This is slightly off-topic, but there was a huge discussion earlier on this list on the enfranchisement of children. There’s a new paper out co-authored by Kleroterian Ethan Leib on the topic of representation and children. It’s entitled “Fiduciary Representation and Deliberative Engagement with Children,” it’s appearing in the Journal of Political Philosophy, and it can be found online here–
From Walter Isaacson’s review of Bettany Hughes’ The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life (New York Times, February 11, 2011):
Hughes intersperses the story of Socrates’ trial in 399 B.C. with some wonderful details. We learn, for example, about the workings of the mechanical device that randomly selected, from 6,000 names, the jury of 500 Athenian citizens (yes, 500) that assembled at the law court to hear the case. This kleroterion, a replica of which can be viewed at the Agora Museum in Athens, was a proto-computer that used carved slots to send metal disks down a chute. “Every means possible has been thought of to prevent corruption,” Hughes writes. “Alphabetical blocks of seats, secret ballots, random-selection machines.” Her quest for authentic detail even leads her to grind up hemlock and sniff it. “It releases a nose-wrinkling sour smell,” she reports.
There’s been some recent discussion here of the possibility that a randomly-selected decision-making body (an Allotted Chamber, or AC) might disagree with the people it represents because the former is well-informed and has thought things through carefully but the latter has not. James Fishkin discusses a movie that illustrates this possibility well–
In his recent posting, David Grant noted an early mention of sortition by Michael Phillips in CoEvolution Quarterly, which I think is now defunct. I found that the article is online at
It doesn’t do more than mention the idea of randomly selecting legislators, but I thought it worth noting here. (Phillips of course went on the coauthor with Ernest Callenbach the book A Citizen Legislature, which Imprint Academic reprinted in 2008.)
The book Sortition: Theory and Practice (edited by Gil Delannoi and Oliver Dowlen, Imprint Academic, 2010)–an anthology of papers from a Kleroterian conference held in Paris in 2008–has been reviewed for the first time (to the best of my knowledge–anyone know of other reviews?). The review, by Alan Lockard, appears in Public Choice. (The print version has not yet appeared–it’s on the journal’s website as an “online first” article.) Here’s the link–
The review is generally favorable to the collection. It discusses each paper in the collection, and thus only has space for about a paragraph on each paper. The review is particularly impressed by Antoine Vergne’s detailed review of the sortition-related literature. It engages most substantively with Gil Delannoi’s lead paper in the collection. And it provides a fair and accurate summary of my own paper, though it does not comment upon it at all (perhaps because it is the last paper in the volume). All in all, a pretty nice review.
I am obliged to confess that I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.
-William F. Buckley, Jr., Rumbles Left and Right: A Book about Troublesome People and Ideas (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1963), p. 134.
I know this quote has been mentioned here before, but this is the first time I’ve ever had in my hand an actual primary source by Buckley for it. Thanks to Ralph Keyes’ The Quote Verifier (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2006) for directing me to it.
One of the new pro-sortition bloggers recently posted this homemade video on the subject–
Two comments. First, I do think that a lot of sortition fans act as though it was obviously bad that a system doesn’t give everyone exactly an equal probability of getting into office. But it’s just not an obvious problem. I can’t think of any job where “equal opportunity” means having all candidates getting the job with equal probability. (The legal scholar Lesley Jacobs is good on this point.) Second, I think it’s important to stress the internal problems with parties. It’s true that (in England at least) you can’t win office without a political party. But the modern ideal says that it’s good to have a different groups of people organized behind different principles competing for office. It takes a separate critique to show why this is a bad thing. (Incidentally, has anyone read Nancy Rosenblum’s recent book on partisanship and political parties? It’s on my “to read” list.)
…will go anywhere or have an impact, but I hope that sortition fans around the world can use blogs like this to find each other. I encourage readers to visit this new blog and say hello.
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
Henry Tuttle
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
