Equality by lot

The Harvard Crimson reports:

Planning Body Releases Final Bylaws for Harvard Faculty Senate After Input From University Leadership

Harvard’s faculty senate planning body released a final set of proposed bylaws for the group Thursday, outlining a largely advisory body that would work closely with top Harvard officials to address University-wide issues.

The new bylaws, officially endorsed by Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 and Provost John F. Manning ’82 in an accompanying letter, appear to address concerns from administrators about the body’s makeup and interactions with existing governance structures.

A new stipulation requires all senators to be elected via an approval voting process, in which voters select candidates they consider acceptable — a change the planning body said “guards against factional capture.” The final bylaws also hold that if fewer than 60 percent of eligible faculty do not vote, the election will be invalid and the seats filled by sortition.

“To avoid the common issue of low-turnout elections that make many faculty senates unrepresentative, the new bylaws take concrete steps to help ensure that Senators broadly represent their respective Faculties,” Garber and Manning wrote in the letter.

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Bruxelles Today reports that the municipality of Auderghem in Belgium is setting up an allotted Citizen Evaluation Council (CEC) that is going to produce a yearly evaluation of the government of the municipality. This has the potential of being a transformative application of sortition – much more impactful than the customary single-issue bodies and the “grand plan” bodies. By evaluating the actual actions of the government as a whole, rather than being assigned limited roles by the elected, or making abstract and inevitably vague plans, the evaluation council can become a meaningful channel for democratic power challenging the oligarchical electoral power. Much of course depends on the details – authority, resources, media attention – but the direction is very promising, despite not having any binding decision making power. This could be a good way for estabilishing the representativity of allotted bodies and increasing their visibility and credibility, as an initial step toward a full sortition-based system. If the population perceives the evaluations produced as valid and useful, then the next step – allowing the CEC to fire and hire the officials they are evaluating in order to promote the same values and interests the CEC uses when producing its evaluation – seems not that far fetched.

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The municipality of Auderghem is launching a Citizen Evaluation Council (CEC) composed of 33 residents selected by lot from among the applicants. Its mission will be to independently evaluate the municipality’s actions on an annual basis, the municipality stated.

Three criteria for evaluating the municipality

Each year, the Council will review municipal actions based on three criteria: effectiveness—specifically, what was or was not achieved and why; the relevance of decisions regarding residents’ needs; and the coherence between various projects. The method draws on an OECD framework, adapted by the ULB Policy Lab to make it accessible to residents who are not public policy evaluation specialists.
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