It is to its great detriment that sortition has become somehow tied to the ideology of “deliberation”. At best, “deliberation” is a distraction from the democratic thrust of sortition. It is often worse, an elitist idea that is in conflict with that democratic thrust. The talk of “deliberation” implies that groups of people are unable to spontaneously self-organize and coordinate in order to reach mutually beneficial arrangements. That unless experts set things up quite right – verify diversity of the forum, make sure the “shy” don’t get left out, facilitate the discussion, set up the correct incentives – then “deliberation” won’t happen and as a result “unwise” decisions will be made. “Deliberative democracy” is therefore an anti-democratic idea that all those who wish to see sortition used to democratize society, rather than to bolster the existing oligarchical arrangements or to modify the existing oligarchical arrangements into different oligarchical arrangements, should distance themselves from, both in their own minds and publicly.
I was again reminded of the harmful effects of the “deliberation” ideology by reading a post by Ethan McCutchen. There is a lot to agree with in the post, like the outright rejection of elections:
[W]e can’t and shouldn’t trust the old process, but not because we’re a nation of villainous idiots. The problem is not the voters but voting itself. Elections will not evolve from a source of feckless discord into one of fruitful discourse. Re-glorifying voting won’t somehow usher in a new era of healthy deliberation. Elections will not bring us back together. Elections are not the antidote; they are the poison.
To be clear democracy is not the poison, elections are.
Unfortunately, the author does his arguments the great disservice of forcing them into the “deliberative democracy” template:
Today, the ancient tradition of democracy by lots, or sortition, is undergoing a revival – and an upgrade from Athens’ flawed system. Process pioneers all over the world have been experimenting with mini-publics, panels of citizens chosen at random. The purposes of these mini-publics vary widely, as do their processes and their names (citizen assemblies, citizen juries, Bürgerrat, etc), but in all cases, participants gather for facilitated sessions of learning and deliberation.
In this context, it turns out that random citizens deliberate far better than elected ones.
But with the right framing, productive deliberation in diverse groups is not just possible but routine. Appropriate facilitation reliably makes participation in mini-publics a profoundly rewarding, even moving, experience. If random citizens can learn to understand each other, converge around solutions, and feel more fully human along the way, what is it that prevents our elected representatives, our chosen ones from doing it too? In a word: elections.
The problem with elections is not just that they fail to identify the best for the job, though wow do they fail.
Nor do legislators’ deliberations fail because elections are terrible at achieving balanced representation, though oh boy are they.
But poor representation doesn’t explain poor deliberation; if anything, deliberation should be easier among more homogenous groups. And, indeed, on the rare occasions when these same disproportionately rich, white, straight, tall, male, urban, educated, extroverted, silver-haired and silver-tongued types find themselves together in a room with the right incentives, they can typically work together just fine.
Sadly, when elections are involved, the incentives are almost always horribly wrong.
And that is the core reason why the elected deliberate so poorly: elections poison discourse. Elected officials have strong incentives to focus their attention on donors and lobbyists and branding and past and future soundbites and almost no incentive to listen to each other with humility. Elections make deliberation a quaint little sidebar to a grand aristocratic game. The game penalizes listening, connection, depth, personal growth, and complexity; and it rewards caricature, hyperbole, gotchas, zingers, wingers, and all flavors of cynicism.
All of this makes the common falacious assumptions about the electoralist system being dysfunctional. That elected officials are too busy with their partisan electoralist machinations to get anything done at the policy level, or at least to get anything “wise” done. But this is absolutely not the case. The electoralist system is perfectly functional. It works great for the elected officials themselves and for their allies. Growing income and wealth concentration is not due to not getting anything done. It is what is getting done. Furthermore, it is getting all this done while at the same time distracting the population from this exploitation by the electoral-partisan theater. It is the epitome of wisdom, as far as the electoralist elite is concerned.
The electoralist elite – the “disproportionately rich, white, straight, tall, male, urban, educated, extroverted, silver-haired and silver-tongued types” – always “find themselves together in a room with the right incentives”. And as a result they do “work together just fine”. Like every other group, and without any need for facilitation, experimentation or management by experts, they do “deliberate”. That is, they coordinate and cooperate in achieving mutually beneficial goals, and they do achieve those goals very effectively. Their achievements are our reality.
Filed under: Deliberation, Elections, Sortition |
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Yoram:> It is to its great detriment that sortition has become somehow tied to the ideology of “deliberation”.
Yes indeed. The term “deliberative democracy” (DD) was coined in 1980 by Joseph M. Bessette, his principal focus being elite deliberation amongst elected officials in Congress. If citizens are to deliberate, it should, in true Madisonian fashion, be through their elected representatives, insulated from the whims of an ‘unreformed and unreflective’ citizenry (Bessette, 1994, p.2).
The shift of focus to citizen deliberation was inspired, in part, by Jurgen Habermas, who claimed that deliberation should be confined to the (voluntary) ‘public sphere’, and the modern deliberative democracy movement might well be seen as the reincarnation of the eighteenth-century (bourgeois) coffee house, thereby increasing the influence of the (already overrepresented) chattering classes.
The democracy element in DD originally focused on the procedural norms required to generate the ‘ideal speech situation’, hence the need for trained facilitators. This was then conflated with Robert Dahl’s throwaway remark that a randomly selected group of citizens would constitute a ‘minipopulus’, and this could be viewed as an ‘attentive’ public, the decisions of which would be better than the real thing.
Unfortunately, Dahl’s model required 1,000 or so for a representative sample, and it’s not clear how such a large group could deliberate (in Bessette and Habermas’s sense). So this was scaled down to small samples that are then stratified on a limited number of variables, to make them more ‘representative’. Unfortunately, typically 95% of those invited to participate turn down the offer, and this might well be a significant population parameter.
When we launched the Journal of Sortition a couple of years ago it was intended to address the conflation of the two variants of democracy involved in sortition and deliberation.
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Yes, there’s something uncomfortable when I see the huge lists of organizations involved with all their typical boards and advisors and funders across the nonprofit world. They’re incentive (and mine) is to get a career out of running assemblies. If they all demand that these events be run by experts and have certain kinds of requirements, it does help make themselves necessary.
Anyway, when presented with opportunities to facilitate or organize assemblies or deliberations, I’m not sure when it’s worth taking baby steps or when one should perhaps refuse to be part of a process.
For instance, I just recently worked with Engaged CA to facilitate a number of online, 2.5 hr deliberations on the impact of AI to workers in California. Do I think 2.5 hours is a sufficient time to think about such a topic? Do I think this is going to be taken seriously by the state of California? I don’t know. Did I get paid? Yes. Do I think these groups were representative of Californians? Not really, they were people who volunteered on a particular website and then randomly selected from that pool. However, it did provice a chance to at least, in my introduction, to explain a bit about sortition.
If we do not have the political power to just grant a sortition body direct legislative power, then concessions have to be made to the elected bodies, if any kind of sortionish process is going to occur.
In defense of stratified sampling, there is some kind of bias definitely introduced in who checks and responds to mailed postcards. I don’t know if stratified sampling as is currently done is the absolute best solution, but there’s a consenus among practitioners and from city legislatures that it doesn’t hurt.
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I’ll also add that I think one can be agnostic as to how self-aware electeds are at the effects of their deliberations. I think many earnestly think they’re fighting a fight for their side. They’re definitely all fighting to keep their careers going! And that is a battle. But yes, the system empowers a class, the class’s shared interests are preserved.
And we want a system that empowers a class representative of the people. I honestly think that we don’t need to worry too much about deliberativeness dereailing us. If we achieve sortition, that is, a system where randomly selected groups are given power, then they can do what they please with moderators.
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Thanks for responding!
I’m happy to grant that elected bodies are typically quite capable of producing outputs.
The essay is not really about legislative output; it’s centered on political systems’ impacts on polarization. I’ve found depolarization a more approachable introduction to sortition for many than arguments about policy alignment. A lot of what I write is aimed at messaging that will broaden sortition’s appeal. It would be a fair critique that the writing style may narrow the appeal back down again :).
The relevant assessment of poor deliberation in elected bodies is about the quality of deliberative discourse between parties and the absolute inappropriateness of electoral systems for leading the resolution of politically polarized countries like the US. Sure, effective deliberation can still happen *within* parties and coalitions. And there is occasional horsetrading between them. But there is little in plenary/committee settings (especially public ones) that approximates the sincere listening and learning and earnest problem-solving that takes place in sortition bodies. (Yes, this problem is exaggerated in the US system.)
Terry Bouricius writes extensively in Democracy Without Politicians about the deliberative shortcomings of elected bodies. Elected leaders pay little attention to testimony except to hunt for opportunities to score political points. As the literal chosen ones, they are less open to learning than ordinary citizens. Etc.
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I’m not sure how this piece inspired such invective for facilitation with such light mention of it. (Or, for that matter, chagrin at the bastardization of the term “deliberative democracy” without using the term at all. Bessett and Habermas and the like don’t own the word “deliberation”.)
> The talk of “deliberation” implies that groups of people are unable to spontaneously self-organize and coordinate in order to reach mutually beneficial arrangements.
It does? To whom? Who hears “deliberation” and thinks helicopter facilitation? It means weighing things thoughtfully, sometimes individually, sometimes in groups. Even sortition bodies with no group interaction feature individual deliberation. If not, then you just have a poll.
I support facilitation in many contexts and have been a part of groups that benefited heavily from it. It was a good user experience; as a participant I find it can be very helpful when others manage process details and let me focus on content. (“Facilitation” can convey a pretty wide range of interventions, many of which are just about deciding when to break into smaller groups or minimizing ad hominem commentary.) And it seemed worth mentioning facilitation here, because it’s common practice to date.
But the vast majority of deliberations I’ve been part of in my life have not been facilitated, and unfacilitated deliberations in sortition bodies are often quite appropriate.
I can believe overfacilitation happens and would be interested in evidence of patterns of intrusive facilitation or other problematic guidance. I’m sympathetic to organizers who work within considerable resource constraints and must push for deliverables on tight timelines, but that can’t justify steering.
And, fwiw, when I spoke of the healthy incentives of CAs, I didn’t mean that facilitators had created artificial incentives, I meant that they LACK the destructive incentives of electoral systems which are very real (separately from and in addition to alignment concerns).
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Ethan:> Terry Bouricius writes extensively in Democracy Without Politicians about the deliberative shortcomings of elected bodies. Elected leaders pay little attention to testimony except to hunt for opportunities to score political points. As the literal chosen ones, they are less open to learning than ordinary citizens. Etc.
What about the incident in Terry’s book where he refers to witnessing the exchange between competing teams of lobbyists on a topic where his Vermont state legislature commerce committee had no particular views? He describes it as deeply informative. The key point is that the advocatess (in this case lobbyists) and jury (in this case elected committee members) should be distinct.
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Max:> And we want a system that empowers a class representative of the people. I honestly think that we don’t need to worry too much about deliberativeness dereailing us. If we achieve sortition, that is, a system where randomly selected groups are given power, then they can do what they please with moderators.
That’s a very strong claim, and there is an awful lot of devilry in the detail (for reasons that we have debated at length on this forum).
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Yes, exactly! The point of that story is that it was an exceptional experience in 20 years in the legislature. And that it was not a “political” (read: “election-related”) issue.
So hooray! Elected representatives can plausibly muster high quality deliberation so long as the topic is not perceived to be of any interest to the public (and therefore of no use for campaign spin). In other words, their deliberative capacity for any given topic is inversely proportionate to the topic’s proximity to the their source of perceived legitimacy.
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Sorry, 10 years in the legislature, I guess. 20 in electoral politics.
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Manin’s decision to segue from his original deliberative democracy focus to debate format validated the inclusion of politicians, so long as the exchange was removed from campaign considerations. This would presuppose a change in the relationship between proposers and deciders along the lines of suggestions by Alex Kovner, Kai O’Reilly, Jason Rose and others.
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I want to push back on this forcefully.
There are lots of great discussions to be had about how best to frame deliberation in sortition-selected groups: when to center group deliberation and when to center individual, whether and when and how to facilitate, how to integrate non-deliberative social interactions, etc.
For most, the term’s denotation has kept close to its etymological roots of weighing. And, from that frame, deliberation is not a distraction from the democratic thrust of most uses of sortition, it’s deeply integral to them.
We can’t all weigh everything, so we pick a representative few to do so. If there’s no deliberation and we just want impulsive reactions, we may as well vote.
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Are you under the impression that the growing adoption of civic assemblies stems from allegiance to Manin?
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Bernard Manin’s paper “On Legitimacy and Political Deliberation” (1987) helped launch the deliberative turn in democracy studies. I think we agree on the etymology of deliberation as “weighing” and that democracy should give this right to a representative sample of the target population. The only issue is who gets to perform the speech acts if the advocacy is to reflect the discursive diversity of the citizenry.
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I agree with you Ethan, it’s frustrating to have one’s best efforts at making sense summed up as tendentiously as in this post.
I do share the post’s hostility to professionals all lining up to supervise the deliberations of the hoi polloi – and have proposed a way in which a ‘council of elders’ drawn from an alumni of citizen jurors would govern the citizens’ jury thus making it self-sovereign.
But we need structures of deliberation – as we have in legal juries – because institutions need to be built around the kind of governance we want, and not the fond hope that people will work it all out from scratch the moment they’re assembled.
We have plenty of powerful people seeking to manipulate outcomes so we want to build an institution capable of resisting that – as we have in the law.
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Nick:> But we need structures of deliberation – as we have in legal juries
When I did jury service 15 or so years ago, the deliberation was entirely unstructured — the judge just told us to appoint a spokesperson and arrive at a verdict. The principal structural difference between legal juries and CAs is (in the latter case) the lack of distinction between pro- and con- advocates and jury.
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Honestly, that seems quite important for discourse here.
I think it’s fair to say that vernacular usage of the term leans more towards “group” than “individual” deliberation. That’s true of how I used it in this essay (though I’ve tried to be more precise in more recent writing), and it’s true of usage in the field. But I don’t think the notion of individual deliberation strikes most as an unfamiliar idea.
I don’t think it’s fair to suggest that the term deliberation itself has come to embed a particular process model as this post claimed. It seems to want to pick a battle with facilitated deliberation. You seem to want to pick one with group deliberation by sortition bodies. But deliberation itself is being made the enemy.
To be clear, I’m a process pluralist and empiricist who would be happy to see experimentation with the processes you’re describing. So as I understand it, the distinction is not that I don’t want sortition used for individual deliberation, it’s that you don’t want it used for group deliberation, even unfacilitated.
So, if it’s important to turn this into another conversation about your model, you could still engage with the ACTUAL content of the essay. You might contest the claims about how elections contaminate group deliberation (eg, how PR or minority proposals would mitigate the problem) or about how group deliberation in sortition bodies help. Or you might contend (plausibly) that individual deliberation in trials would shift incentives for elected officials to engage in healthier cross-partisan public deliberation.
Or, I suppose, we could just continue portraying this essay as a shill for oligarchic process manipulators.
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As the term deliberation has two completely different meanings, I prefer to disambiguate it by referring to a) advocacy and b) judgment. As the argumentative theory of reason posits different cognitive modules for each, it’s also sensible to allocate the functions to different agents. We all agree that (given exacting constraints) the aggregate judgment of a large randomly-selected body will approximate that of the target population.
That leaves the problem of advocacy, where the speech acts of the agents need to match the ideological diversity of the citizen body. The best way of achieving this is via a modified electoral process, rather than leaving it to random information cascades. The exchange between elected advocates would be better described as debate, rather than deliberation.
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I can respect the value of allocating advocacy and judgment functions to different agents, even if I’m not willing to elevate that constraint to a sine qua non for all sortition applications.
But I don’t think anyone uses the term “deliberation” to refer to judgment-free advocacy. Deliberation (weighing) always involves judgment, but there’s a lot of variability in the extent to which different processes invite deliberators introduce their perspectives (along with advocacy dynamics) to the group. Some designs have no social interaction at all. Court juries use group deliberation that often involves advancing personal perspectives, so you can say there’s an element of advocacy, though clearly they’re not the primary advocates. Many CAs, like the Oregon CIRs, don’t stray terribly far from that approach and predominantly weigh the arguments of outside advocates. (Yes, the selection of those advocates is a major concern with many possible solutions, but to stay on topic, the conflation of advocacy and judgment is not so far from that of court juries). Other CAs involve a lot more idea generation from participants and relatively little adversarial testimony and more fully conflate the roles.
In other words, there aren’t two completely different meanings, there’s a continuum of the extent to which advocacy is incorporated with the necessary component of judgment under the banner of deliberation. To favor minimizing that conflation is a fair position, but insist on a firewall in all applications seems extreme and impracticable and, importantly, it runs counter to our most effective strategies for speeding the adoption of sortition.
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We need parliamentary procedure, and nothing else. No facilitators.
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The act of teaching citizen deliberators parliamentary procedure (or any other group process) would be, in the parlance of process practitioners, and act of facilitation.
In that sense (which honestly is the most workable framing), the question isn’t whether there is facilitation but how it is structured. No facilitation means no support organizing meeting dates, no support for temperature-taking votes, no provision of water clocks, nothing. I don’t perceive the removal of all of that support as empowering.
I do understand the push to minimalize mid-deliberation interventions, even if I don’t share it for all applications (especially those with highly limited time resources; you don’t want rushed participants to spend all their time figuring out their process). But the extreme of “no facilitators” doesn’t really serve the deliberators the way it’s intended.
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On the topic of facilitation… we do need a best-guess starting design, but then just leave that decision, and its steady refinement to a sortition-selected Rules Council. Such a body would not deal with policy matters, but only deal with monitoring difficulties and successes of mini-publics and propose rules changes (such as expand, eliminate or adjust facilitation) to a decision making jury. A democratic self-correcting system of improvement.
As for Keith’s assertion that elections assure that proposals proportionally “match the ideological diversity of the citizen body.”… That is nonsense. Most citizens have no consistent ideology. And those that do, often completely change their off-the-cuff policy opinions after giving the topic much serious thought, or learning any new information. Leaving agenda setting to party elites (often atypical), who are skilled at whipping up fears and hatreds to win votes, is a very bad idea (probably as bad as the current election-based agenda-setting process).
Citizens’ Assemblies have found that when diverse everyday people come together randomly, they often find far more agreement than any parties would admit to. The door for proposals should be open to anyone in the society who wants to help (ho boulomenos in Ancient Greek democracy) by participating in one of a huge array of small Interest Panels. Excluding great ideas by EITHER limiting idea generation to elite politicians, or to those few people who get randomly selected, would be a mistake. Random Review Panels can filter or combine the wide range of ideas coming from Interest Panels down to a final draft law that will be ratified or rejected by a large Policy Jury.
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One other serious problem with the idea of limiting policy proposals to political parties that have no power or final authority, is that it seems unlikely more than a tiny percentage of citizens would bother to vote in such elections. In the US we often have two thirds of people sitting out Congressional elections, where real power is at stake. If those who get elected only had permission to propose rather than pass legislation, I don’t know if anybody other than a handful of fanatics and policy extremists who would bother to vote.
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By the way… this is Terry Bouricius… somehow after logging in to WordPress it assigned me this weird name.
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Hi Ethan,
It’s great that you joined the discussion.
I find your statements rather self-contradictory regarding what “deliberation” means. When you defend your claim that the elected do not engage in deliberation you raise the bar and it is a group, ideally public, activity:
> there is little [deliberation] in plenary/committee settings (especially public ones) that approximates the sincere listening and learning and earnest problem-solving that takes place in sortition bodies.
But later you lower the bar and say that deliberation can happen individually:
> It [- deliberation -] means weighing things thoughtfully, sometimes individually, sometimes in groups. Even sortition bodies with no group interaction feature individual deliberation.
It seems to me that you are similarly equivocating regarding what “facilitation” means.
But more importantly, you do not address my main point. The point is that according to democratic ideology people capably represent their own best interests. People who have power use this power effectively to pursue their objectives. When the power is wielded by a group, this naturally and unavoidably involves coordination between the members of the group.
To put this another way, asking whether “deliberation” is going on is equivalent to asking whether “thinking” is going on (indeed in your lowered bar statement above, you essentially equate “deliberation” with “thinking”). Asking this question is meaningless unless one works with the assumption that unless properly guided many people cannot represent their own best interests: they do not deliberate, they do not think.
If you feel that this is indeed the case – that without proper guidance from others many people do not think – then you are continuing a long and storied tradition of elitism. If not, then as far as I can see all the talk about “deliberation” is doing a disservice to your democratic message.
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Ethan:> I don’t think anyone uses the term “deliberation” to refer to judgment-free advocacy.
According to Bernard Manin, “deliberation” has two distinct meanings:
Terry:> As for Keith’s assertion that elections assure that proposals proportionally “match the ideological diversity of the citizen body.”… That is nonsense. Most citizens have no consistent ideology.
That’s true, in the sense of a coherent set of beliefs and preferences, but people often feel strongly about specific policy areas. If the proposal threshold in the parliamentary body were lowered this would lead to a burgeoning of small specialist parties, who would then have to work together on an ad hoc basis to make legislative proposals. I would suggest that Terry’s rejection of electoral democracy is the result of his long exposure to the two party system, which none of us are seeking to preserve. For my review of his book (and Ethan’s response), see: https://sortition-agora.co.uk/post/on-poachers-and-gamekeepers-response-to-review-article
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Yoram:> According to democratic ideology people capably represent their own best interests.
You’ve made that claim repeatedly over the years, could your provide us with some empirical (rather than ideological) support?
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To clarify, Manin’s second meaning applies to a group that performs both functions (which doesn’t apply to our model, which is based closely on 4th Century Athenian nomothesia). That’s why I propose we drop the word deliberation, in favour of advocacy and judgment.
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The word “deliberation” is here to stay among both the general public and sortition advocates. So we need to make sure it stays close to its vernacular meaning, which lacks the ideological attachments implied in the initial response to my essay.
I don’t think academics’ definitions of vernacular words that long predate them do or should matter terribly for how and whether those words are used in advocacy. But in this case Manin’s definitions derive from and still align with how they’re commonly used.
Manin’s two definitions map to individual vs group, not advocacy vs judgment. Both forms of deliberation involve jugdment. Group deliberation may or may not involve contributions viewable as advocacy, but it clearly involves judgment. Advocacy without judgment isn’t deliberation at all. You’re talking about an orthogonal distinction.
Moreover, the connotations of “judgment” argue against using it consistently in place of “deliberation.” Judgment connotes the final decision more than the act of weighing, which would make it a poor substitute for in many cases where sortition advocates are promoting the value of representative bodies that deeply consider ideas. To me, this is the essential appeal of sortition democracy. And this is what the general public hears when they hear “deliberation.”
In both definitions, Manin uses “consideration,” which is much closer in connotation to deliberation than judgment. “Judgment” often makes sense when you’re focusing on outputs, as in a body’s role in a system design. But my essay about polarization, “judgment” would miss the point. It’s a discussion of polarization, and it is the (group) deliberation/weighing/consideration, not the judgment/decision-making, that is depolarizing.
All of this strays a long way from the original response, which is built on a conflation of the word “deliberation” with a particular set of ideologies and approaches to group facilitation. That interpretation strays pretty far from how most people (and even most sortition advocates) read the word “deliberation.” CAs regularly break out into unfacilitated groups and *deliberate*. There is nothing about expert supervision baked into the word.
For my part, I celebrate depolarizing deliberations among sortition bodies whether or not I like every aspect of the process design. Like Max, I’m willing to advance variants that fall well short of my ideal implementation to open doors for further experimentation.
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I share some of Yoram’s frustration with many sortition advocates latching onto the term “Deliberative Democracy” as a virtual synonym for sortition. Most of them have no knowledge of the philosophical writings or Habermas or Rawls using that term of art. Most of these sortition advocates are also unaware that many “Deliberative Democracy” advocates within academia are staunch opponents of decisive sortition bodies (such as Lafont). However, I agree with Ethan, that deliberation as the word is normally used is a wonderful virtue of many sortition implementations, and should be prized.
I do want to reject Yoram’s assertion that elite legislators “deliberate,” equating that to “thinking” or talking to each other. A bunch of like-minded people with similar interests patting each other on the back as they plot how to achieve their common goal is the opposite of deliberation. Meaningful deliberation requires people with different opinions, and generally (though not necessarily) different interests, presenting information and arguments. These might be outsiders giving testimony, or members of the deliberative group, but gathering diverse information and perspectives is essential.
Yoram’s assertion conflates deliberation with plotting (when in agreement in advance), or negotiation (reflecting relative power when not in agreement). Neither of these are deliberation, though they are common within elected legislatures.
One point where I agree with Yoram, is that not all sortition bodies or implementations necessarily will need to use deliberation… Selecting officials from a pool of qualified individuals is not the typical example that comes to mind for sortition advocates, but is a legitimate use, as are many anti-corruption implementations.
However, as Ethan pointed out, mini-public deliberation is a wonderful thing, and can serve as an antidote to the partisan polarization exacerbated by electoral politics.
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In case it might be helpful, I discuss the pros and cons of deliberation (in my view, really just small group discussion) in Chapter 11 of Lottocracy. There I distinguish between three different versions of sortition/lottocracy: wild lottocracy, reflective lottocracy, and quiet lottocracy. The first is completely unmoderated full group deliberation. The second is somewhat moderated deliberation. The third involves no deliberation. Unlike deliberative democrats like Habermas and his followers, I do not see deliberation as a necessary condition of legitimacy or ‘real’ democracy. I see it as at most instrumentally useful, as a way of improving learning/retention of information, sharing perspectives and moral views, reducing biases, sharing evidence and knowledge, considering and weighing moral arguments and values, and working toward compromises. Whether it will in fact be instrumentally/epistemically useful depends on the background context. Whether we should have wild, reflective, or quiet lottocracy also depends on the background context, and what would happen in the absence of deliberation and/or moderation. There are contexts in which each would be best. I spell out some examples in the chapter. Of course, as I argue in the final chapter of the book, it is up to the people who might implement sortition or lottocracy to make all these decisions, not some academic writing a book or even some small group of people designing a particular citizens’ assembly. Here is a copy of the chapter on deliberation for those who might want it and who don’t have the book: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ruze0hcgbryg8mb1sxmjw/Deliberation.pdf?rlkey=kiqny3zk13hah6z1ovbv9x35a&st=gmptf7d7&dl=0
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The consistent through line between group and individual deliberation is careful consideration. Yes, thinking. All deliberation involves thinking but not all thinking qualifies as deliberation. In general, Kahneman’s system 2 thinking (slow and careful) qualifies as deliberation; system 1 (fast and automatic) doesn’t.
All of us are employ both kinds of thinking at different times. In some contexts we do system 1 thinking, in others system 2. Nobody can force anyone else to think one way or the other, but different process architectures invite different ways of thinking.
Both ways of thinking are important and valuable. Brainstorming is a highly useful activity and can make good productive use of system 1 thinking. I happen to enjoy it thoroughly. But it’s not deliberation.
Other process architectures emphasize time for careful consideration of ideas. They invite deliberation, system 2 thinking. Those are the architectures we want to use for weighing complex policy ideas.
I’m not saying this just as a system designer but as a system user. Like everyone else, I’m capable of both kinds of thinking. Some contexts help me settle into system 2 thinking; others make it all but impossible.
I don’t get this “unless properly guided” leap. Who said “proper guidance” is a necessary prerequisite of healthy deliberation? I’ve said a bunch of times that people can and do deliberate without guidance. And that the overwhelming majority of group deliberations in my life have not been facilitated at all, much less guided.
Then again, most of my deliberations haven’t involved time-delimited interactions with sortition-selected strangers, where some base-level of facilitation, if only in terms of setting initial process rules and reviewing remit, would only be denied out of extreme ideology. But still, once rolling, the group (and especially subgroups) might often proceed without anyone else in the room, especially one that favored, in Alex’s terminology, wild lottocracy.
I’ve also said that, as a deliberator, I have often (but not always) *liked* facilitation. I think there are things that facilitators can do to help create more space for system 2 thinking. I wouldn’t like it if they weighed in on content, but I do like it when they make it so I don’t have to think about process details. When done well, they’re not telling me how to think; they’re just creating space for it.
And I’ve never had a facilitated conversation go off the rails into ad hominem nonsense. That’s not to say citizen deliberators would do that often – I don’t think they would. But it could happen occasionally, and I imagine facilitators would reduce the rate.
But whether or not I happen to favor it, the key point is, facilitation is NOT REQUIRED for deliberation. It’s not baked into the concept of deliberation in any way. I say fight the good fight against intrusive facilitation if that’s your calling, but leave deliberation out of it. The call for deliberation is the call to consider things deeply. Deliberation is sortition’s friend.
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I think Yoram’s post has been very helpful in showing that there is no necessary connection between sortition and deliberation. As for Manin’s two definitions of deliberation (which he derived from the OED), the first one: “The action of deliberating, or weighing a thing in the mind; careful consideration with a view to decision” applies to individuals, and corresponds to Alex Guerrero’s “quiet” deliberation category. Lottocratic theory suggests that the aggregation of individual deliberations would approximate to the considered preferences of the target population (iff the numbers and recruitment criteria are adequate to ensure the allotted sample is descriptively representative, and steps are taken to ensure the ongoing independence of individual judgments.)
The last criterion should, IMO, make us cautious about wild and reflective deliberation. Alex’s comment also reinforces why we need the Journal of Sortition (as well as the Journal of Deliberative Democracy).
Ethan:> I celebrate depolarizing deliberations among sortition bodies
Whilst that sounds desirable, it is however a political preference (favouring the “middle ground”). But what if one or other of the poles better matched the considered preferences of the public than a compromise? Take, for example, the two poles in the culture wars — it might even be the case that one pole or the other will be “right”, and the other a temporary aberration (I use “right” in the sense of “correct”, rather than an indication of partisan preference). Sortition must be entirely neutral when it comes to policy matters, otherwise it could exacerbate the populist backlash. See: https://equalitybylot.com/2026/07/21/the-new-york-sun-casts-sortition-as-a-leftist-menace/
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Ethan,
> The call for deliberation is the call to consider things deeply. Deliberation is sortition’s friend.
Who can object to the idea that we should “consider things deeply” before making decisions? If that’s deliberation then it is a truism.
But, again, the question is whether we are to assume that:
(1) people do it naturally and spontaneously whenever it serves their goals, or do
(2) they need a special setup, one which people by themselves do not tend to form, for “deep thinking” to happen.
Which is it?
If it is the former, then exhortations regarding the need for deliberation are unnecessary and making them a central piece of your agenda is puzzling. If it is the latter then we are dealing with an elitist ideology that asserts that most people do not “consider things deeply” without qualified help.
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To illustrate my point on polarization: Terry and Ethan insist that cleavages are manufactured for partisan purposes by elected politicians. However, the culture war shenanigans were manufactured by the chattering classes (within and outwith academia), the very people that Habermas and his deliberative disciples are keen to further empower.
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Man, I wish it were a truism.
I agree that wanting things to be deeply considered should be relatively unobjectionable and obvious, but our electoral structures are not organized at all around promoting deep consideration, either in parliamentary halls or in the population at large. Elections promote a lot of system 1 thinking. I want more system 2 thinking in policymaking. I want more deliberation.
Elections promote shallow discourse and plotting and horsetrading and memetizing and all sorts of things over deep consideration of policy. Sortition bodies ranging from court juries to CAs to Terry’s multi-body sortition to Alex’s SILLS to the electoral lottocrats’ trial juries all share an emphasis on deep consideration.
(Alex doesn’t use the word deliberation for his quiet lottocracy because he leans into the group deliberation connotation, Manin’s second definition, but the emphasis on deep consideration is the same.)
The fact that a pro-deep-consideration argument for favoring sortition is unobjectionable is exactly why we need to trumpet it. I wasn’t trying to persuade people to care about deliberation. I was saying that surely we all want deliberation, so we should use a political system that opens the door for it.
My agenda was to promote sortition. I was offering one articulation of the problem space around elections centered around partisan division and shallow discourse. (There are, as you rightly pointed out, many other problems.)
Sortition – WITH or WITHOUT facilitation – opens doors for richer discourse and deep consideration (or deliberation) in a way that election doesn’t. I alluded to facilitation a couple of times as that is the common practice. But facilitation isn’t germane to the argument at all. The whole argument would stand even with the presumption of self-organizing assemblies.
(Again, I do happen to support appropriate use of facilitation, but that’s not relevant to the argument of this essay).
No, depolarization does not mean moderation. Polarization (as used by Ezra Klein et al) refers to the social sorting into partisan camps. Even if you use the word differently, the essay clearly centers the concept of divisive partisan sorting and focuses on the ways in which elections DRIVE and EXACERBATE this sorting process.
In concept depolarized societies can still include the same mix of viewpoints as polarized ones, but they won’t be as neatly sorted into partisan camps.
I agree strongly with the premise that alignment with a political preference (including a middle ground) will be problematic for the adoption of sortition. It’s unlikely that biases never creep in, but I do work to avoid partisan framing in my writing.
But opposition to partisan sorting ITSELF as a critique of elections (which the essay centers) is not only inbounds for sortition advocacy, it is one of our most effective arguments. Even heavily partisan folks tend to agree that heavy partisanship is undesirable.
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Ethan:> The whole argument would stand even with the presumption of self-organizing assemblies.
Then (ruling out election and facilitation and assuming the assembly had statutory powers) how would you ensure the speech acts mirrored the prevalent discourses in the target population? Election, with a reduced proposal threshold, would achieve that, but small self-selecting assemblies are random in the pejorative sense. If there is no facilitation then the loudest voices will prevail.
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I don’t put sole responsibility for cultural cleavage on the electoral process. Yes, elections clearly play a role in finding and amplifying cleavages and in translating those cleavages into partisanship.
But there are other strong drivers. So strong, in fact, that I think it’s quite important that our political system offer a force in the opposite direction, call it depolarization or integration or weaving or whatever you like. Electoral systems, at best, exacerbate cleavages. Deliberation (with or without facilitation) among sortition bodies offers a counter.
(Do I have to say “with or without facilitation” every time I say “deliberation” to avoid the insinuation that this is all a trojan horse for process manipulators?)
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The problem at root is that deliberative democracy is a set of procedural norms aimed at establishing intra-group equity, whereas sortition is a balloting mechanism (that deliberative democrats have purloined to buttress their representative claims). There is a stark choice between focusing on the group or the relationship between mini- and maxi-demos. This has led Fishkin and others to conclude that there is a need to spread deliberation to society as a whole, and this strikes me as a quixotic endeavour.
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Where does that assumption come from? The essay’s “whole argument” that would stand is a pretty limited one that is mostly a framing of the problem space, not a rich exploration of the solution space.
It does speak favorably of group deliberation among sortition-selected bodies, which I know you hold in low regard. But I’m comparing current sortition implementations with the current American electoral system.
This essay doesn’t even begin to explore the directions where sortition can go from here.
It wouldn’t. The voting population would be tiny and highly misrepresentative. Rational ignorance would limit alignment between voters and the elect. Elected officials would still be disproportionately narcissistic and machiavellian. Public discourse would still be superficial and manipulative and antagonistic (though a bit less so under PR).
Smallish sortition bodies can’t claim a high degree of substantive representation, but it’s not hard to do better than elected ones.
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Ethan,
It’s hard not to notice that you did not answer the question:
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Ethan:> I’m comparing current sortition implementations with the current American electoral system.
You need to make your mind up as to what you are trying to achieve. Most deliberative democrats are content to see their assemblies having (at most) a role to play in influencing elected legislators. If so then you are right to ignore issues of representativity. Others on this forum (and I think we can include Terry here) have a more ambitious goal.
>The voting population would be tiny and highly misrepresentative. Rational ignorance would limit alignment between voters and the elect.
Not sure what you mean by this.
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To put it more concisely, are you looking for a system of representation or a civic love-in?
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> It’s hard not to notice that you did not answer the question
I mean, you’re making me choose between non-mutually exclusive choices, neither of which seem deeply true or relevant to my essay…
Definitely not #2. There is no one special setup necessary for deliberation to happen. As I’ve now said over and over and over.
But I don’t deeply resonate with #1 either. Deliberation doesn’t happen “whenever” it serves a group’s goals. I’ve been in a lot of groups where deliberation emerged naturally, so I guess if you forced me to pick one answer I’d go with #1. But I’ve also been in plenty where the group process deteriorated quickly into muscling or squabbling even though deliberation would have served the group’s goals better.
Someday maybe I’ll write an essay about when different process architectures are appropriate, though I’d like to have more experience with more of the different variants first. (Considerations include things like time constraints, language barriers, consensus threshold, etc. )
I do have *some* experience. I’ve been part of processes aimed at consensus, at idea generation, at evincing pent-up emotions. Some are just about reflecting understanding of other people’s perspectives. This group could benefit from a bit of facilitation like that. And maybe the facilitator could keep me from writing such long messages.
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I’m working from many angles. The most fun may be idealized system design for representational democracy. This essay was not that.
I also work on near-term implementable state constitutional and charter amendment processes to enable deep reform. I have to compromise from my ideal to make it implementable in the near term and to meet the legal frameworks where they are. And any reform that came out of those processes would not be my ideal either. But if successful it would open routes to more rapid evolution.
I’m also working on some highly visible supplementary sortition systems that can be implemented by ballot initiative to familiarize people with sortition options.
And I’m working to produce and share material to bring more people into the sortition sphere. That essay was in the last space.
My contention is that the most strategic route to successfully advocating for sortition reform goes through the cultivation of political will through positive experiences with sortition-selected deliberative bodies. Deliberation is the best pitch for changing how we do democratic representation.
With or without facilitation.
Most people aren’t terribly interested in representative system design and don’t care about sortition. But with sprint assemblies and the like, you can give a lot more people experience with healthy deliberation. And that opens the door to explaining the value of sortition.
I don’t think I’m terribly unclear about what I’m trying to achieve. In fact, what may seem unfamiliar is that I’m not digging into ONLY the end I want to achieve but also the means by which we can get there.
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Ethan,
> There is no one special setup necessary for deliberation to happen.
This seems evasive. The question is not whether there is “one special setup necessary for deliberation”, but rather whether some setup (which may vary according to circumstances) needs to be imposed for deliberation to happen (or at least for it to happen reliably).
> But I’ve also been in plenty where the group process deteriorated quickly into muscling or squabbling even though deliberation would have served the group’s goals better.
Then you do believe people are often unable to serve their own interests and would be better off being managed by someone from the outside. This completely vindicates my assertion in the post to which you reacted with indignation in your first comment:
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The matter is probabilistic. Yes, facilitation *can often* increase the quality of deliberation. It’s helpful, but it is not necessary, even if in some cases, however rare or common (no idea), facilitation could mean the difference between a success and a flop. Ad the inverse (that deliberation implies the presence of facilitation) is utterly ridiculous. But that’s your inference here:
Nonsense. It implies no such thing. Even if I wrote a piece celebrating facilitation it wouldn’t imply that people are “unable to spontaneously self-organize”. Nor when I cook a meal for someone do I think they can’t possibly feed themselves. Just because something *helps* doesn’t mean it’s *required*.
But I didn’t write a piece celebrating facilitation; I wrote one celebrating deliberation, and there’s no sense in which deliberation implies the presence of facilitation. Well over 99% of the deliberation that happens in the world happens without facilitation. The fact that think facilitation improves deliberation does in any logical sense imply that I think “people are unable” to deliberate without it.
I also happen to think cumin makes potatoes better, but the presence of potatoes does not therefore imply the necessity of cumin. I wrote a piece celebrating potatoes, and you wrote a response about how condescending it is that I think people can’t season their own food.
If I understand correctly that you don’t believe in the existence of situations where facilitation can improve outcomes, and that my belief to the contrary is condescending, then that’s still a significant disagreement (or two).
Like if you said “The mention of *facilitation* implies that groups of people are *sometimes less able* to organize and coordinate to reach mutually beneficial arrangments on their own than they are with the help of experienced practitioners,” then that would be a reasonable inference. I think that.
But for what it’s worth, I think that as a *user*. I think I have deliberated better with the help of a facilitator. I have experienced others deliberating better in the presence of a facilitator. By your rationale, I sure do think I’m stupid.
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Here I was echoing Terry’s concern that voter turnout would diminish dramatically under your proposal and that the voting population would be even less representative of the whole than it is now.
Presumably PR can diminish voter’s rational ignorance marginally by making it slightly more likely their vote will change allotment and (often) in elevating parties over individual. But still, the voter’s incentive to work hard to determine party or candidate alignment is small relative to the difficulty of the task.
I understand that you assign primary blame for cultural cleavage to players other than elected politicians. I’m not sure I fully disagree, although I do think the electoral system can be a driver of cleavage *via non-politicians*. Much of the polarizing press coverage seems clearly aimed at influencing elections, for example. And those you call the chattering classes often seem to have an eye on electoral influence as well. Those aren’t politicians, but they’re still vessels through which elections inflame.
The conceit of the essay was that the electoral system by various means a driver of cleavage and that sortition systems could be salves. All of this is quite apart from the legislative outputs. I certainly don’t argue against the central importance of legislative outputs in system design, but this particular essay did not focus on them. AND I think cultural impacts beyond legislative outputs are a completely valid design consideration.
You may challenge this in many ways. You may argue that electoral systems don’t exacerbate cleavage. You may question whether sortition systems would do any better. You may weigh in on the relative importance of legislative outputs and other impacts.
But do I understand correctly from this question that you do not consider structural negative cultural impacts a legitimate design consideration at all?
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Ethan,
> I also happen to think cumin makes potatoes better, but the presence of potatoes does not therefore imply the necessity of cumin.
Again, I find you are equivocating.
When you wrote above
> I’ve also been in plenty where the group process deteriorated quickly into muscling or squabbling even though deliberation would have served the group’s goals better.
This is not about adding cumin to a perfectly nourishing if somewhat bland potato dish but about avoiding turning a batch of potatoes into an inedible burnt mass leaving all involved hungry and rancorous.
Indeed, this is exactly what the description in your post of the ongoings in elected government was about. You made it a point to emphasize that it is the inability to deliberate that is at root of the poor outcomes of elected government. Thus, the possibility of a group of people (the elected, in this case) being unable to “deliberate” was a main component of your post rather than a minor side note.
> If I understand correctly that you don’t believe in the existence of situations where facilitation can improve outcomes, and that my belief to the contrary is condescending, then that’s still a significant disagreement (or two).
What I believe is that groups are the best representatives of their own interests. Thus, it is never right to impose “facilitation” on a group in order to supposedly help it achieve its goals. If the allotted find it useful to call in certain professionals for help, that is perfectly fine of course, but that is up to the allotted themselves.
In particular, the problem with elections is not that the elected are unable to deliberate and need facilitation, but rather that they very effectively promote their own interests and those of their allies at the expense of the interests of the rest of us.
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I heartily agree that facilitation would not solve much of anything for elected bodies. It would not address the underlying incentive structures or shift their calculus of their interests.
> You made it a point to emphasize that it is the inability to deliberate that is at root of the poor outcomes of elected government.
This particular essay was not about poor legislative outcomes, it was about poor cultural outcomes. It wasn’t just about policy discussions but a pervasive cultural antagonism. My contention (which it is fair to question) is that the electoral system has played a significant, perhaps even leading role in driving this antagonism.
This essay series is focused particularly on American governance and bringing more Americans to ideas around sortition, and this cultural frame, rather than a policy frame, seemed like the most broadly resonant starting place.
Most who promote elections promote the idea that elected representatives across ideological perspectives get together and discuss policy ideas and consider them deeply. In other words, that they deliberate. By and large, this is not how electoral politics works, and it’s important to dispel this myth and the idea that the electoral politics will somehow help resolve our antipathy.
Imho, the strategic response isn’t to fight the cultural ideal that policy emerges from earnest deliberation among aligned, representative bodies. It’s to present a plausible path to achieving it.
I don’t think this is too far from my default preference, which is to give assemblies a bit of a menu of facilitative options, ranging from active moderation to “stay away unless we call you back.” If I were on a panel like that, I’d probably vote for a degree of moderation, fwiw. But, as you say, it’s up to the alloted.
It seems like the CT assembly is approaching a pattern pretty close to this one.
Sure burnt potatoes is a *possibility*. But it’s rare. Anyway, I say experiment more and see if they make a hash of it.
(See what I did there?)
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Ethan:> But do I understand correctly from this question that you do not consider structural negative cultural impacts a legitimate design consideration at all?
Sorry, I don’t understand your question. My overriding concern is improving a system of representation.
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I think I fall somewhere between the positions here. I don’t see group discussion or facilitation as the source of legitimate judgment, and I don’t care whether a jury reaches consensus. Individual votes are the output.
But I’m also not sure “give the selected citizens power and let them organize however they want” goes far enough. Some structure exists because the decision environment itself has to be protected. If jurors are prohibited from discussing a case outside the jury, for example, giving them an internal place to discuss it serves a practical purpose.
So I’d distinguish between managing people toward a desired kind of deliberation and engineering the conditions under which independent informed judgment is possible.
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That last comment was me, Henry Tuttle, by the way. This site seems to have a separate login for contributor and commenter so I’ve been accidentally double posting and posting anonymously.
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Henry:> engineering the conditions under which independent informed judgment is possible.
Yes indeed (including the word “engineering”)
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And there is a body of scholarship in social psychology (summarised in Surowiecki’s book) as to what factors undermine independent informed judgment.
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Interesting thread. I will leave one comment.
According to Bernard Manin, “deliberation” has two distinct meanings:
The action of deliberating, or weighing a thing in the mind; careful consideration with a view to decision.
The consideration and discussions of the reasons for and against a measure by a number of councillors (e.g. in a legislative assembly). (Manin, 2005, p. 14)
Habermas has a particular understanding of the term when he uses it. Deliberation is cooperative communication, aimed at promoting mutual understanding, and reaching a rational consensus. Manin’s contentious advocacy deliberation has been tried in the US for at least 50 years now. Combined with party politics it has proved disastrous for the country. When I have asked conservatives what they believe is the biggest political problem in the country, they have overwhelmingly replied the divisiveness around political issues. This reply offers an obvious segue into sortition-chosen citizen assemblies and other forms of governance without politicians.
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Habermas has a particular understanding of the term when he uses it. Deliberation is cooperative communication, aimed at promoting mutual understanding, and reaching a rational consensus. Manin’s contentious advocacy deliberation has been tried in the US for at least 50 years now. Combined with party politics it has proved disastrous for the country. When I have asked conservatives what they believe is the biggest political problem in the country, they have overwhelmingly replied the divisiveness around political issues. This reply offers an obvious segue into sortition-chosen citizen assemblies and other forms of governance without politicians.
Lance Hilt
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Toothehilt:> When I have asked conservatives what they believe is the biggest political problem in the country, they have overwhelmingly replied the divisiveness around political issues.
By “divisivness” I think you are referring to the division of the citizen body into two warring tribes. This, imo, is a consequence of the 51% proposal threshold in the elected legislature. If this were lowered, it would lead to a more nuanced debate. In my (modified) proposal for a sortitional alternative to the Brexit referendum, I proposed three options: Leave, Remain and Renegotiate, and speculated that the latter would likely attract most of the votes ferom the citizens’ jury. The trouble with Rawlsian/Habermasian “rational consensus” is that one person’s rationality is another’s ideological hegemony. There are no “right” answers in politics, so the options presented to the citizens’ jury must reflect the ideological diversity of the target population. Strongly recommend Manin’s paper:
“Retrieving an insight dating back to antiquity, this essay argues that the confrontation of opposing views and arguments is desirable in political deliberation. But freedom of speech and diversity among deliberators do not suffice to secure that outcome. Therefore we should actively facilitate and encourage the presentation of contrary opinions during deliberation. Such confrontation is our best means of improving the quality of collective decisions. It also counteracts the pernicious fragmentation of the public sphere. It facilitates the comprehension of choices. Lastly, arguing for and against a given decision treats the minority with respect. This essay proposes practical ways of promoting adversarial deliberation, in particular the organization of debates disconnected from electoral competition.”
https://www.amacad.org/publication/daedalus/political-deliberation-adversarial-principle
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This, imo, is a consequence of the 51% proposal threshold in the elected legislature.
I am trying to recall, in your system is there a limitation to how many proposals anyone party can make? I believe the only limitation is the number of proposals asked for by the decision-making body, is that correct?
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The details are up for debate (Kai, Alex and Jordan have different criteria), but the principle is simple: the elected body proposes and the allotted jury disposes. For clarification, the proposal threshold determines the number of competing options the jury has to consider on a particular legislative event — the minimum would be three. We also view the proposers in terms of ad hoc coalitions of elected legislators, rather than parties per se, as this gives an opportunity for tiny minorities to combine with those of a similar mindset (on any particular issue). The lower the proposal threshold the greater the chance of empowering small minorities, but if it’s at the cost of increasing the cognitive load faced by the disposing body (and splitting the final vote in a way that might well usurp the aggregate will of the demos). The trade-off would be better determined by trial and error. Three options (Leave, Remain, Renegotiate) would have be right for the Brexit jury, but other issues might require more — for example the funding model for adult social care.
The ad hoc proposal principle helps ensure Manin’s requirement that the debate (before the audience of disposers) should be disconnected from electoral competition. I use the word “audience” in the sense of Manin’s book, as the role of the jury is to a) listen to the debate, b) weigh the options (via deliberation within), then c) determine the outcome via a secret vote.
I don’t understand why pragmatists rule out election for the proposing role in favour of a complex system of small and semi-permanent allotted bodies. Democratic norms would insist that all citizens should at least be able to understand their system of lawmaking, and this precludes any black box approach from which proposals emerge, without any direct engagement with the demos (in the collective sense, rather than “citizens”).
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We also view the proposers in terms of ad hoc coalitions of elected legislators, rather than parties per se, as this gives an opportunity for tiny minorities to combine with those of a similar mindset (on any particular issue). The lower the proposal threshold the greater the chance of empowering small minorities…
Would you make parties illegal? I agree it would be far better to have ad hoc coalitions, but the party bosses won’t share our view. How would you prevent them from determining the proposals?
Lance Hlt
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If you look at the history of the political party they arose out of loose coalitions of independent representatives as a result of the need to cooperate to get things done. If the proposal threshold were lowered sufficiently this would lead to a reduction in the power of party leaders, especially if (as we all propose) the legislative and executive roles were separated. The withdrawal of the party whip would no longer be a meaningful sanction. The ultimate power is in the hands of the jury, so politicians will seek to work together to make proposals that the jury will approve. Whether or not a party ticket is attached to a proposal will be of low salience.
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At first I thought your system might work in the UK, but not in the US with our party duopoly. The 2 dominant parties would simply flood the agenda with proposals, whether serious or not, crowding out the minority proposals which would never garner more support. But given your system places no limits on the number of proposals any given part can make, I see the same situation developing. One or two serious proposals would be offered along with however many “dummy” proposals to fill the slots. How would you prevent this?
Lance
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Alex is the expert on the practicalities (I’m just a political theorist), but the number of proposals is limited by the threshold (flooding is impossible) and the likelihood of the proposal being favoured by the jury, so politicians will be incentivised to put through the strongest policy. It’s important to take a systems approach to the three elements (election, proposal and judgment) and the latter holds the whip hand. Why make a proposal that the jury will reject? And there’s no reason to think that the current (parlous) condition of political parties will persist in the sortitional era — there would be a minimum of three parties, more if the proposal threshold was further reduced. Each party (or ad hoc combination) will compete furiously for jury approval.
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I don’t think you have grasped the scenario I am anticipating. Let us say the threshold is 10. How do you prevent the Labour Party from getting 5 proposals adopted and the Conservatives from another 5, since they control the most votes? Each party would only have one serious proposal that they would present cogent arguments for at the legislative phase. The other four proposals would simply be made to keep minority parties from presenting an attractive alternative. I don’t see how a minority party would ever get a proposal in front of the legislature if there is no limit, within the threshold, that each party could make. You would have to, at least, allow each party to make a minimum of one proposal.
If there are elections, there will be parties. If there are parties, they will be quarrelsome and hostile toward each other.
Lance
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Fair point, I’ll contact Alex and ask him to respond.
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I think we underestimate the extent to which the two party system is an artifact of the 50%+1 threshold. Parties have a lot of internal tensions that get masked by the need to get to 50%+1. Why do legislators subordinate their own preferences to the party leadership? Because if they don’t, they lose their majority, or their chance for a future majority.
Let’s say a party has enough voting power to control two voting slots. Do you really think that the rank-and-file members are going to submit to wasting one of their slots because leadership tells them to? Leadership has no leverage anymore. A group of like-minded party members can split off and make their own proposal without consequence. They can even form their own party if they want, and if they have enough support to control even one proposing slot, they will be happy.
The legislative tyranny we live with now is an artifact of majority control over the agenda and over the proposing process, not final disposition. Set the agenda without party control and create multiple chances for proposing and we invert the political forces that now supress viewpoint diversity. That’s why we think that the threshold will ultimately determine the number of major political parties. If we require five proposals for every agenda item, we will have around five major political parties. There’s nothing natural about party discipline, it is a consequence of our present political structure.
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Alex:> If we require five proposals for every agenda item, we will have around five major political parties.
Exactly. Whereas Henry and Terry want to let 1,000 flowers bloom, five would better reflect the ideological diversity of the polis and will not give the jury cognitive indigestion. And individual parties will wax and wane to match changes in the prevailing discourses. In the words of Nancy Rosenblum, parties are “on the side of the angels” — without them there would be no democracy.
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Ethan,
I agree with a lot of what you’re saying about the goal being deep consideration rather than any particular facilitation model.
In the architecture I’ve been working on, I treat informed judgment as a pillar and group deliberation as a useful enhancement. Citizens need enough time, information, and exposure to competing arguments to make a considered decision, but I don’t think the legitimacy of the result depends on whether they reach consensus or even on how much they talk to each other.
Group discussion may improve understanding, but I see it as an useful for a few minor reasons rather than a foundational feature. The output is still the individual vote.
Where I may differ from some citizen-assembly models is that I try to remove almost everything else from the deciding body. They don’t need to generate proposals, maintain an agenda, accumulate institutional expertise, or become good at governing. Those functions can live elsewhere. Their job is to understand one question well enough to decide it, and then dissolve.
Do you think anything important is lost by narrowing the citizen body’s function that far?
That last question is the key addition. It turns the comment from a statement of your architecture into an invitation for useful criticism.
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Max,
I’m sympathetic to the idea that once citizens are selected they should have a lot of freedom in how they operate. I’m less sure that this means the surrounding process can simply be left to them.
Some structure isn’t there to produce a particular kind of deliberation. It’s there to protect the conditions under which independent informed judgment can happen. A jury is the obvious analogy: outside contact is restricted, the question is defined, evidence enters through a structured process, and then the jurors are largely left alone to reach their judgment.
This is something I’ve been wrestling with in the legislative architecture I’m working on. I’ve ended up drawing a distinction between structuring the decision environment and managing how the citizens themselves think or interact inside it.
So I think I’m somewhere between “facilitate the deliberation” and “give them power and let them organize however they want.” Protect the environment, then interfere as little as possible with the people inside it.
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Henry:> Some structure isn’t there to produce a particular kind of deliberation. It’s there to protect the conditions under which independent informed judgment can happen.
Yes, and more importantly (from a democratic perspective) to ensure that the informed judgment of the minidemos reflects “what everyone would think under good conditions” (Fishkin). One of the problems with deliberative democracy is the limited concern with representativity. JoS is planning a symposium on Daniela Cammack’s forthcoming book on Athenian democracy — her main focus is the representational “ecosystem” in which sortition had its place. If that’s the case for an ancient direct democracy, then even more so for large modern poleis (for a parallel, see David Owen and Graham Smith’s essay on the “circumstances” of sortition).
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Keith and Alex,
I am unclear on how the proposals are selected to be put before the decision-making body. If there is a 5 proposal threshold, but 10 proposals are made, what determines which proposals are selected for presentation?
Lance
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Lance:> what determines which proposals are selected for presentation?
The proposals that receive the most votes, each parliamentarian having only one vote to cast. If the threshold is five proposals then, even if the overwhelming majority of members vote for one or even two proposals, the three with the next highest number of votes will go through to the jury (proportional majoritarianism). And it’s highly likely proposers will seek to second guess the jury and also what support they can garner from their parliamentary peers. This will have a moderating effect, but if the proposal threshold is low enough, still empower significant minorities (in ad hoc coalitions).
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OK, I see now. All the proposals are presented at once for presentation approval. This does make it likely that minority parties can present proposals to the jury, and it would enhance their appeal to voters.
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My comment didn’t load for some reason. I now understand it. I didn’t realize all the proposals were voted on at once. This does make it very likely that minority parties will have a voice.
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yes, and will be motivated to form ad hoc coalitions with other like minded minorities, as the ultimate goal is for their proposal to be chosen by the jury.
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