The way from here to there

Posted on March 7, 2014 by Yoram Gat

A useful proposal for reform must present a path for getting from the status quo to the desired, improved state and the credibility of the proposed path is an important determinant of the credibility of the proposal. Sortition advocates should consider what the most effective ways to promote sortitionist reform are.

To state the obvious: a reform agenda that is aimed at changing the power structure in society can expect to have allies and opponents, the former expecting to gain some power, the latter apprehensive of losing some. Democratic reform, by definition, aims at shifting some power from established elites into the hands of a disempowered majority. This makes established elites the natural opponents of democratic reform, and the general population its natural ally. In view of that, a proposed path for democratic reform which relies on cooperation by the elite is unrealistic. A credible path to democratic reform must rely on popular support and anticipate attempts by the elite to block or derail the reform.
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Filed under: Participation, Sortition | 21 Comments »

Discussing sortition in Plymouth

Posted on March 1, 2014 by Yoram Gat

Keith Rossiter writes in the Plymouth Herald:

A COMMON cry from some Herald readers is that councillors are corrupt/incompetent/self-serving (delete as you wish), and above all that they should not be paid for their services.

[…]

Challenged to step up to the plate themselves, they may say – with some justification – that “it’s all a stitch-up”. You can only get elected with the help of a party machine, and parties only select their pals.

We got the idea of democracy from the Ancient Greeks, and perhaps it’s time to go back to Ancient Greece and borrow the other half of their brilliant concept.

The Athenians used a machine to pick people to hold public office or to do jury duty. The device, called a kleroterion, ensured randomness in allocating important civic positions in much the same way that a lottery ensures randomness in picking the winning ticket. (Of course, we’ve all met conspiracy theorists who claim that’s also a stitch-up.)
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Filed under: Academia, Applications, Athens, Juries, Press, Sortition | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

Voice of the People

Posted on February 15, 2014 by Yoram Gat

Voice of the People describes itself so:

Voice Of the People (VOP) is a new non-partisan organization that seeks to re-anchor our democracy in its founding principles by giving ‘We the People’ a greater role in government. VOP furthers the use of innovative methods and technology to give the American people a more effective voice in the policymaking process.
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Filed under: Academia, Elections, Participation, Proposals, Sortition | 15 Comments »

Early advocate of sortition in government Robert Dahl has died

Posted on February 10, 2014 by Yoram Gat

Robert Dahl was a prominent political scientist and an early advocate of using sortition in government. He proposed advisory allotted bodies in his 1970 book After the Revolution and made a similar proposal (“mini-populi”) in his 1989 book Democracy and Its Critics.

Democracy and Its Critics presents, among other ideas, a careful and coherent critique of the power of “guardian” bodies like the supreme court. In general, Dahl was noted for being unusually clear in his argumentation in a field whose main occupation is a struggle to explain the advantages of a government system in terms of an ideology which is in plain conflict with it. As an illustration, here is a striking passage from Dahl’s A Preface to Democratic Theory (1956):

The absence of specific meaning for terms like “majority tyranny” and “faction” coupled with the central importance of these concepts in the Madisonian style of thinking has led to a rather tortuous political theory that is explicable genetically rather than logically. Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Books, History, Proposals, Sortition, Theory | Tagged: , | 7 Comments »

BBC: The Philosophy of Russell Brand

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Yoram Gat

A recent segment on the BBC radio show Analysis is titled “The Philosophy of Russell Brand”. The audience is warned ahead of time to hold on to their hats as “Jeremy Cliffe enters a world without rules, without government, but with plenty of facial hair”. Following this introduction, and the expected sound bites from the Brand-Paxman interview, the segment talks about the attention Brand received, the Occupy/Indignados protest movement and features interviews with Paolo Gerbaudo, David Graeber, Michael Hardt, Peter Turchin, Daniel Pinchbeck, and a few friends of Cliffe.
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Filed under: Academia, Athens, Elections, History, Juries, Participation, Press, Proposals, Sortition, Theory | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 20 Comments »

Alexander Guerrero: The lottocracy

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Yoram Gat

As was mentioned here before, some time ago Prof. Alexander Guerrero and his ideas about the use of sortition in government were the subject of an article in The Boston Globe.

I thank Prof. Guerrero for alerting me to a recently published essay of his about sortition in the online magazine Aeon. The essay presents Guerrero’s proposal, but starts with an interesting analysis of the failure of elections and follows the proposal with an analysis of the promise of sortition.

The lottocracy
Elections are flawed and can’t be redeemed – it’s time to start choosing our representatives by lottery

[…]

The celebrity comic Russell Brand is gesticulating wildly, urgently, in a hotel room, under the bright lights of a television interview. ‘Stop voting, stop pretending, wake up. Be in reality now. Why vote? We know it’s not going to make any difference. We know that already.’ He is responding to his interviewer, Jeremy Paxman, who is taking him to task for never having voted.

We are brought up to think that voting is important, that it is a necessary condition of being a politically serious person, that we can’t complain about politics if we don’t vote. This last principle has echoes of the more reasonable parental admonition, said of lima beans or cauliflower: don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. But that principle is based on sound epistemological grounds: you might, for all you know, like cauliflower or lima beans. The voting thing is, as Brand argues, stupid. There are ways of participating in public affairs other than voting. For example, one can become a celebrity and call for revolution in a television interview.

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Filed under: Academia, Athens, History, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 47 Comments »

Democracy for the USA

Posted on January 19, 2014 by Yoram Gat

Bob Moore wrote to call attention to the website of Democracy for the USA – a new organization that advocates replacing elections with sortition. Democracy for the USA is based in Chicago and bills itself as an outgrowth of the Occupy Chicago movement aiming to rectify the deficiency of Occupy’s platform – the lack of a workable alternative to the electoral system.

THE BIG IDEA

The heart of democracy is the community meeting. Of course there are already neighborhood meetings, but these do not determine government policy; they are not effective instruments of popular power. In a democratic USA, by contrast, the people will exercise sovereign rule collectively through regular and frequent community meetings across the country. Unlike the political system now in place, there will be no bodies of politicians–a Congress, state legislatures, city councils–drafting our laws. There will be no lobbyists, no groups such as ALEC, usurping the process. Neither will there be a president, governors, or mayors directing the government. Instead, through Community Assemblies and Executive Councils staffed by ordinary citizens selected by lot, everyone will truly have an equal voice in policy-making and an equal opportunity of serving in government.

In essence it is really this simple. We will not get anywhere flailing away within the confines of the current political structures. We will be like rats running around in a maze, succeeding perhaps in making life a little less unbearable for some people in spots, but ultimately getting nowhere fast. In the meantime the earth will be consumed and we will find ourselves in a condition of serfdom or worse. We have no option: we have to make the necessary change from the current system to democracy.

The website links to Ted Aranda’s The Racket and the Answer, that is apparently based on his 2008 Ph.D. thesis.

Filed under: Academia, Sortition | 10 Comments »

Paul Lucardie: Democratic Extremism

Posted on January 10, 2014 by Yoram Gat

Paul Lucardie sent the following excerpts from his new book ‘Democratic Extremism in Theory and Practice. All power to the people’ (London: Routledge, 2014).

democratic-extremism

Author’s comment: Democratic extremism may appear to be an oxymoron, as ‘democracy’ is usually associated with moderation, pluralism and tolerance. Yet one could also regard democratic extremism as the opposite of autocratic and aristocratic extremism: whereas the latter imply that all decisions are taken by a dictator, a class of landowners or perhaps (in a more modern variety) the Central Committee of a ruling Communist Party, the former means that all decisions are taken by the people and that a political elite does not play any significant role. Examples of extreme democracy are rare, as far as I could find out. More common are cases of what I would call radical democracy: not all decisions but most important decisions are taken by the people, some are left to a political elite. Even more common, however, are mixed regimes where most decisions are taken by an elected aristocracy (professional politicians) and some by the people. In fact most so-called representative democracies are, in my opinion, mixed regimes, if not elective aristocracies.
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Filed under: Academia, Books, Elections, Sortition | Tagged: , , | 45 Comments »

The Youth Parliament of Belgium proposes sortition-based government

Posted on January 9, 2014 by Yoram Gat

Commenter ee calls attention to the following.

The Youth Parliament of Belgium is a yearly conference of French-speaking youth in Belgium which is organized by the Parliament of the French Community in Belgium. Every year the Youth Parliament discusses four decrees that are proposed by four “ministers”. The Parliament decides whether to adopt or reject each of the decrees.

The 2013 Youth Parliament adopted a decree titled “Décret visant à réformer l’exercice du pouvoir des citoyens, de leurs assemblées et de leur gouvernement” (“Decree to reform the exercise of power of citizens, their assemblies and their government”), which, if I understand correctly, was authored by Pierre-Yves Ryckaert, a political activist.

The decree opens so (automated translation with my touch-ups):

After more than two hundred years of the representative parliamentary system, one thing is clear: this system which is supposed to derive its legitimacy from the consent of voters appears to create a structural and insidious monopolization of power by a class of professional politicians. The elite politician created by elections is bound to be limited to short-term policies, in a context where they are no longer sufficient to cope with the challenges of tomorrow. This led some citizens and elected officials to question the foundations of this system.
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Filed under: Elections, Proposals, Sortition | Tagged: , , | 15 Comments »

Boyd Tonkin: We should fill at least some public offices by lottery

Posted on January 7, 2014 by Yoram Gat

Commenter ee notes an article by Boyd Tonkin in The Independent in which Tonkin, after warming up to the issue of popular displeasure with the electoral system, writes:

Most of the sounder proposals to refresh faith in democracy invoke some kind of “deliberative” process. Informed citizens should, in this model, have the opportunity to take part in every link of the decision-making chain rather than simply issue a yes/no verdict at its finale. In practice, how might this noble notion work? Well, here’s one idea that has even less chance of rapid realisation than an 11 per cent pay hike for MPs. We should fill at least some public offices by lottery.

“Sortition”, or the allocation of civic duties by lot, has a distinguished history. If ancient Athens practised it to supply most rotating city offices, then everyone in modern Britain understands it – and almost all respect it. The jury system still commands near-universal consent. People know that jury service modifies the risks of pure “sortition”. It makes provision for reasonable refusal or deferment, for challenges on the grounds of competence or conduct, and above all for guidance from a corps of impartial professionals – in this case, judges. If qualified random selection allows us to send someone down (or not) for life, then why not to decide on speed bumps and swimming pools?
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Filed under: Deliberation, Press, Sortition | 3 Comments »

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