Easton: Who would be a member of parliament?

Posted on May 12, 2015 by keithsutherland

A widespread public view (also prevalent on this blog) is that elected politicians are members of a remote political class, dedicated to pursuing their own interests at the expense of those who they purport to represent:

As the Times journalist Louis Heren said when asked what went through his mind when a politician shared a confidence, many members of the public hear an MP and think: “Why is this bastard lying to me?”

BBC home editor Mark Easton, however, takes a different perspective

Most politicians in my experience are driven by a sense of public service. Some of them advance ideas for improving common well-being that are far removed from my own. But that doesn’t make them self-serving.

Full post

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Belgiorno-Nettis: Power to the people, unnamed and unadvertised

Posted on May 12, 2015 by Yoram Gat

Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, founder of the new Democracy Foundation, writes in The Sydney Morning Herald:

[M]odern democracy was born of privilege and nurtured through class conflict. Conceived in partisan contest, initially as kings and barons, then as landed gentry in elections, the disenfranchised became chartists, then socialists, and the ultra-disenfranchised became communists. Even though the claims of the working class and the suffragettes have largely been resolved, the saga continues in a fossilised relic of divisiveness. Modern democracy rejected the Athenian ideal of equality, wherein the poor, as much as the rich, were automatically accorded a place in government.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Elections, Juries, Press, Sortition | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

The principle of distinction

Posted on May 9, 2015 by Yoram Gat

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Technology is not the missing ingredient for democracy

Posted on May 9, 2015 by Yoram Gat

An email I sent to the editors of The New Scientist:

To: “letters@newscientist.com”
Subject: Technology is not the missing ingredient for democracy

Dear Editors,

As you write (“A vote for change“, 25 April, 2015), people perceive that “the parties are all the same, the politicians are all the same, they are not like us”. This perception reflects the inherent elitist nature of the electoral process. Within the electoral process people and parties compete for power. Those who manage to win form a select group with those distinct characteristics that allowed them to win: better connections, more wealth, better organizational skills, more ambition, etc. Why would we expect those winners to represent the rest of us?

Since non-representativity is inherent to the electoral process, technology cannot change its nature. Technology may shift power within the system. Those groups that find out how to exploit new technology may be able to gain power at the expense of others who fail to do so. However, the elitist nature of elections will persist. Those new to power will again be a distinctive group with their own particular agenda and interests and will not represent the public at large.

Achieving a democratic system will require a radical change: moving away from our reliance on elections for selection people with power. Representative power can be created by relying on an established scientific method for obtaining representativity: random sampling. When parliament is selected as a random sample of the population then it would truly be “like us” and then it can then be expected to create policy that promotes the interests of the average citizen.

Best regards,

Yoram Gat

Filed under: Action, Elections, Participation, Press, Sortition | 4 Comments »

Socialism in the USA — and they love it!

Posted on May 2, 2015 by Conall Boyle

I’m sure most of you know about the lottery used to allocate newly qualifying players to the NFL football teams. But it unusual to see this described as ‘Socialism’ in the New Statesman, a major UK political magazine.

You can read the full article here (no paywall): The socialist principles at the heart of American Football.

Filed under: Distribution by lot, Employment, Sport | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Items of interest from America’s finest news source

Posted on May 1, 2015 by Yoram Gat

The Onion:

Authorities Believe Man Radicalized While Serving 18 Years In Congress

WASHINGTON—Saying that being confined in such a volatile environment was known to have devastating psychological repercussions, FBI officials reported Wednesday that Ohio man Patrick Kinsey had apparently become radicalized during his 18 years spent inside of the U.S. Congress. “We’ve uncovered evidence that leads us to believe this elected official became heavily influenced by hardline extremists and religious fanatics during his time serving in the country’s legislative branch,” said FBI spokesperson Irene Jessup, adding that the representative appeared to have fallen in with a powerful fundamentalist faction during his first days in the congressional chamber and quickly adopted their strict interpretation of a fringe ideology. Continue reading →

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Problem with posting comments – a workaround

Posted on April 26, 2015 by Yoram Gat

Update 2: If you are still having technical issues, please let me know by email.

Update: It seems the issue was associated with the blog’s theme. I have changed the theme and now the issue is resolved. Sorry if the new theme causes any disorientation. This is probably a temporary inconvenience.

There seems to be a problem with posting comments. This seems to affect only users who are logged in to the WordPress. If you are having this issue, log out of WordPress before you start commenting. You can then post the comment without logging in.

If you wish to post a comment while being logged in, that can be done by logging in after having started writing your comment using the little WordPress icon next to the comment box.

If this doesn’t get resolved soon, I’ll ask WordPress support for help.

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Mitchell: Democracy has failed! We are being called in like relief firemen, like the Home Guard. Where will it stop?

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Yoram Gat

Victoria Coren Mitchell writes about Ed Miliband’s proposal of having citizens ask the Prime Minister questions every week:

It’s Ed Miliband who is promising that, under his leadership, we would be allowed to go into the House of Commons and ask things. His wheeze is for prime minister’s questions to be extended, every Wednesday, to people who will be allowed to stand up and put whatever questions they like to the leader of the country, on behalf of the rest of us. I love this plan, save only my small confusion that this is what prime minister’s questions ALREADY IS.

I mean, tell me if I’ve missed the concept of our entire democracy; I speak as someone who could only manage grade C in GCSE chemistry (“Draw a picture of a test tube”, “A what?”); but I understood members of parliament to be people who go to Westminster and speak on behalf of the rest of us – specifically, when it comes to prime minister’s questions, in the form of putting questions to the prime minister.

It’s lovely to see politicians come out with clear ideas and policy, but Ed Miliband’s idea here is so massive that it is rather terrifying. Its implication is that our whole system has broken down. If “members of the public” are needed to go in on Wednesdays and ask questions on behalf of the nation, that can only mean members of parliament are not currently doing it. In which case, the entire constituency principle has fallen apart. Democracy has failed! We are being called in like relief firemen, like the Home Guard. Where will it stop? Will I get a phone call saying that, henceforward, I am to be home secretary every other Monday? Will you have to do the budget?

We all know that Westminster’s makeup is not precisely representative: it’s almost entirely white, overwhelmingly male, and filled increasingly with people who have spent their entire lives in politics. But I thought we were still, broadly, trusting them to operate on behalf of their constituencies and ask the questions that we would ourselves.

Filed under: Participation, Press, Proposals | Leave a comment »

Should we talk about “mini-publics” instead of sortition?

Posted on April 22, 2015 by davidschecter

I’ve had many conversations with people about sortition over the last several years, and I’ve never been happy with the term “sortition.” However, I’ve never found a satisfactory alternative. I suspect other people on this blog have also struggled with this problem.

I know of four terms, in English, to describe the selection process we’re talking about. Here are the problems I’ve encountered with each one:

Sortition – doesn’t have an immediate association with anything that people know about (for example, it’s not clearly related to the verb “to sort,” or to the noun “sort”). Also, it sounds like the word “sordid.”

Random selection – the people I’ve talked to intuitively dislike the idea of “random” anything (except random sampling in statistics) – let alone anything “random” connected to democracy (although, ironically, they do like random selection of jurors).

Selection by lot – sounds archaic, even Biblical.

Lottery (and related terms like Alex Guerrero’s “lottocracy”) – has negative connotations because it’s associated with gambling, and (in the United States) with educational lotteries (a few lucky families win, most lose).

What would be a better alternative? At the moment, I think it would be helpful to talk about “mini-publics.”
Continue reading →

Filed under: Sortition | Tagged: | 170 Comments »

Citizens assembly: Neither fair nor effective

Posted on April 21, 2015 by Yoram Gat

Zool Suleman writes in the Vancouver Sun:

In her opinion article Creating a better community plan, Rachel Magnusson extols the virtues of a citizens assembly that is in the process of recruiting participation by residents of Vancouver’s East Vancouver neighbourhood known as Grandview-Woodland, anchored by Commercial Drive.

Authorized by Vancouver city council, this assembly is in response to a community urban plan process that raised howls of protest in 2013 when, after months of supposed listening, residents heard that multiple towers were to be raised in their neighbourhood, some as high as 32 stories.

With the citizens assembly, Vancouver city council is again embarked on a road heavy on process and light on listening. Magnusson and her fellow consultants, who are being paid $150,000 or more out of a total civic allotment of $275,000, are very enamoured by their credentials. Potent terms such as democracy, insight and community are rhetorically utilized to instil trust in the process. Trust is the main issue. Trust between the city’s planning department and the citizens of Grandview-Woodland is sorely lacking.

Our Community Our Plan, a citizens group based in the neighbourhood, has tried repeatedly to advise Magnusson, members of the planning department and city council of the pitfalls in this process, but to no avail, so in this space let us try again.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Applications, Juries, Participation, Press | 11 Comments »

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