Un-vote for a new America

Posted on October 26, 2013 by Yoram Gat

A 1976 book named Un-vote for a new America by Ted Becker, Paul Szep and Dwight Ritter* offers, among other ideas for political reform, the idea of using sortition for selecting half the members of the U.S. Congress:

[I]f the reader makes even the most superficial survey of the world’s “democracies” particularly zeoring in on the national legislatures, it will be obvious that they are all dominated by elites, business or political. All of them claim to represent the people; obviously they don’t. They merely represent the elites’ view of what is in the “public interest” and we are told, correspondingly, that what they decide to be the public interest is, ipso facto, the public interest.
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Filed under: Books, Proposals, Sortition | 25 Comments »

David Van Reybrouck: Against elections

Posted on October 6, 2013 by Yoram Gat

Ad van der Ven wrote to draw attention to David Van Reybrouck’s argument in favor of sortition. Van Reybrouck is a prize winning Flemish Belgian author writing historical fiction, literary non-fiction, novels, poetry, plays and academic texts.

His latest book is Tegen verkiezingen (Against elections) (machine translation with my touch-ups):

Our representative democracy is increasingly in the doldrums. Its legitimacy is affected: fewer and fewer people vote, voters are less predictable in their choice, and the membership of political parties is decreasing dramatically. It is the efficiency of less democracy: since long term government is problematic, politicians increasingly align their policies to the next election. It all leads to what is called by David Van Reybrouck democratic fatigue. But how do tackle it? Papering over the cracks – that is what is happening now mainly. There are some renovation trends here and there. Reybrouck fears that this kind of marginal solutions is no longer sufficient and that the existing system will result in more and more crises.
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Filed under: Athens, Books, Elections, History, Participation, Press, Proposals, Sortition | Tagged: | 71 Comments »

A theory of sortition, part 2 of 2

Posted on September 29, 2013 by Yoram Gat

Part 1 is here.

Extension of self-representation

Like many other authors discussing sortition (Dahl, Leib, Zakaras, Fishkin, and others), Stone and Dowlen choose, then, to drastically downgrade sortition from a tool of radical democratic reform (as presented by C&P, or earlier by C.L.R. James) to an add-on to the electoral system. Such a retreat is certainly not warranted by the theoretical considerations discussed in the first part of the article. The claim that sortition can be expected to produce good government can be put on a much more solid theoretical foundation than the faulty intuitive argument provides. An alternative argument works by employing the properties of sampling in order to extend self-representation of the decision-making group into representation of the entire population. It goes as follows:

  1. A small group of people, under reasonably favorable conditions, is able to represent its own interests. This claim is not directly associated with sortition, but is rather a claim about the political dynamics of small groups of people in general. The claim is that when a small group of people, meeting on an a-priori egalitarian basis, has the opportunity to make collective decisions that would promote the interests of the members as they perceive them, then it will tend to do so. This is a situation which most people would be familiar with – group decision making in the family, within a group of friends or with colleagues. “A small group” is taken to be a group in which all-to-all communication is possible. The upper size limit of such a group would depend on the circumstances, but even under the most favorable circumstances a few hundred people seems like the most that would fit the description.
  2. Policy that promotes the interests of a small group of people which are selected as a sample of a larger group will tend to promote the interests of the larger group as well. Since the interests of a group selected as a sample of a larger group are typical of those of the entire group, policy that promotes the interests of the sample would tend to promote the interests of the group. In particular, if a certain policy promotes the interests of a majority of the members of the sample then that policy is likely to promote the interests of a majority in the population. There would be some obvious exceptions to this extension from sample to population. Policy that applies directly to the members of the sample in their role as members – their salaries for example – affects interests for which the sample members are very atypical. In a government by sortition such exceptions would have to be treated separately.

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Filed under: Academia, Books, Elections, Proposals, Sortition, Theory | Tagged: , , , , | 93 Comments »

A theory of sortition, part 1 of 2

Posted on September 28, 2013 by Yoram Gat

Mirroring

In his Introduction to A Citizen Legislature by Ernest Callenbach and Michael Phillips, Peter Stone commends the authors for doing “an excellent job of presenting the idea of a representative House — a House that will truly be “of the people” — as an inspiring piece of democratic reform.” On the other hand, such inspiring presentation does not meet the philosopher’s standard of a good argument: “Their [C&P’s] efforts to defend their proposal, however, have a number of shortcomings.”

Stone rejects the implied argument that descriptive representation is a desirable end. Descriptive representation is a means, not an end, Stone argues: “descriptive representation is desirable because — and only to the extent that — it contributes to the goal of good lawmaking.” And while some may reject this point of view, and argue that the symbolism of microcosm is indeed an end in itself, I think that would be an evasion of the main point. The essential function of government is to generate good policy – i.e., policy that promotes the interests of the population – and, as Stone asserts, sortition is a useful tool if and only if it can be expected to produce a government that generates good policy. (By “interests” I mean to encompass whatever a person, or a group of people, perceive, upon informed and considered reflection, as important or desirable.)

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Filed under: Academia, Books, Elections, Sortition, Theory | 35 Comments »

Two New Publications

Posted on September 2, 2013 by peterstone

I’ve recently published two articles that might prove of interest. First, I wrote a review essay dealing with the Imprint Academic series on Sortition and Public Policy. It’s just appeared in the latest issue of Redescriptions: Yearbook of Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory (volume 16, 2012/2013). It’s been in the pipeline for a while, and so regrettably does not cover the latest offerings in the series (such as Conall Boyle’s interesting book on educational lotteries). The issue is at https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/42047

Second, Comparative Education Review just published a symposium on “Fair Access to Higher Education: A Comparative Perspective” (volume 57, no. 3, August 2013). It contains a paper of mine entitled “Access to Higher Education by the Luck of the Draw.” The paper deals with university admissions in general and the Irish case in particular. It’s available on JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/669235, but only if your library/university subscribes.

Sorry to be incommunicado. I’ve been away for much of the summer, and have a very busy term ahead of me, but I hope to rejoin the conversation soon.

Filed under: Academia, Books, Distribution by lot, House of Lords, Proposals, schools, Sortition, Theory | 13 Comments »

Ph.D. thesis: Kleros & Demos

Posted on August 31, 2013 by avergne

Dear all,

I started to work on sortition for more than 11 years ago. When I started, I felt really alone because it seemed that this topic interested no one on earth. At the same time this was quite exciting (“I am the first one!” feeling). But I quickly encountered many people having the same interest, and it was a very good feeling. Today it seems that the idea of random selection in politics gains growing interest not only in academia but also in the political world.

I hope that this trend will go on.

In the meantime I was able to start and finish a Ph.D. thesis. I wanted to share with you the weblink where you can download it. I wrote it under the supervision of Gil Delannoi and Gerhard Göhler at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris and the Freie Universität Berlin.

The English abstract reads as follows:

The field of investigation of this thesis is a corpus of texts containing proposals for the intro­duction of random selection schemes in politics. The thesis questions the relevance and coher­ence of these texts: do the publications form a theoretical ensemble that could be labelled as a “theory of aleatory democracy”? If so, do the expectations raised by its supporters remain merely utopian or do they stand the test of the political practice?

The  quantitative and qualit­ative analysis of the text corpus leads to the conclusion that we are in fact dealing with the emergence of a theory and that the analysed authors develop a common argumentative frame and common expectations: the use of random selection in politics could be a solution to over­come the crises of liberal democracies. Its use would allow a better formal and substantial representation, a qualitatively and quantitatively increased participation, and give birth to a new, more procedural and dynamic form of legitimacy. These expectations are then tested with the help of two mini-publics, that is to say, experiments in participatory democracy that use random selection to recruit their participants: a Planungszelle and a Citizens’ Jury. The qualitative empirical investigation shows that most of the expectations are fulfilled, although only in a limited geographical, social and political frame. These results raise the double ques­tion of the conditions for the realization of the theory and of the possible improvement of the mini-public mechanisms through institutional engineering.

The text is in French and there is a short version in German.

I hope this thesis will support our discussion on sortition. And I will try to post from time to time to keep you informed of the projects I do with Missions Publiques. We are designing and facilitating Mini-Publics and there are a lot of interesting developments there.

Greetings,

Antoine Vergne

 

Filed under: Academia, Books, Participation, Theory | 5 Comments »

Adam Cronkright and Simon Pek: Reconstructing Democracy

Posted on July 8, 2013 by Yoram Gat

recondemo
Adam Cronkright sent the attached document and writes:

Here is a draft that I’ve put together to help explain the work we are doing here in Bolivia, and hopefully in other places in Latin America with time. Would love to get input/feedback from readers of the EqualityByLot blog.

In particular, I would love help with the citations in the section on ancient Athens. I’ve been a long ways from home for the last half a year, so I have no access to my personal computer, my personal library, nor any English public/academic library. So in putting this Overview together, I regularly cited a second/third-hand source (Arthur Robbins Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained: The True Meaning of Democracy), since it was one of the few .pdf’s I could access. But Robbins did not rigorously cite his Athenian history, and I would much prefer to cite primary sources when possible. So any help making that section more academically rigorous would be appreciated.
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Filed under: Applications, Athens, Books, Participation, Sortition | 23 Comments »

A. H. J. Greenidge: Appointment by lot in Athens

Posted on April 13, 2013 by Yoram Gat

In 1896 A. H. J. Greenidge published his book A Handbook of Greek Constitutional History. Greenidge devotes a few pages to sortition (“appointment by lot”). He proposes theoretical justification and analysis of the effects of the mechanism.

At this point we may naturally raise the question, “What is the meaning of this new element in political life which was destined to become almost the most characteristic feature of the Athenian and other democracies?” From the treatment of the lot by Plato and Aristotle we should be inclined to gather that it was a consciously adopted democratic institution, that it was the final assertion of the numerical equality of all citizens and of the principle of equal representation. But to realise this character it must be accompanied by universal admission to office. We know, however, that the use of the lot preceded universal admission; we shall see, when we come to discuss the qualifications for office, that in early Athens it was an assertion of the equal fitness for rule of the members of only a narrow circle; and we are further informed that in some cases of its employment it had other meanings than that of an assertion of equality. Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Books, History | 22 Comments »

Mencken: The two kinds of democracy

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Yoram Gat

H.L. Mencken‘s 1927 book Notes on Democracy is an interesting document. On the one hand it is a candid expression of a proud elitist worldview. Mencken spends considerable space explicitly denigrating the average person. In short:

There are men who are naturally intelligent and can learn, and there are men who are naturally stupid and cannot. (p. 17)

Such views cannot be expressed in polite society today, and although it is pretty clear that Mencken is aware that his stridency is politically incorrect, it is also pretty clear that he is expressing ideas that were acceptable, even conventional wisdom, in elite circles of his time.

On the other hand, Mencken devotes much attention to the problems of the electoral process as well (which he identifies with democracy). His anti-democratic attitude allows him to criticize the electoral system in a way that those with commitments either to the existing system or to democracy usually cannot afford. As Mencken damns voters for being stupid and electoral politicians for being scoundrels, Mencken points at several problematic fundamental characteristics of the system, belying his main thrust which focuses on personal characteristics. Here, for example, is the principle of distinction:

Democratic man is stupid, but he is not so stupid that he does not see the government as a group of men devoted to his exploitation that is, as a group external to his own group, and with antagonistic interests. (p. 197)

Mencken’s treatment of “direct democracy” – the standard remedy for the problems of the electoral system – is rather insightful: Continue reading →

Filed under: Books, Elections, History, Participation | 13 Comments »

Plato: The equality of the lot

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Yoram Gat

Badiblogger draws attention in a comment on the Literature page to the fact that Plato’s Laws discusses sortition.

In a passage in book VI Plato explains that it is sometimes necessary – contrary to the requirements of justice – to bow to popular pressure and use “the equality of the lot”:

The old saying, that “equality makes friendship,” is happy and also true; but there is obscurity and confusion as to what sort of equality is meant. For there are two equalities which are called by the same name, but are in reality in many ways almost the opposite of one another; one of them may be introduced without difficulty, by any state or any legislator in the distribution of honours: this is the rule of measure, weight, and number, which regulates and apportions them. But there is another equality, of a better and higher kind, which is not so easily recognized. This is the judgment of Zeus; among men it avails but little; that little, however, is the source of the greatest good to individuals and states. For it gives to the greater more, and to the inferior less and in proportion to the nature of each; and, above all, greater honour always to the greater virtue, and to the less less; and to either in proportion to their respective measure of virtue and education. And this is justice, and is ever the true principle of states, at which we ought to aim, and according to this rule order the new city which is now being founded, and any other city which may be hereafter founded. To this the legislator should look – not to the interests of tyrants one or more, or to the power of the people, but to justice always; which, as I was saying, the distribution of natural equality among unequals in each case. But there are times at which every state is compelled to use the words, “just,” “equal,” in a secondary sense, in the hope of escaping in some degree from factions. For equity and indulgence are infractions of the perfect and strict rule of justice. And this is the reason why we are obliged to use the equality of the lot, in order to avoid the discontent of the people; and so we invoke God and fortune in our prayers, and beg that they themselves will direct the lot with a view to supreme justice. And therefore, although we are compelled to use both equalities, we should use that into which the element of chance enters as seldom as possible.

Filed under: Athens, Books, Proposals, Sortition | 9 Comments »

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