Marta Soler writes about demonstrations in Greece:
Today (Sunday, the twelfth day of the demonstrations) there is to be a huge demonstation in Syntagma; perhaps a million people are expected. There are calls out for simultaneous demonstrations in European capitals, in Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, Berlin… But the Greek one will be the biggest. A friend – a teacher – and his wife plan specially to come from Argos (and there will be a large presence from outside Athens). The sentiment for change – and against the European Union/government – is fierce, increasing in waves.
There is no obvious leadership for this revolution. The teacher along with other intellectuals, lawyers and some former government officials is proposing a constitutional change, a fourth body, a parliament of the citizens, to meet yearly (selected by lot, so as to be not under the influence of the parties). This is an old institution, described initially by Aristotle (in the Constitution of Athens). In it, the parliamentary leader would have to explain how his policies are consistent with the promises of his campaign and benefit the people, achieve a common good. If the government has become too corrupt (as is now particularly the case), the leader and other officials can be subjected to a censure, required not to seek an additional term, and even brought to trial. My guess from listening to the discussion in Syntagma is that this would be a popular suggestion.
YouTube has a talk by Prof. Alan Ryan discussing what he calls “real democracy, using lotteries in the way the ancient world used them”, and contrasting it with the existing system – which he describes as being similar to the Roman system – a system mixing elements of monarchy, aristocracy and monarchy. Ryan concludes by endorsing Fishkin’s “Deliberative Polling”.
Part one:
Part two:
This is a thoughtful, if brief, lecture and the points that are raised are worth discussing, I think, in comments and in future posts.
A poll previously mentioned on this blog found that in January 2010 45% of the U.S. public said that a group of people selected at random from the phone book would do a better job addressing the nation’s problems than the current Congress. Some doubt that such a finding indicates that many Americans would view a proposal to allot Congress favorably. Instead, they suggest that the positive responses are merely equivalent to exclaiming that “a monkey could do better than that lot”.
A February 2010 poll by CNN put the matter a little closer to home, asking: “Do you think you personally could do a better job running the country than our government officials are presently doing?”. 36% of respondents answered positively.
The obvious conclusion is that 9% of the public think that a monkey would do a better job than they would.
Other interesting findings from the same poll: over 80% of the public think each of the following describes “officials in Washington”: “Heavily influenced by special interests”, “Mainly concerned about getting reelected”, and “Out of touch with the average person”. Only 22% think the officials are “Honest”.
Robin Smith, a social entrepreneur and Independent Councillor, dedicated to justice in society through economic reform, writes:
[W]e do not need any more CORRUPTIBLE leaders and we do want people to vote for what is best for ALL people, not themselves.
We can see that democracy today, at best, leads inevitably to oligarchy. Rule by the few. This seems to be a natural tendency under current macro economic conditions […].
With sortition, just like jury service, the assembly of leaders are elected, by lot, from a pool of pre selected but random candidates, essentially all citizens who are willing to do it.
With sortition, just like jury service, the assembly of leaders are elected, by lot, from a pool of pre selected but random candidates, essentially all citizens who are willing to do it.
Some will say there is a small risk of electing a bad guy. Yet how does it compare with what we have today where it seems ALL leaders eventually get corrupted. Remember… keep thinking!
The ignorant and selfish kind of leadership we have today could no longer buy the people and would never rule. There would still be problems. But a BIG one would have been abolished and buried out of sight.
A short article by syndicated columnist Sydney J. Harris was published in the March 1960 issue of The Rotarian under the title “Pick Leaders Out of a Hat?“. The article – a reprint from the Chicago Daily News – takes a bold stance in its first paragraph:
The chief thing wrong with democracy is that it is not democratic enough. I would like to see American officeholders drawn by lot, as they often were in ancient Greece.
Harris’s proposal finds little favor with the four discussants invited by the The Rotarian to respond. The responses range from
I doubt we should dignify his [Harris’s] proposal by giving time, thought, and paper to it,
to the milder
Obviously, everyone’s name cannot go into the hat – the results could be too entirely fantastic – so the would have to be some plan of selection. It is altogether likely that any suitable selection arrangement would gradually develop into nothing but a duplication of the present system.
In November 2008, the following non-binding question was placed on the ballot of the Somerville district, MA:
Shall the state representative from this district be instructed to vote in favor of a proposal to amend the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to replace the state Legislature with 100 randomly selected adult residents of the Commonwealth, each serving a one year term, to be called the Commonwealth Jury and to have all the legislative and other powers of the current Legislature?
The upcoming vote triggered an exchange of mostly scornful comments at the Davis Square discussion board.
The initiator of the proposal was apparently, John Spritzler, Research Scientist at a major School of Public Health in Boston, MA. Spritzler reports that the question won the support of 23% of the voters.
This is the third and last part of this article. The first two parts are 1 and 2.
In a democratic society university admittance policy would be set according to the informed decision of the members of the society – possibly through a representation by an allotted decision-making chamber. The decision makers would have to consider what would be the advantages and disadvantages of possible admittance policies and attempt to design a system that would create maximum benefit for the maximum number of people. (Indeed, in a democratic society, all aspects of university policy, such as the procedure for setting the curriculum, should also be designed so as to maximize the benefit for society as a whole.)
Two effects of the admittance policy that merit consideration are its impact on slot availability and its impact on the ideological stance of the members of the public regarding the benefits of university education. Both of those considerations indicate that a lottery-based admittance policy has clear advantages over the achievement-based policy. While I think that the long term objective for the university system should be to provide quality education to all who seek it, the advantages of the lottery-based admittance system make it both a reasonable system for societies that cannot afford to provide education to all, and make it a good tool for creating a shared interest in reaching this desirable goal.
1. Slot availability
As Conall Boyle emphasizes, the possibility of employing a lottery emerges when a resource is scarce. If the number of applicants to a certain university course is smaller than the available number of slots, then neither a lottery nor any other filtering method is needed. Why, then, are the university slots scarce? Does this scarcity represent the best interests of society? On the face of it, it seems that the natural response to high demand for university slots would be to attempt generate more slots. Would it be difficult to do so?
Popular elections are generally assumed to be the crucial element of democratic governments, but the significance of elections is so widely assumed that it is rarely examined. Although studies of voting behavior abound, there are relatively few theoretical or empirical investigations of the effects of voting on the total political system.
This is an overstatement. Schumpeterian theory was well known and widely discussed at least as late as the 1950’s (e.g., Dahl’s A Preface to Democratic Theory) and a part of that theory is an analysis of the function of elections – an analysis that attacks the “classical doctrine of democracy”. Pomper seems to mean that there is little work attempting to defend the “classical doctrine”. His own defense is to a large extent a capitulation. He gives up on the hope of a representative government and is satisfied with the claim that elections “give the voters a means of protection, a method of intervention in politics when their vital interests were being threatened.” Of course, even this modest claim is not obvious and Pomper doesn’t offer a theoretical argument for its plausibility.
Selecting school entrants by IQ and no other criterion is a good example of a meritocratic system.
Conall Boyle, Lotteries for Education
Conall Boyle sees admitting students to universities based on standardized test scores as being a meritocratic policy. This is so, according to Boyle, since standardized test scores are a good (indeed, the only) predictor of probability of graduation. There seems to be an obvious gap here: it is far from clear why high probability of graduation can be considered “merit”. Boyle rejects “good works” (such as doing volunteer work for good causes), for example, as being “false merit”, because it is not a predictor of probability of graduation. This seems like an unusual use of the term “merit” – a more suitable term perhaps is “potential” or “promise”.
Even then, we are obviously dealing with “promise” of a rather peculiar nature: “promise to graduate”. Boyle sees such promise-based policy as being justified by considerations of efficiency: there is a limited number of slots at the university, the public has an interest to have as many as possible of those slots turn into graduates rather than turn into dropouts. But, again, there is an obvious gap: producing graduates cannot be a good by itself since the university could easily produce more graduates (or fewer graduates) by changing the graduation requirements. The real objective of a university education is something different. Admittedly, an examination of what exactly is that objective would be a rather complicated and potentially controversial task. However, without undertaking this task it would be rather difficult to support the claim that the promise of good grades provides utility for society.
Sortition advocate Richard Ward has pointed me at a televised panel discussion on CSPAN2’s BookTV titled “The Imperial Presidency“. One of the participants in the panel was David Swanson. I have just written the following email to Mr. Swanson:
Dear Mr. Swanson,
I have recently watched the “Imperial Presidency” panel discussion on BookTV in which you took part, and followed that with a visit to your website. I found that I agree with all of what you said in terms of the problems with the current political system.
I did not find, however, that you offered a practicable solution to the problems. You did suggest at one point joining a grass root non-partisan organization (such as RootsAction). While I understand and identify with the line of thinking that leads you to propose this activity, I think further examination would show that there is little reason to hope that it would be effective.
Adam Cronkright
Ali
Ahmed R. Teleb
avanderven
avergne
Alex Kovner
azakaras
Brett Hennig
campbellwallace
Simon Threlkeld
Nick Coccoma
codyhipskind
Common Lot Sortitionist
Conall Boyle
constitutionalism
davidschecter
graytmatter
gtridimas
H.J. Hofkirchner
Hanspeter Rosenlechner
John Burnheim
jgarry20151
Jochen Krattenmacher
johnedwardtaylor
johnhuang865
Jonathan Crock
keithsutherland
Jacob Richter
kkoreilly
lukewhito
SimonPek
Nathan El
Nicholas Gruen
Owen Shaffer
Patrick Chalmers
Paul Gölz
peterstone
Pierre-Etienne Vandamme
pronfeld
Emil
rcaze
richwbrown
Roger Knights
roslynfuller
Pierre-Etienne Vandamme
shaharavin
tbouricius
Ted Wachtel
Joshua Laferriere
theodorestathis
towardsautonomyblog
Wayne Liebman
Yoram Gat
Oliver Milne
Equality by lot 