Flags for sortitionism

Posted on June 23, 2021 by Oliver Milne

Every movement needs symbols, and the sortition movement is notably short on them. I’ve taken the liberty of putting together a couple! The design is a stylised version of the kleroterion – a 6×7 grid of 42 horizontal bars (because sortition is the answer!) The bars are 2×8 units, separated by gaps of 2 units from each other; the top and bottom borders are 9 units high, and the right and left borders are 12 units across, giving the flag as a whole a 2:1 aspect ratio.

As well as representing the kleroterion, the flag also resembles a swarm of ‘=’ signs. The mass of bars – more than can be counted in a casual glance – suggests the mass of people sortition is meant to empower and the mass of centres between which it aims to separate powers. Aesthetically, it turns the design into a texture, unique to the sortitionist flags.

I’ve done two colour variants – a red-and-black one for left-sortitionism, and a blue-and-white one for centrist/right-sortitionism. As I see it, the dividing line between the two is that left-sortitionism sees the conflict between power elites and the public as extending into the economic sphere, and believes sortitional-democratic mechanisms are the best or only way to achieve lasting victory for the latter, while centre- and right-sortitionism are concerned more narrowly with political power within a capitalist market economy. Where we agree is on the importance and legitimacy of sortitional-democratic mechanisms in government. By having multiple flags riffing on the same theme, we provide a template for a symbolic shorthand for sortitionism that can be used by other people – green sortitionists, anarcho-syndicalist sortitionists, and so on – thereby helping spread familiarity with the idea.

You can see an animated version of the left-sortitionist flag here.

Filed under: Sortition | Tagged: , , , | 22 Comments »

Deliberative assemblies are finding their feet – but also facing political barriers

Posted on October 17, 2020 by Oliver Milne

On Friday the 16th of October, the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College hosted a webinar entitled ‘Revitalizing Democracy: Sortition, Citizen Power, and Spaces of Freedom’, which you can watch here. The workshop heavily featured people putting sortition into practice right now, and so the overall focus was very much on deliberative assemblies in advisory roles, rather than non-deliberative juries or lawmaking roles. If you’d rather not spend the whole day watching a videoconference, here’s the CliffsNotes:

David Van Reybrouck, who gave one of the keynotes, helped design the new citizens’ council and assembly system in the parliament of the German-speaking region of Belgium – an area with only 76 000 citizens, but devolved powers similar to Scotland’s. The system involves a permanent citizens’ council and temporary citizens’ assemblies, both selected by sortition, as well as a permanent secretary who acts as a sort of ombudsman for the system. The council sets the agenda for the assemblies, and chases up their conclusions in the regional parliament – essentially acting as an official lobby group for the assemblies’ recommendations. Politicians have to report back to the council a year after each assembly, setting out how they’ve acted on their recommendations and, if they’ve deviated from them, why. In this respect it is a major step forward in the institutionalisation of sortition. Under the Belgian constitution, however, sortitional bodies cannot be given legislative power, so the assemblies are restricted to an advisory role until and unless momentum can be built for a constitutional amendment.

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Filed under: Academia, Action, Applications, Deliberation, Opinion polling, Proposals, Sortition | 8 Comments »