Patrick Deneen on democracy, populism and sortition

Posted on October 2, 2024 by Yoram Gat

Patrick Deneen is a professor of political science at Notre Dame university. He is a fairly prominent public intellectual in US politics, popular especially among the Republican elite. His 2018 book, Why Liberalism Failed, drew quite a bit of attention.

A piece by Deneen has recently been published by the Notre Dame magazine. It is a surprisingly, even impressively, good. The heavy punches just keep coming. Here are some excerpts.

Democracy and Its Discontents

The claim that our democracy is imperiled should rightly strike fear in the souls of citizens, but it ought also to give pause to any student of politics. During most of the four decades I have studied and written about democracy, political scientists, and especially political theorists such as myself, would begin not with a claim about the relative health of democracy, but rather with a seemingly simple question: What is democracy?

Yet according to a dominant narrative among today’s academics, public intellectuals, media personalities and even many citizens, it is largely assumed that we know what democracy is. Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Athens, Books, education, Elections, History, Press, schools, Sortition | 17 Comments »

Sortition in New Zealand

Posted on September 28, 2024 by Yoram Gat

A 2022 talk by Prof. Matheson Russell from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, makes the standard case for sortition. Such presentations emphasize amiablity and “empirical findings” at the expense of political power and scientific rigor.

Filed under: Academia, Sortition | Leave a comment »

This Saturday INSA Presents – Sortition and Socialism

Posted on August 28, 2024 by richwbrown

Sortition and Socialism

Online Conference

Saturday, 31 August

– Sunday, 1 September in Asia & Australia – 

Free Admission

Google Meet joining info video call link: https://meet.google.com/ntz-xguv-bsb 

For more information on times, presenters, topics see the

Conference Website

INSA is a volunteer organisation aimed at connecting pro-sortition academics, advocates, and activists around the world, to share resources and tactics and advance the theoretical understanding of sortition. http://www.INSA.site

You are invited to join our Discord server at https://discord.gg/6sgnrphp6w

Filed under: Academia, meeting, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Democracy Without Shortcuts, A Critique. #2:  Deference to a lottocracy needn’t be “blind”

Posted on August 14, 2024 by Roger Knights

Christina Lafont, in her 2020 book, Democracy Without Shortcuts, routinely asserts that, because a minipublic excludes the mass public, the mass public must “blindly defer” to its decisions. Those words at face value imply that the mass public would be blindsided by its decisions. That is not her full meaning, but I’ll criticize that part of it first.

There are four mechanisms by which the public could descry and/or influence the machinations of a lottocracy.

1a. By pairing and “checking” any lottocratic legislative chamber with an elected House.

Any legislation considered in, or passed by, a lottocratic House would be subject to public scrutiny when it reached the elected House, and even before that, during election campaigns for that House. The public would not be taken unawares (for what it is worth). The majority of lottocratic reformers, as far as I know, are only asking for this single-House, or half-a-loaf, power, so Lafont is not justified in insinuating that any empowered lottocratic legislature would be scarily secretive and all-powerful. It would only be influential, and it would have to negotiate openly in compromise-seeking conference committees with its elected counterpart.

1b. By allowing the mass public to veto, by referendum, objectionable minipublic measures. Or by requiring their endorsement, by referendums, by the public.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Books, Participation, Proposals, Sortition | 24 Comments »

INSA Presents: Sortition and Socialism

Posted on August 13, 2024 by richwbrown

Sortition and Socialism

Saturday, August 31, 2024

– Sunday, September 1st in Asia & Australia – 

15:00 – 19:00 UTC

Conference Website

Google Meet joining info video call link: https://meet.google.com/ntz-xguv-bsb  

INSA is a volunteer organisation aimed at connecting pro-sortition academics, advocates, and activists around the world, to share resources and tactics and advance the theoretical understanding of sortition. http://www.INSA.site

You are invited to join our Discord server at https://discord.gg/6sgnrphp6w

Filed under: Academia, meeting, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Mogens Herman Hansen – prominent classicist with an interest in sortition – dies

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Yoram Gat

The Guardian has an obituary of Mogens Herman Hansen.

Danish historian who transformed our understanding of the way Athenian democracy functioned

The term democracy emerged in the classical city-state of Athens to denote power exercised by common people, at that point men who were not slaves. From around the sixth century BC, officials were chosen by lot and were subordinate to a citizens’ assembly that made decisions. Writers on this process tended to describe it in theoretical terms. But the Danish historian Mogens Herman Hansen, who has died aged 83 after a short illness, transformed understanding of how Athenian democracy functioned by approaching it empirically, through a series of simple questions.

Hansen established the actual practices of the direct democratic assembly, the nature of the leadership exercised by the distinct classes of orators and generals in the absence of any form of partisan political structures, and the importance of mood and rhetoric on the opinions of the mass assembly.

His second insight was based on the fact that previous interpretations of Athenian democracy had ignored how it had changed as a result of Athens’ defeat in the Peloponnesian war with Sparta and the constitutional reforms that began in 403 BC.

The system had moved from the assembly being sovereign to one that was ruled by the distinction between laws (nomoi) that were permanent, and decisions (psephismata) that had to be made in conformity with the laws, and could be challenged in the courts if they were not.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Athens, Books, History, Sortition | 2 Comments »

Democracy Without Shortcuts, A Critique. #1: A false equivalency is drawn between electoral misanthropy and electoral misogyny 

Posted on June 29, 2024 by Roger Knights

Among the major handicaps a reformer can encounter is the opposition of the indignant virtuous …. —E.S. Turner, Roads to Ruin: The shocking history of social reform, 1960.

Cristina Lafont’s 2020 book, Democracy Without Shortcuts, unfairly attacks lottocracy as invidiously exclusionary. A false equivalence is asserted between lottocrats’ current “existential” criticism of the political capability of mass publics and misogynists’ past “essentialist” criticism of the political capability of women (and sometimes of other marginalized groups). Lafont writes, for instance:

… The empirical evidence provided to supposedly ‘prove’ women’s ignorance, irrationality, apathy, and irresponsibility, and the arguments put forth to perpetuate their subjection to others in the not too distant past, are remarkably similar to the arguments and evidence currently provided by the ‘voter ignorance’ literature.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Books, Elections, Sortition | Tagged: , , , , , | 11 Comments »

Upcoming Presentation by Oliver Milne: The Jury Trust Model

Posted on June 21, 2024 by richwbrown

The Jury Trust Model: Nationalised Industries Without the Corruption

Presented by Oliver Milne, PhD. – Independent scholar and game designer based in Galway, Ireland. PhD in Philosophy from the University of Galway in 2024.

The control of capital is among the most potent of powers: the power to make or break people’s livelihoods, landscapes, and governments. There are limitless ways this power can be abused, and vast amounts of it can be amassed by its abuser. In this talk, Oliver will propose a novel model of capital ownership, the jury trust, in which allotted juries are entrusted with the stewardship of large firms, and make the case that this model can address the problems inherent to state and private ownership.

Date: Thursday, 27 June · (Friday, 28 June in Asia & Australia)

Time: 20:00 – 21:00 Time zone: Europe/Copenhagen

Google Meet link: https://meet.google.com/kfs-vatf-jnu

Or dial: ‪(DK) +45 70 71 45 70 PIN: ‪247 732 930# More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/kfs-vatf-jnu?pin=6887037700703

INSA is a volunteer organisation aimed at connecting pro-sortition academics, advocates, and activists around the world, to share resources and tactics and advance the theoretical understanding of sortition. Join the conversation!

Discord invitation https://discord.gg/6sgnrphp6w

Filed under: Academia, meeting, Sortition | Leave a comment »

INSA Presents the Online Conference: Sortition and Socialism

Posted on June 21, 2024 by richwbrown

Sortition and Socialism

Saturday, August 31, 2024

– Sunday, September 1st in Asia & Australia – 

15:00 – 19:00 UTC

17:00 CEST • 11AM US Eastern • 12:00 Buenos Aires • 8AM US Pacific

Google Meet joining info Video call link: https://meet.google.com/ntz-xguv-bsb  

Or dial: ‪(DK) +45 70 71 41 10 PIN: ‪115 473 082# More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/ntz-xguv-bsb?pin=5619945386152

Featured Presenter

Dr. Camila Vergara

Dr. Camila Vergara is a critical legal theorist, historian, and journalist from Chile writing on the relation between inequality and the law, and on alternative institutional solutions to systemic corruption. She is Senior Lecturer at University of Essex Business School, Editor of Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, Associate Editor of Critical Sociology, and author of Systemic Corruption: Constitutional Ideas for an Anti-Oligarchic Republic (Princeton University Press 2020). In her work on constitutional theory, republicanism, and corruption, she advocates for council democracy and sortition-based plebeian institutions as part of a counterpower structure against oligarchy. In addition to her scholarly work, Dr. Vergara is a global public intellectual and an activist advising and collaborating with grassroots organisations on rights, deliberative democracy, and community-based forms of governance.

INSA is a volunteer organisation aimed at connecting pro-sortition academics, advocates, and activists around the world, to share resources and tactics and advance the theoretical understanding of sortition. http://www.INSA.site

You are invited to join our Discord server at https://discord.gg/6sgnrphp6w

Filed under: Academia, meeting, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Harvard produces a pure specimen of the “deliberative democracy” narrative

Posted on June 3, 2024 by Yoram Gat

Gina Goldenberg, writing for the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation in the Harvard Kennedy School, has produced a highly purified specimen of the “deliberative democracy” narrative. The article is a useful condensed aggregation of the clichés of the “deliberative democracy” genre, notable for what it does not say more than for what it does. Other than the canned vocabulary, the tropes and the omissions, another noteworthy point is the intimate/inspirational style which focuses on the personalities of supposedly brilliant elite actors on whose insights and initiative our future depends (including professionally-staged pictures, of course).

In the excerpt below, I underline terms and phrases that are typical to the genre. I find it a useful exercise to consider what those terms and phrases mean and what alternative phrasings they were chosen over. Also, to reduce the mental burden on the readers, I elide some of the intimate/inspirational verbiage.

Could deliberative democracy ameliorate democratic backsliding? Two HKS students believe it might.

As concerns for the health of democracy mount, Medha Uniyal and Kartikeya Bhatotia consider one particular “experimental democratic practice” that could increase connectivity between citizens and decision-making processes.

In their PAE [Policy Analysis Exercise], [Medha Uniyal and Kartikeya Bhatotia, students at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS)] responded to the sentiment of global democratic decline by looking for untraditional and innovative mechanisms to increase civic engagement and collect deeper citizen input through deliberative democracies. By concentrating on the deliberative model, Uniyal and Bhatotia hope to address some of the challenges that aggregate democracies face today, like extreme polarization and decreased connectivity.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Deliberation, education, Participation, Sortition | 4 Comments »

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