Pluchino et al. in the Guardian

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Marc Abrahams, the editor of the bimonthly annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize, turns in his “Improbable research” column in the Guardian to Pluchino et al. in support for sortition:

Improbable research: why random selection of MPs may be best

Mathematical research indicates that parliaments work best when some, though not all, members are chosen at random

Democracies would be better off if they chose some of their politicians at random. That’s the word, mathematically obtained, from a team of Italian physicists, economists, and political analysts.

The team includes the trio whose earlier research showed, also mathematically, that bureaucracies would be more efficient if they promoted people at random.

[…]

The scientists made a simple calculation model that mimics the way modern parliaments work, including the effects of particular political parties or coalitions. In the model, individual legislators can cast particular votes that advance either their own interests (one of which is to gain re-election), or the interests of society as a whole. Party discipline comes into play, affecting the votes of officials who got elected with help from their party.

But when some legislators are selected at random – owing no allegiance to any party – the legislature’s overall efficiency improves. That higher efficiency, the scientists explain, comes in “both the number of laws passed and the average social welfare obtained” from those new laws.

Filed under: Athens, Press, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Voting – Sortition – Election

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Gene Callahan has attended a panel about sortition and, seemingly like most people with any interest in sortition, came up with his own variant – a 3-stage process:

  1. Voting – people who get a certain number of votes go to the next stage.
  2. Random selection – of the people who made it to this stage, a certain number are selected at random and go to the next stage.
  3. Election – the people who reach this stage stand for popular elections.

If the bar in the first stage is set low enough, it may not involve mass politics – one could supposedly get to the second stage simply by getting the votes of one’s friends and acquaintances. This stage would serve to limit the sortition pool to fairly well motivated people who have some spare time on their hands. Whether this is a good filtration mechanism is unclear.

The random selection of the second stage would limit the ability of interested parties to influence the outcome of the elections by carefully selecting the candidates from the vast pool of the entire population. Taken to the extreme, there could be a single person promoted to the third stage, resulting in the elimination of the election round altogether.

Otherwise, mass political effects would rule this last stage and it may be expected that, as usual, superficialities would determine who, among the candidates, would win the elections. The winner would also be able to argue (and believe) that they deserve their position of power due to having won a competition, and such a mindset would potentially have the same corrupting influence that it does in the existing system.

Filed under: Proposals, Sortition | 25 Comments »

Internal-dynamics design parameters

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Yoram Gat

In a previous post I enumerated some design parameters of decision making bodies that affect their power: binding authority, term of service, permanence, purview, and policy drawing power. Those parameters, except for term of service, describe the explicit amount of power the body can exert on other parts of the political system. Term of service, on the other hand, affects the power of the body by its influence on the behavior of the members of the body. A recent item about a policy jury brought forward three more design parameters that, like term of service, affect the body’s power through their influence on the dynamics within the body:
Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Juries, Sortition | 2 Comments »

My feeling is that the future of politics doesn’t have any elections in it

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Yoram Gat

The Huffington Post has an article which mixes some standard issue techno-progressivist messages with a rejection of elections and a proposal of government by policy juries:

Jim Gilliam, CEO and co-founder of NationBuilder, […] and his co-founders Jesse Haff and Joe Green created the service to help people organize their own communities. As Gilliam said in the first part of our interview, he sees the primary political divide in our country not as one of “left vs. right. The divide is the people vs. the powerful.” This is something that Gilliam sees as not standing for long in an age of instantaneous, ubiquitous communication.

“The internet will reset all of that,” said Gilliam. “There’s no question it has to, because the internet has this really difficult relationship with power. I have deep emotional issues with power, and I believe that the way to deal with it is to give it to everybody. The biggest way to destroy it is that everybody has it. So build tools so that you can build your power base. and everybody wants that. That’s the currency of 21st century, it’s less all the money you have and it’s more how big your nation is.”

[…]

“My feeling is that the future of politics doesn’t have any elections in it. […]”

“No elections” runs against the grain of the way we currently think of democracy. Yet our own system already contains the framework of what Gilliam sees as a better, more participatory solution that addresses the issues of corruption and ignorance that he sees as plaguing our current democracy.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Press, Proposals, Sortition | 6 Comments »

Allotted assembly for budget planning in the city of Canada Bay, Australia

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Yoram Gat

The Australian Daily Telegraph reports:

The buck will stop with you – people power council

More than 1,500 people will be randomly asked to take part in a panel to set the agenda for how Canada Bay council should spend, service and plan its four-year budget.

It puts into practice an idea from independent research body newDemocracy Foundation that a random selection of citizens has the least direct self interest in public decisions.

NewDemocracy Foundation executive director Iain Walker said the randomly selected panel was similar to a jury – only for public decision making instead.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Initiatives, Press, Sortition | 14 Comments »

Bristol Radical History Group: From Athens to the Electoral Lottery

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Dan Bennett, of the Bristol Radical History Group, presents a description of the Athenian democratic system and proposes a sortition party.

Cheerleaders for parliamentary democracy often hark back semi-legendary ‘golden ages’ as a foundation of the modern electoral process. Do these myths have any basis in reality and what relevance do they have today? Dan Bennett uncovers the hidden history of Athenian popular democracy and proposes a modern alternative.

‘Every Cook Can Govern’: From Athens to the Electoral Lottery – part 1, part 2, part 3.

Filed under: Athens, Elections, Proposals, Sortition | 19 Comments »

A summary of Chouard’s talk, and links to some concurring posts

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Below is my itemized summary of the ideas presented by Ètienne Chouard:

  1. The core of democracy is political equality
  2. Elections are anti-democratic
    • Not designed to be democratic, and no such claims made by its designers
    • History shows that elections put the rich in power
    • The powerful support elections – cannot be a threat to them
    • It is a paradox that the entire political spectrum supports elections
    • Based on a myth – being able to choose the good
    • Rule by the worst – “good people don’t care about governing”
    • Elections are appropriate for small scale – depend on knowing people and being able to follow what they do, in large systems, the voters do not know the candidates and do not know what they do

    Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Participation, Proposals, Sortition | 11 Comments »

Rasmussen: 43% Say Random Choices From Phone Book Better Than Current Congress

Posted on March 8, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Rasumussen has results for a new round of their occasional survey measuring support for sortition (they don’t quite phrase it this way):

With positive ratings for Congress at an all-time low, it may come as no surprise that a plurality of voters nationwide believes a group of people randomly selected from a telephone book would do a better job than the current legislators.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Elections, Opinion polling, Sortition | 16 Comments »

David Grant talks about sortition

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Yoram Gat

The Reading Eagle reports:

Using a lottery to name the members of a citizen legislature would make that legislature more truly representative of the population and uncouple the link between money and the influence it buys in elections.

That was part of a message David Grant delivered to 17 people gathered Saturday in the Reading Friends Meetinghouse.
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Filed under: Athens, History, Press, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Dunbar’s number

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Yoram Gat

We have in the past discussed the issue of the desirable size of an allotted chamber (or more generally, the size of the set of decision makers). The two contrasting constraints are the need for representativity on the one hand which demands the chamber is not too small, and the need to avoid mass political effects which demands that the chamber is not too big.

One important factor which determines the size at which mass political effects become influential is the ability of the group members to have face-to-face social interactions. Once group members are unable to interact with others personally, the system becomes opaque, promoting new ideas becomes increasingly difficult for the average member, and power brokering emerges. In such a situation, power is no longer equally distributed in the chamber.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Sortition | 12 Comments »

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