A PhD Dissertation Written in favor of Democracy without Elections

Posted on December 15, 2024 by johnhuang865

I just stumbled across a PhD thesis recently published in November, 2024. It is entitled “The Rule of Ordinary People: The Case for a Sortition-Based Democracy without Elections,” by Eric Shoemaker, from the University of Toronto’s Philosophy Department. I have not read it yet but you can find the thesis here.

The abstract is:

In this dissertation, I challenge the orthodox position that elections are the democratic method for selecting political representatives. I reconstruct the concept of democracy shared broadly by democratic theorists to demonstrate that assemblies of randomly selected citizens are more democratic, as representatives of the public, than elected politicians. The primary arguments against sortition focus on the idea that the random selection of legislators is not democratic. Having argued that random selection is more democratic, I divide these criticisms into three different interpretations of why it is normatively significant that the members of the mini-public are not chosen by those whom the mini-public represents, and rebut each of them. In addition to defending the use of legislative mini-publics, I propose and defend institutional blueprints for a political executive and judiciary which put ultimate authority in the hands of randomly selected officials. In doing so I demonstrate that a representative democracy without elections is possible, and that because it would be more democratic, it is the model of democracy which we ought to strive for.

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Members of the Journal of Sortition editorial board present themselves

Posted on December 10, 2024 by keithsutherland

Sortition: Past and Present

Since ancient times sortition (random selection by lot) has been used both to distribute political office and as a general prophylactic against factionalism and corruption in societies as diverse as classical-era Athens and the Most Serene Republic of Venice. Lotteries have also been employed for the allocation of scarce goods such as social housing and school places to eliminate bias and ensure just distribution, along with drawing lots in circumstances where unpopular tasks or tragic choices are involved (as some situations are beyond rational human decision-making). More recently, developments in public opinion polling using random sampling have led to the proliferation of citizens’ assemblies selected by lot. Some activists have even proposed such bodies as an alternative to elected representatives. The Journal of Sortition benefits from an editorial board with a wide range of expertise and perspectives in this area. In this introduction to the first issue, we have invited our editors to explain why they are interested in sortition, and to outline the benefits (and pitfalls) of the recent explosion of interest in the topic.

Arash Abizadeh (Department of Political Science, McGill University). Democratic theory, as I understand it, is committed to two fundamental values: political agency (meaning people’s power and participation in political decision making) and political equality (meaning their equal political agency). I am interested in elections as a mechanism for political agency and in sortition as a mechanism for political equality; I am also interested in the tension and tradeoffs between these two fundamental democratic values (Abizadeh, 2019, 2021).

Josine Blok (Department of History and Art History, Utrecht University) & Irad Malkin (Department of History, Tel Aviv University). Our book on sortition among the ancient Greeks, Drawing Lots: From Egalitarianism to Democracy in Ancient Greece (Oxford University Press, 2024) contains some lessons for today, especially focusing on why sortition, with its emphasis on equality and mixture, is as efficient as it is just. Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Press, Sortition | 3 Comments »

Goldberg, Lindell and Bachtiger: Deliberative minipublics for democratic renewal

Posted on December 6, 2024 by Yoram Gat

A new paper in the American Political Science Review covers some very well explored ground.

Empowered Minipublics for Democratic Renewal? Evidence from Three Conjoint Experiments in the United States, Ireland, and Finland

Saskia Goldberg, Marina Lindell and André Bachtiger

Abstract

This article investigates the potential of deliberative minipublics to provide a new set of institutions for democratic renewal. Using three preregistered and identical conjoint experiments in the United States, Ireland, and Finland, it first shows that minipublics are moderately attractive institutional innovations, but that in all three country contexts, citizens in general are very reluctant to grant them empowerment and autonomy as well as ask for additional provisions (such as large size or large majorities for recommendations). Subgroup analyses, however, reveal that especially participation in minipublics as well as trust in other citizens as decision-makers in combination with low political trust produces more support for empowered and autonomous minipublics. But what stands out in the empirical analysis is that most citizens want minipublics as additions to the representative system, not as a replacement of the existing democratic infrastructure, as some minipublic advocates have suggested.

As is common in this genre, the conclusions are that citizens are conservative and suspicious about giving citizen bodies decision-making power. Thus, the authors say, it is up to political experts to design institutions that would “win” the support of those citizens. Such conclusions are convenient on two counts. First, they provide cover for the conservatism of the authors themselves, and second they entrust the authors, their colleagues in academia, and their benefactors in the halls of power, with the crucial role of designing any possible reforms to the system.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Deliberation, Sortition | 2 Comments »

Journal of Sortition launch issue

Posted on November 30, 2024 by keithsutherland

The launch issue of the Journal of Sortition is nearing completion. You can read the Foreword and Table of Contents at imprint-academic.com/sortition-hub and also register for a free printed and bound inspection copy, to be mailed to you on publication.

Filed under: Academia, Press, Sortition | 1 Comment »

On Randomly Selecting Australia’s Head of State

Posted on November 24, 2024 by peterstone

Just out: an article proposing that Australia select its Head of State through a multi-stage process involving sortition at the beginning and the end. The author doesn’t really seem to endorse the idea; rather, he just offers it as an alternative that’s “a little bit whacky.” Here’s the link:

https://pelicanmagazine.com.au/2024/11/17/could-we-randomly-select-a-citizen-as-our-head-of-state/

Filed under: Academia, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 1 Comment »

Ballotocracy: A step beyond lottocracy

Posted on November 3, 2024 by Roger Knights

We all know what lottocracy means: Sample Sovereignty. In other words, the elevation of a representative sample of the whole community to legislative seats, replacing elected legislators.

The case for this replacement seems strong:

Per Rousseau, there is less of a “representative” interference between the whole body and the legislators, meaning the General Will is more truly ensconced, and its actions more democratically legitimate.

Democracy means the rule of the considered common sense of the community. But a mass-electoral system gives each voter such a tiny influence on election results that most pay little consideration to political affairs. And an electoral system implies party government, which roils the waters and impairs considered consideration of the issues. And the influence of professional party politicians, pelf (money), propaganda, and the press (more generally, the media) further shapes and restricts the democratic dialogue. This is only a partial list of the demerits of what I call DeMockery (a mockery of democracy). Many others have noted them too.

The public, according to polling, seems disillusioned to an unprecedented level with DeMockery and ready for a change.

And yet there have been no powerful movements toward full lottocracy. Only randomly chosen advisory entities have been created. (And even they have shown flaws, as in Ireland recently.) The public and public intellectuals apparently need a strong inducement to move beyond today’s mass-electoral system.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Elections, Participation, Proposals, Sortition | 17 Comments »

Nobel prize winning AI technology creates the “Habermas machine”

Posted on October 21, 2024 by Yoram Gat

Google DeepMind, whose AI product AlphaFold2 won the 2024 chemistry Nobel prize for the company’s founder, Demis Hassabis, has now applied its technology to create a tool they call the “Habermas machine”. The tool is described as working as a “caucus mediator,” generating summaries that outline areas of agreement of people making up a discussion group. An excerpt from an article in the MIT Techology review:

AI could help people find common ground during deliberations

Groups using Google DeepMind’s LLMs made more progress in discussing contentious issues. But the technology won’t replace human mediators anytime soon.

Reaching a consensus in a democracy is difficult because people hold such different ideological, political, and social views.

Perhaps an AI tool could help. Researchers from Google DeepMind trained a system of large language models (LLMs) to operate as a “caucus mediator,” generating summaries that outline a group’s areas of agreement on complex but important social or political issues.

The researchers say the tool — named the Habermas machine (HM), after the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas — highlights the potential of AI to help groups of people find common ground when discussing such subjects.

“The large language model was trained to identify and present areas of overlap between the ideas held among group members,” says Michael Henry Tessler, a research scientist at Google DeepMind. “It was not trained to be persuasive but to act as a mediator.” The study is being published today in the journal Science.

Filed under: Academia, Deliberation | 2 Comments »

Alexander Guerrero’s new book: Lottocracy

Posted on October 18, 2024 by Yoram Gat

Alex Guerrero, Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University and a longtime sortition advocate, has written to announce that his book Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections (Oxford Press) is now out. It is available now in the UK from the publisher, and available for pre-order everywhere on Amazon.

The book, which has been more than a decade in the making, also has a website, https://www.lottocracy.org/, where highlights, excerpts and other information can be found.

I asked Alex what was new or different about his book compared to previous books advocating sortition. He called out 5 points:

I provide a more detailed and empirically informed set of concerns about electoral representative democracy and a more detailed and multidimensional diagnosis for why electoral democracy isn’t performing well. In doing this, I make the case that there are no straightforward “fixes” for what ails electoral democracy. Chapters 2-6 raise these empirically informed concerns; Chapter 7 considers possible solutions and suggests they will be inadequate.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Books, Proposals, Sortition | 32 Comments »

A Constitutional Imperative to Implement a Citizen’s Assembly Model within US Governance

Posted on October 10, 2024 by Yoram Gat

A post by Dylan Vargas. Dylan Vargas is a Master’s Student at American University studying International Affairs Policy and Analysis. In his studies he focuses on the interplay between good governance and human rights. He has worked extensively in the Democracy space, including work in four electoral campaigns and two years with the League of Women Voters of the United States advocating for Democracy Reform. This post was written as part of a Human Rights course Vargas is taking at AU.

A Constitutional Imperative to Implement a Citizen’s Assembly Model within US Governance

Outline: The core argument of the post is that the United States should implement a Citizen’s Assembly Model to achieve a more representative and responsive form of governance, as promised by the U.S. Constitution. Current democratic mechanisms are failing to adequately reflect the diverse population they serve, leading to widespread mistrust in government institutions. The implementation of a Citizen’s Assembly — a body made up of randomly selected citizens reflecting the demographic makeup of the country — would ensure that the voices and perspectives of ordinary Americans are better represented in policy-making. This argument addresses Equality by Lot’s debates surrounding political representation, democratic legitimacy, and the crisis of public trust in government. It focuses on the US Constitution, founding documents, US polling/stats, and conversations around democratic and repressive government political theory.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Sortition | 1 Comment »