The way from here to there

Posted on March 7, 2014 by Yoram Gat

A useful proposal for reform must present a path for getting from the status quo to the desired, improved state and the credibility of the proposed path is an important determinant of the credibility of the proposal. Sortition advocates should consider what the most effective ways to promote sortitionist reform are.

To state the obvious: a reform agenda that is aimed at changing the power structure in society can expect to have allies and opponents, the former expecting to gain some power, the latter apprehensive of losing some. Democratic reform, by definition, aims at shifting some power from established elites into the hands of a disempowered majority. This makes established elites the natural opponents of democratic reform, and the general population its natural ally. In view of that, a proposed path for democratic reform which relies on cooperation by the elite is unrealistic. A credible path to democratic reform must rely on popular support and anticipate attempts by the elite to block or derail the reform.
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Filed under: Participation, Sortition | 21 Comments »

Discussing sortition in Plymouth

Posted on March 1, 2014 by Yoram Gat

Keith Rossiter writes in the Plymouth Herald:

A COMMON cry from some Herald readers is that councillors are corrupt/incompetent/self-serving (delete as you wish), and above all that they should not be paid for their services.

[…]

Challenged to step up to the plate themselves, they may say – with some justification – that “it’s all a stitch-up”. You can only get elected with the help of a party machine, and parties only select their pals.

We got the idea of democracy from the Ancient Greeks, and perhaps it’s time to go back to Ancient Greece and borrow the other half of their brilliant concept.

The Athenians used a machine to pick people to hold public office or to do jury duty. The device, called a kleroterion, ensured randomness in allocating important civic positions in much the same way that a lottery ensures randomness in picking the winning ticket. (Of course, we’ve all met conspiracy theorists who claim that’s also a stitch-up.)
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Filed under: Academia, Applications, Athens, Juries, Press, Sortition | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

“An Italian Road to Randomocracy”

Posted on February 27, 2014 by peterstone

The latest on sortition from Italy (this time in English)–

http://www.internauta-online.com/2014/02/an-italian-road-to-randomcracy/

The proposal is rather complex, and perhaps worth discussing here.

Filed under: Academia, Participation, Proposals, Sortition | 11 Comments »

Life By Lottery

Posted on February 18, 2014 by keithsutherland

BBC Radio 4’s flagship Analysis programme next week is devoted to sortition and distributive lotteries:

Should we use chance to solve some of our most difficult political dilemmas? From US Green Cards to school place allocation, lotteries have been widely used as a means of fairly resolving apparently intractable problems. Jo Fidgen asks whether the time has come to consider whether more of society’s problems might be solved by the luck of the draw.

Producer: Leo Hornak. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03w02sl

The presenter interviewed Barbara Goodwin and Peter Stone and the producer consulted Conall Boyle and myself. Broadcasting on Monday 24th at 8.30 pm.

Filed under: Distribution by lot, education, Sortition | 6 Comments »

Voice of the People

Posted on February 15, 2014 by Yoram Gat

Voice of the People describes itself so:

Voice Of the People (VOP) is a new non-partisan organization that seeks to re-anchor our democracy in its founding principles by giving ‘We the People’ a greater role in government. VOP furthers the use of innovative methods and technology to give the American people a more effective voice in the policymaking process.
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Filed under: Academia, Elections, Participation, Proposals, Sortition | 15 Comments »

Early advocate of sortition in government Robert Dahl has died

Posted on February 10, 2014 by Yoram Gat

Robert Dahl was a prominent political scientist and an early advocate of using sortition in government. He proposed advisory allotted bodies in his 1970 book After the Revolution and made a similar proposal (“mini-populi”) in his 1989 book Democracy and Its Critics.

Democracy and Its Critics presents, among other ideas, a careful and coherent critique of the power of “guardian” bodies like the supreme court. In general, Dahl was noted for being unusually clear in his argumentation in a field whose main occupation is a struggle to explain the advantages of a government system in terms of an ideology which is in plain conflict with it. As an illustration, here is a striking passage from Dahl’s A Preface to Democratic Theory (1956):

The absence of specific meaning for terms like “majority tyranny” and “faction” coupled with the central importance of these concepts in the Madisonian style of thinking has led to a rather tortuous political theory that is explicable genetically rather than logically. Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Books, History, Proposals, Sortition, Theory | Tagged: , | 7 Comments »

BBC: The Philosophy of Russell Brand

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Yoram Gat

A recent segment on the BBC radio show Analysis is titled “The Philosophy of Russell Brand”. The audience is warned ahead of time to hold on to their hats as “Jeremy Cliffe enters a world without rules, without government, but with plenty of facial hair”. Following this introduction, and the expected sound bites from the Brand-Paxman interview, the segment talks about the attention Brand received, the Occupy/Indignados protest movement and features interviews with Paolo Gerbaudo, David Graeber, Michael Hardt, Peter Turchin, Daniel Pinchbeck, and a few friends of Cliffe.
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Filed under: Academia, Athens, Elections, History, Juries, Participation, Press, Proposals, Sortition, Theory | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 20 Comments »

Alexander Guerrero: The lottocracy

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Yoram Gat

As was mentioned here before, some time ago Prof. Alexander Guerrero and his ideas about the use of sortition in government were the subject of an article in The Boston Globe.

I thank Prof. Guerrero for alerting me to a recently published essay of his about sortition in the online magazine Aeon. The essay presents Guerrero’s proposal, but starts with an interesting analysis of the failure of elections and follows the proposal with an analysis of the promise of sortition.

The lottocracy
Elections are flawed and can’t be redeemed – it’s time to start choosing our representatives by lottery

[…]

The celebrity comic Russell Brand is gesticulating wildly, urgently, in a hotel room, under the bright lights of a television interview. ‘Stop voting, stop pretending, wake up. Be in reality now. Why vote? We know it’s not going to make any difference. We know that already.’ He is responding to his interviewer, Jeremy Paxman, who is taking him to task for never having voted.

We are brought up to think that voting is important, that it is a necessary condition of being a politically serious person, that we can’t complain about politics if we don’t vote. This last principle has echoes of the more reasonable parental admonition, said of lima beans or cauliflower: don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. But that principle is based on sound epistemological grounds: you might, for all you know, like cauliflower or lima beans. The voting thing is, as Brand argues, stupid. There are ways of participating in public affairs other than voting. For example, one can become a celebrity and call for revolution in a television interview.

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Filed under: Academia, Athens, History, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 47 Comments »

Epistemic Democracy and Sortition

Posted on January 28, 2014 by Ahmed R. Teleb

In order to spark a discussion of the significance or relevance of “epistemic democracy” to the use of randomly selected assemblies, juries, or other minipublics, I paste my (very positive) review of Democratic Reason. A short paper by David Estlund called “Introduction to Epistemic Approaches to Democracy” names at least four flavors of epistemic democracy. I believe Landemore’s is it’s “purest” form and therefore a good one to discuss.

How relevant or significant is the epistemic approach? How relevant or significant is the work on diversity and group decision making? How much does all this depend on empirical work not yet done by political scientists?

What empirical studies are out there that Kleroterians would recommend to other sortinistas and to the general public?

Review of Democratic Reason

This book follows the recent trend in democratic theory termed “epistemic democracy” in a novel way. Rather than relying on liberal philosophy or an analogy with science, it begins with results in mathematics, decision theory, psychology and cognitive science. It also mentions an evolutionary basis for the superiority of group decision making.
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Filed under: Academia, Books, Sortition, Theory | 49 Comments »

Democracy for the USA

Posted on January 19, 2014 by Yoram Gat

Bob Moore wrote to call attention to the website of Democracy for the USA – a new organization that advocates replacing elections with sortition. Democracy for the USA is based in Chicago and bills itself as an outgrowth of the Occupy Chicago movement aiming to rectify the deficiency of Occupy’s platform – the lack of a workable alternative to the electoral system.

THE BIG IDEA

The heart of democracy is the community meeting. Of course there are already neighborhood meetings, but these do not determine government policy; they are not effective instruments of popular power. In a democratic USA, by contrast, the people will exercise sovereign rule collectively through regular and frequent community meetings across the country. Unlike the political system now in place, there will be no bodies of politicians–a Congress, state legislatures, city councils–drafting our laws. There will be no lobbyists, no groups such as ALEC, usurping the process. Neither will there be a president, governors, or mayors directing the government. Instead, through Community Assemblies and Executive Councils staffed by ordinary citizens selected by lot, everyone will truly have an equal voice in policy-making and an equal opportunity of serving in government.

In essence it is really this simple. We will not get anywhere flailing away within the confines of the current political structures. We will be like rats running around in a maze, succeeding perhaps in making life a little less unbearable for some people in spots, but ultimately getting nowhere fast. In the meantime the earth will be consumed and we will find ourselves in a condition of serfdom or worse. We have no option: we have to make the necessary change from the current system to democracy.

The website links to Ted Aranda’s The Racket and the Answer, that is apparently based on his 2008 Ph.D. thesis.

Filed under: Academia, Sortition | 10 Comments »

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