George Galloway’s recent landslide win the UK was certainly a rejection of the British duopoly by the Rochdale voters. Despite his obvious loathing of the people put into power by the UK electoral system, and the policies they pursue, Galloway seems to still adhere to Van Reybrouk’s rule – “we despise elected officials, we venerate the elections” – and avoid offering a systemic change that would be more likely to promote different people and different policies.
CEPS is “a think tank and forum for debate on EU affairs”, founded in Brussels in 1983. CEPS has a project it calls Ideas Lab whose aim is “to provide a high-level intellectual forum for exchanges concerning the wide range of current and pressing issues faced by the EU”. In this forum, Kalypso Nicolaidis, chair of global Affairs at the New Florence School of transnational governance at the European University Institute in Florence, is proposing to set up a permanent allotted EU citizen assembly.
Eurobarometer data shows that the trust European citizens have for their governments has recovered significantly from the depths of distrust felt in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. At the bottom, in 2013, only a quarter of European expressed trust in their governments and parliaments. Now the average EU government and parliament enjoy a level of trust of 36% and 39% respectively. These numbers have been fairly steady over the last 5 years and are comparable to the numbers before the crisis.
It seems then this is the European “normal”: those who distrust their government outnumber those who do by a 3 to 2 margin or more. Currently, of the 27 EU countries, there are only 6 countries in which a plurality of citizens trust their governments.
how individuals, communities, the public and private sector and others can become more energy efficient in a way that makes the most impact on the climate, economy, jobs, health – and energy bills.
This event, which is billed as “putting citizens at the heart of European policymaking”, is an archetype for how citizen assemblies are being used as an exercise in public relations and a driver for meaningless governance process that serves to generate employment and status for a self-serving political, professional and academic elite. The notion that a body of 150 people can meaningfully generate independent ideas about energy management over 3 weekends is transparently absurd. This is even before questions about whether the purview of energy efficiency even makes sense and how any recommendations produced would be handled by the vast professional political apparatus.
No doubt, though, that events like this would then serve as grist for the citizen assemblies industry and would feed a self-congratulating rhetoric about how “increased involvement of citizen assemblies in our democracies” is leading to a renewal of democracy and is a way to address citizen alienation and cynicism. It is indeed a useful contribution to the money-raising operation of this fledgling industry and to the careers of the experts and academics associated with it.
Senegal, which “is considered one of West Africa’s more stable democracies and is the only country in the region never to have had a military coup”, has recently been in the news, as its electoralist system is being shaken by the government’s attempt to postpone the upcoming elections.
Back in 2012, the Senegalese economist Ndongo Samba Sylla wrote the following assessment of the situation in Senegal (and elsewhere).
By praising the Senegalese “democratic” model, we are in fact glorifying an oligarchic system based on a legitimacy which, for its effectiveness, is no less artificial. This artificial character derives from the fact that the label “democratic” is conferred more by the certification of established political rating agencies than by an ability to really address the needs of the population. At a time when demagogic flights of fancy regarding the “Senegalese exception” are all the rage on the web, the most needy are quietly suffering in structural poverty which “democracy” will probably never pull them out of. Continue reading →
Carlos Acuña an attorney from El Centro, California, writes in the Calexico Chronicle:
The upcoming national elections later this fall, not to mention the upcoming recall in … gulp, Calexico, bring to mind the legend of Faust. For those unfamiliar with the name a Medieval legend revolves around a man, Faust, who made a deal with the devil. Faust, in exchange for knowledge and the hedonistic life, offered his soul to the devil. The devil gladly agreed. The devil had vacancies to fill, that sort of thing; hell has no homeless; all are welcome.
Faust was not alone. Your garden-variety political candidate pretty much brings Faust to mind. Political office seekers tend to be a self-selecting lot; unlike the ancient Greek system of sortition — reflected in our modern jury system — where citizens got selected at random to represent the population at large in the halls of leadership and political decision-making. Those hungry for power jockey for position; sadly, those who want it most, deserve it least. The Greeks knew it, 2,300 years ago … Hence, their citizen lottery for leadership, real democracy. A side effect from that: the Greeks not knowing who among them would be picked, made sure everyone got a first-rate education, including ethics … Continue reading →
A new short video discussing sortition lays out the standard discourse around sortition. In doing so, despite the video’s tone that seems rather sympathetic to sortition, it echos the arguments against sortition made by supporters of elections rather naively. Similar arguments were made by elitists throughout the ages, going back at least 2,500 years to Socrates, when they argued against any democratic mechanism. When people argue for the maintenance of their privilege, they always claim that they do so for the general benefit. We are quick to dismiss such claims when they come from our ideological enemies, e.g., advocates of monarchy, theocracy, and most notably from those who argue for the system used in the People’s Republic of China. Shouldn’t this skepticism be applied to those defending elections as well?
TikToker Professor Neil is, it turns out, a sortition advocate. In a recent clip Prof. Neil lays out the reason that elected government does not represent the interests of the population.
Whilecriticizing tax increases planned by the Israeli government, it was suggested to the Minister for National Goals, Orit Strock, that ministers should “cut back on all the bounty [they] receive”. Strock replied: “What bounty? No minister receives a fat salary. I know ministers who are unable to make ends meet, despite working hard day and night, and even some ministers who are supported financially by their parents”.
The salary of Israeli ministers is about 4 times that of the average worker, and well into the top decile of incomes.
Clay Shentrup wrote to announce the Election by Jury website he created.
If you were accused of a crime, who would you want deciding your fate?
A panel of randomly selected jurors, all of whom have spent multiple weeks sitting in a courtroom, listening to all the relevant facts and arguments put forward by both sides
A popular vote open to hundreds of thousands of people in your county, the vast majority of whom only know a few sound bites about the case, which they heard from a biased and one-sided source
The premise behind “Election by Jury” is simple: we believe that our government, just like the criminal justice system, will function better if our representatives are elected after weeks of deliberation by a panel of randomly selected jurors. These jurors would hear from the candidates and their expert-witnesses, deliberate among themselves, and cast their votes in secret.
Here are a few of the most compelling benefits of our proposal:
Carlos Acuña an attorney from El Centro, California, writes in the Calexico Chronicle:
Clay Shentrup wrote to announce the 
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Equality by lot 