Equality by lot

Previous parts: 1, 2, 3.

7. “Idiocracy” (39:20). Bennett brings up the matter of people expressing a lack of trust in the knowledge or intelligence of their fellow citizens and asks Troesoyer if he has “any anxiety over handing normal people power over their lives”. Troesoyer responds that sortition would force society to improve its system of education (presumably so that people have more knowledge and are more intelligent).

This response is problematic because it in effect accepts the classical elitist notion that people’s ability to rule depends on their education. The correct response to Bennett’s question appears to me to be: “Any change involves risk, so some anxiety is natural. But I support democracy and that means that I believe that people should have power over their lives. Others may surely believe otherwise, but then they are opponents of democracy, and they should acknowledge that”.

As for the role of education: Education should primarily be seen as a good on its own. Any additional effects, such as better governance or technological improvements would be side benefits. Education should not in any way be seen as a qualification for self-rule. To take an obvious example, an illiterate person would be a better representative of their own interests (and quite likely of other illiterate people) than a literate person would be.

8. “Mature democracies” (48:15). As he is making an important point about the lack of good reasons to expect any of the commonly-proposed fixes for electoralism to provide meaningful democratization, Troesoyer uses the standard liberal narrative of “democratic recession” about “a serious problem with democracy affecting every mature democracy around the world, […] sliding toward authoritarianism”. This narrative is counter-productive.

First, the use of the term “mature democracies” to describe electoralist systems reinforces the false notion that electoralism is somehow, in its pure and unadulterated form, inherently democratic. This notion is further reinforced by the claim that those systems are now “sliding toward authoritarianism”. This claim implies the existence of a mythical past golden age in which those systems functioned as desired, and which, for some unspecified reason, possibly the fickleness of the public, or the inexplicable rise of demagogic politicians, was lost to time.

If the sortitionist argument is that elections are inherently oligarchical, then we must dislodge the entrenched conventional wisdom that elections are democratic – in some ideal form, if not in practice. Every time we use the common coin of “mature democracies” or “Western democracies” we reinforce this conventional wisdom instead of undermining it. Every time we accept that the problem with current politics is “sliding toward authoritarianism” or “growing polarization” or “populism” and any of those tropes, we accept the framing of a glorious electoralist past which can be revived and in this way weaken the claim that electoralism is inherently anti-democratic and that democracy requires replacing elections with sortition.

9. Sortition in the judiciary (56:30). Finally, Bennett raises the question of using sortition in the judiciary. Strengthening the sortition-based elements that are already in place seems like the natural way to go, and Troesoyer takes this route when he suggests having a jury select from different opinions written by judges, while also allowing the jury to select “none of the above” and have an allotted body write its own opinion.

But if we accept that an allotted body can write their own opinions, why do we need the selection from a set of opinions phase? This adds complication to the process and while not adding any clear benefits, adds the potential downside of giving an elite group a disproportional influence on the process. The fact that the jury can vote for “none of the above” reduces, but far from eliminates, that disproportional influence. Of course, the allotted opinion-writing body can and should consult with experts on various topics when writing its opinions, but the experts should always be – in this case as in all cases – providing input to be used or ignored by the allotted as they see fit rather than have an official proposal-generating role.

Filed under: Elections, Sortition, video |