Aftermath of the Irish Election

Posted on March 26, 2016 by roslynfuller

I recently ran in the Irish general election that was held on Feb. 26th as an Independent (Non-Party) candidate, campaigning on a platform of direct digital democracy.

As some of you may know, this election did not deliver a clear winner or even a clear coalition. A month on, a government has yet to be formed. While some prefer to see this as an argument in favour of the need for stronger government and an end to Independents like me, my view is that it is but one further indictment of the party system. The major parties did badly because they refused (for years) to listen to the people who voted for them, and utterly failed during their campaigns to credibly address any of the mistakes they had made or even to present reasonable solutions for the future. Despite these failures, rather than getting on with the business of governing the country, we are left in limbo waiting to see whether any of them (Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Sinn Fein) will condescend to form a government with each other. This is a distinct possibility for Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, who between them received nearly 60% of all seats with less than 50% of first-preference votes. The constantly trumpeted line that the public voted for the establishment parties is thus wildly over-stated, and there has definitely been a serious push towards alternative politics.

I definitely noticed this while out canvassing, with most people at least open to the idea of more participatory politics and a surprising number already fairly well-informed about participatory initiatives at home and abroad. Most surprisingly of all, I could knock on people’s doors out of the blue and they would not only answer the door, but read through my literature there and then and really engage with the issues.
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Filed under: Ballot measures, Elections, Juries, Participation, Proposals, Sortition | 10 Comments »

Aspects of decision-making

Posted on February 24, 2016 by John Burnheim

1. Public affairs and rational ignorance.

The argument: It is rarely rational for anybody to vote or engage in some other political activities because the chance of influencing the outcome is so infinitesimal that it does not merit the slightest effort.

Reply. That is one consideration, but it is not only a false picture of the thinking of most people, but not the only rational consideration. Many, I think most, voters also recognise two other dimensions to their role as voters.

One is that they see voting as an expressive act and feel it is important to them to express themselves in this way. That is why opposition voters still turn out to vote in what is a safe seat for the incumbent party. Moreover, voters are concerned that in expressing their support for a candidate or a party they are ding something that reflects credit on them. So they are concerned to exercise what influence they can on that candidate or party to adopt policies that they find admirable.

Another reason why the selfish approach is not rational is that people quite rightly do not take an entirely selfish attitude to public goods. Their identity as members of a particular community is closely bound up with the quality of the public goods in which they can share as members of the community. So they do have an interest in the quality of the community’s educational institutions, even though they do not expect any particular pay-off to them from those institutions. Moreover, they are usually well aware that the sort of cost-benefit analyses that reduce benefits to measurable benefits to individuals leads to a penny-pinching approach to funding policy decisions that is often destructive and counterproductive in its effects. It is not rational.

That is not to say that it is improper in choosing to support one rather than another of competing proposals about, say, an educational program, to do so because it suits one’s own interests better. Practical decisions are rarely one-dimensional. They involve diverse, often competing, considerations in varying degrees in different contexts.
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Filed under: Elections, Participation, Proposals | 16 Comments »

Demarchy and the ways of the world

Posted on February 20, 2016 by John Burnheim

1. Demarchy assumes that enough people will engage in the complex of serious activities it is supposed to work on to convince people that the outcome of those activities can claim to represent public opinion.

Looking at the way in which public opinion is in fact formed in our society that seems an absurd assumption.

Even if we go back to Habermas’s beloved 18th century coffee house it is utterly unrealistic. Public opinion emerges from a host of conversations in which what is going on or what is proposed is talked about in terms of familiar images. What is prized in conversation in all sorts of social contexts, from groups of labourers on lunch break to elite dinner parties is wit, the remark that encapsulates a way of looking at a subject in a new light that is at least in some respect plausible.

The cardinal sin in conversation is to insist on spelling out in detail just where that slant on the subject is misrepresented. People are not expected to take casual remarks seriously. That is utterly boring and destructive of conversation. Nevertheless there is overwhelming evidence that people are very strongly influenced by the cumulative effects of the caricatures that prevail in representations of ideas and states of affairs and come to be seen as expressing public opinion.

Even very sophisticated people succumb to this sort of conversation, because they are very aware that political affairs are usually so complicated that there is little chance of arriving at a rationally justified analysis and verdict on them. One just despairs or hopes that the obscure processes of social change will tend towards decisions one can live with. But there is no prospect of getting reliable decisions about political matters by discussion. So Demarchy is nonsense.

Reply: I concede there is a great deal of truth in this picture, but as a generalisation it is too sweeping. At the risk of being boring I shall try to explain why. There are several aspects to it.
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Filed under: Deliberation, Participation, Proposals | 26 Comments »

The Paradox of Democratic Selection: Is Sortition Better than Voting?

Posted on January 6, 2016 by keithsutherland

A draft book chapter by Anthoula Malkopoulou:

Sortition, or the selection of political officers by lot, has its antecedent in the direct democratic tradition of ancient Athens. Its transfer into a modern context of representative democracy poses rightful scepticism not only about the practical difficulties, but more so about the theoretical inconsistencies that arise. Modern systems of political representation are based on the aristocratic idea of ‘government by the best’, who are to be selected through a competitive call for candidates (Manin 1997). Sortition, on the other hand, replaces this aristocratic criterion of competition and evaluative election with the democratic mechanics of direct and equal distribution of political office by chance. Hence, the very expression ‘democratic (s)election’ includes a paradoxical contradiction in terms, between the democratic concept of equal access to public office and the aristocratic idea of government by the (s)elected best.

My aim in this chapter is to shed some light into this contradiction by critically discussing the benefits and pitfalls of using sortition today, comparing it throughout the chapter with voting and the general effects of electoral representation. More specifically, my arguments are divided in four sections. I begin by addressing the reasons that drive klerotarians away from electoral representation (1). Next, I consider alternative modes of political ‘outsourcing’, such as the inclusion of civil society actors or the use of quotas (2). I continue by discussing the democratic legitimacy of sortition by dividing the subject in two questions: (a) political equality and (b) political participation (3). Last, I focus on the type of political representation that the lot produces, viewed from the perspectives of descriptiveness, authorization and accountability (4). In conclusion, I suggest that lotteries may offer valuable improvement to current practices of democratic selection, but only if special measures are taken to compensate for the limitations they entail.

Full text (uncorrected draft: not for citation).

Filed under: Academia, Athens, Ballot measures, Books, Elections, Participation, Sortition, Theory | 26 Comments »

Lasserre: Sortition in politics – the false good idea, part 2

Posted on November 3, 2015 by Yoram Gat

This is the second and final part of a translation of an article by Tommy Lasserre. The first part is here. Again, proofreading and corrections of the translation are welcome.

Sortition eliminates popular participation

While fewer and fewer Frenchpeople bother vote, the membership of parties evaporates, the feeling of powerlessness intensifies, the advocates of stochocracy seem to think that the new selection mechanism could revitalize popular participation. After all, since each person could be called upon to assume political responsibilities, or see their spouse, their neighbor, or their colleague be called to assume them, it is natural that they would grow interested in political questions. Likewise, the disappearance of the political caste would restore the enthusiasm which multiple betrayals have drained over the years. However, this argument in favor of sortition seems unconvincing.

First, everyone must know that the chance of finding yourself sitting in the assembly, or even seeing one of your acquaintances sitting in the assembly, remains extremely small. Using the proposal discussed in the introduction and considering the existing electorate, there are 45 million registered voters (that is without considering those who meet the criteria but are not registered, or expected population growth), the sample selected for exercising the sovereignty for the people in the assembly would represent 0.004% of the electorate. This means that each year only one person in 25,000 would be drawn. Of course, this is better than the chance at the lottery, but it must be admitted that the chances of knowing someone who was allotted remain tiny.
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Filed under: Participation, Press, Proposals, Sortition, Theory | 23 Comments »

Lasserre: Sortition in politics – the false good idea, part 1

Posted on October 24, 2015 by Yoram Gat

André Sauzeau referred me to a polemic against sortition by Tommy Lasserre. This text is the most elaborate argument against sortition ever written (as far as I am aware) and it is therefore of significant interest to sortition advocates. In view of that, and despite my essentially non-existent French I have undertaken to translate it from the original French to English. The first part of the outcome is below. If your French is better than mine I’d be happy with any corrections.

Sortition in politics – the false good idea

By Tommy Lasserre, September 2014

Immersed in scandals, disconnected from the realities of the majority in society, demonstrating every day their total submission to finance and the dogmas of liberalism, and therefore their complete incapacity to pull us out of the crisis, the political caste today is largely discredited, in France as in the rest of Europe. This is expressed well in record low turnouts and in the rise of false alternatives, but equally, fortunately,, reflection, shared by increasingly significant number of citizens, about the ways to change politics. Suggestions for changing the Republic through a constitutional process, proposals for giving citizens greater control over our elected officials, in particular opening the way for recallability, garner, therefore, significant response on the Web.

Among all the ideas that emerged in the blogosphere or on the social networks, one idea, that could appear absurd keeps appearing frequently: putting the reins of power in the hands of an allotted assembly. It is often mentioned in conversations on Facebook, or in argument between bloggers, the controversial intellectual Étienne Chouard has made it his battle cry and the political party Nouvelle Donne (“New Deal”) even made an argument for this idea during the European elections.
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Filed under: Athens, History, Participation, Press, Sortition, Theory | 48 Comments »

Voting but not talking

Posted on October 2, 2015 by peterstone

I just wanted to recommend a working paper by Daniela Cammack entitled “Deliberation in Classical Athens: Not Talking, But Thinking (and Voting).” It’s available online here. It’s not directly about sortition, but it deals with a number of themes discussed on this blog. The paper argues that the Athenians maintained a careful distinction between the function of presenting arguments and the function of evaluating those arguments, and assigned the latter, but not the former, to the assembly. This distinction, Cammack argues, is conflated by those who use the term “deliberation” for both functions.

I found this passage particularly relevant to contemporary politics:

In Athens, then, as in modern democracies, an overwhelming majority of non-speaking voters attempted to control a minority of prominent political actors who took primary responsibility for advocating and carrying policies. The key difference between Athenian and modern democracy was not that all or even many Athenians took part in political discussion, but first, that large samples of ordinary citizens had the opportunity to vote on every political decision, and second, that the barriers to becoming politically influential were relatively low, while the risks associated with this position were high. This is the reverse of the situation today, where a high barrier to entry as a politician–largely financial–is combined with a low risk of losing one’s position once established. To be sure, one can fail to be reelected, but this pales in comparison to the mechanisms of accountability available in Athens, such as routine annual audits (euthynai) covering both moral and financial issues. In many modern systems, by contrast, a feedback loop is set up in which corruption becomes endemic, since the high costs of running for election are in large part met by supporters whose opportunity to shape policy then becomes significantly greater than that of ordinary voters, with very little way for those ordinary voters to hold the politician in question to account, either before or after the next election.

Worth a look.

Filed under: Academia, Athens, History, Participation | 12 Comments »

Sortition on ideochina.com

Posted on September 28, 2015 by Yoram Gat

The Chinese language blog ideochina.com – 思想中国 – has an article about the troubles of the elections-based system of government (what may be termed “eklogocracy”). Among other ideas for reform, the article mentions proposals involving sortition.

Abstract:

In the past quarter of the century，democracy has won the day，with most countries in the world claiming themselves to be democracies. However， the glory is fleeting. In exactly the same period of time， the advancing step of western democracy starts faltering， and its theory is being challenged in an unprecedented way. The idol of democracy is entering into twilight， surrounded by more and more pessimistic views. Theorists of democracy have now started to reflect on the inherent deficiencies of representational democracy， rethink electoral democracy， and seek to return to real democracy by exploring various institutions that can involve the participation of the populace.

The author appears to be an Equality-by-Lot reader.

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The ancient Greek view on what democracy is

Posted on September 19, 2015 by Yoram Gat

This topic came up recently. Here is the most thorough discussion of this matter in the primary sources that I am aware of. Aristotle is describing here (Politics, 1317a-1318a) what he considers as the conventional wisdom of his time:

And for this inquiry we must take into view all the features that are popular and that are thought to go with democracies; for it comes about from combinations of these that the kinds of democracy are formed, and that there are different democracies and more than one sort. In fact there are two causes for there being several kinds of democracy, first the one stated before, the fact that the populations are different （for we find one multitude engaged in agriculture and another consisting of handicraftsmen and day-laborers, and when the first of these is added to the second and again the third to both of them it not only makes a difference in that the quality of the democracy becomes better or worse but also by its becoming different in kind）; and the second cause is the one about which we now speak. For the institutions that go with democracies and seem to be appropriate to this form of constitution make the democracies different by their combinations; for one form of democracy will be accompanied by fewer, another by more, and another by all of them. And it is serviceable to ascertain each of them both for the purpose of instituting whichever of these kinds of democracy one happens to wish and for the purpose of amending existing ones. For people setting up constitutions seek to collect together all the features appropriate to their fundamental principle, but in so doing they make a mistake, as has been said before in the passage dealing with the causes of the destruction and the preservation of constitutions. And now let us state the postulates, the ethical characters and the aims of the various forms of democracy.
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Filed under: Athens, Books, Elections, History, Participation, Sortition | 57 Comments »

Timo Rieg: Why a citizen’s parliament chosen by lot would be ‘perfect’

Posted on September 8, 2015 by Yoram Gat

Sortition makes an appearance in the German public discourse. swissinfo.ch has an English translation of a German article which proposes short-term allotted bodies with decision making power whose agenda is externally determined. The article’s author is described as follows:

Timo Rieg, a German journalist and biologist. He developed and tested the “Youth Citizens Jury”, a form of youth parliament in which members are selected through a draw. He is the author of 18 books. His most recent publication, Democracy for Germany, examines a combination of citizens’ parliament, a directly elected government and referendums.

An excerpt from the article:

‘Citizens’ parliament’

One could firmly establish [a] procedure, which could be called the “citizens’ parliament”. Week by week, 200 new members, selected each time by a draw, could meet in the citizen’s parliament. They could listen to experts and lobbyists in a plenary session, have discussions with their jury and small groups, ask questions, suggest changes and entrust the governing authority to make improvements.

The outcome of this process would be a clear recommendation, a law (or its repeal), and the result is, unlike today’s parliament, always representative! Thus the citizen’s parliament is a “mini-populus”, an almost exact miniature replica of the general public.

All schools of thought, all social backgrounds, all occupations, artistic interests and hobbies would be proportionally represented. No one and nothing would be forgotten, and yet it’s both technically and financially a manageable size.
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Filed under: Elections, Participation, Press, Sortition | 2 Comments »

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