David Grant talks about sortition

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Yoram Gat

The Reading Eagle reports:

Using a lottery to name the members of a citizen legislature would make that legislature more truly representative of the population and uncouple the link between money and the influence it buys in elections.

That was part of a message David Grant delivered to 17 people gathered Saturday in the Reading Friends Meetinghouse.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, History, Press, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Rousseau’s general will and sortition

Posted on March 2, 2012 by keithsutherland

Along with its famous opening sentence: ‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains’ Rousseau’s Social Contract is best known for its clear distinction between sovereignty and government. The latter was a delegated administrative function: the ‘Prince’ could either be single, few, or many (monarchy, aristocracy or democracy) but was a mere servant of the sovereign popular will. Although Rousseau argued that democratic government was more suitable for small states, he had no problem in principal with the notion of elected delegates administering government under the watchful eye of the sovereign people and subject to their dismissal if the delegated mandate was breached.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Ballot measures, Distribution by lot, Elections, History, Sortition | 44 Comments »

Emma Goldman on suffrage

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Yoram Gat

In 1911, Emma Goldman wrote the essay Woman Suffrage. It opens as follows:

WE BOAST of the age of advancement, of science, and progress. Is it not strange, then, that we still believe in fetich worship? True, our fetiches have different form and substance, yet in their power over the human mind they are still as disastrous as were those of old.

Our modern fetich is universal suffrage. Those who have not yet achieved that goal fight bloody revolutions to obtain it, and those who have enjoyed its reign bring heavy sacrifice to the altar of this omnipotent diety. Woe to the heretic who dare question that divinity!

Toward the end of the essay, Goldman writes:

History may be a compilation of lies; nevertheless, it contains a few truths, and they are the only guide we have for the future. The history of the political activities of men proves that they have given him absolutely nothing that he could not have achieved in a more direct, less costly, and more lasting manner. As a matter of fact, every inch of ground he has gained has been through a constant fight, a ceaseless struggle for self-assertion, and not through suffrage. There is no reason whatever to assume that woman, in her climb to emancipation, has been, or will be, helped by the ballot.

Filed under: Elections, History | 6 Comments »

Tom Hodgkinson: Boris ought to know his Plato

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Yoram Gat

Tom Hodgkinson, editor of The Idler, invokes Plato on the pages of The Independent:

[I]f Boris [Johnson] knew his Plato, which he ought to, having been to Eton and everything, then he would recognise in the protests, riots and strikes that have marked this year a sign that the people ain’t happy with the situation. He would also recognise himself as being a member of the short-sighted oligarchy – oligarchy meaning “control by a wealthy minority”. Reading Plato’s Republic, I was struck by the parallels with a typical cycle that he describes. In Platonic terms, it would seem that an oligarchy has taken over UK plc, and that this oligarchy has made too many loans, thereby pauperising the people, and now fails to see what is happening right beneath their noses: that the people are talking about revolution. The good news, though, is that a real democracy may be in store:

Plato writes that when the pursuit of riches remains unchecked, resentment breeds:

[…]

This is the situation that will lead to social upheaval: “Democracy originates when the poor win, kill or exile their opponents, and give the rest equal rights and opportunities of office, appointment to office being as a rule by lot.”

This is what the people want: a real democracy, government by the people, and not by a clique comprising top politicians and CEOs. […]

Filed under: Athens, History, Sortition | 46 Comments »

Alan Ryan: “Do We Really Believe in Democracy?”

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Yoram Gat

YouTube has a talk by Prof. Alan Ryan discussing what he calls “real democracy, using lotteries in the way the ancient world used them”, and contrasting it with the existing system – which he describes as being similar to the Roman system – a system mixing elements of monarchy, aristocracy and monarchy. Ryan concludes by endorsing Fishkin’s “Deliberative Polling”.

Part one:

Part two:

This is a thoughtful, if brief, lecture and the points that are raised are worth discussing, I think, in comments and in future posts.

Filed under: Athens, Elections, History, Sortition | 3 Comments »

The Triumph of Election

Posted on April 11, 2011 by keithsutherland

Why did the American founders ignore the case for sortition? It was well known at the time that sortition was one of the primary mechanisms of Athenian democracy and this explains why Madison and his Federalist chums (who were no democrats) ignored it. But even Antifederalists (who argued the democratic case for descriptive representation) failed to propose sortition as a means to establish a legislature that was a ‘portrait in miniature’ of the whole community. According to Bernard Manin it was philosophy – in the form of the Natural Right theory of consent – that was the principle cause of the ‘triumph of election’ (Manin, 1997, Ch.2). But is this true?

James Fishkin points out that the etymological root of ‘deliberation’ (deliberationem) is ‘weighing’ (2009, p.35), so when a randomly-selected assembly member of an allotted chamber (AC) ‘like me’ weighs up the arguments and judges accordingly then I am descriptively represented. But is it possible to take this further and argue that I thereby consent to the judgment of a randomly-selected assembly? The argument for this further claim would need to take the following lines (paraphrasing Fishkin, 2009):

  1. Someone ‘like’ me would, ex hypothesi, exercise judgment in the same way that I would myself. The argument does not require a definition of the ‘likeness’ criteria (age, gender, occupation, political preferences etc.), as the randomization process in principle reflects the incidence of any quality in the general population.
  2. The number of representatives ‘like me’ in an allotted assembly would be proportionate to the number in the general population. If the sample is not sufficiently fine-grained to accurately reflect the distribution of any quality deemed to be salient to the exercise of political judgment then the sample numbers would need to be increased accordingly: only a relatively small sample would be needed to provide an accurate gender balance, whereas the proportional representation of, say, albinos or molecular microbiologists would require a larger sample. The rapid growth of the polling industry is a testimonial to the accuracy and validity of the probability sampling principle.
  3. Therefore the aggregate judgment of the allotted assembly would represent the considered judgment of the whole population. This was the principle behind the nomothetai (legislative assemblies) introduced in fourth-century Athens.
  4. All electors are currently deemed to consent to the results of a general election, whether or not ‘their’ candidate was victorious; so the same principle should apply to the result of a vote in an allotted assembly (the only difference being the employment of one or other of the two mechanisms – election or sortition – that constitute a ‘ballot’.) Although one might argue that the ‘consent’ involved is at best tacit, hypothetical (or some other form of ‘useful fiction’), the same is true in both instances of the ‘ballot’.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Distribution by lot, Elections, History, Sortition | 36 Comments »

They are simply not ready for free and fair elections

Posted on March 6, 2011 by Yoram Gat

Bernard Lewis, “renowned Islamic scholar”, shares with the readers of the Jerusalem Post what he undoubtedly thinks is a real-politik theory of democracy, the product of his decades of study:

The Arab masses certainly want change. And they want improvement. But when you say do they want democracy, that’s a more difficult question to answer. What does “democracy” mean? It’s a word that’s used with very different meanings, even in different parts of the Western world. And it’s a political concept that has no history, no record whatever in the Arab, Islamic world.

In the West, we tend to get excessively concerned with elections, regarding the holding of elections as the purest expression of democracy, as the climax of the process of democratization. Well, the second may be true – the climax of the process. But the process can be a long and difficult one. Consider, for example, that democracy was fairly new in Germany in the inter-war period and Hitler came to power in a free and fair election.

We, in the Western world particularly, tend to think of democracy in our own terms – that’s natural and normal – to mean periodic elections in our style. But I think it’s a great mistake to try and think of the Middle East in those terms and that can only lead to disastrous results, as you’ve already seen in various places. They are simply not ready for free and fair elections.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Elections, History | 9 Comments »

What Sortition Can and Cannot Do

Posted on March 3, 2011 by keithsutherland

There is considerable disagreement regarding the political potential of sortition. Dowlen (2008) argues that sortition is not primarily a system of representation as its invention in classical time predates the discovery of probability. Fishkin (2009) has long advocated sortition as a method of deliberative polling but has not (to date) suggested that it should be incorporated permanently into the system of governance. A host of writers (including the present author) have argued that sortition should either replace or supplement the institutions of electoral democracy as part of a mixed constitutional settlement. At the opposite end of the spectrum to Fishkin a small number of brave souls (mostly active on this blog) have argued for the wholesale replacement of electoral democracy by sortition. In this post I argue that, for purely conceptual reasons, the role of sortition can only be one, albeit an essential, part of a mixed constitution and that the attempt to extend its usage beyond this role undermines any claims that it may have to be a democratic mechanism. My case is based on some partially developed arguments in Pitkin (1967).

In her book The Concept of Representation, Hannah Pitkin argues that there are a variety of aspects to representation – aesthetic, symbolic, formalistic, descriptive and active – the latter two being the most relevant to political representation. Descriptive representation involves “standing for” and requires a degree of identity between the representative and her constituency, as evidenced by contemporary demands for all-women candidate shortlists and positive discrimination on account of ethnic minorities. Random selection is the best way of achieving descriptive representation, hence James Fishkin’s choice of this method for his Deliberative Polling programme. On the other hand, Active representation requires the representative (in a similar manner to a trustee or advocate) to act in the interests of her constituents; there is no intrinsic need for the representative to in any way mirror their identity, thereby justifying electoral representation in single-member constituencies. According to Pitkin, descriptive representation does not cover what the representatives do, while active representation is indifferent to who does it.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Distribution by lot, Elections, History, Initiatives | 55 Comments »

New Book Review Mentions Kleroteria

Posted on February 24, 2011 by peterstone

From Walter Isaacson’s review of Bettany Hughes’ The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life (New York Times, February 11, 2011):

Hughes intersperses the story of Socrates’ trial in 399 B.C. with some wonderful details. We learn, for example, about the workings of the mechanical device that randomly selected, from 6,000 names, the jury of 500 Athenian citizens (yes, 500) that assembled at the law court to hear the case. This kleroterion, a replica of which can be viewed at the Agora Museum in Athens, was a proto-computer that used carved slots to send metal disks down a chute. “Every means possible has been thought of to prevent corruption,” Hughes writes. “Alphabetical blocks of seats, secret ballots, random-selection machines.” Her quest for authentic detail even leads her to grind up hemlock and sniff it. “It releases a nose-wrinkling sour smell,” she reports.

The review can be found here–

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/books/review/Isaacson-t.html?ref=books

Filed under: Athens, History | Leave a comment »

Paul Cockshott: Ideas of Leadership and Democracy

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Yoram Gat

Paul Cockshott is offering the Greek political structure as an alternative to the Roman model:

When the American revolutionaries were trying to establish their state – and that is the stable form of bourgeois state that has survived – they looked at historical models. And there were two models available for them, there was Rome and Athens. They had to choose between these, and it is actually no accident that they chose Rome, that the United States constitution is largely based on the Roman ideas of constitution – it’s a republic, it’s not a democracy. It was constructed as a state by slaveholders who saw what had been the most stable slaveholder state in the past: Rome. And they modeled their state on that.

But there’s another model, and that’s the Athenian model of direct democracy, and the Greeks, over a period of hundreds of years, developed mechanisms to prevent aristocratic domination of the state. Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Elections, History, Sortition, Theory | 60 Comments »

« Previous Page — Next Page »