Athens | Equality by lot

Tom Hodgkinson: Boris ought to know his Plato

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Yoram Gat

Tom Hodgkinson, editor of The Idler, invokes Plato on the pages of The Independent:

[I]f Boris [Johnson] knew his Plato, which he ought to, having been to Eton and everything, then he would recognise in the protests, riots and strikes that have marked this year a sign that the people ain’t happy with the situation. He would also recognise himself as being a member of the short-sighted oligarchy – oligarchy meaning “control by a wealthy minority”. Reading Plato’s Republic, I was struck by the parallels with a typical cycle that he describes. In Platonic terms, it would seem that an oligarchy has taken over UK plc, and that this oligarchy has made too many loans, thereby pauperising the people, and now fails to see what is happening right beneath their noses: that the people are talking about revolution. The good news, though, is that a real democracy may be in store:

Plato writes that when the pursuit of riches remains unchecked, resentment breeds:

[…]

This is the situation that will lead to social upheaval: “Democracy originates when the poor win, kill or exile their opponents, and give the rest equal rights and opportunities of office, appointment to office being as a rule by lot.”

This is what the people want: a real democracy, government by the people, and not by a clique comprising top politicians and CEOs. […]

Filed under: Athens, History, Sortition | 46 Comments »

Athenian Democracy Reincarnate

Posted on October 13, 2011 by keithsutherland

Athenian democracy involved a combination of sortition (boule, juries and most magistracies) and direct democracy (ecclesia). Sortition fell into disuse in large modern states and direct democracy was replaced by representative elections. There has been a flurry of proposals recently for the reintroduction of sortition, but it is unclear how — or indeed if — this can be reconciled with mass democracy, as the latter is elitist, populist, undeliberative and frequently hijacked by rich and powerful elite interests, leading to sharp exchanges on this list. However a recent debate suggests an acceptable compromise, which I outline in this post. There would be three stages to the legislative process, with the relevant Athenian institution in parentheses:
Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Proposals | 90 Comments »

Fishkin: How to Fix California’s Democracy Crisis

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Yoram Gat

Prof. James Fishkin has an op-ed piece in the New York Times:

One hundred years ago today, California voters added the ballot initiative to the State Constitution, allowing citizens to use petitions to bring proposed statutes and constitutional amendments for a public vote.

In the article Fishkin entwines two themes. On the one hand, according to Fishkin, multiple cycles of legislation via the initiative system have encumbered California with various laws that cannot be overturned by the legislature, and make California “virtually ungovernable”. He cites the two-thirds rule for raising taxes, mandatory funds allocation (40% to education), the “three strikes law” and term limits for legislators. (He also originally cited a two-thirds rule for passing the budget – this reference was removed from the article since last year Proposition 25 eliminated this rule in favor of passage by regular majority.)

The other theme is the troubles with the Proposition system itself – supposedly the cause for the passage of the problematic laws.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Ballot measures, Opinion polling, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 25 Comments »

New Paper on Appointment to office by lot in Ancient Athens

Posted on August 28, 2011 by gtridimas

“Constitutional choice in ancient Athens: The rationality of selection to office by lot” by George Tridimas (University of Ulster) is forthcoming in Constitutional Political Economy.

Abstract:

Contrary to modern democracies ancient Athens appointed large numbers of government officers by lot. After describing the Athenian arrangements, the paper reviews the literature on the choice between election and lot focusing on representativeness of the population, distributive justice, minimization of conflicts, quality of appointees and administrative economy. It then examines why in drawing up the constitution a self-interested citizen may give up voting for government officials and appoint them by lot. It is shown that appointment by lot is preferred when the effort required to choose candidates is less than the benefit expected from their actions as government officials. It is also found that, given the choice, office motivated candidates may unanimously agree to selection by lot but not to election.

Filed under: Athens, Elections, Participation, Sortition, Theory | 5 Comments »

One of Bill McClellan’s readers writes in

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Yoram Gat

Google Alert netted another fine catch:

Democracy seeming like Greek to U.S.

Bill McClellan
stltoday.com, July 29, 2011

Not long ago, I wrote a column in which I suggested we select our leaders through a lottery [Stupid vs. immoral? Let’s leave governing up to chance, June 8, 2011]. We would avoid tiresome campaigns and the lies and misrepresentations therein, and we would rid ourselves of campaign contributions and the time-honored practice of buying influence and favors.

It was a whimsical idea. Or so I thought. But one of the joys of writing a newspaper column is hearing from people who know more than I do about the subjects I write about.

David C. sent me this note: “Today’s column made me think of ancient Athens, one of the most thoroughgoing democracies in western history (at least for those who weren’t slaves). They had a system of government very similar to your idea of government by lottery. As the Marxist historian C.L.R. James wrote in his essay, ‘Every Cook Can Govern’: ‘Perhaps the most striking thing about Greek democracy was that the administration (and there were immense administrative problems) was organized upon the basis of what is known as sortition, or, more easily, selection by lot. The vast majority of Greek officials were chosen by a method which amounted to putting names into a hat and appointing the ones whose names came out.'”

Filed under: Athens, Elections, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 3 Comments »

Karatani on sortition

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Yoram Gat

Kojin Karatani writes in his book, Transcritique (2001, translated by Sabu Kohso, p. 182ff):

There is one crucial thing we can learn from Athenian democracy in this respect. The ancient democracy was established by overthrowing tyranny and equipped itself with a meticulous device for preventing tyranny for reviving. The salient characteristic of Athenian democracy is not a direct participation of everyone in the assembly, as always claimed, but a systematic control of the administrative power. The crux was the system of lottery: to elect public servants by lottery and to surveil the deeds of public servants by means of a group of jurors who are also elected by lottery. […] My point is that the core of the system invented to stop the fixation of power in Athenian Democracy lay not in the election itself, but in the lottery. Lottery functions to introduce contingency into the magnetic power center. The point is to shake up the positions where power tends to be concentrated; entrenchment of power in administrative positions can be avoided by a sudden attack of contingency. It is only the lottery that actualizes the separation of the three powers. If universal suffrage by secret ballot, namely, parliamentary democracy, is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the introduction of a lottery should be deemed the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Disappointingly, Karatani steps away from sortition, without providing a real reason – off-handedly blaming “the people” for not being ready for a radical solution:

Can we choose all representative by lottery in all elections? That is not realistic; the system itself would be too arbitrary to gain the trust of the people.

Instead, he offers a lottery among top vote getters, claiming it will reduce factionalism, and making a vague unexplained promise that such a mechanism will “free the power center from fixation in the long run”:

[W]hat is preferable to us would be to choose the most crucial post by lottery: namely choosing three candidates by secret vote (three in one choice) and then finally electing one by lottery. Because the last and most crucial stage is determined by contingency, factional disputes or conflicts over successors would not make sense.

Filed under: Athens, Books, Elections, Proposals, Theory | 1 Comment »

More on the going-ons in Syntagma Square

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Yoram Gat

I recently linked to a WSWS story about the Indignants in Syntagma Square. The Kathimerini newspaper has a story as well. As can be expected, the tone is much more equivocal.

In Syntagma Square, some see the dawn of a new politics

As Indignant protests enter second month, opinions divided about nature and future of the movement

[…]

Costas Douzinas, a law professor at Birkbeck, University of London, recently penned one of the most flattering profiles of the Indignants in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, after being invited to speak in Syntagma. For him “this is the most political movement we have had in Greece, and perhaps in Europe for the past 20 years. It is totally political and in a way it changes our understanding of what politics means,” he says.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Sortition | 2 Comments »

Indignant, fumbling, drawing lots

Posted on June 25, 2011 by Yoram Gat

The WSWS has a critical report about the “indignants” movement in Greece:

Greece: The Syntagma Square movement—no real democracy

It is not easy to report on the “Indignants”, the protesters in Athens’ Syntagma Square. We spent almost an hour trying to find someone responsible who could tell us about the goals and character of the movement, without success.

[…]

There was no one willing to provide information about the objectives and purpose of the movement, and take responsibility for this. This game of hide and seek is not a coincidence. It is justified by reference to the principle of “genuine” or “direct” democracy, according to which the people take decisions directly, without the mediation of political representatives or parties. In fact, it serves to hide the real political objectives of the Indignants.
Continue reading →

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

Alan Ryan: “Do We Really Believe in Democracy?”

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Yoram Gat

YouTube has a talk by Prof. Alan Ryan discussing what he calls “real democracy, using lotteries in the way the ancient world used them”, and contrasting it with the existing system – which he describes as being similar to the Roman system – a system mixing elements of monarchy, aristocracy and monarchy. Ryan concludes by endorsing Fishkin’s “Deliberative Polling”.

Part one:

Part two:

This is a thoughtful, if brief, lecture and the points that are raised are worth discussing, I think, in comments and in future posts.

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

Democracy – Ancient and Modern

Posted on May 26, 2011 by keithsutherland

In The Principles of Representative Government (1997), Bernard Manin attempted to explain why Athenian (sortive) democracy was supplanted by election at the time of the birth of modern representative democracy. Many members of this forum have lamented this development and called for a return to classical democracy. In this post I would like to argue that sortition was only ever one element in Athenian democracy and that the other elements, if translated into a modern context, would of necessity be rather like the institutions that we currently bemoan. For analytic convenience I’ll deal with Athenian democratic practice under three categories: