Equality by lot

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 |