Rodriguez and DeNardis: Can Allocation by Sortition Resolve the Connecticut Education-Financing Impasse?

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Yoram Gat

A new paper about lotteries in education mentions some familiar names.

Abstract: It has been over 40 years since Connecticut amended its Constitution to ensure citizens a right to a free public education. Despite the constitutionally prescribed right, dramatic inequities in educational conditions continued to characterize the state’s K-12 educational system, especially between suburban/rural white and urban minority school districts. In the 1970s plaintiffs challenged the prevailing mechanism for allocating education funds with a host of court cases that tackled the thorny question of how much financial responsibility the state should assume to equalize the spending disparities between school districts. Prodded by court decisions, many formulas and approaches have been proposed by the Connecticut General Assembly in response to the various legal challenges yet the state has never fully funded the cost sharing formula nor lived up to the 50-50 cost sharing arrangement envisaged by some policymakers. The situation remains at an impasse with the latest court action, CCJEF v. Rell (2005), to be resolved no sooner than 2014 by most accounts.
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Select papers for publication by lot

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Conall Boyle

From Switzerland comes a serious suggestion from a well-respected economist, Bruno Frey (and co-author Osterloh). As they say in their abstract,

The process by which scholarly papers are selected for publication in a journal is faced with serious problems. The referees rarely agree and often are biased. This paper discusses two alternative measures to evaluate scholars. Continue reading →

Filed under: Distribution by lot, Initiatives, Proposals | 1 Comment »

The Luck of the Draw: The Role of Lotteries in Decision Making

Posted on August 16, 2011 by keithsutherland

I’ve been commissioned to write an ‘in brief’ review of Peter Stone’s new book (OUP, 2011) for Times Higher Education but wanted to bring up a couple of points here that I can’t squeeze into their measly 60-word limit. The book is an attempt at a theoretical clarification of lotteries as an equitable method for the ‘allocation of [scarce] goods’ and ‘assignment of responsibilities’ (both wanted and unwanted) (p.13), Peter’s thesis being that the distinguishing feature of the lottery is its ‘sanitizing effect’ (p.16). This is on account of the essentially arational nature of the lottery – it serves an entirely negative function by shielding the decision process from reasons of any kind (good or bad), therefore protecting it from partiality and corruption.

A lottery is a process capable of generating a set of outcomes, in which the particular outcome to be expected whenever the process occurs is unpredictable given available information (p.20).

Much of the book deals with allocative justice and covers similar ground to Barbara Goodwin’s Justice by Lottery but from a rigorous theoretical perspective that is hard to disagree with (presupposing certain Rawlsian assumptions).
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Filed under: Books, Distribution by lot, Sortition, Theory | 27 Comments »

Failure at ‘Green Card’ lottery

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Conall Boyle

According to the Diversity Visa Lottery website:

We regret to inform you that, due to a computer programming problem, the results of the 2012 Diversity Lottery that were previously posted on this website have been voided. They were not valid and were posted in error. Continue reading →

Filed under: Distribution by lot | 2 Comments »

Hajj by Lot

Posted on June 15, 2011 by peterstone

Apparently, in Turkey there’s some sort of lottery to make the annual pilgrimage to Mecca–

Religious Affairs Directorate selects out hajj applicants

The Religious Affairs Directorate has made the final selection of people going on the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. People were chosen through a random drawing, and the names of winners were posted online.

The hajj is one of Islam’s five obligations that every Muslim must fulfill, if possible, during his or her lifetime. According to Muslims, their journey to Mecca absolves them of their sins. The name drawing ceremony began with the reading of the Surah Yass’in from the Quran. Prior to the drawing, Religious Affairs Directorate President Mehmet Görmez said, “Whether your name is drawn or not, may God never reduce this excitement within your hearts.” Görmez also commented on questions people have raised regarding the random selection system. Some have questioned the current system and have asked for people that apply first to be granted the right to go to hajj. Thus, Gömez stated, “If we use this kind of a system [of selecting early applicants], then people who apply in this year will be able to go [to hajj] in 15 years.”

I must admit I’m rather ignorant on this subject. Is there some kind of permit needed to go to Mecca? Is that what’s being offered here? Or is this more like an “all expenses paid” trip, such that one could skip this lottery and go on one’s own dime if one wanted?

I seem to recall a posting on this blog about Muslim cabbies objecting to a random drawing of taxi licenses, on religious grounds. Wonder what they’d make of this.

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A Varsity Athletics Lottery

Posted on June 5, 2011 by peterstone

I recently found the following news item at the website of Carleton College:

The Carleton College men’s track and field team won seven events and set numerous personal records on Tuesday as the Knights battled cross-town rival St. Olaf College in the annual Rolex Classic at Manitou Field. In keeping with tradition and the congenial relationship between the two squads, the meet’s winner was determined by random selection of a single event after the completion of competition. Lady Luck was on the Oles’ side this year, as the 200-meter dash – an event narrowly won by the hosts – proved to be the decisive event.

I was never very into varsity sports, especially track and field. Does anyone know if this practice is common?

P.S. I haven’t had the chance to review activity on the list for a few weeks. Hope to get back into the swing of things by next week.

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Research: Sharing the funds by lottery

Posted on May 28, 2011 by Conall Boyle

Hans de Jonge, a university Education Policy Advisor in the Netherlands asks for our help:

“I believe there is some similarity between the arguments used to support lotteries in the allocation of scarce places in medical school and the case for using lotteries in the distribution of research funds. Do you know of any papers in support of this, or instances where it is used?” Continue reading →

Filed under: Distribution by lot, Proposals | 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:

  • One Man One Vote
  • Deliberative Scrutiny
  • Rule and Be Ruled In Turn

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Filed under: Athens, Distribution by lot, Elections, Sortition, Theory | 12 Comments »

Conall Boyle on university admittance: (3) who gains?

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Yoram Gat

This is the third and last part of this article. The first two parts are 1 and 2.

In a democratic society university admittance policy would be set according to the informed decision of the members of the society – possibly through a representation by an allotted decision-making chamber. The decision makers would have to consider what would be the advantages and disadvantages of possible admittance policies and attempt to design a system that would create maximum benefit for the maximum number of people. (Indeed, in a democratic society, all aspects of university policy, such as the procedure for setting the curriculum, should also be designed so as to maximize the benefit for society as a whole.)

Two effects of the admittance policy that merit consideration are its impact on slot availability and its impact on the ideological stance of the members of the public regarding the benefits of university education. Both of those considerations indicate that a lottery-based admittance policy has clear advantages over the achievement-based policy. While I think that the long term objective for the university system should be to provide quality education to all who seek it, the advantages of the lottery-based admittance system make it both a reasonable system for societies that cannot afford to provide education to all, and make it a good tool for creating a shared interest in reaching this desirable goal.

1. Slot availability

As Conall Boyle emphasizes, the possibility of employing a lottery emerges when a resource is scarce. If the number of applicants to a certain university course is smaller than the available number of slots, then neither a lottery nor any other filtering method is needed. Why, then, are the university slots scarce? Does this scarcity represent the best interests of society? On the face of it, it seems that the natural response to high demand for university slots would be to attempt generate more slots. Would it be difficult to do so?

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Filed under: Books, Distribution by lot, schools | 27 Comments »

Machiavellian Democracy

Posted on April 14, 2011 by keithsutherland

John P. McCormick’s new book (Machiavellian Democracy, CUP, 2011) is a fascinating attempt to appropriate insights from Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy (1513-17) in order to moderate some of the worst excesses of modern ‘democracy’ – in particular the Florentine’s advocacy of class-based magistracies to constrain the oppressive ‘humor’ of the grandi (political elite). Machiavelli’s template for this is the institutions of the Roman republic, especially the People’s Tribunes. Roman Tribunes were elected exclusively from plebeian ranks and were charged with popular advocacy; McCormick’s suggestion is that a modern equivalent (for the US) might involve fifty-one tribunes selected by an annual sortition from the whole population (apart from the wealthiest 10% of family households). The powers of the tribunes would be three-fold (p.184):

1.     To veto, by majority vote, one piece of congressional legislation, one executive order and one Supreme Court decision p.a.

2.     To call one annual referendum p.a. which, if ratified, would take on the force of federal statute.

3.     To initiate impeachment proceedings against one federal official from each of three branches of government. McCormick is particularly attracted to the Roman practice of political trials – any citizen could publicly accuse magistrates of malfeasance and this would prompt a hearing in a voting assembly, which could comprise the entire citizenry.

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Filed under: Books, Distribution by lot, Elections, Proposals, Sortition, Theory | 12 Comments »

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