasion beforehand, they would doubtless have done a ‘better’ job, by their own lights. The default state of any large group of people is ‘ill-informed and unable to effectively pursue their own interest’ – it takes a whole array of well-functioning institutions to sustainably lift a group out of that state. I can’t speak for Alex, but from where I sit, if this is a ‘counter-democratic’ argument, so much the worse for ‘democracy’.
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>According to viewpoint theory
Is this Alexander Bain’s apologia for religious creationism or Mary Overlie’s theory of theatre, dance and choreography? I’ve yet to come across it in the study of political decision making.
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> viewpoint theory
Sorry, that should be “standpoint theory”. That is the term used in Alex’s slide deck I linked to above (slide 5):
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Oliver,
> There are many examples of elites, through ignorance and groupthink, failing to effectively pursue their own interests or intended goals
Everybody can make mistakes, but the notion that some person or group (no matter which person or group) is consistently unable to use their power to promote their own interests is antithetical to the democratic idea that people and groups are the best representatives of their own interests.
It is the traditional elitist position that common people are better off having the state controlled by their betters. The “deliberative democrats” have things the other way around: the elites are better off having the state controlled by common people. Neither claim makes sense and both are anti-democratic.
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> it takes a whole array of well-functioning institutions to [allow a large group to pursue its interests]
This is clearly true, but it is neither here nor there. Everybody recognizes that institutions are needed to run a state. The question is whose interests those institutions are promoting. Are you claiming that the current institutions are not working for anyone? To me it seems they are doing a great job promoting the interests of those who control them.
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>Standpoint Theory: what one is able to see, understand, and explain is partly a function of one’s social position.
That is regular epistemic theory (there is no reference to interests) that underlies The (Millian) case for diversity. Note also the “partly”.
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Hi Yoram (and others).
Some answers to your questions. I’ll do the posts separately so to keep things a bit more manageable.
On the question of intended audience…
My hope is that the book will be of interest and accessible to anyone interested in what democracy is, why electoral democracy is running into trouble, and new ideas about how we might do democracy differently. I think there have been a number of excellent ‘get the ball rolling’ general audience books putting sortition in view (e.g. DVR’s Against Elections, Hennig’s The End of Politicians, even Landemore’s Open Democracy), but I worry that they don’t offer enough by way of detail. That is fine for some audiences, but there is a danger that they seem a bit too rosy-eyed with respect to sortition and inadequately attentive to ways in which things might go badly for sortition and lottocratic institutions.
Related to this, I wrote the book in a form (and with a press) focused on academic respectability and engagement. I think there is actually more excitement, respect, and engagement regarding sortition and citizens’ assemblies and so on outside of the academic/intellectual world; part of my hope is to do more to build a case from within those ‘elite’ institutions, both as a practical matter but also as a theoretical one. There are many reasons to care about this, I think, only some of them related to movement strategic questions.
I did push for things like lower cost, paperback release, an audiobook, etc., in part in the hope that it will be engaged with by people outside just those in academia. But I consciously chose not to make it a trade book. It is long, there are lots of detailed scholarly citations, I try to fairly and in detail represent the relevant empirical and philosophical literature, etc.
Part of the thought, I guess, is that there are two things that are important. One (“publicity”) is to get many people to be broadly aware of sortition, the arguments in favor of it, etc. A second (“respectability”) is to have those ideas be as detailed and well defended as possible, and to make it very difficult for intellectuals and academic elites to dismiss them. This project is aiming to do more regarding that second goal.
Both of these seem important for eventually getting lottocratic/sortition systems to be taken seriously or even adopted, even despite the expected resistance from elites who currently benefit from the system (only imperfectly overlapping with the intellectual/academic ‘elite’).
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Hi Alex,
> anyone interested in […] how we might do democracy differently
Thanks for your response. I must admit, however, that I do not feel that my point was addressed. When you write “how we might do democracy differently”, you seem to be glossing over the fact that there is no single “we” to address.
In particular, when you try to engage an academic audience, it seems necessary that you take into account the “academic standpoint”. Academia, as an elite group, and specifically the political science academia which is strongly connceted to the political elite, has a natural tendency to see the political status quo, which lends it its elite status, as justified and desirable.
> anyone interested in what democracy is
It’s great that you bring this up – it’s another fundamental point that I feel is never addressed properly. Could you give your definition of what democracy is?
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Hi Yoram, yes, I was going to respond point by point. The first response just concerned audience. (I am finding time to respond interspersed with other obligations; please excuse the delay…)
One small additional point re: audience. I think that there are some who will never be convinced that we should change from the status quo; namely, those who benefit massively from things as they are and who are motivated solely by self-interest. Those are individuals to strategize around, outvote, and so on, not to aim to convince. How many such people there are is an open question, but I think it is perhaps not actually all that many. And I wouldn’t put most academics in that category (whatever other many flaws academics have…).
On to the issues about the epistemic advantages of diversity.
The key background claims for me are (a) that political institutions are tools that a group of people can and ought to use to address a distinct kind of “moral-political” problem that arises when creatures like us live in close enough proximity to each other and (b) that the effectiveness of political systems as tools in this regard is in large part a function of their “sensibility.”
I define sensibility as having two components: (1) the ability to appreciate the world as it actually is, and (2) the ability to respond to the world in light of that appreciation. The first of these is an epistemic dimension, tracking reality, truth, and the facts that there are. The second of these is an agential dimension, concerning the ability of the system to actually respond to reality in morally and prudentially appropriate ways.
It is entirely possible that elites often pursue their own objectives effectively. But those objectives match very poorly with actually addressing the moral-political problems that actually exist in some political community. So, they might be adequately “diverse” to effectively pursue their own ends. (But also perhaps not. I think often elites make terrible mistakes, even by the lights of their own self interest, for having an overly narrow understanding of the world, the problems they are confronting, etc.) The main objection to elite capture is not just that there is inadequate diversity and that this has epistemic implications. The main objection is that they have agential aims that depart from the proper purposes of political systems, and so systems that are captured in this way fail by the lights of most components of political morality: responsiveness, sensibility, equality, participation, justice, etc.
The elites will not be moved by an argument that says they need more epistemic diversity in order to do better by these lights. They will also not be moved by an argument that says they should be less able to capture the political institutions. These ideas and arguments aren’t for them. There is no way to argue the self-interested elitist oligarchy out of power. They aren’t going to just step down because we make some very convincing arguments.
Those of us who are concerned not to be tyrants or to dominate or rule over others illegitimately might be concerned about what an actually responsive, legitimate political system might look like in the modern world. One part of that, I think, is acknowledging that knowledge is widely dispersed, different people know many different things that are relevant to actually noticing and responding effectively to the moral-political problems that are present in our community, and, for the system to do well by sensibility, there must be some mechanism by which it can harness and incorporate that widely dispersed knowledge. Chapters 10 (on expertise), 11 (on the epistemic and other value of deliberation) and 13 (on the likely improved epistemic performance of lottocracy) get into these issues in much greater detail.
Four key assumptions in the background for my view are (1) that knowledge is widely dispersed, given the complexity of the modern world and the variety and diversity of positions that people occupy in that world; (2) that there are objective moral facts; (3) that we should expect deep and persistent disagreement about value and morality and downstream issues of political morality; and (4) we should expect significant disagreement and interest divergence across a range of political issues. A sensible, effective, morally attractive, legitimate political system needs to be designed in light of all those facts.
So, I very much don’t think that we will all discover that we share the same values and interests. At various places in the book I note that I part ways with many deliberative democrats in thinking that there is something like consensus that we might hope or expect if we can only set up the right deliberative fora. (Although, in fairness, I think most of the deliberative democrats also no longer think we can or should aim at consensus, either.)
There is much more that might be said, but in general I try to be very clear that the ‘non-representative’ elite character of our political representatives is troubling for two very different families of reasons, the first epistemic (relating to what the elite believe and know and are interested in inquiring into to learn more), the second agential (moral, relating to the interests and preferences of the elite). This gets extended discussion in Chapter Six, on “Unrepresentative Representatives.”
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Hi Yoram. As for the definition of democracy, I take this up at length in Chapters 15 and 16, with the most explicit discussion taking place in Chapter 15 Section 7.
There, I argue that whether a political system is a democracy or operates democratically is a matter of degree, rather than a threshold on/off idea, and that there are four central components relevant to the assessment of how democratic a political system is:
EQUAL FUNDAMENTAL RESPECT: a political system is democratic in part to the extent that the system operates in a way that is compatible with, and indeed expresses and constitutes, a foundational commitment to the fundamental respect owed equally to all members of the political community, so that no invidious comparisons among citizens are made and no one rules over or dominates anyone else.
PARTICIPATION: a political system is democratic in part to the extent that (a) there are channels for ordinary citizens to participate substantively in political life, (b) these channels are protected as a matter of right, and (c) the participation of ordinary citizens within these channels significantly causally affects what political actions are taken and does so in a way that corresponds to the substantive nature of that participation.
INDIVIDUAL PRE-POLITICAL RIGHTS: a political system is democratic in part to the extent that there are substantial and broadly effective protections in place to limit political infringement of individual rights regarding life, bodily integrity, physical liberty, movement, speech, association, and thought.
RESPONSIVENESS: a political system is democratic in part to the extent that it generates substantially responsive political outcomes, where political outcomes are responsive to the extent that they substantially track what the people living in the political jurisdiction believe, prefer, or value, so that if those beliefs, preferences, or values were different, the political outcomes would also be different, would be different in a similar direction, and would be different because the beliefs, preferences, and values were different.
To count as a democracy, a political system must do well by all four of these measures, and a political system is more democratic to the extent that it does better by each of these measures.
I discuss each of these ideas at considerable length in Chapter 15, and make the case that lottocracy does as well as electoral representative democracy with respect to each of these dimensions, so that lottocracy is at least as democratic (and arguably more democratic) than electoral representative democracy.
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Hi Alex,
> I try to be very clear that the ‘non-representative’ elite character of our political representatives is troubling for two very different families of reasons, the first epistemic (relating to what the elite believe and know and are interested in inquiring into to learn more), the second agential (moral, relating to the interests and preferences of the elite).
Two points:
First, regarding your treatment of the two classes of reasons: I have not read the book, but in your slides that I linked to it seems to me that (1) the epistemic and agential reasons are not clearly described as two very different reasons, and (2) the epistemic reasons are highly emphasized at the expense of the agential reasons. In fact, except for in the preamble, “agential” is mentioned only once in the slides, and in that single time “agential priorities” are mentioned as being one of the reasons for the “epistemic concerns”.
Second, substantively: If the elite is dedicated to promoting its own narrow interests, then the question of whether they are epistemically effective (in the sense that they are not fully aware of non-elite concerns) seems completely beside the point. Even if the elite was perfectly epistemically effective, it would still pursue its own ends. Why then be concerned with the epistemic issues at all?
My general suspicion is that the epistemic concerns are played up (and the agential concerns are played down) in the academic literature because these concerns are more acceptable to the elite. Being blamed for not being sensible enough to how the hoi polloi feel is one thing. Being blamed for deliberately exploiting them is another.
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Regarding your definition of democracy:
While at the abstract level your four points make sense and incontestable, it seems to me that they largely leave things as underdefined as the literal “rule by the people” does.
For example, you write:
Some would argue that this would rule out any form of representation, since any decision-making body “rules” over the rest of the population.
Or, as another example:
Standard electoralist dogma is that elections meet all your criteria. Would you accept that?
To be more specific: how would you operationalize your definition? Given a particular system, say the US, the Russian, or the Chinese system, how would I assess how democratic that system is?
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Hi Yoram,
A few responses to your most recent questions/responses.
Regarding the relative emphasis of the epistemic and the agential issues… In the book (rather than the slides) both are given quite an extensive definition and discussion. Some of the agential points are somewhat obvious and less interesting philosophically, so there is less need to go on and on about them. (The idea that many of the very wealthy attempt to advance their own interests even when those depart from the broader public interest is hardly news.)
You write: “Second, substantively: If the elite is dedicated to promoting its own narrow interests, then the question of whether they are epistemically effective (in the sense that they are not fully aware of non-elite concerns) seems completely beside the point. Even if the elite was perfectly epistemically effective, it would still pursue its own ends. Why then be concerned with the epistemic issues at all?”
The interesting question is not whether the elite are doing a good job (epistemically or agentially) at advancing their own interests. The big issues (as I see them) are (a) how can we make it so that the elite don’t control our institutions; and (b) if the broader public does control the institutions, how can we make it so that they (we) do a good job at addressing their (our) actual problems in effective and sensible ways, without thereby losing control again (say, by relying in bad ways on experts or representatives who don’t act in our interest).
We don’t get to the (b) issues if the elites control everything, but if we get to a situation in which that is no longer the case, the (b) issues remain. And those very much involve epistemic considerations, because of the massive size, scale, and complexity of modern life and modern political systems.
I am very happy (and very often do) explicitly blame the elite for taking advantage of the political institutions!
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Hi Yoram, regarding the definition of democracy, I encourage you to read chapters 15 and 16! I try to go into much more detail about what each of those conditions actually requires and ways in which electoral representative democracy isn’t doing so well by those conditions, if we interpret them in a non “electoralist dogma” way. Very briefly, I argue that equal formal say in an election isn’t a great way of satisfying the equality condition, the “causal efficacy” clause (c) of the participation condition often isn’t satisfied in captured electoral democracies, and electoral representative systems do poorly regarding responsiveness. But I go into much more detail about how to evaluate and operationalize these different ideas in those (very long) chapters. It wouldn’t immediately be the kind of thing that could be used to conduct an empirical study, but I do offer a lot more detailed discussion.
I also discuss the issue of using representatives and whether this constitutes an objectionable kind of being “ruled over” in Chapter 15 Section 5, in which I spend a long time responding to Lafont’s worries about “blind deference” to lottocratic representatives. I end up arguing that any attractive system will need to use representatives, and I offer a view regarding when deference to representatives is appropriate and doesn’t constitute being “ruled over” by anyone. I write: “deference is appropriate (a) if there are instrumental or moral reasons to defer, (b) if we believe that there are such reasons, and our belief is epistemically justifiable; and (c) if we choose to defer not unthinkingly but based on our (reasonable) views about the presence of such reasons. On this view, our deference should always be at least somewhat conditional, rather than unqualified or irrevocable, as it might be that certain contemplated actions would clearly depart from or undercut any instrumental or moral reasons to defer. Note that this account does not require that we can control those to whom we are deferring, nor does it require that we identify with the person(s) to whom we are deferring, nor with their decisions.” (p. 348)
I also stress that this question of appropriate deference must be framed at the macro (wholesale) level, not the micro (retail): “the question of deference on instrumental grounds must be framed at the right level. The question to ask is not about whether deferring to this specific elected official or this specific legislature is going to bring about good results. One might often be in a position to see that the results will not be good in this specific instance. One will often believe this to be the case, when one’s side loses a policy vote or an election. Importantly, in the political case, our deference should not be grounded in retail judgments about individuals or policies, but wholesale judgments about the full political system that empowers representatives and enables them to enact policies. That is why the Lafont-inspired conditions sketched above do poorly at discerning appropriate and inappropriate deference. And this is why we shouldn’t see our deference to or acceptance of the system hinging on specific elections or policy votes. For one thing, the very premise of a representative system suggests that we will be in a poor epistemic position to extend or withhold our deference in this kind of micro-level, retail way. But an additional key point is that our deference must be compatible with our knowledge of the deep disagreement in our political community, and the way in which we are unlikely to agree with or endorse much of what is decided. The key here is to see the value in deference to the system as a whole as a sensible way to go forward together, even given (and indeed perhaps because of) our deep disagreements.” (p. 349)
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Hi Alex,
> The idea that many of the very wealthy attempt to advance their own interests even when those depart from the broader public interest is hardly news
Sure. But the point is that elected officials ally themselves with those plutocrats and together form an exploitative ruling elite, and that (and this is the crucial point) this is not an abberation but the normal and expected function of electoralism.
This point should also be hardly news. After all, we have absolutely no problem asserting that rulers in other systems are exploitative. However, when it comes to our own system, this point is carefully avoided by political theorists.
> I am very happy (and very often do) explicitly blame the elite for taking advantage of the political institutions!
I think a more accurate way of putting it is that Western political institutions were deliberately designed to empower an elite. (“Taking advantage” seems to imply a situation that was not intended or foreseen.)
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Hi Alex,
> electoral representative democracy
An important point of terminology: I think we should avoid using this term or similar terms that imply that the existing system is fundamentally democratic. As anyone who reads the Federalist papers cannot fail to notice, the electoralist structure was designed as an anti-democratic structure. The fact that it was rebranded and marketed as “democracy” is pure manipulation. As we keep using those terms and the well-worn formulas about how “our democracy is failing” we just undermine our own case.
> I go into much more detail about how to evaluate and operationalize these different ideas in those (very long) chapters
This is a problem in my opinion. If we cannot distill our ideas and make their empirical application clear and direct, then we will find ourselves mired in the endless discussions about what democracy is. These discussions have been going on for 200 years and have produced very little in terms of either better scientific understanding of the notion of democracy or of improved democratic practice.
> Lafont
(I apologize in advance: The tone in the paragraph below is rather trenchant. After being in this business for two decades, one’s patience with self-serving arguments by people who benefit from that status quo wears thin.)
Lafont is a great example of the problem of using long arguments in the hope of convincing academics to see sense. This assumes good faith on the side of your interlocutors – good faith that is very often not there. Lafont’s arguments are completely without merit. But as long as we accept long tracts of unstructured text as an acceptable form of argumentation, nothing will ever stop her from repeating arguments that are obviously absurd, and nothing will stop those who sympathize with her conclusions (i.e., keep the status quo) from pretending that those arguments should be taken seriously. Even if on occasion, unsurprisingly, the mask falls off and the naked oligarchical mindset is presented for all to see.
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> Lafont’s arguments are completely without merit.
I think that statement goes beyond “trenchant”.
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[…] review of mine of Alex Guerrero’s book Lottocracy will be appearing in this first […]
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