A theory of sortition, part 1 of 2

Posted on September 28, 2013 by Yoram Gat

Mirroring

In his Introduction to A Citizen Legislature by Ernest Callenbach and Michael Phillips, Peter Stone commends the authors for doing “an excellent job of presenting the idea of a representative House — a House that will truly be “of the people” — as an inspiring piece of democratic reform.” On the other hand, such inspiring presentation does not meet the philosopher’s standard of a good argument: “Their [C&P’s] efforts to defend their proposal, however, have a number of shortcomings.”

Stone rejects the implied argument that descriptive representation is a desirable end. Descriptive representation is a means, not an end, Stone argues: “descriptive representation is desirable because — and only to the extent that — it contributes to the goal of good lawmaking.” And while some may reject this point of view, and argue that the symbolism of microcosm is indeed an end in itself, I think that would be an evasion of the main point. The essential function of government is to generate good policy – i.e., policy that promotes the interests of the population – and, as Stone asserts, sortition is a useful tool if and only if it can be expected to produce a government that generates good policy. (By “interests” I mean to encompass whatever a person, or a group of people, perceive, upon informed and considered reflection, as important or desirable.)

Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Books, Elections, Sortition, Theory | 35 Comments »

Random Promotion at US Universities?

Posted on September 8, 2013 by Conall Boyle

Perhaps this provides part of the explanation of random promotion policies (equivalent to random wages) used by some universities.

Is this true? Do some US universities really promote faculty staff at random?

Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Distribution by lot, Theory | Tagged: , , | 12 Comments »

Two New Publications

Posted on September 2, 2013 by peterstone

I’ve recently published two articles that might prove of interest. First, I wrote a review essay dealing with the Imprint Academic series on Sortition and Public Policy. It’s just appeared in the latest issue of Redescriptions: Yearbook of Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory (volume 16, 2012/2013). It’s been in the pipeline for a while, and so regrettably does not cover the latest offerings in the series (such as Conall Boyle’s interesting book on educational lotteries). The issue is at https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/42047

Second, Comparative Education Review just published a symposium on “Fair Access to Higher Education: A Comparative Perspective” (volume 57, no. 3, August 2013). It contains a paper of mine entitled “Access to Higher Education by the Luck of the Draw.” The paper deals with university admissions in general and the Irish case in particular. It’s available on JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/669235, but only if your library/university subscribes.

Sorry to be incommunicado. I’ve been away for much of the summer, and have a very busy term ahead of me, but I hope to rejoin the conversation soon.

Filed under: Academia, Books, Distribution by lot, House of Lords, Proposals, schools, Sortition, Theory | 13 Comments »

Sortition Research

Posted on September 1, 2013 by Ahmed R. Teleb

Where is sortition (both its history and potential) being studied?

[Many researchers have been mentioned before on Equality by Lot, and it would be helpful to have a current list in one place.]

Filed under: Academia, Experiments, schools, Sortition, Theory | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

Ph.D. thesis: Kleros & Demos

Posted on August 31, 2013 by avergne

Dear all,

I started to work on sortition for more than 11 years ago. When I started, I felt really alone because it seemed that this topic interested no one on earth. At the same time this was quite exciting (“I am the first one!” feeling). But I quickly encountered many people having the same interest, and it was a very good feeling. Today it seems that the idea of random selection in politics gains growing interest not only in academia but also in the political world.

I hope that this trend will go on.

In the meantime I was able to start and finish a Ph.D. thesis. I wanted to share with you the weblink where you can download it. I wrote it under the supervision of Gil Delannoi and Gerhard Göhler at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris and the Freie Universität Berlin.

The English abstract reads as follows:

The field of investigation of this thesis is a corpus of texts containing proposals for the intro­duction of random selection schemes in politics. The thesis questions the relevance and coher­ence of these texts: do the publications form a theoretical ensemble that could be labelled as a “theory of aleatory democracy”? If so, do the expectations raised by its supporters remain merely utopian or do they stand the test of the political practice?

The  quantitative and qualit­ative analysis of the text corpus leads to the conclusion that we are in fact dealing with the emergence of a theory and that the analysed authors develop a common argumentative frame and common expectations: the use of random selection in politics could be a solution to over­come the crises of liberal democracies. Its use would allow a better formal and substantial representation, a qualitatively and quantitatively increased participation, and give birth to a new, more procedural and dynamic form of legitimacy. These expectations are then tested with the help of two mini-publics, that is to say, experiments in participatory democracy that use random selection to recruit their participants: a Planungszelle and a Citizens’ Jury. The qualitative empirical investigation shows that most of the expectations are fulfilled, although only in a limited geographical, social and political frame. These results raise the double ques­tion of the conditions for the realization of the theory and of the possible improvement of the mini-public mechanisms through institutional engineering.

The text is in French and there is a short version in German.

I hope this thesis will support our discussion on sortition. And I will try to post from time to time to keep you informed of the projects I do with Missions Publiques. We are designing and facilitating Mini-Publics and there are a lot of interesting developments there.

Greetings,

Antoine Vergne

 

Filed under: Academia, Books, Participation, Theory | 5 Comments »

The Eyes of the People: Democracy in an age of spectatorship

Posted on July 28, 2013 by keithsutherland

Jeffrey Edward Green’s book of the above title (OUP, 2010) is a tightly-argued, highly-readable and courageous attempt to defend the indefensible – a normative theory of passive spectator democracy. The book swims against the current of democratic theory by claiming that all other normative theories (including the deliberative and participatory variants) are doomed and misguided attempts to establish democracy as the voice of the people (vox populi, vox dei). Green is agnostic as to whether this was possible in classical Athens, but it’s entirely impossible in large modern states. However as well as being impossible, it’s undesirable, as most citizens have no settled political views; besides which, electoral democracy, as Dahl famously put it, establishes rule by minorities. So much for the general will.

Green’s alternative is the ‘ocular’ tradition whereby the people don’t speak, they hold a watching brief over the political elite. The theory has its origins in the writings of Max Weber and was developed (and distorted) by Carl Schmidt and Joseph Schumpeter. Unlike with Bernard Manin’s ‘audience democracy’, Green makes no attempt to argue that the current ‘metamorphosis’ of representative government maintains any of the putative virtues of the classical theory of democracy (partial autonomy of representatives, trial by discussion etc), it is simply a way of identifying political charisma (a Weberian sociological term). Green denies that elections are an indirect way for citizens to influence public policy and agrees with Schumpeter that they are simply a way of selecting political leaders, although it is hard to understand Winston Churchill’s 1945 defeat by the decidedly uncharismatic Clement Attlee in any way other than the aggregation of policy preferences.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Elections, Initiatives, Proposals, Theory | 1 Comment »

A common man must ask a man of influence for whom he must vote

Posted on June 30, 2013 by Yoram Gat

Lawrence Lessig points to a quote of Patrick Henry at the Virginia Ratifying Convention in which he points at the weakness of the virtue-based justification for elections:

It has been said, by several gentlemen, that the freeness of elections would be promoted by throwing the country into large districts. I contend, sir, that it will have a contrary effect. It will destroy that connection that ought to subsist between the electors and the elected. If your elections be by districts, instead of counties, the people will not be acquainted with the candidates. They must, therefore, be directed in the elections by those who know them. So that, instead of a confidential connection between the electors and the elected, they will be absolutely unacquainted with each other. A common man must ask a man of influence how he is to proceed, and for whom he must vote. The elected, therefore, will be careless of the interest of the electors. Continue reading →

Filed under: Elections, History, Theory | 3 Comments »

Machiavelli and the principle of distinction

Posted on June 3, 2013 by Yoram Gat

In chapter XLVII of his Discourses, Machiavelli tells two stories:

The Roman People having become annoyed with the Consular name, and wanting to be able either to choose as Consuls men of the Plebs, or to limit their authority, the Nobility in order not to discredit the Consular authority by either change, took the middle course, and were content that four Tribunes with Consular power be created, who could come from the Plebs as well as from the Nobles. The Plebs were content with this, as it seemed to them to destroy the Consulship and give them a part in the highest ranks. From this a notable case arose, that when it came to the creation of these Tribunes, and they could have selected all Plebs, the Roman people chose all Nobles. Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Elections, History, Theory | 12 Comments »

On a Lighter Note…

Posted on May 20, 2013 by peterstone

On a Lighter Note…

Google alerts brought this to my attention. The same paper (with no author indicated) can be found at http://www.handmenotes.com. At first, I thought someone had written some kind of working paper on my work. But it looks like this is intended for use by students trying to cheat on a term paper assignment. I had no idea that enough professors were assigning my work as to justify circulating a paper like this. I’m deeply touched.

Filed under: Academia, Distribution by lot, Theory | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

Economic Juries — whatever next?

Posted on May 4, 2013 by Conall Boyle

Daniel McFadden of UC Berkley produced a paper in 2011 which is mostly about what he calls Economic Juries. This is just like the German CJs that we have heard about previously from Antoine Vergne which were tasked with deciding whether to go ahead with new public infrastructure projects. So it’s interesting to see economists picking up on this idea.

McFadden’s paper has the anodyne title The Human Side of Mechanism Design, and you can read the paper on my website www.conallboyle.com

I found it the paper his website, but academics could obtain it from Athens. McFadden is one of the better guys, an economist who understands a bit about real humans.

The main ‘mechanism’ he investigates is the use of a jury to decide issues of public spending. Apart from a passing reference to deciding if a new park should be established at Boulder, Colorado, no actual examples of Economic Juries are given. But the theoretical reasons for using an EJ, they methods that could be used to inform them and elicit their real opinions are explored — in other words can a jury work? can it decide correctly? can it evade the human failings of bias, framing, short-termism etc. etc.?

Warning! This paper is a bit wonkish (to use  Krugman’s phrase).

So CJs (or EJs to use McFadden’s term): They would be an alternative to the democratic, elected representatives deciding. Would EJs work better? At what? Discovering the General Will perhaps???

Filed under: Applications, Juries, Opinion polling, Participation, Theory | 3 Comments »

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