Adam Cronkright sent the attached document and writes:
Here is a draft that I’ve put together to help explain the work we are doing here in Bolivia, and hopefully in other places in Latin America with time. Would love to get input/feedback from readers of the EqualityByLot blog.
In particular, I would love help with the citations in the section on ancient Athens. I’ve been a long ways from home for the last half a year, so I have no access to my personal computer, my personal library, nor any English public/academic library. So in putting this Overview together, I regularly cited a second/third-hand source (Arthur Robbins Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained: The True Meaning of Democracy), since it was one of the few .pdf’s I could access. But Robbins did not rigorously cite his Athenian history, and I would much prefer to cite primary sources when possible. So any help making that section more academically rigorous would be appreciated. Continue reading →
Lawrence Lessig points to a quote of Patrick Henry at the Virginia Ratifying Convention in which he points at the weakness of the virtue-based justification for elections:
It has been said, by several gentlemen, that the freeness of elections would be promoted by throwing the country into large districts. I contend, sir, that it will have a contrary effect. It will destroy that connection that ought to subsist between the electors and the elected. If your elections be by districts, instead of counties, the people will not be acquainted with the candidates. They must, therefore, be directed in the elections by those who know them. So that, instead of a confidential connection between the electors and the elected, they will be absolutely unacquainted with each other. A common man must ask a man of influence how he is to proceed, and for whom he must vote. The elected, therefore, will be careless of the interest of the electors. Continue reading →
Theoretical considerations show that the electoral system cannot be expected to produce government that represents the values and interests of the general public. The two mechanisms advanced for the idea that the electoral system is representatives – the virtue based mechanism and the rewards based mechanism – both do not withstand scrutiny. The widespread support for the 2011 anti-government protest movement in the West indicates that in many countries the public sentiment is that government is indeed not representative.
Abstract By allowing voters to choose among candidates with competing policy orientations and by providing incentives for incumbents to shape policy in the direction the public desires, elections are thought to provide the foundation that links government policy to the preferences of the governed. In this article I examine the extent to which the preference/policy link is biased toward the preferences of high-income Americans. Continue reading →
A “CITIZENS’ jury” will deliberate on Adelaide’s future and deliver their verdict to the State Government.
Forty randomly selected South Australians will consider how to make the city both vibrant and safe and their recommendations will go to Parliament.
Premier Jay Weatherill will outsource this latest incarnation of “debate and decide” to a not-for-profit organisation, the newDemocracy Foundation. It boasts the support of a range of luminaries and former politicians and is dedicated to finding a “better system” of government.
It will invite about 20,000 randomly selected people to apply, then use an algorithm to find 40 people who are broadly representative of the community. Continue reading →
An automatic translation of the introduction of the proposal (with my touch-ups) is as follows:
A motion for a resolution on the revision of the electoral system and the establishment of the draw members of the Federal Parliament of the Kingdom of Belgium
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Introduction
The Kingdom of Belgium has gone through its history, a plurality of policies by landscapes from the bipartisan confrontation (1830-1893) to extreme multiparty (1965-present), all with a common point, the election. Belgium claims, like all Western countries which have adopted the same system, to be a representative democracy. Representative democracy is a “system in which elected representatives by the people develop and pass legislation.” This system, highly controversial for many years, does not give the people the opportunity to express itself and to pass laws (as in a direct democracy), but has “the great disadvantage of vesting the decision making power, not in the people themselves as the idea of democracy suggests, but in representatives elected by the people and governments designated indirectly, not to mention even more indirect selection of public agencies and other institutions.” Continue reading →
Nicholas Gruen, CEO of Lateral Economics, Chairman of the Australian Centre for Social Innovation, an entrepreneur involved in a number of internet startups, wants to use sortition to “cut through the weaknesses of ‘vox pop democracy'”:
It turns out that it’s in the opposition’s interest to oppose government policy even where most informed people think the government is right, perhaps even where most of the people think it’s right. Whereupon the process of undermining community sentiment begins apace. On abstract and complex subjects, lots of effort can be expended emphasising uncertainties, nursing resentments, breaking the law to obtain emails and then using them to smear scientists’ motivations etc. Who cares that careful investigation showed that these emails didn’t illustrate what they were taken to illustrate? By then the caravan has moved on.
Other areas where there’s been strong consensus based around expert opinion which have then been exploited by oppositions include tax reform of virtually every hue from the mining tax to CGT, FBT and GST reform. Continue reading →
A review of David Graeber‘s book, The Democracy Project, in The Nation makes a brief mention of his offer of sortition. The Nation‘s verdict: “That sounds nice, but it’s far easier said than done.”
For many who were attracted by slogans like “banks got bailed out, we got sold out,” the fetishization of process seemed like bait and switch. Horizontal decision making at general assemblies and small groups could go on for hours. Far from being democratic, the time-consuming process discriminated against people with jobs, those who had to take care of children or sick people, those with health problems of their own and those unfamiliar with anarchist culture and jargon, among others. Just as is the case with liberal structures, horizontalism encourages democracy in some contexts and dampens it in others. Continue reading →
In chapter XLVII of his Discourses, Machiavelli tells two stories:
The Roman People having become annoyed with the Consular name, and wanting to be able either to choose as Consuls men of the Plebs, or to limit their authority, the Nobility in order not to discredit the Consular authority by either change, took the middle course, and were content that four Tribunes with Consular power be created, who could come from the Plebs as well as from the Nobles. The Plebs were content with this, as it seemed to them to destroy the Consulship and give them a part in the highest ranks. From this a notable case arose, that when it came to the creation of these Tribunes, and they could have selected all Plebs, the Roman people chose all Nobles. Continue reading →
A political or management system can be characterized by the kind of people it elevates to positions of authority. A number of terms have been proposed by cynics, such as plutocracy, rule by the rich, kleptocracy, rule by thieves, or kakistocracy, rule by the worst. But from this writer’s experience with the most influential legislators, bureaucrats, judges, and corporate executives, the finding is that what attribute is most important to the success of most of them is the ability to sell and make connections with other people. In Greek a salesman is a πωλητής, or poletes. This suggests a word, poletecracy.
In a few cases technical skills help enable someone to rise to power, but most people in high positions are not experts in anything but campaigning and dealmaking. Most are politicians (πολιτικοί) first and foremost. If they acquire any expertise, it is usually after being on a job for a while, not while they are climbing. Their personal assets are favors earned and paid, and being able to have other influential people take their phone calls. Continue reading →
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Equality by lot 