“Representation and Randomness,” Part Two

Posted on November 11, 2010 by peterstone

After a long hiatus, I’d like to return to commenting on Constellations’ recent symposium on “Representation and Randomness.” (See part one of this review.) To take up where I left off…

Hubertus Buchstein entitled his contribution to the symposium “Reviving Randomness for Political Rationality: Elements of a Theory of Aleatory Democracy.” In this contribution, Buchstein promises to “show that incorporating the factor of chance might…be of interest for contemporary democracies in terms of reform policy and how it could be achieved in practice.” In doing so, he attempts an ambitious array of tasks. The paper begins by “listing five potential functions of the lottery in the realm of politics” (p. 436). It then briefly considers the reintroduction of lotteries to modern politics via the American jury. (Two small historical quibbles: while it is true, as Buchstein says, that U.S. law has required random jury selection only since 1968, the practice was used at various times since the early days of the Republic. Also, the random selection of American military conscripts predates the Vietnam War. It was used in World War II, for example.) Then it addresses some theoretical problems raised in contemporary democratic theory (primarily by Habermas). Then it examines various recent small-scale projects involving randomly-selected citizens (notably James Fishkin’s deliberative opinion polls). Then it considers how random selection might address the problems of contemporary democratic theory that were raised earlier. It concludes with a few additional reform proposals involving random selection that might be worthy of further consideration.

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Filed under: History, Sortition, Theory | 2 Comments »

Compulsory Voting

Posted on November 5, 2010 by peterstone

The latest issue of the British Journal of Political Science features an article by Annabelle Lever on compulsory voting. See–

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=7908207&jid=JPS&volumeId=40&issueId=04&aid=7908205

Lever notes that (pp. 902-903),

Most proponents of compulsory voting believe that voters should have the option to vote for ‘none of the above’, although none of them ever discuss what should happen if that option turns out to have the largest share of the vote in an election, or is sufficient to turn it into the major ‘opposition’ party.

Lever may wish to consider the proposal by Filimon Peonidis made at

http://www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/etes/documents/Peonidis.AllottedMPs.pdf

In effect, Peonidis proposes that 1) people be permitted to vote “none of the above” and that 2) if “none of the above” wins any legislative seats, those seats be allocated randomly among the eligible population. In effect, those voting for “none of the above” are voting against the candidates offered and for candidate selection via sortition.

Filed under: Elections, Proposals, Sortition | 1 Comment »

Citizens’ Constitution of Czech Republic

Posted on November 3, 2010 by peterstone

I don’t believe that this blog has previously discussed the proposed Citizens’ Constitution of Czech Republic, which would introduce both citizen assemblies and referenda into the Czech Republic on a massive scale. The proposal can be found at

http://www.pdemokracie.ecn.cz/cs/index.php?pg=eng

The proposal is not always clearly worded, but judging by Article 53A, the idea seems to be to select ten citizen commissions which will meet in parallel for five days, before getting together to submit a single joint set of recommendations (presumably chosen by majority or plurality rule). Interestingly, the proposals of the commissions are meant to be advisory only (with the final say going to either the elected legislature or a referenda) UNLESS the commission is dealing with the salaries of government officials. One might wish to expand this a bit to include, say, the ethical rules that officials must follow regarding lobbyists, transparency laws, etc.

This proposal would surely lead to a great many referenda being held. I am unsure that even a small country like the Czech Republic could make so many referenda work. But if one wants citizen participation, and one is not willing to let randomly-selected bodies make binding decisions against the will of elected legislatures, then I suppose one has little choice.

Filed under: Initiatives, Sortition | Leave a comment »

A New Book on Lotteries

Posted on November 2, 2010 by peterstone

Not to blow my own horn, but this announcement from Oxford University Press seemed pertinent to this blog…

The Luck of the Draw

The Role of Lotteries in Decision Making
Peter Stone

Filed under: Distribution by lot, Theory | 3 Comments »

Promotion by Lot

Posted on October 29, 2010 by peterstone

Haven’t had a chance to read the study described here yet…

Study: Most Efficient Organizations Grab Random Employees, Promote Them

…but it does deal with a fascinating problem. If you promote the best people, the argument goes, you will keep promoting people to tougher and tougher jobs until they no longer excel at them. The result will be an organization full of people stuck in positions for which they’re not particularly qualified. So says the Peter Principle, for which I can claim no credit. I’d be curious of the details as to how exactly the argument works, but the implications are striking. If you randomized the process of putting people into more difficult positions, it would seem odd to call it “promoting” them anymore. The latter term seems inherently related to merit or desert. It would then seem better just to say that the more difficult jobs (i.e., jobs requiring higher levels of competence) are reassigned by lot. (Should this happen periodically? Good question, but one I cannot answer until I actually get around to reading the study.)

Filed under: Distribution by lot | 5 Comments »

“Representation and Randomness,” Part One

Posted on October 9, 2010 by peterstone

I finally got around to reading “Representation and Randomness,” a collection of papers that appeared in the most recent issue of the journal Constellations (volume 17, number 3, September 2010). One paper in that collection, by Alex Zakaras, has already gotten some attention here, but I thought it worth adding some comments on the entire collection.

Philip Pettit’s “Representation, Responsive and Indicative” distinguishes (obviously) between responsive and indicative representation. A responsive representative does what I want because I can direct the representative to do what I want. An indicative representative does what I want because the representative is chosen in such a way that the representative does what I would have done were I present. In Pettit’s words, “In responsive representation, the fact that I am of a certain mind offers reason for expecting that my deputy will be of the same mind…In indicative representation things are exactly the other way around. The fact that my proxy is of a certain mind offers reason for expecting that I will be of the same mind…” (p. 427). Sortition can select indicative representatives, whereas election is supposed to select responsive representatives. But both are legitimate forms of representation, and we might find appropriate uses for each of them.

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Filed under: Sortition | 48 Comments »

Michael Phillips

Posted on September 7, 2010 by peterstone

Michael Phillips, who coauthored with Ernest Callenbach the book A Citizen Legislature (2nd ed., Imprint Academic, 2008), recently posted on his blog about selection by lot. (In A Citizen Legislature, he and Callenbach propose the selection of the U.S. House of Representatives by lot.) The posting can be found at

http://phillips.blogs.com/goc/2010/09/random-in-politics.html?cid=6a00d834515c6d69e2013486af5914970c

The posting provides some useful context regarding the book. I had thought that Phillips might no longer endorse the ideas in the book, and so it is interesting to see that he does.

I do, however, sincerely hope that the opening line is meant to be tongue-in-cheek:

“I know that among the many many contributions to human thought for which I will get credit long after I die, the use of random selection for political bodies will be one for which I will get credit.”

Filed under: Sortition | 2 Comments »

Lottery Film Now on DVD

Posted on July 30, 2010 by peterstone

Mention was made earlier of the new movie “The Lottery,” which deals with charter school lotteries. More on the movie is available here–

http://thelotteryfilm.com/

The film is now available for sale on DVD. Just visit–

http://www.neoflix.com/store/LOT26/

Filed under: Distribution by lot | 1 Comment »

Judicial Reforms

Posted on June 26, 2010 by peterstone

I found a blog that advocates the random selection of judges (from a pool of qualified candidates) and an increase of jury powers. There’s not much defense offered for the proposals–it’s just a list of ideas. Some of these ideas would fit well, I believe, in a “demarchy” or other polity type that relies more extensively on sortition. Some of them seem completely unrelated to random selection, however; instead, they seem simply to be libertarian contrivances to hamstring the government’s ability to act. (Libertarians like to require unanimity before government agent’s can act in ways that influence people’s property, because they know unanimity is almost impossible to obtain in such matters. They also like to pretend that the U.S. Constitution is so transparent in its meaning that all we have to do is attend to the “original meaning” of the words.)

The blog posting can be found at…

http://constitutionalism.blogspot.com/2010/06/judicial-reforms-needed.html

Filed under: Sortition | 2 Comments »

An Economist Writes about Sortition

Posted on June 12, 2010 by peterstone

I just learned about this book–

http://uthreee.blogspot.com/2010/06/martin-j-bailey-constitution-for-future.html

http://www.amazon.com/Constitution-Future-Country-Martin-Bailey/dp/0333719093/ref=reg_hu-wl_item-added

Has anyone read it? It sounds like it devotes quality time to a lot of ideas besides sortition, including some of the favorite pet projects of public choice theorists.

Filed under: Sortition | 1 Comment »

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