Bernard Manin, 1951-2024

Posted on November 3, 2024 by peterstone

Hello All,

I just received the news that Bernard Manin has passed away. I learned this through Melissa Schwartzberg, one of his many excellent students. Sortition fans probably know that Manin’s book The Principles of Representative Government (1996) was one of the first major works to consider the respective democratic credentials of sortition and election. Contrary to what many suggest, he did not share Aristotle’s view that election was inherently aristocratic; rather, he suggested in his book that election was inherently Janus-faced, with both aristocratic and democratic dimensions. His book also raised the important question how sortition came to be eclipsed by election as a democratic selection mechanism. Beyond this book, Manin made many important contributions to debates about deliberation, representation, and other central topics in contemporary political theory.

I only met Manin once, at a workshop at Sciences Po organized by Gil Delannoi. He had many kind words about my book on lotteries for which I was very grateful. Sorry I did not have more opportunity for conversation with him. RIP, Professor Manin.

Filed under: Books, Elections, Sortition | 6 Comments »

Ballotocracy: A step beyond lottocracy

Posted on November 3, 2024 by Roger Knights

We all know what lottocracy means: Sample Sovereignty. In other words, the elevation of a representative sample of the whole community to legislative seats, replacing elected legislators.

The case for this replacement seems strong:

Per Rousseau, there is less of a “representative” interference between the whole body and the legislators, meaning the General Will is more truly ensconced, and its actions more democratically legitimate.

Democracy means the rule of the considered common sense of the community. But a mass-electoral system gives each voter such a tiny influence on election results that most pay little consideration to political affairs. And an electoral system implies party government, which roils the waters and impairs considered consideration of the issues. And the influence of professional party politicians, pelf (money), propaganda, and the press (more generally, the media) further shapes and restricts the democratic dialogue. This is only a partial list of the demerits of what I call DeMockery (a mockery of democracy). Many others have noted them too.

The public, according to polling, seems disillusioned to an unprecedented level with DeMockery and ready for a change.

And yet there have been no powerful movements toward full lottocracy. Only randomly chosen advisory entities have been created. (And even they have shown flaws, as in Ireland recently.) The public and public intellectuals apparently need a strong inducement to move beyond today’s mass-electoral system.

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Filed under: Academia, Elections, Participation, Proposals, Sortition | 17 Comments »

Sabine Hossenfelder on democracy, republic and sortition

Posted on November 3, 2024 by Yoram Gat

Sabine Hossenfelder is a physicist and fairly prominent YouTube figure with over 1.5 million followers. Her clips are about the physical sciences, but she occasionally strays outside this area. Her most recent video is titled “Is the USA a Democracy or a Republic?”. The analysis she offers is not too perceptive in my mind, but it does have the advantage of mentioning the idea of selecting political decision making bodies using a lottery. This idea gets a brief teaser in the introduction and a bit more detail toward the end of the video.

Naturally, most of the thousands of comments to the video focus on the democracy vs. republic matter, but at least one comment does pick up on the sortition idea:

Problem with representative democracy is that strangers, who do not know you, cannot represent you. The premise is simply false.

Voting is entering a contract, asking to be ruled by a handful of strangers. Extending them Power Of Attorney, four years into the future … If you sign that, whatever happens, you have no right to complain, because you accepted the deal.

Here is what we should do instead : Government by lottery

1000 citizens randomly selected. 200 replacements selected every year, giving five years in government for each. Then perhaps a quarterly online voting session for the rest of us; Yes/No to the bill with slimmest decisive vote, in the 1000-man parlament during that quarter.
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Filed under: Elections, Press, Sortition | 1 Comment »