The Keys to Democracy by Maurice Pope

Posted on October 7, 2023 by Yoram Gat

Maurice Pope’s book The Keys to Democracy is the third book ever written advocating the use of sortition as a major component of a modern government. (The two earlier ones being Ernest Callenbach and Michael Phillips’s A Citizen Legislature and John Burnheim’s Is Democracy Possible?, both first published in 1985. Pope, who seems to have started writing at about the same time, was apparently unaware of either.) The great strengths of Pope’s writing are his independence of thought and his evident sincerity. Coming early into the field, and being a classicist rather than a political scientist, Pope was clearly breaking new ground, following his own logical train of thought. He was thus free from the burden of formulaically making connections to prior writings and from the petty-political considerations of self-promotion. This unique situation made a thoroughgoing impact on the book as a whole.

Authors of works about sortition (including Pope) generally share the ostensible aim of achieving some measure of democratization of society. But while this general aim is broadly shared, the consensus ends there because the detailed aims and the proposed mechanisms for achieving them vary widely. At the conservative end, the problem with the existing system is conceived as some sort of sclerosis. The main symptom of the problem is fatigue, or a lack of confidence. Sortition-based institutions are then seen as a way to infuse the system with new blood or new vigor, rejuvenating a system that is essentially sound but has for various reasons, that generally remain vague, fallen into a bad state. Associated with this view of things are generally quite modest proposals – advisory bodies that “help” current decision makers make more informed decisions. Even those more informed decisions are perhaps less important than the mere fact that allotted citizens are widely recognized as having had a part in the process. Indeed, what exactly the problems are with the current outcomes of the process and what are the expected improvements in terms of policy is usually not specified. In fact, sometimes the entire point is to have the allotted citizens themselves become more informed rather than making any changes in decision making. Writings in this vein tend to be heavy with references to the canon of “deliberative democracy” and light on the idea that democracy is a regime of political equality.
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Filed under: Academia, Athens, Books, Elections, Fiction, History, Juries, Participation, Press, Sortition | 10 Comments »

Yanis Varoufakis proposes a Monetary Supervision Jury

Posted on April 9, 2023 by Ahmed R. Teleb

Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece, is leader of the MeRA25 party and Professor of Economics at the University of Athens, writes:

Imagine that the central bank provided everyone with a free digital wallet, effectively a free bank account bearing interest at the central bank overnight rate. Given that the current banking system functions like an anti-social cartel, the central bank might as well use modern digital, cloud-based technology to provide free digital transactions and savings storage to all, its net revenues paying for essential public goods. Freed from the compulsion to keep their money in a private bank, and to pay through the nose in order to transact using its system, people will then be free to choose if and when they wish to use private financial institutions offering risk intermediation between savers and borrowers whose monies will, however, live in perfect safety on the central bank’s ledger.

It is at around this point of my proposal that the crypto brotherhood will feign a fit, accusing me of pushing for a Big Brother central bank that sees and controls every transaction we make. Setting aside their stunning hypocrisy, days after they demanded an immediate central bank bailout of their Silicon Valley bankers, let me point out that the Treasury and other organs of the state already have access to each transaction of ours. Indeed, privacy could be better safeguarded if transactions were to be concentrated on the central bank ledger under the supervision of something like a Monetary Supervision Jury comprising randomly selected citizens and experts drawn from a wide range of professions.

In summary, the time has come to reach an inevitable conclusion: the banking system we take for granted is unfixable. That’s the bad news. But there is good news. We no longer need to rely, at least not the way we have so far, on any private, rent-seeking, destabilising network of banks. The time has come to blow up an irredeemable banking system which only delivers for property and share owners at the expense of the majority.

Coal miners have found out the hard way that society does not owe them a permanent subsidy to damage the planet. It is time for the bankers to make a similar discovery.

Filed under: Action, Juries, Proposals, Sortition | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »

Sintomer: The Government of Chance

Posted on March 17, 2023 by Yoram Gat

French political scientist Yves Sintomer has published a new book dealing with sortition called The Government of Chance: Sortition and Democracy from Athens to the Present.

The publisher, Cambridge University Press, provides a(n apparently auto-translated) book description:

Electoral democracies are struggling. Sintomer, in this instructive book, argues for democratic innovations. One such innovation is using random selection to create citizen bodies with advisory or decisional political power. ‘Sortition’ has a long political history. Coupled with elections, it has represented an important yet often neglected dimension of Republican and democratic government, and has been reintroduced in the Global North, China and Mexico. The Government of Chance explores why sortation is returning, how it is coupled with deliberation, and why randomly selected ‘minipublics’ and citizens’ assemblies are flourishing. Relying on a growing international and interdisciplinary literature, Sintomer provides the first systematic and theoretical reconstruction of the government of chance from Athens to the present. At what conditions can it be rational? What lessons can be drawn from history? The Government of Chance therefore clarifies the democratic imaginaries at stake: deliberative, antipolitical, and radical, making a plaidoyer for the latter.

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Filed under: Academia, Athens, Books, Deliberation, Elections, Juries, Sortition | 5 Comments »

Martin Wolf on Democratic Capitalism (and me as it turns out!)

Posted on February 4, 2023 by Nicholas Gruen

Martin Wolf is talking up a storm on the crisis of democratic capitalism, and he’s supporting sortition as you can hear from around 11 minutes in where I’ve set it up to begin.

In case you’re interested, here’s the presentation he gave before the panel session recorded above.

Filed under: Applications, Books, Elections, House of Lords, Juries, Press, Proposals, Sortition | Tagged: , , , , | 19 Comments »

Snell: Countries obsessed with sortation likely to be inward looking and self-obsessed

Posted on December 30, 2022 by Yoram Gat

As they describe themselves, James Snell is a senior advisor at the New Lines Institute, currently writing a book on the war in Afghanistan. The New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy is a nonprofit and non-partisan think tank in Washington D.C. working to enhance U.S. foreign policy based on a deep understanding of the geopolitics of the different regions of the world and their value systems.

Snell has a piece in Politico where he expresses his concern about the dangers of what he consistently calls “sortation”. Snell’s concern has seemingly been triggered by the upcoming posthumous publication of Maurice Pope’s book “The Keys to Democracy”.

[T]he ancient Athenians — so admired by the founders of the United States — were ruled by a boule, or a council, where the positions were filled by lot. The same went for Athens’ courts, and Roman juries after the founding of their republic.

There’s something romantic about this notion of a non-representative democracy, of government formed by citizens rather than their elected delegates — so romantic, in fact, that it’s making a comeback.
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Filed under: Athens, Books, Elections, History, Juries, Press, Sortition | 8 Comments »

New second chamber could be filled using a process of random selection

Posted on December 23, 2022 by Yoram Gat

Andrew Carruthers, a reader of the Scottish The National, writes the following in a letter to the editor:

THE Labour party has again proposed to scrap the House of Lords. This raises the question of what form a replacement House should take, not just in Westminster but also in a potentially independent Scotland.

The obvious answer is some form of democratically elected forum, as indeed Labour suggests. The Lords itself is unrepresentative and not a model to follow. But “democratically elected” systems also have problems. Not least is that most seats in any election do not change party, so most of the individuals “elected” are actually chosen by a small clique of the incumbent party’s faithful. In other words, they are jobs for the boys rather than being democratically responsive in any meaningful way.

A further issue is that the sort of people who put themselves forward as candidates may have laudable ambitions, but are not necessarily the sort of person you and I would actually prefer to be in charge. Clearly not every political hopeful is a self-seeking egomaniac, but the very fact that they are putting themselves forward will always raise a suspicion – just think Boris Johnson (but not for too long).
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Filed under: Elections, House of Lords, Juries, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 1 Comment »

Nathan Jack: Let’s end elections

Posted on August 13, 2022 by Yoram Gat

Nathan Jack, an attorney in Salt Lake City, is a sortition advocate blogging at democracyplus.substack.com. He has recently written the following article in The Salt Lake Tribune.

Time to replace elections with Democracy+

Picking our leaders at random would be better than hard-fought elections.

Congress is broken. With few legislative accomplishments, we shouldn’t be surprised at its abysmal 16% approval rating. But with midterms approaching, all five Utah incumbents up for election won their primary. And all five are projected to keep their seats.

In states and districts across the country, incumbents easily win reelection. Despite our dissatisfaction with Congress, nothing changes.

This problem lacks an easy solution. Many look to term limits. Sen. Mike Lee himself has long advocated for senators to serve two six-year terms (although he seems unwilling to apply that rule to himself). Others look to campaign finance reform, as fundraising is one of the biggest advantages that incumbents gain. But these measures only treat the symptoms. We need to rid our government of the disease.

The disease? Elections.
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Filed under: Applications, Athens, Elections, History, Juries, Press, Sortition | Tagged: | 12 Comments »

Thomas and Pollack: Rethinking Guilt, Juries, and Jeopardy

Posted on July 23, 2022 by Yoram Gat

A distinction is sometimes made between democracy as a system in which citizens are politically equal and a system in which the “right” decisions are made. In “Rethinking Guilt, Juries, and Jeopardy”, a paper published in the Michigan Law Review in 1992, George Thomas and Barry Pollack argue, in the context of juries, that the two concepts may be theoretically indistinguishable. It is interesting to weigh the strength of their argument and see to what extent it is applicable to citizen judgement in the case of policy making. Thomas and Pollack also go further and use this argument to reason about jury size, an argument which may be interesting and relevant in public policy making as well.

It may be obvious, but it is worth noting anyway, that the arguments made are also relevant to very wide epistemological questions about what is truth, what are facts, the analytical/synthetic distinction, the fact/value distinction, internalism vs. externalism, etc. It turns out that a theory of democracy may require a workable epistemological theory, or at least a part of such a theory.

The purpose of a mechanism for deciding guilt is to impose punishment only on those who deserve it. This goal raises two questions. First, who decides? Second, how can an observer evaluate whether the decisionmaker was right or wrong?

Although citizen juries played a role in the English criminal process at least as far back as 1201 A.D., their role initially was limited to screening cases, much like the present-day grand jury. Thus, a jury would decide whether to hold the accused for the guilt-determining phase, which might be battle or ordeal. Battle on an accusation of felony ended in death for the accused if he lost – the offender would perish either in the battle or from immediate hanging. Ordeal consisted principally of trial by fire and water, which required the accused (and sometimes the accuser) to walk through fire, carry red-hot iron, plunge his hand or arm into boiling water, or be thrown into a pool of water.

The premise underlying both battle and ordeal as guilt-determining mechanisms was that “God would always interpose miraculously to vindicate the guiltless.”

With the dawning of the Renaissance, however, Western culture gradually ceased seeing the hand of God or Satan in every physical event, and the role of citizen juries was extended from screening defendants for trial to determining guilt. As long as God was making the decision, believers did not accept the possibility of error. Once the ultimate decision rested in the hands of citizens, however, error became possible. The difficult, and usually unappreciated, question is how error can occur.
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Filed under: Academia, Juries, Press, Theory | 1 Comment »

Dikastic Thorubos

Posted on January 13, 2022 by keithsutherland

All the other powers are naturally in a man’s own control, but the power of speaking is blocked if there is opposition from the audience. Hear him as a scoundrel, bribe-taker, and as one who will say absolutely nothing true. (Dem. 19-340)

Cited in V. Bers, ‘Dikastic Thorubos’ in Crux: Essays Presented to G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, ed. P.A. Cartledge and F.D. Harvey (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 1985)

Recent outbursts of mud-slinging on this forum have implications for the design of sortition-based assemblies, especially if isegoria (equal speech) is the norm. This is the guiding principle of deliberative democracy, as it was in the Athenian democracy (unlike Sparta). However in both the ancient and modern cases only a tiny number of participants exercised the ho boulomenos (anyone who wishes) principle. It took some cojones to address the Athenian assembly and unpopular speakers were shouted down by the other participants (as we saw in the quote from Demosthenes). Whilst such prophylactics can work in direct democracies, large modern states resort to the exchange of insults between political parties, each one hoping to increase its share of the vote in elections. Jaw-jaw is certainly better than war-war, hence the fact that the illocutionary factions in the House of Commons are separated by two swords’ lengths.

The mud-slinging on this forum appears to be primarily between two “camps” — in the one corner Alex Kovner and Keith Sutherland and in the other Yoram Gat and Liam Jones. As Alex recently commented, the two groups appear to be “on different planets”, impervious to the (Habermasian) exchange of reasons.

There is no good reason to believe that a sortition-based assembly would be any different — especially if participation is voluntary, as this would attract those who like the sound of their own voice, which may or may not map to the voices of those in the target population that the randomly-selected group is intended to “describe”. This would suggest that ho boulomenos can do little to support the isegoria rights of the vast majority of citizens who fail to be included in the sortition.

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Filed under: Academia, Athens, Deliberation, Juries, Sortition, Theory | 12 Comments »

Austria’s Climate Citizen Council: Broken from the Get-go

Posted on January 4, 2022 by H.J. Hofkirchner

Suspicious decisions and coincidences surround the preparations for Austria’s planned “Klimabürger*innenrat” (Climate Citizen Council) hosted by Austria’s Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment and Energy. Worrisome information emerged regarding the award of the organiser’s role and the choice of scientific experts.

Some background: Austria’s Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment and Energy is headed by Leonore Gewessler, a Green Party nominee within Austria’s coalition government of conservative ÖVP (People’s Party) and environmentalist minority partner “Die Gruenen” (Green Party). Their business lobbying sub-branch is called “Gruene Wirtschaft” (“Green Economy”) with its offices located at Seidengasse 25, in Vienna’s 7th “bobo” district.

As an aside, Austria now has the third Chancellor in quick succession since the 2019 elections due to a scandal surrounding fake citizen surveys which boosted the first Chancellor’s political ascent. SMS conversations revealed that a powerful boulevard newspaper was “incentivised” with government funds under the influence of said Chancellor to publish these fake surveys prominently. This matter is currently under investigation by Austria’s Anti-Corruption Agency. My readers will know that easily manipulated and biassed traditional surveys capture the Madness of Masses instead of Wisdom of Crowds, thus acting as a clandestine cause of corruption and many democratic ills in Austria (and other countries with a political party system).

With this background in mind: Gewessler answer to a parliamentary inquiry (the protocol is here) about the preparations to the “Klimabürger*innenrat” (Climate Citizen Council) stated that bids for independent organisation and moderation of the Klimarat were accepted throughout the EU and its 27 countries. Strangely, the Minister received only one single application by a consortium of three partners, PlanSinn GmbH, PulsWerk GmbH, and ÖGUT. PulsWerk is located at ​​Seidengasse 13. What a coincidence! Just six houses up in the same street as Gruene Wirtschaft. PlanSinn is – surprise! – also located in Vienna’s 7th district, in Zollergasse, a five minute walk from Gruene Wirtschaft. According to the Minister’s response, this single consortium’s offer luckily fulfilled all her quality criteria exactly and was thus awarded the contract.

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Filed under: Applications, Elections, Juries, Opinion polling, Sortition | Tagged: , , , , | 79 Comments »

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