Equality by lot

[This article was originally posted as a comment by Fran Barlow.]

For me the key question of representative governance turns on the legitimacy question. In what senses, if at all, is the exercise of executive power a bona fide expression of the attempt to meet all of the legitimate and contested claims of the community the sovereign ostensibly serves?

To qualify in this way, it seems to me that the legislature, in its composition, must be and be seen to be rather like the population as a whole in its composition. All of us are far more inclined to suppose that people who are socially like us are more likely to resist doing things we’d fundamentally object to and to be predisposed to serving the interests we see as valuable. That the legislature is like the populace as a whole isn’t a guarantee against them acting recklessly or like tyrants, but it makes it less likely.

On the other hand, we surely know that large sections of the populace aren’t highly informed about policy, even in a big picture sense. This is one of the contextual factors that subverts good policy because career politicians can exploit this ignorance (or complain that it constrains them) to do things that amount to very poor policy. In my view, sortition (or any proposed system of governance) should foster inclusivity and empowerment. We ought to want a better informed and more engaged citizenry. My outline below aims at ensuring that over time, the pool of people who are engaged with policy and have the skills to analyse and develop good policy grows.

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The latest issue of the British Journal of Political Science features an article by Annabelle Lever on compulsory voting. See–

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=7908207&jid=JPS&volumeId=40&issueId=04&aid=7908205

Lever notes that (pp. 902-903),

Most proponents of compulsory voting believe that voters should have the option to vote for ‘none of the above’, although none of them ever discuss what should happen if that option turns out to have the largest share of the vote in an election, or is sufficient to turn it into the major ‘opposition’ party.

Lever may wish to consider the proposal by Filimon Peonidis made at

http://www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/etes/documents/Peonidis.AllottedMPs.pdf

In effect, Peonidis proposes that 1) people be permitted to vote “none of the above” and that 2) if “none of the above” wins any legislative seats, those seats be allocated randomly among the eligible population. In effect, those voting for “none of the above” are voting against the candidates offered and for candidate selection via sortition.

Filed under: Elections, Proposals, Sortition | 1 Comment »

In our recent exchange (1, 2), Alex Zakaras and I debated whether an allotted chamber should be given the full legislative powers now held by the elected chambers, or be limited to ratifying or rejecting legislative proposals made by an elected chamber. Two main line of arguments were brought up:

• Most of the discussion revolved around issues of competence – can an allotted chamber be expected to be as competent in drafting legislative proposals as an elected chamber. Zakaras argued that an elected chamber can be expected to be more competent due to the experience of its members. I argued that experience is to a large extent a separate matter from the method of delegate selection.

• Additionally, there was some discussion regarding representativity. I think that we agree that due to its statistical representativity, the outlook of an allotted chamber would be closer to that of the general population than the outlook of an elected chamber is. Zakaras, however, asserted that, due to both formal and substantial considerations, an elected chamber has the advantage of being accountable to the public while an allotted chamber is not. I argue that the electoral accountability is a purely formal (or mythical) notion, which is absent in reality and self-contradictory even in theory.

Here, instead of pursuing those same lines of argument I would like to develop a different point by arguing that, in fact, there is no situation in which the public should rationally bar the allotted chamber from initiating legislature – even if Zakaras’s arguments become accepted, and it is widely agreed that an allotted chamber should generally avoid such a role.

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In his recent article “Lot and Democratic Representation”, Alex Zakaras proposes introducing a sortition-based element into the US government. His proposal is similar to the one made by Anthony Barnett and Peter Carty in the UK (The Athenian Option). The new body proposed, with its veto power over legislation and term of service of one year, would wield moderate power – it lies somewhere on the spectrum between a full-fledged parliamentary body, as proposed by Cellenbach and Phillips, and the weak ad-hoc policy juries of James Fishkin and Ethan Leib.

Zakaras emphasizes the democratic advantages of sortition over elections – primarily equality in the representation of interests. He challenges opponents of sortition (quoting Robert Paul Wolff) to reflect on what their opposition “reveals about their real attitude toward democracy”. It is natural, then, to turn the tables and challenge Zakaras as to what his reluctance to grant the allotted body full parliamentary powers – to set its own agenda, initiate legislation and draft its own legislative proposals – reveals about his own attitude toward democracy.

In one brief passage Zakaras explains that the reason for “not burdening” the allotted body with the tasks of initiating and writing legislation is that its members would lack the expertise of career politicians and “would have virtually no experience assessing the likely consequences of different policy alternatives.”

Quite a few unexamined – and, in fact, unlikely – assumptions are packed into this brief argument. Each of the several counter-arguments below is, by itself, in my mind, enough to counter the reasoning given, or, at least, grounds for a thorough examination of its logic.

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