David Van Reybrouck presents Terry Bouricius’s proposal for sortition-based government system in an article in De Corresponedent. I don’t read Dutch and the automatic translation is pretty poor, but, if nothing else, the graphics describing the system are very nice. [English version of the diagram added below.]
Filed under: Press, Proposals, Sortition | 10 Comments »
Liberation has an interview with David Van Reybrouck by Béatrice Vallaeys about his sortitionist message.
An automatic translation of the preamble with my touch ups:
To counter distrust toward politics, Belgian historian and writer David Van Reybrouck advocates deliberative democracy, where allotted citizens lend a hand to elected officials.
“We despise elected officials, we venerate the elections.” Thus says David Van Reybrouck in a recently published essay, Against elections. Born in 1971 in Bruges, David Van Reybrouck strives with an undeniable talent to demonstrate “a fatigue of Western democracy”, but he also offers a remedy: instead of the appointment rituals where people are invited to cast their votes for a particular candidate, he proposes the creation of an allotted legislature. “The realities of our democracies disillusions people at an alarming rate. We must ensure that democracy does not wear itself out,” he says, convinced that elections are a cause of paralysis of democracy. His credo: not only the right to vote, but the right to speak.
Filed under: Books, Elections, Press, Proposals, Sortition | Tagged: David Van Reybrouck, democracy, elections, fatigue, sortition | 20 Comments »
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.
Continue reading
Filed under: Participation, Sortition | 21 Comments »
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: Deliberative poll, fishkin | Leave a comment »
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 »
A splendid piece with excellent contributions from Barbara and Peter. (I spoke to the producer and gave him a lot of pointers, but couldn’t do the interview because of a 3-week break in Tenerife)
I was delighted that most of the programme was devoted to lotteries for school and university places. The case for university entrance by lot was well made, as a difficult but inevitable method of choosing between generally well-qualified applicants.
However no mention was made of the highly successful Dutch medical school entry lottery which has stood up very well over the decades. Pity!
Lotteries for school places (seats in the US) produced a less satisfactory result. The obvious fairness of lottery and the unfairness of nearness-to-school were demonstrated.
But the result of using the lottery, especially in Brighton, is deemed ‘unsatisfactory’ because the desired social mixing has not been achieved.
This is entirely predictable, because entry to the lottery is voluntary. Only the determined (middle-classes) go for it. If a representative outcome didn’t happen, at least all parents/children had a rough equality of chance.
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Filed under: Applications, Distribution by lot, education, Press, schools | 10 Comments »
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 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 »
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: Madisonian Democracy, Robert Dahl | 7 Comments »
I was watching a talk by Michael Sandel yesterday dealing with his book What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (2012). He discusses the fact that people have to queue to attend congressional hearings, federal court hearings, etc. Apparently, you can hire someone to wait in line (all night, if need be) to save your place for you. There are even services that you can contact that specialize in this.
There is often discussion about whether lotteries and queues are interchangeable, equivalent, etc. It strikes me that this is a clear case where a lottery would be superior to a queue. (Not sure if they discuss lotteries at all in here, as I haven’t had the time to finish the video yet.)
Sandel’s talk can be found here:
Filed under: Academia, Applications, Books, Distribution by lot, Participation | 1 Comment »
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