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Full text (uncorrected draft: not for citation).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 »

Dahl: After the Revolution

Posted on December 15, 2015 by keithsutherland

I’ve been re-reading Robert Dahl’s 1990 book and a section struck me as particularly relevant to some of the debate on this forum:

Perhaps the greatest error in thinking about democratic authority is to believe that ideas about democracy and authority are simple and must lead to simple prescriptions. . . . if you think there are simple prescriptions, then we cannot hope to understand one another. (p.73)

Dahl’s approach, as always, offers a rich combination of historically-informed theoretical analysis, comparative political science and pragmatic policy proposals. From the political theory perspective, he argues that democracy involves a trade-off between personal choice, competence, economy, and the principle of affected interests. Although ‘primary’ (assembly) democracy is generally viewed as the gold standard, considerations of scale mean that other ostensibly non-democratic mechanisms will often lead to a form of democracy that better manages the trade-off than an attempt to approximate the ideal. Polyarchy may well be a poor approximation of ideal democracy but it’s descriptively accurate and a lot better than actual historical alternatives (various forms of oligarchy and dictatorship).

The error of thinking about democracy as a a single form has led to catastrophe in the past; I fear it will lead to disaster in the future.

Dahl’s historical examples include the excesses of the Athenian demokratia, Jacobinism and the attempts to introduce ‘real’ democracy in the former Soviet Union — where the supposed rule of the people’s soviets in effect meant the dictatorship of the leaders of the vanguard party. From the perspective of the future, Dahl spends longer considering sortition (pp. 122-5) than the mere half page in Democracy and Its Critics, but his treatment is cautious — participation by lot should be restricted to selecting advisory councils for elected officials. This is because sovereignty by sortition would contravene principles of personal choice, competence and economy. In coming to this conclusion he ignores the Greek distinction between magistrates and juries and also fails to capitalise on the dual role of polyarchic officials (policy advocacy and judgment), thereby ignoring the potential of sortition in the latter function without undermining his three principles.

P.S. Andre [or any other Rousseau scholar]: Dahl claims (p.139, footnote 10) that Rousseau ‘strongly objects to the selection of representatives by lot’. Is this true? One might well deduce that this was the case, in that he insisted that all citizens should participate in the sovereign assembly, but did he anywhere actually consider sortition for the legislature? Dahl argues that Rousseau’s throwaway suggestion for spatial rotation in Social Contract Ch.XIII (moving the capital alternately from one village to another) was incompatible with his hostility to sortition in the legislative assembly, but to my mind the possibility of spatial rotation would mean that a statistically-representative assembly would not be ruled out as a matter of principle. After all the Greeks did not see any incompatibility between law-making by assembly vote (5th century) and law-making by the vote of an allotted subset (4th century) — the latter was no less democratic than the former.

Reference
Robert A. Dahl, After the Revolution? Authority In a Good Society. Revised edition (1990), Yale University Press.

Filed under: Academia, Juries, Sortition, Theory | 6 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.
Continue reading →

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.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, History, Participation, Press, Sortition, Theory | 48 Comments »

Creating a Framework for Sortition

Posted on September 1, 2015 by roslynfuller

Dr. Roslyn Fuller is a lecturer in International Law based in Ireland. She is a regular contributor to Irish and international media on world trade, privacy, whistle-blowing and the War on Terror. A great fan of the classics, she has been researching democracy for over a decade and is the author of Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed its Meaning and Lost its Purpose, to be published by Zed Books in November 2015. [Welcome to Equality-by-Lot! -YG]

When I first started researching ancient, democratic Athens, I was struck by the layers of randomness built into the political system. Sure, it wasn’t a utopia, but under Athenian democracy wresting control of the decision-making process was at least a difficult and continuous task, because the thrust of the system worked against what Robert Michels would have termed ‘the Iron Law of Oligarchy’.

Lottery selection for most office-holders, as well as for Athens’ enormous juries was one aspect of that randomness. The more I read, the more I was impressed not just with the practice of sortition, but the way the Athenians went about it: dropping their pinakia (identity-tickets) into baskets, having them shaken up, the presiding official randomly drawing a ticket, that person becoming the pinakia-inserter and in turn randomly drawing tickets, dropping the kyboi, or coloured balls, randomly down the kleroterion’s funnel. The Athenians were clearly determined to bastard-proof their system. In my view, their paranoia was justified, and represented nothing more than healthy respect for the criminal (or oligarchic) mind.

But there’s not much point in creating such a fool-proof sortition system if the overarching politics doesn’t change as well. As we all know, in Athens the process of sortition didn’t run in parallel to a sophisticated and expensive electoral system; it ran in parallel to the Assembly. Whatever else one may want to say about Assembly, it was the national focal point for the issues of the day. Assembly attendance was also somewhat random (if self-selecting) in that it generally depended on who showed up of their own volition. A rhetor never looked out on the exact same Assembly twice, and while the ‘professional’, often affluent, rhetors certainly wielded a great deal of influence, they never did know when some unknown citizen would pop out of the woodwork and carry the day against them. Power was possible; power consolidation more of a challenge.

It was this Assembly that was down with sortition in its various forms. It’s hard to look at Athens and see how sortition could have existed side-by-side with the kind of entrenched and powerful electoral politics practised today.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Elections, Participation, Sortition, Theory | Tagged: , , | 98 Comments »

Sortition and Legitimate Coercion

Posted on March 30, 2015 by Ahmed R. Teleb

In an address called “What is Political Science For?” at the 2013 American Political Science Association’s Annual Meeting, APSA President Jane Mansbridge mentioned sortition as one of the new areas being studied for grounding legitimacy. She referenced Fishkin & Ober in her footnote to the statement. The thrust of her talk is that political scientists (democratic theorists especially) should turn their focus away from preventing tyranny and towards creating “legitimate coercion” because the world is facing rather formidable collective action problems that cannot be solved otherwise. Together with Waldron’s “Political Political Theory” article it leads me to believe that there is some movement in the field towards the questions that we often discuss here on Equality by Lot. Below are some excerpts from the full article found here.

This address advances three ideas. First, political science as a discipline has a mandate to help human beings govern themselves. Second, within this mandate we should be focusing, more than we do now, on creating legitimate coercion. In a world of increasing interdependence we now face an almost infinite number of collective action problems created when something we need or want involves a “free-access good.” We need coercion to solve these collective action problems. The best coercion is normatively legitimate coercion. Democratic theory, however, has focused more on preventing tyranny than on how to legitimate coercion. Finally, our discipline has neglected an important source of legitimate coercion: negotiation to agreement. Recognizing the central role of negotiation in politics would shed a different light on our relatively unexamined democratic commitments to transparency in process and contested elections. This analysis is overall both descriptive and aspirational, arguing that helping human beings to govern themselves has been in the DNA of our profession since its inception.

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Filed under: Academia, Sortition, Theory | Tagged: , , , , | 9 Comments »

Paul Rosenfeld: The Extinction of Politics

Posted on March 21, 2015 by Yoram Gat

A post by Paul Rosenfeld.

To readers of this blog the idea that random selection should play a central role in government may seem like common sense, but clearly it’s not. 341 followers (344 at last count!) represent a statistically invisible group on a planet of 7 billion. We aren’t a minority and we aren’t a fringe group (not even a lunatic fringe); from the perspective of politics we simply don’t exist (at least not in the U.S.). Our sense of things is anything but common, it is exceedingly rare. If we ever hope to see this thinking converted into action that will have to change. Somehow we must convince enough people to put our movement on the map. For this, we will need a highly effective argument, because the people we wish to persuade are living under the thrall of a myth.

The average citizen of our globe believes fervently in something which they call “The Democratic Process”. Voting is its central tenet. No matter how often it fails them they rarely waver in their devotion. And like true believers, fundamentalists even, each further obstacle is taken as a sign; the path is righteous but rocky, we must purify our faith and trudge ever onward. When we are finally worthy, the Democratic Process will at last deliver us. The road to true reverence has been long. Following the rise of the Third Estate there came the fall of property qualifications; then the secret ballot; voting by freed slaves; direct election of Senators; the ballot initiative and finally women were included. None of this brought deliverance and so today’s mantra is “corporate cash”. If only we can somehow stay the floodgates of corporate influence which pervert the process of “True” Democracy, then at long long last we will finally enter the promised land.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Elections, Theory | Tagged: , | 148 Comments »

Down with Elections! Part 5

Posted on February 3, 2015 by campbellwallace

DOWN WITH ELECTIONS!

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

PART 5

The “Loose-Leaf” Approach

I have touched on the fact that elected politicians may become “locked into” a bad policy. (see §20 above) It is not simply a question of damage to the ego, or the embarrassment of publicly changing their stance after several TV or newspaper interviews. There may be the inertia of a whole political and publicity machine brought into being to push a policy which was once thought to be important for gaining office, and which later turns out to be doubtful or disastrous. (Examples include climate change denial, the “war on drugs”, and the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.)

Changing policy means that the whole team of bullocks: tame journalists and editorialists, other politicians of the same party, public relations staff, and grass-roots party members have to change direction as well. A large part of the public may need to be convinced, not only of the need for the change, but also of the politicians’ sincerity in advocating first one policy, then another. Some sources of party finance may dry up overnight and other sources may have to be found. To make the change, some heads may have to roll, and there will not be many volunteers to rush in to make the sacrifice. All this is risky politically, and time-consuming.

An Assembly chosen by lot will not suffer from these disadvantages, of course. Members will be quite free to change their minds, and in any case, with a secret ballot, there is no need for anyone else even to be aware of a change of mind. This will permit errors of judgement to be quickly corrected, and policies which are no longer desirable because of changed circumstances to be altered.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Elections, Sortition, Theory | 9 Comments »

Down with Elections! Part 4

Posted on January 30, 2015 by campbellwallace

DOWN WITH ELECTIONS!

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

PART 4

Theoretical Considerations and Explanations

Athens

Proponents of sortition usually refer to the fact that it was used in Athens, and sometimes use the Athenian constitution as a yardstick for comparing other proposals. There is no attempt here to reproduce or imitate the Athenian democracy, which had several features which would now be considered objectionable, among which are:

  1. The exclusion of the majority of persons living under the control of the government from any say in that government. One can argue about the relative numbers of adult male citizens, adult female citizens, metics (metoikoi, foreigners living and working in Athens) children of citizens, and slaves, but clearly the adult male citizens were a small minority of those affected by the laws which they alone could vote on. Amongst adult male citizens, the Athenian constitution was eminently democratic, amongst those who were subject to its laws, it was oligarchic.
  2. The lack of separation of justice and legislature.
  3. Ostracism. It was not necessary to commit a crime to be ostracised and exiled, merely to be feared.
  4. Dokimasia. This was an examination, not to determine whether a citizen was competent, but whether he was eligible for office, and if so, whether his political views were offensive (usually meaning that he had oligarchic sympathies).

    5. Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Fiction, History, Juries, Sortition, Theory | 33 Comments »

The Blind Break, the Invisible Hand and the Wisdom of Crowds: The political potential of sortition

Posted on September 12, 2014 by keithsutherland

[Update: Commenting was accidentally initially off, enabled now.]

Draft paper:

Abstract: Following (Waldron, 2013), this paper draws a distinction between ‘social’ and ‘political’ variants of sortition, focusing principally on the latter. The two leading theories – the ‘blind break’ and the ‘invisible hand’ of descriptive representation – rely on different principles, focus on different levels of analysis (individual and collective) and have little in common. The attempt by epistemic democrats to bridge the gap via small-group face-to-face deliberation fails on account of the lack of concern for statistical representativity and the lack of distinction between the different roles of advocacy and judgment (proposing and disposing) in political decision-making, sortition only being relevant to the latter function.

This is derived from the paper that I presented at the recent IPSA Montreal conference, where I was encouraged to write it up and submit to a journal. I’d really appreciate comments and criticisms via this forum. Here’s the full draft (click the download button on the right).

Filed under: Academia, Sortition, Theory | Tagged: , , | 55 Comments »

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