Democracy and Truth

Posted on June 21, 2025 by Yoram Gat

In a recent article in The Catholic Herald Niall Gooch discusses some objections to sortition from the book Against sortition?. As he describes sortition, “[t]he idea is that involving “normal people” in such deliberation helps to spread power more widely and obtain broader perspectives”.

The contributors to the book set out various reservations about this idea, and various objections. Many of them have procedural concerns – for example, they believe that existing approaches don’t gain a wide enough spectrum of opinion, or that they are easily captured by special interests, or that they don’t really add anything new to a conventional elected legislature.

Others highlight the problems of accountability raised by citizens’ assemblies, or the way in which they dilute the legitimacy of existing bodies. But a few contributors are clearly trying to articulate something like the more fundamental problem identified by John Paul II, which we might sum up with this question: “Does involving lots more people in political decision making actually get you closer to the truth?”

Gooch refers his readers to, Evangelium Vitae, The Gospel of Life, a 1995 essay by Pope John Paul II. In it John Paul II writes:

Democracy cannot be idolized to the point of making it a substitute for morality or a panacea for immorality. Fundamentally, democracy is a “system” and as such is a means and not an end. Its “moral” value is not automatic, but depends on conformity to the moral law to which it, like every other form of human behaviour, must be subject: in other words, its morality depends on the morality of the ends which it pursues and of the means which it employs. If today we see an almost universal consensus with regard to the value of democracy, this is to be considered a positive “sign of the times”, as the Church’s Magisterium has frequently noted. But the value of democracy stands or falls with the values which it embodies and promotes. Of course, values such as the dignity of every human person, respect for inviolable and inalienable human rights, and the adoption of the “common good” as the end and criterion regulating political life are certainly fundamental and not to be ignored.
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Filed under: Academia, Books, Elections, Participation, Religion, Sortition | 4 Comments »

Demiocracy, Chapter 5b: Three Long-Term Cases of sortition from a nominated sample, Like Demiocracy’s “Ballottery”

Posted on April 18, 2024 by Roger Knights

Amish Religious Practices

Amish ministers and deacons are selected by lot out of a group of men nominated by the congregation. They serve for life and have no formal training. Amish bishops are similarly chosen by lot from those selected as preachers. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish_religious_practices.

The Amish employ something akin to what I call a ballottery to select ministers. The congregation (= the general public) nominates (= ballots for) those it considers worthy, and a lottery selects a minister from among those worthies. A second lottery (structurally similar to what I call a “stacked” ballottery) selects a bishop from those selected ministers.

It should be obvious that if those clerics were selected at random from the congregation, they would not perform as well as those drawn from a democratically pre-approved group, and that they would have less legitimacy because of that poorer performance, and of the mechanical way they had been chosen. These considerations of competence and legitimacy apply equally to the next two cases below.

It will be objected that these cases all have to do with the the choice of executive officeholders. But the importance of elevating competence and credibility still applies to deciding on the method of choosing legislators and electors, although incapacity among them would not be as blindingly obvious. Nevertheless, that is hardly a reason to prefer mediocrity, or accept it. Indeed, its subtler manifestation is an even stronger reason to guard against it.

PS, from Wikipedia:

(Note that the Greek word for “lot” (kleros) serves as the etymological root for English words like “cleric” and “clergy” as well as for “cleromancy”.)

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Filed under: Athens, Elections, History, Religion, Sortition | 4 Comments »

Sortition and democracy. History, instruments, and theories: a special issue of Participations journal

Posted on June 14, 2019 by Yoram Gat

Participations journal’s latest issue is devoted to sortition. This appears to be a treasure trove. The issue, titled “Sortition and democracy. History, instruments, and theories”, has 24 papers comprising over 500 pages. The French text of all papers seems to be allow unrestricted access.

The papers are organized into 5 sections:

  1. The ancient world
  2. The medieval world and the modern world
  3. The Chinese world
  4. The contemporary world
  5. Postface

The authors include familiar names (Sintomer, Demont, Courant) as well as many that I, at least, am not familiar with.

“The contemporary world” section has some papers that seem particularly interesting, e.g., Samuel Hayat’s “The militant trajectory of the reference to Bernard Manin in French activism for sortition” and Julien Talpin’s “Does random selection make democracies more democratic? How deliberative democracy has depoliticized a radical proposal”.

Another intriguing paper is Alexei Daniel Serafín Castro’s “Political representation and the uses of sortition in Mexico: 1808-1857” which discusses a historical application of sortition that I have never heard of before.

Filed under: Academia, Elections, History, Participation, Press, Religion, Sortition | 10 Comments »

Short refutations of common objections to sortition (part 3)

Posted on June 5, 2015 by Yoram Gat

Part 1 Part 2

11. Elections are a mechanism of accountability. It allows the electorate to reward or punish those with power. There is no way to hold government accountable using sortition.

Using elections as an accountability mechanism is like a bank’s board of directors appointing a new bank manager for a 4-year term and telling him that if he steals the depositors’ money then there is some chance that he will not be re-appointed to run the bank for another term (but he will get to keep the money he took). A manager who sees his job as a means for self-enrichment is clearly better off simply taking the money. No matter how many years of service he can secure if he stays honest, his salary will never amount to what he can steal in a single term.

Besides, if the replacement managers are all as greedy as the current manager, what good would replacing the manager do?

In short, seeing elections as providing an effective means of incentivizing a government to promote the interests of the average citizen is hopelessly unrealistic. It is remarkable that this view is standard in both popular discourse and professional political science literature.

12. The training and service experiences would likely cause people to change their minds about various issues and in this way become unrepresentative.

As the allotted delegates study issues it is indeed to be expected that they will adopt views on matters that they were not aware of before, and occasionally will even come to have opinions that contradict previously held ones. In this sense the allotted become unrepresentative – they are better informed and have spent more time and effort considering various matters of policy than the average citizen does.
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Philo Judaeus advises against sortition

Posted on June 7, 2014 by Yoram Gat

Philo Judaeus was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, in the Roman province of Egypt, in the first century BC and first century AD. The following passages are taken from Philo’s A Treatise on Those Special Laws Which Are Contained Under and Have Reference to the Eighth and Ninth, and Tenth Commandments.. In them he repeats the competence argument against sortition which Xenophon attributes to Socrates. Philo adds an argument against sortition and in favor of elections from Biblical authority.

XXIX. (151) Some persons have contended that all magistracies ought to have the officers appointed to them by lot; which however is a mode of proceeding not advantageous for the multitude, for the casting of lots shows good fortune, but not virtue; at all events many unworthy persons have often obtained office by such means, men whom, if a good man had the supreme authority, he would not permit to be reckoned even among his subjects: Continue reading →

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In praise of … drawing lots (in The Guardian UK)

Posted on November 7, 2012 by Conall Boyle

In praise of … drawing lots

Experts say that a legislature drawn from the people at random would be more representative, especially of minority communities

Forget campaigns that cost $5.8bn, and which ignore voters outside swing states and seek to reduce their number within them. None of those issues troubled the process by which Egypt’s 10 million Copts chose a new pope. First, over 2,000 clergymen and laymen shortlisted three candidates. Next, a blindfolded boy, himself chosen by lottery, picked out a plastic ball containing one of the three names, the idea being that his right hand doubles as the hand of God. Thus was Pope Tawadros II chosen. Experts say that a legislature drawn from the people at random would be more representative, especially of minority communities. Think it couldn’t happen here? Jury selection shows we are already happy to leave some crucial appointments to chance. And in May, in Runnymede’s Chertsey South and Rowtown ward, the Tory and the independent tied at 503 votes apiece. How was this democratic deadlock broken? By drawing lots, of course.

Filed under: Elections, Press, Religion, Sortition | 5 Comments »

Sanitization, Arrationality or should it be called Super-Humanity?

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Conall Boyle

Describing what a lottery can contribute to the process of choosing.

Sanitization, Arrationality or should it be called Super-Humanity?

Whatever it is used for, a lottery does something for the process.  Sanitizing  is Stone’s description; Arrationality is Dowlen’s.

I do not disagree with either definition, but feel that both are a bit lacking.

Sanitization implies a clean-up, removal of contaminating elements, but leaves open the question: Cleansed of what?

Arrationality, besides being a neologism, hence not easily understood, might also even be taken to mean some kind of crazy departure which abandons the only human attribute that truly sets us above the animals – the ability to use our brains to think about things.

So either incomplete or liable to be mis-understood; can I come up with something better?
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Filed under: Distribution by lot, Religion, Theory | 15 Comments »

Are Sortitionists sincere?

Posted on June 16, 2012 by Conall Boyle

Do sortitionists really believe their own rhetoric? A Citizen’s Jury will be called using the method of random selection. They then proceed to chew over the issue at hand, and normally decide by voting!

What’s the matter with these guys? Surely the matter should be resolved, either by Unanimity, or failing that by a lottery, weighted by the votes of the CJ?

I was inspired to pose this question after reading a piece about the rise of Majority Voting which is mostly about French and Catholic Church experiences.

The Anglo-juridical Jury (12 citizens drawn at random) used to require unanimity, and still needs 10/12 to convict. Who so?

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Eygyptian Christians to choose Pope by lot

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Conall Boyle

In a report in today’s (London) Independent:

Pope Shenouda, 88, [who has just died] was famous as a cautious Coptic leader, all-powerful within his community, who for four decades had dealt with the Egyptian government. … His successor, to be chosen by a synod of bishops, is unlikely to exercise the same authority in defence of Egypt’s embattled Christian minority. The bishops will choose three candidates, whose names are written on pieces of paper and placed in a box. The final choice is made by a blindfolded boy, who picks one of the names.

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