Beyond the Ballot: A Citizen Chamber for the Twenty-First Century
Under this model, a national legislature would become bicameral. The first chamber would remain an elected parliament responsible for initiating legislation, reflecting partisan competition and electoral accountability. The second chamber would be a Citizen Chamber composed of approximately 500 randomly selected citizens chosen through stratified sampling to reflect national demographics, including age, gender, region, education level, and income distribution. Members would serve one-year terms and receive full-time compensation to ensure accessibility across socioeconomic backgrounds.
Crucially, this chamber would possess binding authority. Any major legislation passed by the elected house would require the Citizen Chamber’s approval before becoming law. The Citizen Chamber could also delay legislation for reconsideration or require public revision, forcing elected officials to justify policy more transparently. However, it would not initiate legislation independently, preserving elected representatives’ agenda-setting role and preventing institutional gridlock.
Filed under: Books, Elections, Press, Proposals, Sortition |
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Sometime in the 1970s I developed (independently) an idea for issue conventions or policy conventions based on random selection of participants. In today’s terminology they are commonly called Citizens’ Assemblies. These could be convened for various specified subjects, as many as needed. I was thinking primarily of federal government, rather than state or local governments. I believe 500 for the number of participants is about right, as there is need to balance statistical representativeness with cost considerations. There is, of course, a need for adequate compensation so that most citizens, when offered the opportunity, will voluntarily accept the advisory and/or decision-making role.
In 1977 I later came across James Payne’s article on candidate nominating juries that I mentioned in a previous post — I immediately saw it as an alternative application of the principle of random selection.
Still later, I came across a short article or opinion piece that argued that one chamber of the California legislature should be composed of citizens selected at random. Unfortunately, I do not recall who wrote it or which newspaper or magazine I may have seen it in, but it was likely in 1982 or before because I left California in 1982. In my recent Internet search of books on sortition, I found one 1985 book that advocates this very concept, A Citizen Legislature, by Callenbach and Phillips, published in California. This book is available for free on two webpages at https://people.well.com/user/mp/citleg.html and citleg2.html. I am guessing one or both authors may have written that opinion piece.
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Carl,
I think most of us agree on the need for a hybrid model. The trouble with Callenbach and Phillips (re-published back to back with my own book A People’s Parliament) is that if two chambers, one elected and one allotted, come to different conclusions, which one will be the legitimate one? The other problem is how a group of 500 people can exercise meaningful face-to-face deliberation. The number is far too large to fulfil the exacting requirements of the equal speech situation (as specified by deliberative democrats).
This has let a few of us (Alex Kovner, Kai O’Reilly, Jordan Rose and myself) to propose an alternative hybrid model, in which elected officials argue the case for their proposals before a large randomly-selected jury that decides the outcome. This is an analogue of 4th Century Athenian lawmaking, repurposed for a large multicultural polis.
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Sorry, I replied to Carl’s comment before reading Peter’s original post. It’s true that in the Barnett and Carty book (which I also published) the randomly-selected house would have binding authority rather than proposal rights. But this would mean the allotted chamber would effectively be reduced to a veto function, rather than selecting between competing proposals from the “lower” house. It’s also ironic how the nomenclature has been inverted — in Harrington’s original bicameral model it was the Senate that proposed and the Prerogative Tribe that disposed.
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I believe the two-chamber proposal would give both houses equal legislative power, much as is true for House and Senate in the U.S. Congress and in 49 of the 50 states (one state is unicameral). Both chambers must agree on any new legislation and frequently form joint committees when they disagree. I suppose this could be described as each chamber has a “veto” on the other chamber, with bargaining when they disagree, although the “veto” terminology is usually applied to executive vetoes.
I believe each of the three ideas I mentioned above would be an improvement on current practice in electoral democracies. To be sure, it is possible that additional or alternative ideas, structures, or procedures involving sortition might be even better still.
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>To be sure, it is possible that additional or alternative ideas, structures, or procedures involving sortition might be even better still.
Indeed. There are coherent arguments in favour of allocating the proposing right to the elected chamber and the disposing right to the allotted chamber.
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First, many thanks to Dylan for his interest in politics and political reform and for writing up a clear statement and defense of a rarely considered proposal. Congratulations also for getting that proposal published on the Fulcrum website.
After re-reading his proposal, I see a restriction that would make the Citizen Chamber not quite coequal with the elected chamber. He says, “it would not initiate legislation independently, preserving elected representatives’ agenda-setting role and preventing institutional gridlock.” I do not see how this restriction would be necessary, useful, or enforceable.
For example, the U.S. Constitution requires the House of Representatives to initiate all budgetary bills, but in practice the U.S. Senate routinely rejects and proposes its own bills, giving the Senate essentially equal say on the budget. Similarly, if the Citizen Chamber rejects proposals by the elected house, won’t the elected legislators want to know why? Won’t they want the Citizen Chamber members to speak up and say why? Won’t the selected members want to speak up and explain themselves, or even counter with legislative proposals of their own? Might this result in bargaining between the two chambers? Restricting legislative proposals by the Citizen Chamber seems to run counter to the desire to avoid gridlock and also raises constitutional issues (limiting free speech on political issues).
Why would the “gridlock” be any worse than it is now? Would “gridlock” that prevents bad legislation from being enacted by the elected house be a good thing? Would “gridlock” that prevents bad legislation from being enacted by the Citizen Chamber also be a good thing? Even if we decide the “gridlock” would be a bad thing, I do not see how the “gridlock” would be reduced in any meaningful way by the proposed restriction.
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Apart from gridlock, there is the problem of perceived legitimacy. Members of both Congressional houses can claim electoral legitimacy, whereas the descriptive representation claim of a sortitional house is limited to aggregate functions like voting. The presentation of reasons and other speech acts are not subject to the law of large numbers. And, from a pragmatic perspective, existing legislators are more likely to give up half of their right if they can preserve proposal as their exclusive remit. Dylan’s bicameral proposal is consonant with Madison’s argument against the corrupting effect of mixing advocacy and judgment in “the same body of men” (Federalist 10).
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“The presentation of reasons and other speech acts are not subject to the law of large numbers.” O.K., but so what? Everybody is free to speak (or not), both inside and outside the Chamber. Each individual within the Citizen’s Chamber is free to accept or reject anything he or she hears from other Chamber members, friends, neighbors, relatives, the public at large, news media, and elected representatives. The result, for the Chamber as a whole, is still descriptively representative, is it not?
My argument above strongly suggests that elected legislators cannot “preserve proposal as their exclusive remit” if the sortition body can veto any legislative proposal. The two bodies will be forced to bargain with each other — as they do in any bicameral legislature.
Madison’s 1787 argument in Federalist No. 10 speaks a few words against direct democracy, but nowhere discusses sortition as an alternative to elected representation; nor does he advocate that one legislative body propose while another body exclusively votes and never proposes. He simply argues his expectation (or hope) that the legislature of a larger country (13+ States) would be composed of more worthy persons and represent more interests than a single State, and therefore be less vulnerable to faction.
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Hey everyone,
Thank you for commenting about my work. I just found this page today, and I really love to see that what I wrote was able to start a positive intellectual conversation. You both bring up very good points, which when I wrote the article I had never thought about. Thank you again.
-Dylan
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Nice to hear from you Dylan.
Carl:> The result, for the Chamber as a whole, is still descriptively representative, is it not?
No, as it’s subject to information cascades and other perlocutionary imbalances. This is from Hanna Pitkin’s book The Concept of Representation:
“If the contemplated action is voting, then presumably (but not obviously) it means that the [descriptively-mandated] representative must vote as a majority of his constituents would. But any activities other than voting are less easy to deal with. Is he really literally to deliberate as if he were several hundred thousand people? To bargain that way? To speak that way? And if not that way, then how?” (Pitkin, 1967, pp. 144-145)
And this is the relevant passage from Madison:
“‘a [single] body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties [advocates] at the same time’ (Federalist, 10, 8, my emphasis).
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Welcome aboard, Dylan! Keith and I have been discussing a mere one sentence in your well-written piece. In addition, we have been discussing some other matters that are only tangential to your piece.
Keith, are the “information cascades and other perlocutionary imbalances” of sufficient importance to upset the results, either of a sortition body or an elected body? It seems unlikely to me. Is there empirical evidence that bears on this question?
In the Pitkin quote, it seems to me that we could substitute “elected” for the bracketed term “descriptively-mandated” and come up with same questions for an elected body. How is one body superior to the other based on the Pitkin quote?
The Madison quote is fine, but it points to a problem that is almost insoluble, if we retain majority rule. If the population is sufficiently polarized, a majority may run roughshod over a minority. Presumably, this would be just as true in a sortition chamber as in an elected chamber.
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Carl,
There is a considerable body of evidence on information cascades (who gets to speak first) and perlocutionary imbalances (who is the most persuasive) in the literature on group psychology. If this were not the case then there would be no need for trained facilitators in citizens’ assemblies.
Regarding Pitkin, those putting themselves up for election make a representative claim, and this is the basis for voters’ choices. In a sortitional body the representation is aggregate — as Bouricius puts it there is no such thing as a (single) descriptive representative.
Madison’s point was not an objection to majoritarianism, just that proposing and disposing are two different functions. The way to stop them corrupting each other is to allocate each right to a separate body.
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