Yoram Gat

Wariboko: Election by lottery: A new approach to Nigerian democracy

Posted on September 22, 2017 by Yoram Gat

Nimi Wariboko, Walter G. Muelder Professor of Social Ethics at the School of Theology at Boston University, writes:

Electioneering is warfare in Nigeria. Billions of naira are invested in campaigns and conducting elections. War and money have not yielded wise leaders for the country. Is it not time for us to generate creative ideas on how we can peacefully and cheaply select citizens for offices? I suggest that we complement our system of election with lottery. We reserve one-third of all seats in the state Houses of Assembly, House of Representatives, and the Senate for delegates to be filled by lot. Every four years, we put the names of all eligible citizens in a given constituency in a computerised urn or other mechanism and pick out a winner to represent his or her constituency at one level.
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Filed under: Academia, Athens, Elections, Press, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Ranciere: What times are we living in?, part 2

Posted on September 16, 2017 by Yoram Gat

What to save from the drifting French political system? The philosopher Jacques Ranciere was the guest of Aude Lancelin in “The war of ideas” of June 20th, 2017. Here is the transcript of this interview. Part 1 of the translation is here. [My translation, corrections welcome. -YG]

03. It is paradoxical to work through institutions in order to demolish them.

Aude Lancelin: Let’s remain with France insoumise and the phenomenon of Mélenchon during the presidential elections. You are very sceptical regarding the figure of a tribune (Mélenchon) who is going to speak in the name of the suffering of the people and champion their cause. This posture is suspect in your view. What is the basis of your criticism?

Jacques Ranciere: There are several things. First, adopting this posture means also adopting the posture that the system imposes, namely the posture that there is an official political game and that there are the people of the depths who are not represented, or are represented by the extreme right from which they must be separated. It is this idea that the people exist, that there are those who represent the people, that is what de Gaulle pretended to do. I don’t think that this is a democratic idea that makes it possible to mobilize and advance. That is the first point. The second point is that I find it paradoxical to become a candidate of the supreme office of the system saying: if you elect me, here is my program. And at the same time to say: but pay attention, this system is bad and therefore everything is going change. I think there is a fundamental contradiction. You are saying to me that my anti-presidential stance is somewhat paradoxical or difficult to follow. But I think it is still more difficult to follow a stance which on the one hand asks to be vested with the powers of the president of the 5th republic and at the same time says I want to 6th republic and i am going to throw all of this up in the air. It is either one or the other. If we say: it is necessary to throw the 5th republic up in the air, we say: I am here to throw the 5th republic up in the air. Period.
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Filed under: Academia, Elections, Participation, Press, Sortition, Theory | 3 Comments »

Athens as a democratic precedent

Posted on September 3, 2017 by Yoram Gat

Athens of the fifth and fourth centuries BC is often brought up in discussions and polemics about sortition, both in support of the idea and against it. However, since this is often done in rote or knee-jerk manner rather than as reasoned argument the results provide more insight about modern conventional views than about the mechanism of sortition. It is therefore of interest to make an orderly account of the properties of the Athenian system as they are relevant to the question of using sortition in a modern political system and then use this account to evaluate the relevance of the system to the modern debate: the lessons that can be drawn from the historical record, if any, and whether in fact Athens should be a prominent part of the discussion of sortition today.

The historical facts

The institutional arrangements in Athens are pretty well known. My understanding is that the main source for the details is Aristotle’s The Athenian Constitution, but the general institutional picture and the conventional political theory behind them is clear from multiple sources. In addition some background facts about the Athenian society can be established including both facts about the demography of Athens and about the conventional ideology of the Athenians. For our purposes, the following points (“stylized facts”) are the relevant ones:

Athenian citizenship was very restrictive. Of a population of about 300,000 people, only 30,000 were fully enfranchised citizens (adult males of Athenian ancestry). The rest were women, children, foreigners and slaves.
Despite some vestiges of formal political stratification among the citizens, conventional Athenian ideology saw citizens as deserving equal political rights and in practice no formal distinctions were enforced.
The set of Athenian citizens was largely made of two groups – small farmers and city-resident workers. There were two elite groups: landed Aristocracy, and the wealthy city bourgeoisie.
The rich were taxed by the city and money was given in various ways to the poorer citizens, but significant economic inequality persisted in Athens.
The day-to-day governing of the Athenian city was carried out by the Council – a body of 500 citizens allotted yearly. The council oversaw a large number of magistrate boards, each made of ten 10 citizens allotted yearly. There were also a few specialized offices (military generals and high financial officers) that were elected.

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Filed under: Athens, Elections, History, Sortition | 36 Comments »

Ranciere: What times are we living in?, part 1

Posted on September 1, 2017 by Yoram Gat

01. There is always this confusion between democracy as the power of all and a representative system.

Aude Lancelin: Jacques Rancière, welcome. I thank you, a great political philosopher, for coming to help us understand what is happening in a democratic country where full power is obtained with the support of less than 11% of the electorate. One of the very cruel lessons of your new book “In what times are we living?”, which is a dialog with the editor Eric Hazan, is that despite the mass abstention, despite the dysfunction of the representative system, someone holds power. Moreover, power becomes more and more oligarchical in our societies, without meeting any serious obstacle. It is not enough to turn our backs on the electoral system for it to collapse by itself. It continues to function without the popular classes, without the left… until when?

Jacques Ranciere: As I see things, the representative system is made to function with the support of a minority. There is always this confusion between democracy as the power of all and a representative system. The electoral system is made as a conflation of the two but fundamentally the representative system is in its essence an oligarchical system. In the 17th century the representative system was therefore made for a small part of the population that was supposed to be “enlightened”, representative and conscious of the general interests of society, to be able to govern with as few obstacles as possible. At the time of the revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries a belief in the power of people emerged, which could express itself through the electoral system and representation. Today we realize again that in different ways power is always with a small minority. In the past it was a social class, now it is difficult to say what social class can really govern the country, even if we know what interests the system serves. In consequence, we professionalization occurred which produced an interaction between a left and a right which fundamentally thought and did the same thing. And at the same time, they saw themselves as representatives and called for a non-establishment system or an “anti-system”. That is, the system itself produced its anti-system. What we see with Macron, with En Marche [Macron’s party], is a new and unexpected way in which the system produces its “anti-system”. I mean that the representative system carries within it the potential for several possibilities. There is the Le Pen style alternative, that is the people of the depths who are going to sweep away all the people of the system, and then there is of course the Macron alternative, which is a more subtle form because it replaces the system by the system itself. Fundamentally, what is the great novelty about under the banner of En Marche? These are alliances which are already known in other European countries (Germany, for example), with the difference that the parties keep their autonomy, while keeping the same politics, sometimes as adversaries and sometimes as allies.
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Filed under: Academia, Books, Elections, History, Proposals | 2 Comments »

Greece: School flag-bearers will be chosen by lot, rather than achievement

Posted on August 20, 2017 by Yoram Gat

ekathimerini.com reports:

The government has scrapped a long tradition of honoring top pupils by selecting them to carry the national flag in school parades. From now on flag-bearers will be chosen by lot. Opposition parties criticized this as part of the SYRIZA party’s assault on excellence.

A presidential decree published in the Government Gazette on Tuesday sets out the new procedure for selecting flag-bearers, and those flanking them, in primary school parades. Two pupils in sixth grade (the final year of primary school) will be chosen by lot each year, with one serving from the start of the academic year until January 31 and the other from February 1 to the end of the school year.

This means different pupils will carry the flag in parades to mark Independence Day on March 25 and Oxi Day on October 28, which commemorates Greece’s response to an Italian ultimatum in 1940 and the country’s entry into World War II.
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Filed under: Distribution by lot, Press | 5 Comments »

Marcela Iacub: To reform political life, long live the lottery!

Posted on July 17, 2017 by Yoram Gat

The French original is here.

The prevalent disgust with the political class will not be resolved as long as the powerful enjoy unwarranted privileges and as long as the president lives in the Elysée palace

It seems that attempting to reform political life brings bad luck. Once the government appointed François Bayrou to draft a law for reforming political life he was quickly paralyzed. Ever since the announcement of this effort, scandals are surrounding the allies and the close associates of the president’s party. Faced with this curse, two explanations suggest themselves.

The first is sociological. The privileges associated with power are shared by practically the entire political class. How then may one find the person capable of putting an end to those privileges? And if by happenstance such a person is found, even the most straight-laced would be surrounded by others who may not be…

The demands of honesty keep increasing year-by-year. That which was common practice suddenly becomes ethically unacceptable, and that which was unethical becomes illegal. Things are moving so quickly that the political class will soon face a crisis. And it is normal. In a democracy, isn’t the gratitude of the people the only privilege allowed? But maybe under those conditions, no one would wish to govern…

For a regime to be really deprived of unwarranted privileges, it must be based on sortition: the rulers are to be appointed in the same way juries are. Everything would then be very different: the political class would simply be a mechanical intermediary and the public in involvement in politics would be strong. Populism would disappear because the citizens would be educated about every question being collectively discussed.

The second reason is psychological. In the current context, the one who is charged with reforming political life is necessarily hated. Not only because he is suspected of hypocrisy – must he not be hiding his own scandals or those of his associates? – but also because the mere idea of “reform” provokes a desire to punish. The entire political class is transformed into a scapegoat for all the collective frustrations. The disgust with the political class is but a mild version of the desire to eliminate it. If it recently benefited the present government, it will soon to turn against it. Can this be doubted?

This is why it is hopeless that the attempt to reform political life will restore the public’s confidence in those who rule over it. It will only further this hate. No sanction will appease the public’s wish to make the power elites pay, to make them fall, to see them suffer. For that to dissipate, the entire system of privileges accorded to the rulers has to be abolished. And above all a profound remaking of institutions has to conceived. Representative democracy has to be reconsidered. It creates the political elites that extract from the people the power to shape their destiny. It is necessary to abolish the material privileges attached to the exercise of power. Today, the most symbolic and the most jarring among those is the fact that the president lives and works at the Elysée palace. Doesn’t this hall signify the unfathomable abyss which separates the rules and the ruled? Aren’t the former nothing but the servants of the sovereign will of the latter? These transformations will make the people, woken from the aggressive apathy toward the ruling elite, re-become a real actor in political life, their hate transformed into delight.

Filed under: Elections, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 16 Comments »

Podemos adopts sortition in its Valencia region branch

Posted on June 23, 2017 by Yoram Gat

A post by Tomas Mancebo. English translation by Pablo Segundo.

Internal elections were held at the end of May 2017 in the Valencian Community branch of the Spanish party Podemos. The alliance called “A Tide to Deepen Change” (Una marea per aprofundir el canvi / Una Marea para Profundizar el Cambio) composed of three inner groups: Democratic Deepening (Profundización Democrática), Valencian Tide (Marea Valenciana), and Deepen the Change (Aprofundir el Canvi), won the General Secretary post for Antonio Estañ, and set the branch’s new Organizational Statutes.

The new organizational model introduces more internal democracy in this regional branch: new participation mechanisms, preferential voting methods, and sortition for the selection of members of key directorial boards, committees and assemblies. These organizational innovations were pushed for by the group “Democratic Deepening” (Profundización Democrática), that has been championing new organizational and democratic mechanisms as the key to real change since the founding of the Podemos Party.

Salvador Mestre, co-founder of “Democratic Deepening” had a key role in securing the alliance between the three groups. He explains:

“The goal of ‘Deepening Democracy’ has always been to couple organizational efficiency with the integration of the different areas, sectors and spaces inside and outside the Party, as we understand this is a strong need for a new party like Podemos. The only option is to push for innovation. We seek to integrate the plurality and diversity of the 15M Plazas [the Spanish spontaneous political street assemblies that exploded in 2011], their transversality and abundance of ideas, inside a flexible and multi-purposed structure, permeable to the collaborative and creative energy of activists, supporters and social movements. It’s funny how part of this innovation is based in the age old mechanism of sortition, but quite probably Van Reybouck is right when he affirms that sortition is the only chance of medium-term survival for our political systems called ‘democratic’ in spite of their representative character, survival that has to be a renewal and a true evolution towards real democracy. In the 15M Plazas we cried for ‘Real Democracy NOW!’ and it is evident that sortition must be an important answer to that call.”

“During the formation of the alliance sortition had to be explained, defended and motivated. It was accepted as a superb method to integrate the party bases within the executive party decisions, and among other measures we agreed for a significative part of the Directorial Board to be drawn by lot.”
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Filed under: Applications, Elections, Sortition | 15 Comments »

El partido político Podemos-Comunidad Valenciana introduce el sorteo en su organización

Posted on June 21, 2017 by Yoram Gat

A post by Tomás Mancebo. An English version is here.

En la tercera semana del pasado mes de mayo, se celebraron elecciones internas en Podemos de la Comunidad Valenciana (CV). Una alianza de tres corrientes denominada Una marea per aprofundir el canvi (Profundización Democrática, Marea Valenciana y Aprofundir el Canvi), consiguió triunfar al salir elegidos tanto su candidato a la Secretaría General, Antonio Estañ, como su modelo de organización interna para el partido en esta región. El nuevo modelo organizativo introduce más democracia interna en el partido, sobre todo por la influencia ejercida en la coalición por el grupo «Profundización Democrática», que desde el principio de la constitución de Podemos como partido político apostó por propuestas innovadoras. Se refuerzan los mecanismos de participación, se proponen sistemas de votación preferencial y, sobre todo, se prescribe el sorteo profusamente para designar miembros de varios órganos y espacios.

Salvador Mestre, co-fundador de «Profundización Democrática», ha desempeñado un papel fundamental en el proceso de confluencia con las otras dos corrientes internas Transcribimos unas declaraciones de Mestre cuando contactamos con él: “el objetivo de «Profundización Democrática» siempre ha sido aunar la eficacia organizativa con la integración de todos los espacios, ámbitos y sectores tanto internos como externos, pues entendemos que esta debe ser la aspiración de una organización política nueva como Podemos. Eso nos lleva necesariamente a una exigencia de innovación. La idea que nos guía es integrar la pluralidad y diversidad de las plazas del 15M, su transversalidad y riqueza de ideas, dentro de una estructura versátil y flexible, permeable a toda la energía colaborativa y propositiva de la militancia, de los simpatizantes y de los movimientos sociales. Es curioso que, como parte de esa innovación, echemos mano de un recurso tan antiguo como el sorteo, pero la realidad es que quizá Van Reybouck tenga razón cuando sostiene que el sorteo es la única posibilidad de supervivencia a medio plazo de los sistemas políticos que han venido llamándose democráticos a pesar de su cariz tan representativo. No solo de supervivencia, sino de renovación y de evolución realmente democrática. En las plazas del 15M pedíamos “Democracia Real Ya” y es evidente que el sorteo debe ser parte importante de la respuesta a ese clamor.
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Filed under: Applications, Elections, Sortition | 4 Comments »

Sortition-related proposals in Belgium and Switzerland

Posted on June 7, 2017 by Yoram Gat

In Belgium, Christie Morreale, a senator, proposes a Peonidis–esque scheme where blank votes would be translated into allotted MPs.

In Switzerland “Génération nomination” is starting to collect signatures for putting its sortition-related proposal on the ballot. According to the proposal, 50 out of the 200 members of the Swiss national council would be selected by lot.

Filed under: Ballot measures, Elections, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 3 Comments »

A Dutchman offers sortition to the Scots

Posted on June 3, 2017 by Yoram Gat

Dr Jasper Kenter, an ecological economist at the Scottish Association for Marine Science and Honorary Fellow of the University of Edinburgh, writes in The Scotsman:

Being Dutch, Westminster politics and elections horrify me. […] In Holland, […] [c]oalition agreements mean ministers can get on with their jobs without being threatened by reshuffles. They are even expected to have expertise relevant to their post.

Yet, proportional representation faces the same issues as first past the post: policies in the long-term interest of society are hard to sell because of short-term impacts. This is exacerbated by the commercial and political interests of media, with power to sway opinion by triggering fear, anger and envy, deluding people into thinking the extraordinary is more common.

For example, air pollution leads to 40,000 deaths a year, far more than terrorism and homicide. Addressing this would require policy overhauls and investment opposed by powerful lobbies, so we stick our heads in the sand.

Another example: preserving healthy ecosystems is the most important thing we can do for future generations – but the UK’s environment department has had more severe cuts than any other, with barely anyone noticing.

There is a solution: replace MPs with randomly selected citizens called up for parliamentary duty, a system called sortition. Imagine parliament being a true reflection of the public, with mothers and teachers thinking through education and childcare, health workers influencing how to run and fund the NHS. MPs would be independent of wealthy donors and no need to be popular, so would be better at making difficult decisions.

They would be supported by an office providing independent expertise, like the current Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology. By changing a third of MPs at a time, experience could be passed on.

In Scotland, there is an ideal opportunity to try sortition: Holyrood does not have a second chamber and, regardless of Indyref2, will receive more powers after Brexit, so arguably needs one.