Equality by lot

Yavor Tarinski

The man who wears the shoe knows best that it pinches and where it pinches. ~John Dewey [1]

One of the main pillars of contemporary oligarchies worldwide is the institution of elections. Every leader and government, regardless of how liberal or authoritarian, claims its ascendance to power through some kind of electoral process. Elections are considered as “the democratic means” per se – if a system is based on elections, then it supposedly is a “democracy”.

The supporters of this view see in electoral processes a means of sustaining popular sovereignty, while avoiding what they see as a danger of popular self-rule – i.e., rule by the incompetent. But as philosopher Jacques Rancière underlines, there is an “evil at once much more serious and much more probable than a government full of incompetents: government comprised of a certain competence, that of individuals skilled at taking power through cunning.”[2]

Electoral processes tend to nurture antagonism and competitiveness, rather than cooperation and dialogue. They give way to a certain anthropological type – the power-hungry political demagogue. Rather than concerned with resolving public issues and problems, it focuses on “winning” elections. The very essence of politics is radically altered in elections-based systems – with their content being emptied of any substantial deliberatory essence and replaced with a lifestylish approach that focuses on candidates – their ways of life, the tricks they pull on each other, etc.

Ultimately, the main agenda that drives the action of the electoral anthropological type is that of opinion polls. Candidates must learn what and when to say things that will be liked by the largest amount of people, so that they can get ahead in the race. The result is a type of craft where electoral competitors outbid each other, play dirty, and resort to all sort of tricks in order to win. This becomes the main occupation of people involved in electoral competitions for office. Because of this political scientist James S. Fishkin suggests:

Candidates do not wish to win the argument on the merits as much as they wish to win the election. If they can do so by distorting or manipulating the argument successfully, many of them are likely to do so. Representatives elected through such processes are looking ahead to the next election while in office.[3]

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Filed under: Books, Elections, Sortition, Theory | Tagged: democracy, politics, sortition | 4 Comments »