Can sortition help fend off the threat of “broader prosperity and rising wellbeing”?

Posted on July 10, 2021 by Yoram Gat

“Democracy Rules”, a recently published book by Jan-Werner Müller, Roger Williams Straus Professor of Social Sciences at Princeton University, is another contribution to the “democratic crisis” genre:

They do not all look the same; plenty of differences are obvious. But group them together and they clearly make up one political family: Orbán, Erdogan, Kaczynski, Modi, undoubtedly ex-president Trump, perhaps Netanyahu, but Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro for sure. It is imperative to understand what is often described as a global trend in authoritarianism.

According to a review of the book in Financial Times, Müller is concerned about “performance legitimacy”:

As exemplified by China, that is the undemocratic bargain in which illiberal, one-party control is put up with in return for broader prosperity and rising wellbeing. Its appeal stirs fears that there are other attractive norms on offer and that history may not be cheering liberal democracy on.

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Filed under: Academia, Books, Elections, Press, Sortition | 5 Comments »

Defending Democracy

Posted on July 3, 2021 by peterstone

Anthoula Malkopoulou (Lund University) and I just published a paper in Constellations entitled “Allotted Chambers as Defenders of Democracy.” Here’s the first paragraph:

In this paper, we identify a problem—the problem of which actors should serve as defenders of democracy—and propose a solution to that problem—the creation of randomly selected citizen bodies, or allotted chambers (hereafter ACs). Having in place institutions that are tasked with democratic self-defense, is, we argue, a critically important pillar of democratic government, but its importance has often been neglected. This neglect is exacerbated by the evasive nature of the task that these democratic defense institutions are called to perform. Part of the problem is that the task of democratic self-defense is often mistakenly conceived as an ad hoc response to an occasional problem, rather than a routine task to which democracies should devote regular attention. Once the task of democratic self-defense is properly specified, the advantages of assigning this task to ACs, rather than courts or legislatures, become evident.

You can read it here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-8675.12580

Filed under: Academia, Applications, Elections, Sortition, Theory | 18 Comments »

Appointing public officials by sortition: Guest post from Paul Frijters

Posted on July 1, 2021 by Nicholas Gruen

A friend of mine, Paul Frijters posted the post below on the group blog we share ClubTroppo. It raises an important issue for me which is the potential use of sortition to institutionalise political independence. I reproduce it for readers’ interest here, though there are over twenty comments on his post at ClubTroppo which may be of interest.

oooOOOooo

Dear Troppodillians, lend me your critical eye. I ask you to consider the system of citizen-jury appointments I have in mind, and tell me how the vested interests would try to game it, ie why it would not work and whether the system can be improved. Bear with me as I describe what I have in mind.

Suppose that in 10 years time in Australia, there is a citizen-jury-system for appointments for the entire upper layer of the public sector. One jury, one top position. Politicians would still be in charge of policy and Budgets, but juries would appoint all the top people working in the public sector. The system would hold for all large entities receiving significant state funding:

  • Universities
  • large hospitals
  • heads of Government Departments
  • State Media
  • Arts Councils
  • Statistical Agencies
  • etc.

So every year, hundreds of top-positions would be decided upon by juries. Consider how this would go for, saying, the director of the ABC.

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Filed under: Proposals, Sortition | 55 Comments »

Two New Articles on Citizens’ Juries

Posted on June 30, 2021 by peterstone

Read two interesting articles on Citizens’ Juries today. The first, entitled “The Wisdom of Small Crowds: the Case for Using Citizens’ Juries to Shape Policy,” was written largely by researchers affiliated with the Brookings Institute.

The emphasis in the article is on the epistemic advantages of citizens’ juries (with, say, 12-24 members) and not on the descriptive representation provided by citizens’ assemblies or deliberative polls (with hundreds of members).

That article led me to another one, “Respect: A New Contract with the Middle Class”, also from Brookings researchers.

The emphasis in this article, in contrast to the previous one, is on citizens’ juries as a respectful way of involving citizens in the political process.

In scholarly circles, Citizens Juries are seen as an example of “participatory action research.” To us they are a tangible expression of partnership between state and citizen, and of democratic respect. To date, they have been the result of largely voluntary and philanthropic efforts, and patchy in terms of quality. We believe that Citizens Juries should be seen as an important part of the standard policymaking process.

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Jersey votes to let terminally ill end their lives

Posted on June 28, 2021 by keithsutherland

Andrew Gregory writes in the Sunday Times:

Jersey is set to become the first part of the British Isles to legalise assisted dying after a citizens’ jury voted overwhelmingly in favour of changing the law.

There is growing evidence that elected politicians are enthusiastic to outsource controversial decisions to randomly selected citizens juries. Here’s the the article (by the Sunday Times’ Health Editor).

A panel of islanders said last week it was in favour of ending the ban on assisted dying after an independent inquiry heard months of expert evidence and personal testimony. The Sunday Times, backed by politicians from all parties, some senior doctors and religious leaders, is campaigning to legalise assisted dying across the UK.

Last week 78 per cent of the citizens’ jury — 18 of the 23 islanders who had been selected at random — said assisted dying should be legal. The jury called for terminally ill islanders to be able to seek help to end their life, subject to safeguards. Eight in ten Britons support having a right to assisted dying, polls suggest.

As a crown dependency, Jersey can legislate on assisted dying independently of Britain. The jury’s recommendations will be followed by a full report in September. Jersey’s Council of Ministers will then lodge a proposition asking the States Assembly, the island’s parliament, to agree that assisted dying be legalised.

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Filed under: Applications, Deliberation, Juries, Sortition | 11 Comments »

Flags for sortitionism

Posted on June 23, 2021 by Oliver Milne

Every movement needs symbols, and the sortition movement is notably short on them. I’ve taken the liberty of putting together a couple! The design is a stylised version of the kleroterion – a 6×7 grid of 42 horizontal bars (because sortition is the answer!) The bars are 2×8 units, separated by gaps of 2 units from each other; the top and bottom borders are 9 units high, and the right and left borders are 12 units across, giving the flag as a whole a 2:1 aspect ratio.

As well as representing the kleroterion, the flag also resembles a swarm of ‘=’ signs. The mass of bars – more than can be counted in a casual glance – suggests the mass of people sortition is meant to empower and the mass of centres between which it aims to separate powers. Aesthetically, it turns the design into a texture, unique to the sortitionist flags.

I’ve done two colour variants – a red-and-black one for left-sortitionism, and a blue-and-white one for centrist/right-sortitionism. As I see it, the dividing line between the two is that left-sortitionism sees the conflict between power elites and the public as extending into the economic sphere, and believes sortitional-democratic mechanisms are the best or only way to achieve lasting victory for the latter, while centre- and right-sortitionism are concerned more narrowly with political power within a capitalist market economy. Where we agree is on the importance and legitimacy of sortitional-democratic mechanisms in government. By having multiple flags riffing on the same theme, we provide a template for a symbolic shorthand for sortitionism that can be used by other people – green sortitionists, anarcho-syndicalist sortitionists, and so on – thereby helping spread familiarity with the idea.

You can see an animated version of the left-sortitionist flag here.

Filed under: Sortition | Tagged: , , , | 22 Comments »

Okazaki: Appointment and Sortition

Posted on June 22, 2021 by Yoram Gat

Seiki Okazaki, Professor of political theory and comparative politics at Kyushu University, Japan, has written to share a summary of his new article, “Appointment and Sortition,” pubilshed in Law and Philosophy journal, No. 7, pp. 31–56.

I have recently published an article titled “Appointment and Sortition” in Japanese. It is one of the five contributions to Law and Philosophy, No. 7 (June 2021), which discuss ‘Just Lotteries’. Here I will summarize the arguments of my article.

As is well known, sortition has been generally discussed within the framework of ‘election and/or sortition.’ While I agree that the framework is still relevant, I am concerned that it limits the potential of sortition: Sortition tends to be applied mainly to the legislature and is mainly evaluated in terms of its contribution to democracy. If we liberate the concept of sortition from the framework, we can recognize two potentialities of sortition. First, the field of application is not limited to legislature: Sortition can be applied to administration and to the judiciary. Second, we will see that it has a liberal potential as well as a democratic potential: Sortition can contribute not only to citizen participation in power, but also to the restriction of political power (Oliver Dowlen’s book is important in this respect).
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Filed under: Academia, Elections, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 8 Comments »

Global Democracy

Posted on June 22, 2021 by John Burnheim

In a Democracy it is important that the decision on any public issue, be made by a community at the appropriate level. For example; local, regional, national, continental or global. It is imperative that at each level decision on a particular matter should be decided on the specific considerations that are relevant to each, not on the basis of power games.

The all-embracing range of nation-states is a very undesirable concentration of power. The concerns of each nation-state are all framed and public policy is evaluated in terms of their community, with only the slightest concern for other communities. In an era where almost all our most urgent problems can be understood and resolved only on a global scale, we have to look to decision making bodies on each matter in terms of its own nature. Some of those urgent problems are international but most of them are not a matter that is of national communities, but must be approached on a global perspective – global change, overpopulation, the world ecology, and many other matters effect us not as citizens of the state, but as citizens of the world. Nation states used to be self-sufficient and nobody worried about the earth as global. That is no longer the case.

It would be very dangerous to think we can treat this new situation simply on the federal model in which states hand over some matters to a superior body that met their common needs, by concentrating all the power for dealing with those problems in a single government. Federal powers are inevitably repressive of their constituents in many respects. People rightly fear the likely effects on a world state.

An alternative model – a central departure – from current assumptions, is to abandon the idea that everybody in a community should have an equal say on every matter of public concern. Certainly there are many matters in which there is solid ground for strict equality, but what is more often the case is that some important matters can be dealt with best by the those who are most affected either favourably or unfavourably by the activity in question.
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Filed under: Sortition | 3 Comments »

The Scottish Citizens Assembly recommends creating a House of Citizens

Posted on June 18, 2021 by Yoram Gat

Back in January, the Scottish Citizens Assembly has concluded its work and published its report. One of the sections in the recommendations chapter (PDF) is called “How decisions are taken” and contains various proposals involving the use of allotted bodies for political decision making. One of those recommendations is to

set up a ‘house of citizens’ to scrutinise government proposals and give assent to parliamentary bills. Membership should be time-limited and representative of the population of Scotland, similar to the way this CA was selected.

Having a permanent allotted body with oversight powers over government and (it seems) binding veto power over legislation is, I believe, an unprecedented proposal from an official constitutional reform body. Of course, the Scottish CA itself was merely advisory, so the adoption of its recommendations by the elected government is very far from certain.

A discussion of the report was held in the Scottish parliament in February. In the discussion John Mason of the Scottish National Party responded to the proposal:

The start of the members’ introduction says:

“We, the people of Scotland, present this report” to Government and Parliament. That is a big statement, suggesting that the assembly is either more representative of, or more in touch with, the general population than elected MSPs are. We should take that kind of statement seriously. The assembly is a cross-section of society, but it is not elected, so are we questioning democracy if we follow that logic?
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Filed under: Applications, Proposals, Sortition | 15 Comments »

Confessions of a Traitor to the Cause: Some reflections looking back from John Burnheim

Posted on June 16, 2021 by John Burnheim

As I struggle with my ninety-fifth year, I would like to beg forgiveness from the true believers in sortition.

Nearly forty years ago, in 1985, I published the book Is Democracy Possible? with the subtitle The Alternative to Parliamentary Democracy. The sortitionists believed that the alternative could only be to reject the electoral system and replace it by sortition. The will of the people could be expressed only by the people themselves, so they assumed I must support that view.

In fact what the book advocated was something different, but it was so far outside the mainstream that it attracted little attention. There is no point in offering answers to questions people, apart from a few anarchists, don’t ask. Everybody assumed that democracy was a matter of ensuring that the power of the state is invested in the nation’s people. Anybody who denied that was a traitor to democracy.

My contention was that the real problem was the concentration of all public goods in the powers of the state. Those who agreed with me on that point usually assumed that the only alternative was to manage the power of money to protect the rights of the owners of property — radical capitalism. Robert Nozick, in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), claimed that the public goods that the state did not provide could be provided on a moral basis by the rich. This was hardly a prescription for democracy. Clearly public goods are very important to human life. Many public goods are conventions that evolve from the interactions of people as unplanned byproducts. Our languages are the obvious example. However in complex technological societies, many of the goods we need to have at our disposal must involve rational choices between different possibilities that are accepted by all those who need them.

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

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