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 |
Adam Cronkright
Ali
Ahmed R. Teleb
avanderven
avergne
Alex Kovner
azakaras
Brett Hennig
campbellwallace
Simon Threlkeld
Nick Coccoma
codyhipskind
Common Lot Sortitionist
Conall Boyle
constitutionalism
davidschecter
Ethan McCutchen
graytmatter
gtridimas
H.J. Hofkirchner
HpR
James Kierstead
John Burnheim
jgarry20151
Jochen Krattenmacher
johnedwardtaylor
johnhuang865
Jonathan Crock
keithsutherland
Jacob Richter
kkoreilly
lukewhito
SimonPek
Nathan El
Nicholas Gruen
Owen Shaffer
Patrick Chalmers
Paul Gölz
peterstone
Pierre-Etienne Vandamme
pronfeld
Emil
rcaze
richwbrown
Roger Knights
roslynfuller
Pierre-Etienne Vandamme
shaharavin
tbouricius
Ted Wachtel
Joshua Laferriere
theodorestathis
towardsautonomyblog
Wayne Liebman
Yoram Gat
Oliver Milne
Equality by lot 
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.
LikeLike
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.
LikeLike
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.
LikeLike
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.
—
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).
LikeLike
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.
LikeLike
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).
LikeLike
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.
LikeLike
Sorry, 10 years in the legislature, I guess. 20 in electoral politics.
LikeLike
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.
LikeLike
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.
LikeLike
Are you under the impression that the growing adoption of civic assemblies stems from allegiance to Manin?
LikeLike