Nissani: Cheers for Direct Democracy

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Dr. Moti Nissani writes in The Dissident Voice:

Revolutionary strategists must ask themselves: How can we best structure our own movement? And: What kind of political framework should we aim for, once we relegate the Banking-Militarist Complex to the dustbin of history? The answer to both questions is the same: genuine (or direct) democracy.

Democracy, for the Greeks who coined the word, meant “power of the people” or “rule of the people.” Perhaps the best-known example of a genuine democracy in a highly-advanced, highly-literate, polity, is Athens and its sister democracies of Ancient Greece. There, all significant political, legal, and judicial decisions were made directly by the people. Democratic Athens went to war if, and only if, the majority so voted; a man was exiled, or condemned to death, if, and only if, his fellow citizens so decreed.

It is a typical reformist treatment of the Athenian system. Sortition is discussed in the context of juries, but its application to political offices is given barely a mention:

The Athenians knew that power-seekers could not be trusted, so they filled many important public offices by lot. Moreover, most office holders maintained their positions for extremely short durations. Athens thereby bypassed, to a certain extent, a key problem in all other extant political systems: The ascendancy of the psychopaths.

Filed under: Athens, History, Participation, Sortition | 3 Comments »

Sintomer: Tirage au sort et démocratie délibérative

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Yoram Gat

An article by Yves Sintomer discusses, among other things, reasons for the avoidance of sortition by 18th century revolutionaries. English translation by John Zvesper.

Bernard Manin first raised the question of why with modern revolutions sortition disappeared from the political scene. His answer was based on two observations: first, the founding fathers of modern republics wanted elective aristocracies, and for this reason they rejected random selection, which Plato and Aristotle had connected with democracy. Second, the theory of consent, deeply rooted in theories of natural law, was so widespread that it seemed difficult to legitimize any political authority that was not formally approved by the citizenry.

Both of these arguments are important, but they do not explain everything. […]

The unavailability of the statistical concept of the representative sample (even though probability calculus was already well developed by the time of the American and French Revolutions) is the key to understanding why political sortition seemed useless in modern democracies, whose size – as almost no political writer in this period failed to point out – made it impossible to have self government similar to that of the ancient democracies. In this conceptual world, drawing lots meant arbitrarily giving power to someone. Lacking the idea of the representative sample, the proponents of descriptive representation were forced to choose other tools to advance their ideals.

Filed under: Athens, History, Sortition | 11 Comments »

Etienne Chouard

Posted on May 24, 2012 by peterstone

I spoke to Etienne Chouard for the first time last night. He recommended the following TED talk he did:

It is close-captioned with English subtitles.

He also pointed me to the following talk (again in French) which unfortunately does not yet have subtitles:

I’ve only watched the first talk, and I must say I think he overstates a bit the worthlessness of elections. There is a reason why people like Mugabe resist elections so vehemently–it does offer some checks on arbitrary power. At the very least, they prevent one faction of the powerful from running roughshod over everyone, including other powerful people, and that can provide a measure of protection to everyone else.

Chouard expressed great appreciation for the work of Bernard Manin. I wonder what he thinks of the claim that representative government has both a democratic and an aristocratic side? I hope we will discuss this further with him.

Filed under: Athens, Elections, Sortition | 12 Comments »

David Chaum: Random-sample elections

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Joshua Davis writes in Wired:

Roughly 2,500 years ago, the citizens of Athens developed a concept of democracy that’s still hailed by the modern world. It was not, however, a democracy in which every citizen had a vote. Aristotle argued that such a practice would lead to an oligarchy, where powerful individuals would unduly influence the masses. Instead the Athenians relied on a simple machine to randomly select citizens for office. It’s an idea whose time has come again.

Two separate research initiatives—one from a pioneering cryptographer and a second from a team based at Stanford University—have proposed a return to this purer, Athenian-style democracy. Rather than expect everyone to vote, both proposals argue, we should randomly select an anonymous subset of electors from among registered voters. Their votes would then be extrapolated to the wider population. Think of it as voting via statistically valid sample. With a population of 313 million, the US would need about 100,000 voters to deliver a reliable margin of error.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Athens, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 14 Comments »

“Direct democracy” and mass politics – part 2

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Part 1 is here.

Mass politics

Mass politics is the situation in which political decisions are made by a symmetrical aggregation of the actions of a large number of individuals.

The modern electoral system is an example of a mass political system. In this case, the actions of the individuals are (1) whether to run for office, (2) advocacy, and (3) voting. The political decision made is the selection of the officials.

Another example is the “direct democracy” situation – both in its modern “popular initiative” setup or in the ancient “Athenian Assembly” setup. In this case, the individuals can (1) propose legislation, (2) advocate, and (3) vote, and the decision made is the passing of pieces of public policy.

When the agenda is set externally (by the Ephors in Sparta and to some extent by the Boule in Athens, or by the elected legislature in Oregon System referenda), then the individual actions are limited to advocacy and voting. In some cases (e.g., the Spartan assembly) advocacy by individuals is also explicitly excluded from the process.

Due to the symmetry of its decision making process, mass politics has superficial similarity to democracy – a political system in which political power is distributed equally among the members – since both terms describe situations of equality. The difference is that mass politics is defined in terms of formal equality while democracy is defined in terms of equality of actual political power.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Elections, Participation, Sortition | 14 Comments »

Jacques Rancière on elections

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Joshua Mostafa wrote to call attention to an interview with Jacques Rancière:

Jacques Rancière was interviewed by Le novel Observateur on the French presidential election. He argues that elections, despite being touted as the height of democracy, are anti-democratic, oligarchical procedures. He does not confine his criticism to the right, or to the likely winner of the election, François Hollande, whose weak-tea, centrist version of socialism cuts no ice with the philosopher, but also to the purported champion of the left, Front de Gauche candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon: ‘A true campaign of the left would denounce the office of president itself.’

In principle and in historical origin, representation is anti-democratic. Democracy was founded on the idea of equal competence of all. The usual mode of selection for office was drawing lots… Representation is an oligarchic principle: it has always been associated with power representing not the population but the status or competence that bases its authority over that population: birth, wealth, knowledge, etc.
Read more (in French) »

Filed under: Athens, Press, Sortition | 8 Comments »

Keddie: Instead of an Elected Lords, let’s have a People’s House

Posted on April 28, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Patrick Keddie, a freelance writer, writes in Liberal Conspiracy:

The historic prospect of reforming the House of Lords, set to be announced in the Queen’s Speech on 9 May, should be exciting – yet the public is hardly enthused.

Fairly or not, politicians are currently viewed as pretty disreputable creatures and the prospect of electing even more of them is not very appealing to many.

But there is a little-discussed radical alternative; a second chamber composed of ordinary people, appointed by lottery in a manner similar to those chosen for jury service.

I came across the idea on comedian Mark Thomas’s People’s Manifesto radio show. Thomas began a tour of the UK in 2009, asking audiences to come up with their own ideas and policies which were then debated.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, House of Lords, Sortition | 8 Comments »

“Direct democracy” and mass politics – part 1

Posted on April 21, 2012 by Yoram Gat

The reformist idea of “direct democracy” is a recurring theme among critics of the dominant modern elections-based system of government. However, “direct democratic” systems, when considered as systems for representing popular interests, suffer from much the same problems that afflict elections-based systems.

The promise of “direct democracy”

The standard description of the Athenian democracy emphasizes the role of the Assembly. According to this description having thousands of Athenians assemble 40 times a year to discuss and vote on policy decisions was the main democratic mechanism in Athens. This institute, supposedly, distributed political power widely within the group of Athenian citizens. Wikipedia puts it this way:

It [Athens] remains a unique and intriguing experiment in direct democracy, a political system in which the people do not elect representatives to vote on their behalf but vote on legislation and executive bills in their own right.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Elections, History, Initiatives, Participation, Proposals, Sortition | 65 Comments »

Pluchino et al. in the Guardian

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Marc Abrahams, the editor of the bimonthly annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize, turns in his “Improbable research” column in the Guardian to Pluchino et al. in support for sortition:

Improbable research: why random selection of MPs may be best

Mathematical research indicates that parliaments work best when some, though not all, members are chosen at random

Democracies would be better off if they chose some of their politicians at random. That’s the word, mathematically obtained, from a team of Italian physicists, economists, and political analysts.

The team includes the trio whose earlier research showed, also mathematically, that bureaucracies would be more efficient if they promoted people at random.

[…]

The scientists made a simple calculation model that mimics the way modern parliaments work, including the effects of particular political parties or coalitions. In the model, individual legislators can cast particular votes that advance either their own interests (one of which is to gain re-election), or the interests of society as a whole. Party discipline comes into play, affecting the votes of officials who got elected with help from their party.

But when some legislators are selected at random – owing no allegiance to any party – the legislature’s overall efficiency improves. That higher efficiency, the scientists explain, comes in “both the number of laws passed and the average social welfare obtained” from those new laws.

Filed under: Athens, Press, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Internal-dynamics design parameters

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Yoram Gat

In a previous post I enumerated some design parameters of decision making bodies that affect their power: binding authority, term of service, permanence, purview, and policy drawing power. Those parameters, except for term of service, describe the explicit amount of power the body can exert on other parts of the political system. Term of service, on the other hand, affects the power of the body by its influence on the behavior of the members of the body. A recent item about a policy jury brought forward three more design parameters that, like term of service, affect the body’s power through their influence on the dynamics within the body:
Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Juries, Sortition | 2 Comments »

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