Tomas Mancebo highlighted the proposals for using sortition that were part of the constitutional process at Podemos – a party which emerged this year as a highly popular alternative to the established parties in Spain.
Adam Cronkright wrote about his work with Democracy In Practice in Bolivia applying sortition to student governments.
Together with Tomas, I find the fact that sortition was relatively prominently proposed and discussed (although ultimately rejected) as part of the power structure within Podemos as the most significant sortition-related event of 2014.
Other 2014 sortition-related events of significance were:
Russell Brand’s anti-electoral message, although originally announced in 2013, continued to resonate and generate largely outragedresponses throughout 2014.
The idea of sortition continued to be actively discussed in French. A new French movie – J’ai pas voté – featured a string of critics of electoralism and sortition advocates. Etienne Chouard and David Van Reybrouck joined forces in April for a conference called “The Tired Democracy”.
While Chouard’s more militant message seems to be limited to French media, Van Reybrouck’s softer message made it through the language barrier and was featured on the BBC.
An empirical study by Gilens and Page indicating that median (as measure by income) public opinion has very little effect on policy in the U.S. got significant media attention. Another study, by Norton and Kiatpongsan, showing that there is little association between people’s expectations (and perceptions) about inequality and reality was widely discussed as well.
Ever eager to find ways to legitimize itself, established power made exploratory maneuvers to exploit the idea of sortition.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s recent remarks on the Senate floor have been viewed half a million times. She decries the coziness of the big banks with government and names names, coming close to Russell Brand and unknowingly making a case for the use of lot.
The questions these sort of sharp, honest protests raise are the following. Must someone as sophisticated as Sen. Warren draw the connection between contributor-driven electioneering and corruption or could one simply attribute it to the acts of an unscrupulous few who break the rules? When does a critic of a system ceased to simply criticize the system’s non-conformity to its own ideals and begin to question the system itself?
Elections in Israel are in the offing again. Prof. Irad Malkin, a professor of Ancient History in Tel Aviv University and winner of the 2014 Israel Prize for history, againoffers sortition to the readers of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz:
Lottery instead of voting, like in Athens
In these days, in which parties are preparing for elections, especially in view of the increase of the electoral threshold, an exhausting process of political fighting, deals, backstabbing and ideological infighting can be expected. Even if a new party is formed and wins seats in the Knesset, residues of bitterness and animosity that have accumulated during the formation struggle will remain. This problem can be solved – greatly shortening the process and dissolving the conflicts in advance – by adopting a mechanism that was used in ancient Athens, the city that gave us democracy.
In the Athenian democracy people were selected by lottery to most positions in the executive, religious and judicial organization. […] The difference between oligrachy and democracy, say Aristotle, is that oligarchy has elections while democracy has the lottery.
A new Spanish political party called “Podemos” (“we can”) has seen meteoric growth in public support according to opinion polls. According to some polls, it has now surpassed in popularity the two major Spanish parties.
Its founding manifesto (a somewhat awkward translation here) presents Podemos as an outgrowth of the 2011 “Indignados” protests and the unrepresentative nature of the existing system:
Turning outrage into political change
Just as with other moments in history, we see today a European continent submerged in perplexity. Whilst the majorities look back with nostalgia on the past that is lost, certain powerful minorities, with no criterion other than their own survival, show that enrichment is their flag and impunity their horizon. Never in Europe have there been so many people discontented with their loss of rights, and, at the same time, so few prospects for channeling this outrage through a voting option that excites while at the same time, shows the capacity to represent the majorities under attack and a capacity for committed and efficient administration that makes the best possible options become real. Many find it intolerable that in the greatest crisis in the system since the crash of 1929, those forces that claim to be progressive are at their weakest point, thereby condemning the majorities in our countries to a kind of melancholy that leads to resignation and political depression. [Excerpted from the translation linked above with my touch ups.]
[S]ortition is a form of government based upon the drawing of officials by lottery. It was used in Ancient Greece and is rarely used now. To me, it seems a lot less corruptible than a regular democracy, it seems to me that it represents the people better, by literally selecting by random, rather than certain people picking certain people because he looks cool or “my dad met him”.
If you do it with a large enough pool of people it should represent the larger public well. It works with polling science I dont see why it wouldnt work there.
Most people are incompetent at their chosen profession. Why should we assume that if they are selected randomly they will behave anymore rationally than they do in other areas of their life?
A ‘lottery’ electoral system could break our malaise
Perhaps it’s time to overhaul our voting system and instigate a form of “lottery” whereby our MPs are elected on the basis of random sampling. It may not be perfect, but neither is our current system, writes Tim Dunlop.
The basic logic of voting is that it is the method by which we determine the will of the people. Free elections are therefore understood to be the cornerstone – the defining characteristic – of democratic governance.
No vote, no democracy is just about a truism.
But what if that’s wrong? What if voting actually hampers democratic governance and is leading to undemocratic outcomes?
What if all the stuff we complain about in regard to our politicians – that they are unrepresentative, that they are out of touch, that they are in the pocket of various vested interests, that all they are really interested in is getting re-elected – what if all those problems are actually a by-product of voting itself?
In fact, Dunlop does a better job of presenting the idea of sortition than van Reybrouk himself. van Raybrouk never quite manages to point out what is wrong with elections. He spins a convoluted story in which elections were supposedly once democratic but are now no longer sufficiently so. This story may provide van Reybrouk with some sort of cover for his anti-electoralist heresy, but it makes his point incoherent. Dunlop, on the other hand, drops this supposedly historical argument and his introductory paragraphs above make the argument for sortition clearly and succinctly.
On Sunday, September 29th 2013 in a Dutch TV series named Buitenhof the word Lottocracy (Dutch: lottocracy), although casually, for the first time was used in public in Holland. There was an interview with David Van Reybrouck about his new book ‘Against elections’. Great, that the idea of Lottocracy was mentioned for the first time in the Dutch media. The broadcast can be viewed by clicking below:
However, van Reybrouck did not mention in the program nor in his book, that the idea of lottocracy has already been discussed extensively in the book ‘The World Solution for World Problems’, especially in the chapter ‘A Concept for Government’. The book was already published in 1988. The book is available as an electronic book at:
A section of Belgian author David Van Reybrouck’s sortition book, Against Elections has been translated into English and posted online:
Representative democracy is in crisis. Low voter turnout, abstention, falling party membership, and the phenomenal rise of populist parties – these are the symptoms of Democratic Fatigue Syndrome. Considering democratic innovation from classical Athens to present day, it becomes apparent that our democratic institutions haven’t been updated since the late 18th century. How to renew the centralised, hierarchical party system to reflect the horizontal power relationships of the hyper-connected, interactive society of the 21st century? A bi-representative system, combining elections with the democratic principle of sortition, or drawing of lots, could steer democracy into smoother waters. Continue reading →
To quote Sean O’Casey, “Th’ whole worl’s in a terrible state o’ chassis.” Why is it that way? Does it have to be that way? What can be done to set it straight? These are the questions the intellectual should be asking.
There are many factors creating the “state o’ chassis.” Most of them can be traced to a combination of action and inaction on the part of government. Government promotes the exploitation of fossil fuels. It favors the private car over public transportation. It diverts to war critical resources that could be used to develop alternative sources of energy. All of these policies are humankind’s contribution to global warming. These policies can be reversed, but not without transforming government. And I am afraid yet another election will not do the job.
Currently, there is considerable discussion and some experimentation exploring the possibilities of using sortition as a means of restructuring government. In ancient Athens, sortition was used as a means of selecting magistrates. We could substitute sortition for elections as a means of selecting our representatives and senators. Continue reading →
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