Vincent Azoulay: An electoral campaign in reverse

Posted on September 28, 2016 by Yoram Gat

An article by Vincent Azoulay, professor of ancient history in the University of Paris-Est/Marne-la-Vallée, in france culture (original in French, my translation [corrections welcome]):

An electoral campaign in reverse: the ostracism

Let us start from a finding that is at first surprising. We possess no detailed record of an electoral campaign in Athens – despite it being history’s first democracy! There are multiple reasons for this: first, elections may not have necessarily been important events, being considered an aristocratic selection mechanism, being the opposite of the more egalitarian mechanism of sortition. Most importantly, when elections were held – when selecting generals, for example – they were most often if not unanimous then at least less-contentious: because it was never for selecting a single individual, a bitterly competitive affair, but a board of ten magistrates, which made the competition not as harsh.

To find the real electoral campaigns in Athens, with their maneuvers and intrigue, we have to turn to a celebrated institution, the ostracism, which may be considered as an election in reverse, as it was for politicians who would definitely not be elected!
Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Athens, Elections, History, Press, Sortition | 5 Comments »

Against elections, the video

Posted on September 20, 2016 by Yoram Gat

A surprisingly militant video from David Van Reybrouck.

Filed under: Elections, History, Opinion polling, Sortition | Tagged: | 6 Comments »

Crowdfunding Anthony Barnett’s WHAT NEXT: Britain after Brexit

Posted on September 16, 2016 by Yoram Gat

unboundAnthony Barnett’s new book WHAT NEXT: Britain after Brexit is available for pre-order on Unbound. He writes:

Dear Fellow Kleroterians!

Thank you for permitting me to join you on this blog. I’m writing with a shameless request, but in this post-Brexit world being polite and submissive and deferential in a British way seems to be for the birds. Towards the end of the last century I wrote a paper suggesting that a section of the upper chamber should be selected by lot. Peter Carty got in touch with me, as he had been writing a paper on similar lines. We developed it into a publication for Demos, then directed by Ian Christie, published in 1998. Ten years later we turned it into a book, The Athenian Option: radical reform of the House of Lords, published by Imprint.

There was a moment I’ll never forget – which we write about in the book. In order to put replacing the Lords into the long grass, Tony Blair created a Royal Commission in 1999 to take evidence across the country. Because our Demos paper had caused a stir we were invited to give evidence. On the way into the session I found myself in a small lift with one of its senior members, Douglas Hurd, at that point Baron Hurd of Westwell. He had been close to Edward Heath, had been Foreign Secretary under John Major, who he had failed to beat for the Tory leadership. A grandee, I think, was the term at the time. the very opposite of the kind of regular person who would have been chosen had the Commission been selected by lot.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Books, House of Lords, Juries, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 7 Comments »

Democracy talk – Episode 3: Brexit

Posted on September 10, 2016 by Yoram Gat

Patrick Chalmers and I are offering our conversation regarding Brexit and related issues.

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

Initiative in Switzerland calls for a referendum on “elections by sortiton”

Posted on August 30, 2016 by Yoram Gat

generation-nomination-636x310

Harald K. calls attention to an interview with Charly Pache, a Swiss political activist, in the Pirate Times. Pache is one of the founders of the group “Génération Nomination” which aims to introduce sortition to the Swiss government. In the interview he makes an explicit proposal: replace elections with sortition as the mechanism for selecting the Swiss legislature.

Excerpt:

Pirate Times: What is “Generation Nomination” initiative?

Charly Pache: Generation Nomination is a Swiss based movement that wants to empower every citizen to be an active element of democracy, by introducing a system called ‘sortition’ in which members of the legislative are no more elected but randomly selected among all citizens, hence to give equal chances to all to be a player in the political decisions, no matter how rich or connected the citizen is. We are active on local, regional and national levels, with good connection with direct democracy NGO’s, academics and activists around the world.

Pirate Times: When did it start and what are its aims?

Charly Pache: We launched Generation Nomination publicly in 2015 after two years of preparation. The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) does not ensure the right to democracy but barely to ‘free elections’, what in fact shrinks the exercise of democracy to only elections… this is a very poor definition, as democracy is a lot more than ‘elections’: it’s about participation of all citizen, debating, informing, building political competences among the population. Furthermore, elections are of aristocratic nature, not of democratic essence. We want to broaden the ECHR with the right to democracy.

Continue reading →

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

Distinguishing characteristics, positively valued?

Posted on August 26, 2016 by Yoram Gat

In a 2007 interview, Bernard Manin explains to Hélène Landemore his theory of the principle of distinction (my translation):

[E]lites play in effect an important role in a representative government. This is so because elections necessariliy select individuals who possess uncommon characteristics which are positively valued by the voters. A candidate who is not distinguished by certain traits that are judged favorably cannot win an electoral competition. That said, the electoral method does not determine which specific distinguishing characteristics positive judgment are those which would get candidates elected. These characteristics are determined by the preferences of the voters, that is, by ordinary citizens. The voters choose the distinguishing qualities which they want to find in their representatives. The qualities could consist of a number of things, including an exceptional ability to express and disseminate a certain political opinion. Even in this case, we are still dealing with elites, in the sense these people who are exceptionally capable of defending an opinion possess a talent that most of the people who share the opinion do not. This is the meaning I attach to the term “elites”.

Manin’s claim that the distinguishing characteristics of the elected must be valued positively by the voters, or else they would not be able to win the elections, is empirically refuted by the case of the 2016 presidential elections in the US. In this case, both candidates are disliked by a plurality of the voters, have negative favorability numbers and have a majority of their “supporters” state that they are voting against their opponents rather than for them.

Filed under: Academia, Elections, Press, Theory | 2 Comments »

Reimagining democracy

Posted on August 20, 2016 by Yoram Gat

ballot-to-randomizer

Filed under: Elections, Press, Sortition | Tagged: | 6 Comments »

Sortition advocacy in North Carolina

Posted on August 20, 2016 by Yoram Gat

Owen Shaffer, a retired college professor living in Asheville, NC has an opinion piece in the local Citizen Times. Unlike many sortition advocates, Shaffer is not talking half-measures. He is ready to dispose of elections altogether and replace them with sortition:

Is there a better way to select representative bodies to govern us? Is it possible to remove “politics”, “lobbyist”, and “campaign contribution” from our vocabulary, and still have a democracy? Can we remove the oligarchic underpinnings to our democracy? One only needs to look at history to find the answer. “It is thought to be democratic for the offices to be assigned by lot, for them to be elected would be oligarchic” – Aristotle (Politics, Book 4, Section 1294b)

What changes might happen if the random selection of members of a governing body occurs? It would be more likely that they deliberate issues and not sink into decisions based on political affiliation, posturing, and “sound bite” opportunities. They would be unafraid to make hard choices since they would owe no one any favors nor have an opportunity for re-election. In short, they would be more willing to make the right decisions.

Filed under: Elections, History, Juries, Press, Sortition | 11 Comments »

“Limiting who can vote”

Posted on August 19, 2016 by Yoram Gat

Ripples from Van Reybrouck’s book made it across the Atlantic and into the Washington Post where Dutch professors of political science Eric Schliesser and Tom Van Der Meer see fit to discuss his proposals for using sortition together with a proposal to “disenfranchise the ignorant to slant political rule toward experts”. They write:

Both [proposals] limit who can vote and seek to stimulate apolitical and rational decision-making:

1) Representatives by lottery. Belgian author and cultural historian David Van Reybrouck suggests abolishing elections and appointing representatives by lottery instead. Van Reybrouck’s proposal extends the principle of sortition — how juries are appointed — to the legislature: Randomly selected citizens would reach the optimal decision via deliberation, supposedly without a need to be bothered with politicking. When their term is up, they go home.

2) Experts as representatives. Philosopher Jason Brennan at Georgetown University suggests disenfranchising the ignorant to slant political rule toward experts. His proposal recently received favorable discussion in The Washington Post. Inspired by Plato, the rule by properly trained experts, or epistocracy, would prevent politicians from being easily swayed by moneyed interests and demagogues.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Books, Elections, Juries, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 131 Comments »

Van Reybrouck’s Against Elections, in English

Posted on July 23, 2016 by Yoram Gat

An English translation of David Van Reybrouck’s book Against Elections was recently published. The book is blurbed by, among others, J. M. Coetzee, the South African novelist who was the recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature:

Choosing our rulers by popular vote has failed to deliver true democratic government: that seems to be the verdict of history unfolding before our eyes. Cogently and persuasively, David Van Reybrouck pleads for a return to selection by lot, and outlines a range of well thought out plans for how sortitive democracy might be implemented. With the popular media and the political parties fiercely opposed to it, sortitive democracy will not find it easy to win acceptance. Nonetheless, it may well be an idea whose time has come.

With attention from such a luminary it is not surprising that the book was reviewed in several elite media outlets. As Coetzee predicts, the reception is quite cold. The warmest one is Andrew Anthony’s lukewarm response in The Guardian. Anthony concludes:

[W]hen, say, a sortition of the public recommends an expensive transport system that doesn’t work out or cuts a defence system that is later needed, […] where and how is that frustration registered? You can’t vote out the public. One job that elected politicians fulfil is as democratic punchbags. It’s not edifying or necessarily productive, but it may be essential.

Perhaps sortition or partial sortition could be applied in very specific cases. But we also need to look at reviving elections and renewing our belief in them. They remain a vital part of the democratic process. Not its only part, to be sure, but they are an all too rare example of mass engagement. Let’s not vote them out just yet.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Books, Elections, Press, Sortition | 7 Comments »

« Previous Page — Next Page »