An electoralist crisis in Romania

Posted on March 15, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Over the last few months Romania has been undergoing an electoralist crisis. The crisis was precipitated by the unexpected ascendance of the “far-right populist” candidate Calin Georgescu to the status of front runner in the first round of the presidential elections in November 2024. This round was annulled by Romania’s Constitutional Court.

The Constitutional Court’s unprecedented decision — which is final — came after President Klaus Iohannis declassified intelligence on Wednesday that alleged Russia organized thousands of social media accounts to promote Calin Georgescu across platforms such as TikTok and Telegram.

The court, without naming Georgescu, said that one of the 13 candidates in the Nov. 24 first round had improperly received “preferential treatment” on social media, distorting the outcome of the vote.

Needless to say, despite being dutifully echoed in the Western media, no evidence was provided to the public to back the claims of Russian meddling. Later reports seemed to be rather vague about those claims:

The European Union’s executive has opened a formal investigation into TikTok because of “serious indications” of foreign interference in the recent Romanian presidential election using the video-sharing platform.
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Filed under: Elections, Press | 15 Comments »

Hoping for the fleet to return from Samos

Posted on March 8, 2025 by Yoram Gat

In an impressive demonstration of the power of the electoralist dogma to twist one’s perception, Pierre Silverberg, writing in the Belgian La Libre, shares his belief that the ascent of the second Trump administration has a close historical parallel.

[Original in French, Google translation with a couple of minor touch-ups.]

From Democracy to Oligarchy

The parallels between the oligarchic revolution in Athens in -411 and the current coup d’état in the United States are striking.

In the Oligarchic Revolution, the Athenian elite decides to seize power, put an end to democratic institutions, and ally themselves with the enemy city, Sparta, to maintain their hold on Athens. Sound familiar? The historical parallels between the Oligarchic Revolution of 411 BC and the current coup in the United States are striking.

2036 years apart, both the Athenian oligarchy and the American elite present the individual and political freedoms acquired by the people as clear signs of moral and civilizational decline that must be acted upon. In both cases, the oligarchs present themselves as the only ones capable of straightening out the country and purging the nation of its excesses. And, naturally, in both cases, the oligarchy feels authorized to override the laws and subvert the system to the detriment of the people.

War as a context

These “oligarchic revolutions” also fit into a relatively similar historical context: war. The Peloponnesian War was a conflict that broke out between Athens and Sparta. Ideologically, Athens represented “progressive” Greece: its democracy was complete, each citizen enjoyed unprecedented individual freedom as well as the certainty of being able to actively contribute to the politics of his City. Thanks to its democratic practice of drawing lots, it is estimated that an Athenian citizen had a 70% chance of exercising a political role at least once in his life. Conversely, Sparta had kept its original constitution and represented “conservative” Greece. The City was a “gerontocracy” governed by two kings and a council of elders, the Gerousia. The people had practically no chance of ever exercising political responsibility and literally had to choose their representatives using an “applause-meter”.
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Filed under: Athens, Elections, History, Press, Sortition | 10 Comments »

Henry George’s analysis of electoralism, with a side note on sortition

Posted on February 22, 2025 by Yoram Gat

From Book X, Chapter IV of Progress and Poverty (1879) by Henry George:

Where there is anything like an equal distribution of wealth—that is to say, where there is general patriotism, virtue, and intelligence—the more democratic the government the better it will be; but where there is gross inequality in the distribution of wealth, the more democratic the government the worse it will be; for, while rotten democracy may not in itself be worse than rotten autocracy, its effects upon national character will be worse. To give the suffrage to tramps, to paupers, to men to whom the chance to labor is a boon, to men who must beg, or steal, or starve, is to invoke destruction. To put political power in the hands of men embittered and degraded by poverty is to tie firebrands to foxes and turn them loose amid the standing corn; it is to put out the eyes of a Samson and to twine his arms around the pillars of national life.

Even the accidents of hereditary succession or of selection by lot, the plan of some of the ancient republics, may sometimes place the wise and just in power; but in a corrupt democracy the tendency is always to give power to the worst. Honesty and patriotism are weighted, and unscrupulousness commands success. The best gravitate to the bottom, the worst float to the top, and the vile will only be ousted by the viler. While as national character must gradually assimilate to the qualities that win power, and consequently respect, that demoralization of opinion goes on which in the long panorama of history we may see over and over again transmuting races of freemen into races of slaves.

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The New Republic: There’s little doubt that sortition beats election hands down

Posted on January 29, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Roger Hallam, “a co-founder and strategic mastermind of the civil resistance groups Extinction Rebellion (often called XR) and Just Stop Oil”, and who is also serving “five years in prison for ‘conspiracy to cause a public nuisance'” is the protagonist of a supportive article in The New Republic. The article makes a very sympathetic presentation of Hallam’s anti-electoral and pro-sortition ideas:

Hallam calls our current moment a “pre-revolutionary period.” Such eras have arisen throughout history—if never on such a grand scale—and they unfold according to a distinct logic. One of the first casualties is moderation. “The center does not hold,” Hallam said. “You saw this before the Nazis, you saw it before the Bolsheviks, and you’re seeing it at the moment in slow motion in Western democracies.” It’s easy to miss the signs, because “the center still has institutional power,” he added. “In other words, like it’s a zombie space. It’s dead, but it hasn’t yet been pushed over by the new.”

Under such conditions, wrenching paradigm shifts are inevitable. The only question, Hallam suggested, is whether we submit to authoritarianism, as many Americans seem all too eager to do, or embrace a genuinely pro-social revolutionary alternative. While it would have been comforting to hit the snooze button with four more years of Biden-style liberalism—a sound approach in simpler times—when survival hangs in the balance, there are distinct advantages to being awake.

The centerpiece of Hallam’s plan is a radical reinvention of democracy aimed at turning elections into a historical relic. Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Elections, History, Press, Sortition | 14 Comments »

Proposal: Allot White House press passes among all citizens

Posted on January 8, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Martin Gurri fulminates in the New York Post against the way Joe Biden’s mental decline was denied and downplayed over his term as president. Gurri points out that the White House press corps took an active part in the deception. Presumably this collaboration is a result of the fact that members of the corps are selected for their friendliness to the White House occupant. Sortition would be a remedy.

Reporters have special passes to the White House. They accompanied Biden on his trips, often on Air Force One. They saw what Appel saw: a president who “can’t say sentences.”

And they chose to think nothing of it, to say nothing, to remain at best incurious and at worst to lie and so curry favor with the mighty.

The news media’s corruption is too evident to need elaboration. But there ought to be consequences.

Here’s a modest proposal: Disband the White House press corps. Cast them out like money-changers from the temple. Select those American citizens entitled to question the president by lot, the way the Athenians chose their public officials.

Reference to Gurri’s article was sent to me by Roger Knights.

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Sortition in 2024

Posted on December 28, 2024 by Yoram Gat

Equality-by-Lot’s traditional yearly review post.

2024 continued the trend of the last few years of cooling interest in the idea of sortition among the elites. This happened despite the re-emergence of Donald Trump as a viable candidate and his subsequent election to the presidency of the United States. The same Trump who was hysterically portrayed as a menace to democracy in 2016, and triggered (together with Brexit) a wave of elite interest in sortition, was accepted this time without nearly as much alarm. Presumably, Trump’s first term indicated that he is not the threat to the electoralist establishment that he was feared to be. This time the electoralist establishment seems confident enough with the existing structures that it has no need to consider introducing allotment into the system in order to shore it up.

Indeed, the most prominent application of sortition in 2024, a third constitutional assembly in Ireland, ended in what was described as “a fiasco”, as the proposals derived from the assembly’s work (there is some controversy about how close those proposals were to the those issued by the body itself) were rejected by two thirds of the Irish in a ratification referendum. This led to the inevitable hand-wringing and acrimony among those who have been promoting sortition based on the supposed success of such bodies.

Of course, the underlying issues with electoralism are not abating. The electoralist system maintains its record of generating low approval ratings and gestures of rejection by the public.

The academic world continued to churn out the familiar arguments for and against sortition, with a side of AI. In this ongoing discussion, two notable contributions this year are Malkin and Blok’s book Drawing Lots, which sets the Greek use of sortition in a longue durée context of an egalitarian ideology, and Alex Guerrero’s tome Lottocracy which, as it argues for replacing electoralism with a sortition-based system, provides a broad overview of the literature. Also worthy of note is the impending launch of the Journal of Sortition.

A few more mentionable sortition-related developments in 2024: Students continued to write positively about the idea. Sortition was mentioned in popular social media outlets and mass media. Of particular interest is an exchange on the pages of The Conservative Woman, in which an opinion writer bashed citizen assemblies, only to be corrected by a reader who actually took part in one. A new appointee to the House of Lords in the UK advocates for selecting this chamber using sortition. A kleroterion-inspired statue is on display at the Storm King art center in New York state.

Finally, three figures who played important early roles in the modern discussion of sortition have died over the last 14 months:

Late last year John Burnheim, an Australian researcher with a seminal contribution to igniting interest in sortition, passed away. Burnheim’s 1985 book Demarchy was a radical proposal for replacing the existing electoralist system with a very different system which relied heavily on sortition.

Mogens Herman Hansen, a prominent historian of Ancient Greece, died in June this year. Hansen’s book, The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes, has become the go-to book on many questions regarding the functioning of democratic Athens, including specifically the application of sortition.

Most recently, Bernard Manin, a French researcher who wrote the seminal book The principles of representative government, died in November. Manin set out to problematize elections in the 1990’s, a time when following the collapse of the Soviet bloc electoralism was considered by a triumpalist West as the political holy grail at the end of history. Manin’s “pure theory of elections” is, in my opinion, the most incisive critique of electoralism ever written. Interestingly, Manin was not an advocate of sortition but his scholarship on this subject is unmatched.

Filed under: Academia, Applications, Books, Elections, Press, Sortition | 1 Comment »

Sortition in The Washington Post

Posted on November 8, 2024 by Yoram Gat

A little more than a year ago, Adam Grant offered sortition to the readers of The New York Times. Now Daniel Pink offers it to the readers of the The Washington Post. Interestingly, and encouragingly in terms of the foothold that the idea of sortition may now have gained, Pink writes that he is merely echoing proposals made by readers whose ideas for “improving our country, our organizations or our lives” were solicited by the Post.

On Election Day, we affirm with our actions an unspoken principle of governance: The fairest and most democratic way to determine who wields public power is by asking citizens to cast ballots.

But what if there’s an alternative — not autocracy or monarchy but a more radical form of democratic representation and popular sovereignty?

“Why not make serving in Congress like jury duty?” asks a reader in Salt Lake City. “If you meet the criteria, you could be selected to serve for a term, which would give a broader cross-section of people representing regular Americans.”

The article is typical in the sense that instead of engaging with arguments previously made it merely repeats such previous arguments, even when these were addressed and refuted. (And even if they are transparently self-contradictory.)

It’s a bit nutty — complicated and replete with unintended consequences. But first, let’s examine its virtues.
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Filed under: Elections, Press, Sortition | 1 Comment »

Demiocracy: Less is more

Posted on November 6, 2024 by Roger Knights

Once our “allotteds” have had their names drawn, what role should they play? I suggest that of elector rather than officeholder, for these reasons.

Most importantly, imposing a low burden on the participating-allotteds means that many of them will be available to oversee officeholders for the entirety of their terms, not just at Election Day. (Electors will see, over a private Internet channel, monthly reports from “their” officeholders and their critics. For which they will be well paid.)

Electors can throw their weight around during inter-election periods by signaling to their officeholders, e.g. via straw votes, their preference regarding bills up for debate. So there is not much real loss of power in being an elector.

Perhaps the most important advantage of elevating the allotteds only to electorhood is that it leaves existing officeholders in place, at least until the next election. This will arouse less opposition from members of the status quo, and make for a smoother transition.

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Filed under: Elections, Proposals, Sortition | 8 Comments »

Bernard Manin, 1951-2024

Posted on November 3, 2024 by peterstone

Hello All,

I just received the news that Bernard Manin has passed away. I learned this through Melissa Schwartzberg, one of his many excellent students. Sortition fans probably know that Manin’s book The Principles of Representative Government (1996) was one of the first major works to consider the respective democratic credentials of sortition and election. Contrary to what many suggest, he did not share Aristotle’s view that election was inherently aristocratic; rather, he suggested in his book that election was inherently Janus-faced, with both aristocratic and democratic dimensions. His book also raised the important question how sortition came to be eclipsed by election as a democratic selection mechanism. Beyond this book, Manin made many important contributions to debates about deliberation, representation, and other central topics in contemporary political theory.

I only met Manin once, at a workshop at Sciences Po organized by Gil Delannoi. He had many kind words about my book on lotteries for which I was very grateful. Sorry I did not have more opportunity for conversation with him. RIP, Professor Manin.

Filed under: Books, Elections, Sortition | 6 Comments »

Ballotocracy: A step beyond lottocracy

Posted on November 3, 2024 by Roger Knights

We all know what lottocracy means: Sample Sovereignty. In other words, the elevation of a representative sample of the whole community to legislative seats, replacing elected legislators.

The case for this replacement seems strong:

Per Rousseau, there is less of a “representative” interference between the whole body and the legislators, meaning the General Will is more truly ensconced, and its actions more democratically legitimate.

Democracy means the rule of the considered common sense of the community. But a mass-electoral system gives each voter such a tiny influence on election results that most pay little consideration to political affairs. And an electoral system implies party government, which roils the waters and impairs considered consideration of the issues. And the influence of professional party politicians, pelf (money), propaganda, and the press (more generally, the media) further shapes and restricts the democratic dialogue. This is only a partial list of the demerits of what I call DeMockery (a mockery of democracy). Many others have noted them too.

The public, according to polling, seems disillusioned to an unprecedented level with DeMockery and ready for a change.

And yet there have been no powerful movements toward full lottocracy. Only randomly chosen advisory entities have been created. (And even they have shown flaws, as in Ireland recently.) The public and public intellectuals apparently need a strong inducement to move beyond today’s mass-electoral system.

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Filed under: Academia, Elections, Participation, Proposals, Sortition | 17 Comments »

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