Kleristocracy and Neoconservatism: Spot the Difference

Posted on July 22, 2014 by keithsutherland

Kleristocracy is a term, coined by Jon Roland, for the concentration of political power in sortition-based systems, and has been advocated by a number of commentators on this blog. It’s struck me recently that this has a lot in common with the neoconservative worldview that has led to such disastrous outcomes in (for example) Iraq and Libya and I want to use this post to explore the parallels.

Neoconservatives argue that the goal of foreign policy is the liberation of oppressed nations from tyranny – ideally through their own efforts, if not then with a bit of help from the “forces of freedom” – followed by the institution/imposition of democracy, enabling the self-organising powers of “the people” to operate in an unfettered manner. Kleristocrats also argue that “the people” should be liberated from tyranny (of the rich and powerful) and empowered by “real” democracy – the only difference between kleristocrats and neoconservatives being the use of an alternative balloting method.
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Filed under: Ballot measures, Elections, Sortition, Theory | 71 Comments »

Politics and gambling lotteries

Posted on June 14, 2014 by Conall Boyle

Nice piece in today’s Financial Times (paywall, so I’m reproducing it below). Interesting fact: The “Yes” campaign in Scotland gets 80% of it’s funding (£3.5 mn) from just one lucky lottery winner.

June 13, 2014 7:03 pm

The whims of the super-rich can turn politics into a lottery

By Gideon Rachman

Courting the rich is both necessary and dangerous for politicians

©Reuters

So this is what the future of the United Kingdom comes down to? Harry Potter versus EuroMillions. On September 18, Scotland will vote on independence. The news that JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter oeuvre, has decided to give £1m to the Better Together campaign is a welcome boost to the pro-union campaign. Until now, it has struggled to match the financial firepower of the pro-independence campaign, which has benefited from £3.5m donated by Chris and Colin Weir, a couple who won £161m playing the EuroMillions lottery in 2011. All told, the Weirs account for about 80 per cent of the funding received by the Yes campaign.
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Filed under: Ballot measures, Distribution by lot | 2 Comments »

Sortition Coming to Washington State?

Posted on April 11, 2014 by peterstone

I was reading Dan Savage’s blog this morning, and stumbled upon the following posting:

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Posted by Dan Savage on Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 4:57 PM

We couldn’t do worse than Rodney Tom, right?

That led me to find the ballot initiative itself. It appears to be real, and was only recently filed with the State of Washington. Continue reading →

Filed under: Action, Applications, Ballot measures, Initiatives, Proposals, Sortition | 3 Comments »

Voting lists: Alphabetic or Random?

Posted on September 12, 2013 by Conall Boyle

Should the name of candidate Aardvark, Al always come before Zizovic, Jo on the ballot paper?

Not in Wallingford, Connecticut, where the names of the candidates are in random order:

http://www.myrecordjournal.com/wallingford/wallingfordnews/2345300-129/wallingford-ballot-lineup-set-in-tuesday-lottery.html

There is a twist to this procedure: Republicans and Democrats alternate on the ballot paper.

Q. (for our US readers) Is the randomization of ballot order used widely in the US?

Q. (for the rest of us) Should we copy this practice?

Filed under: Ballot measures, Distribution by lot | 4 Comments »

The most basic democratic right? Beneficial ownership of natural resources

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Conall Boyle

News about ‘Democracy’ from Iceland

If Iceland demonstrates the possibilities of direct democracy, recent months have also exposed its limitations. A row still rages over the country’s constitution, which was created after its economic collapse. When 950 Icelanders, randomly chosen from the national register, gathered for one day in 2010 to decide its founding principles it was hailed as the world’s first “crowd-sourced” constitution. Continue reading →

Filed under: Ballot measures, Distribution by lot, Initiatives, Participation | 1 Comment »

Political Studies Association: “The Party’s Over”

Posted on September 29, 2012 by keithsutherland

The theme for the (UK) 2013 PSA conference (Cardiff, 25-27 March) is The Party’s Over. Oliver Dowlen is organising a sortition panel under the auspices of the PSA specialist group on deliberative and participatory democracy. The deadline is tight (abstracts need to go to Stephen Elstub, the group convenor by October 5), so anyone interested please contact ollydowlen@yahoo.com

Filed under: Academia, Ballot measures, Participation | 1 Comment »

Rousseau’s general will and sortition

Posted on March 2, 2012 by keithsutherland

Along with its famous opening sentence: ‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains’ Rousseau’s Social Contract is best known for its clear distinction between sovereignty and government. The latter was a delegated administrative function: the ‘Prince’ could either be single, few, or many (monarchy, aristocracy or democracy) but was a mere servant of the sovereign popular will. Although Rousseau argued that democratic government was more suitable for small states, he had no problem in principal with the notion of elected delegates administering government under the watchful eye of the sovereign people and subject to their dismissal if the delegated mandate was breached.
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Filed under: Ballot measures, Distribution by lot, Elections, History, Sortition | 44 Comments »

The San Francisco Chronicle: Fishkin promoting a citizens advisory council

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Lois Kazakoff, Chronicle Columnist, writes:

Concerned by California’s faltering government, a coalition of eight nonprofit good government groups conducted an experiment in June. They invited 435 Californians of every stripe from every corner of the state, from every political persuasion to spend three days in a Torrance hotel deliberating 30 proposals for government reform. The coalition raised $1 million to cover their travel costs.

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Filed under: Athens, Ballot measures, Opinion polling, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 8 Comments »

Sortition & Referenda

Posted on October 27, 2011 by peterstone

I’ve been rather quiet on the blog lately. I hope to change that in the weeks ahead. Rather than comment on some of the recent postings, I thought I’d raise a topic that I thought merited a post on its own.

One of the most common uses of sortition that has been proposed is to approve or reject legislation drafted by some other body–usually, an elected legislative body.  The new People’s Senate Party in Canada, for example, endorses this proposal. In some respects, this makes the randomly-selected house (hereafter Representative House, or RH) into a substitute for a referendum. Instead of seeking approval for laws from the people as a whole, seek it from a randomly-selected sample.

I think there’s a lot of merit to this proposal, but I have a serious concern that I think merits addressing. Basically, I think that there are two types of legislation. On the one hand, there is “must-pass” legislation–stuff like the defense budget, or the debt ceiling. There’s an interesting literature on legislation like this. Take, for example, the work by Thomas Romer on referenda for school district budgets. Typically, the practice is that if such referenda are not approved, the district budget reverts to some insanely low level, one that no parent would want. School board officials are assumed to want to maximize the size of the budget. And so unsurprisingly, Romer argues, they propose the maximum possible budget that a majority will approve via referendum (i.e., the one that leaves the mediam voter indifferent between approval and rejection). And given how bad rejection is, this could be rather large.

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Filed under: Ballot measures, Sortition | 33 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.
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Filed under: Athens, Ballot measures, Opinion polling, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 25 Comments »

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