Equality by lot

Parts 1 and 2 are here and here.

5. Corruption (22:40). Bennet asks how sortition prevents the influence of money. Troesoyer says that sortition makes it easier to prevent corruption. In his argument he refers to two factors: term length and avoiding the electoral need to raise campaign money. Term length is important, Troesoyer says, because decision makers working together for a long period of time are able to develop trust between themselves. This allows them to collaborate among themselves and with other long-term actors, and thus to collude on corrupt enterprises. Campaign finance is a fertile ground which fosters corrupt collusion. Actors can promise help in terms of campaign funds in exchange for promotion of their interests. They can also make threats to support competitors in retaliation for non-cooperation.

But neither of these factors make for a convincing advantage of sortition over elections. Electoral systems can be, and often are, set up so that campaigns are highly regulated and publicly financed, greatly reducing the ability of campaign funds to inflence outcomes. The fundamental reason that elected officials serve narrow interests is not a direct quid-pro-quo but rather that the elected officials have a world-view in which the narrow interests are legitimate and should be served. Granted, campaign funds can be a corrupting factor but that can be fixed. The problem is that fixing that does not fix the fundamental problem with elections.

As for term lengths, the implied assumption in the argument is that allotted bodies have “short terms”. But short terms imply not much time to develop familiarity with issues, which is hardly a tool for better decision making. Furthermore, specifically regarding trust, in any setup where members of a group are expected to communicate with each other and with others (such as advisors and experts), trust is an asset, not a problem. Such trust should not be thought of as allowing corrupt collusion but allowing fruitful collaboration. For this reason allotted bodies, and certainly any allotted body that makes proposals (rather than takes up-or-down votes on pre-made proposals), must have terms measured in years. Thus, unless “short terms” is measured in years, allotted bodies (or at least some of them) should not have short terms of office.

It is true that elected candidates and officials spend entire lifetimes developing connections within the system and within the ruling class. It is true also that these lifetimes spent in these circumstance do play an important role in shaping that world-view referred to above as the foundation of corruption. Thus, to some extent it is true that the time spent inside decision making circles is crucial. But the difference is between a period of years and a period spanning a lifetime rather than between a period of days or weeks and a period of years.

6. A proposers-deciders division of labor (27:30). Troesoyer proposes Terry Bouricius’s plan for having two bodies involved in legislation. The first being a longer-term body (serving for weeks or months) sampled from volunteers which comes up with a bill. The second being a “quasi-mandatory” short-term body (working for days) making an accept or reject decision on the proposed bill based on input from the proposers.

This is all round a truly bad idea. Having the proposals made by “volunteers” makes it very likely they would be highly influenced by narrow interests. Having the decisions made by short-term bodies makes it very likely those decisions would be less than well-informed well-considered since becoming informed and weighing considerations takes time. It is likely that rhetorical manipulation would play an important role in decisions that require understanding complex issues but are made within a very limited time. Furthermore, forcing people into decision-making bodies may make those bodies appear representative, but in no way makes it likely that the bodies would generate decisions that really do represent the informed and considered will of the population. Those people who do not really wish to be present would likely not invest much effort in making their decision. At best they would abstain. More dangerously they may very well be targets for manipulative persuasion, and might even be deliberately non-cooperative.

The idea of having a proposers-deciders division of labor is by itself rather questionable. Bouricius’s claim that people’s handiwork is better judged by others than by themselves seems rather anti-democratic since it implies that people cannot represent their own interests as well as others can. But be the answer to this question what it may, the Bouricius proposal goes beyond a division of labor. The idea that such a division of labor would allow transmuting two non-democratic bodies (one which is not representative and the other which does not have the time to properly undertstand the matters on which it decides) into a single democratic process is pure political alchemy.

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