Legislative activities tree diagram

Posted on December 29, 2011 by davidschecter

I’m still thinking about the basic legislative activities, and the order of them.

In a previous post, I proposed a set of activities that drew distinctions between choosing issues to address, deciding the objectives and criteria for laws about each issue, and proposing laws. Despite what I said before, I now think this does represent a sequence of activities, but it’s an order of logic, and not meant to dictate the actual order in practice. For example, choosing issues is logically prior to writing bills, but often issues are discovered or clarified through the process of writing bills.

Terry pointed out that while there is value in this logical order, in actual practice advocates are likely to jump immediately into proposing laws, and that the lawmaking process should allow for this. So I wrote, “there ought to be a way to get the benefits of both the top-down and bottom-up kinds of thinking.”
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Filed under: Participation | 4 Comments »

New Paper on Appointment to office by lot in Ancient Athens

Posted on August 28, 2011 by gtridimas

“Constitutional choice in ancient Athens: The rationality of selection to office by lot” by George Tridimas (University of Ulster) is forthcoming in Constitutional Political Economy.

Abstract:

Contrary to modern democracies ancient Athens appointed large numbers of government officers by lot. After describing the Athenian arrangements, the paper reviews the literature on the choice between election and lot focusing on representativeness of the population, distributive justice, minimization of conflicts, quality of appointees and administrative economy. It then examines why in drawing up the constitution a self-interested citizen may give up voting for government officials and appoint them by lot. It is shown that appointment by lot is preferred when the effort required to choose candidates is less than the benefit expected from their actions as government officials. It is also found that, given the choice, office motivated candidates may unanimously agree to selection by lot but not to election.

Filed under: Athens, Elections, Participation, Sortition, Theory | 5 Comments »

Mark Fredrickson: Citizen responses under election and sortition

Posted on August 21, 2011 by Yoram Gat

Mark Fredrickson writes:

I am a follower of the Kleroterian blog, and I am excited to announce
that I have something to contribute. As a possible lead up to a field experiment for my dissertation (Department of Political Science, University of Illinois), I undertook a survey experiment in which subjects either read a story about an elected committee or a randomly selected committee (along with several other manipulations). I recently completed my first draft and have published a working paper: Returning to the Cradle of Democracy.

The data and computations for the analysis are also available online: election-sortition-corruption-survey-experiment.

I hope your readers find it useful, and I look forward to their feedback.

The paper’s abstract:

The hallmark of modern democracies is the competitive election. This
institution is seen as the primary connection between leaders and the population. This has not always been the case. Sortition, the random selection of leaders from the population, served as the primary institution of democracy in ancient Athens. How would citizens in a modern democracy react to the use of sortition to select leaders? This study employs a survey experiment in which subjects read about a local development grant, overseen by either an elected or randomly selected committee. I fi nd that sortition encourages more citizens to seek leadership positions, though other forms of participation remain unchanged. I also find that despite a stated preference for election, subjects see the two committees as equally capable and responsible, even when confronted with corrupt acts and closed door meetings.

Filed under: Experiments, Participation, Sortition | 5 Comments »

Riots: Benefits e-petition hits crucial 100,000 mark

Posted on August 13, 2011 by keithsutherland

The BBC reports:

An e-petition calling for rioters to lose their benefits has hit 100,000 signatures and become the first to be considered for a Commons debate.
It has dwarfed others on the government website, which has struggled to deal with the volume of people accessing it.

The petition has now been formally referred to a committee which will decide whether to hold a debate.

As I argued in Part 1 of this thread, e-petitions would be an excellent way of setting the agenda for an allotted legislature. Others have claimed that any form of elective or referendum-based system allows the agenda to be set by the rich and powerful (in particular media and lobby groups); but in the case of the London riots, the media has been reflecting (rather than initiating) public anger (by contrast to phone hacking, where the “outrage” has largely been manufactured by the commercial rivals of News International, including the BBC). Anyone who examines the most popular e-petitions would find it hard to argue that they were being manipulated by the rich and powerful. Although many of the petitions have a right-wing and populist flavour, there is no equivalent in the UK of Fox TV or the shock-jock radio networks which have helped fuel Tea Party support in the US. The media in the UK (especially the BBC) are normally viewed as considerably more left-liberal than the population in general, so it would appear that the e-petitions site is a reasonable indication of public priorities, hence my argument that it should become an instrument for setting a democratic agenda for an allotted legislature.

The only problem I have with the present arrangements is that the parliamentary debate is left to MPs and government ministers. As has been argued consistently on this forum, elections do not lead to a descriptively-representative chamber and the decision-making process is poor from an epistemic perspective (MPs do not have a wisdom that the rest of us lack, and are no longer viewed as “honourable” members). Hence my own petition (signatures welcome) for an allotted chamber to debate any e-petition that exceeds the threshold. If MPs and ministers wish to take part in the debate then they should act as advocates, arguing the case for or against the petition under deliberation.

Filed under: Experiments, Initiatives, Participation | 14 Comments »

Online Petitions go live on Directgov

Posted on July 30, 2011 by keithsutherland

The Guardian reports:

A new public e-petitions service has gone live on the Directgov portal, replacing the previous e-petitions system on the Downing Street website.

The new website went live on 29 July and is being operated by the Government Digital Service. The government said that public petitions which secure the backing of 100,000 signatures will be eligible for debate in Parliament.

Sir George Young, the Leader of the House of Commons, said: “The public already have many opportunities to make their voices heard in parliament, and this new system of e-petitions could give them a megaphone.
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Filed under: Initiatives, Participation, Proposals | 17 Comments »

Edip Yuksel: Lotteries elections: Disinfecting democracy from lobbies

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Yoram Gat

In 1998, Edip Yuskel, “an Islamic reformer”, wrote an article proposing selecting Congress using sortition:

Every citizen who meets the qualifications enumerated in Article I, sections 2 and 3 of the Constitution could become a candidate by filling out a simple application form. This application can be automatically done during voter registration. Every registered person will have an equal chance of becoming a member of Congress. The election or selection can be conducted by mechanical devises or computers with sufficient security and supervision.

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Filed under: Elections, Participation, Proposals, Sortition | 45 Comments »

newDemocracy

Posted on July 4, 2011 by Yoram Gat

newDemocracy is an Australian website that introduces itself as follows:

Citizens are seeking Parliaments that are less adversarial and less short term in outlook. The newdemocracy Foundation researches and publishes alternative democratic methods that seek to deliver this. We pursue alternatives more likely to identify common ground, end the continuous campaign, and return representatives to focus on issues, not opinion polls.
We don’t need better politicians. We need a better system.
Read about these options here, and get involved.

Under “Alternatives”, newDemocracy presents various ideas, including “Demarchy” – following John Burnheim and Brian Martin, “A Senate Drawn by Lot” – following Alex Zakaras and linking to a post by Keith Sutherland on this blog, and “The Popular Branch” – following Ethan Leib.

The force behind the website is apparently Luca Belgiorno-Nettis. The website also lists various luminaries among its supporters including Prof. Lyn Carson.

One item that I find particularly valuable is the slogan mentioned in one of the entries: Don’t Vote – It Only Encourages Them!

Filed under: Opinion polling, Participation, Proposals, Sortition | 3 Comments »

Comment on CJs in Ireland

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Conall Boyle

Interesting observations by a randomly selected barrister (lawyer) on Citizens’ Assembly experiment in Ireland. The organisation behind it,  ‘Wethecitizens’, is non-governmental, and looks excellent. For non-Irish: Oireachtas is Government, Seanad is the Upper House, like the House of Lords. It is sad to see that this exercise did not recommend Sortition for the Seanad.

Need to work out what a citizens’ assembly is before deciding to have one

CONOR NELSON
Thu, Jun 30, 2011

OPINION: I was selected to take part in the citizens’ assembly – but what exactly is the aim of the experiment?

LAST WEEK, I was selected randomly to participate in an experimental citizens’ assembly. It met over a day and a half last weekend at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham (originally to be the seat of the Oireachtas in 1922).

I met lots of people who were engaged and pleased to be selected. The event was run by the “We the Citizens” project, funded by Atlantic Philanthropies, the organisation founded by Chuck Feeney.
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Filed under: Elections, Experiments, House of Lords, Participation | 1 Comment »

Indignant, fumbling, drawing lots

Posted on June 25, 2011 by Yoram Gat

The WSWS has a critical report about the “indignants” movement in Greece:

Greece: The Syntagma Square movement—no real democracy

It is not easy to report on the “Indignants”, the protesters in Athens’ Syntagma Square. We spent almost an hour trying to find someone responsible who could tell us about the goals and character of the movement, without success.

[…]

There was no one willing to provide information about the objectives and purpose of the movement, and take responsibility for this. This game of hide and seek is not a coincidence. It is justified by reference to the principle of “genuine” or “direct” democracy, according to which the people take decisions directly, without the mediation of political representatives or parties. In fact, it serves to hide the real political objectives of the Indignants.
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Filed under: Athens, Participation, Sortition | 14 Comments »

Participatory Budgeting

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Common Lot Sortitionist

Here’s an example that demonstrates that citizens can effectively grapple with the difficult issue of budgeting. The only piece missing, as far as true ‘government by the people’ is concerned, is that the groups convened to make these decisions should be randomly selected. Otherwise, it is only those who have the time and personal interest who ‘solve’ the community’s issues.

Government can’t solve budget battles? Let citizens do it.

To resolve the budget battles tearing apart Congress and state and local governments, politicians should look to a new model of citizen involvement: participatory budgeting.

Filed under: Participation, Sortition | 13 Comments »

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