Alda

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Alda is an Icelandic organization promoting reform of Iceland’s government system, including the use of sortition in various ways. A member, Kristinn Már Ársælsson, has an article on the openDemocracy site:

After the crash that destroyed Iceland’s economy, Icelanders started to take an interest in new forms of political and economic governance.

[…]

In some respect, Icelanders have made their voices and interests heard in a way people of other countries have not. The protests after the crash got us a new government, the head of the central bank and the financial inspection agency were axed and a process to make a new constitution with the active involvement of the people was initiated.

[…]

These are important achievements. Things that other countries could learn from. But frankly, most of these developments were also controversial in Iceland and overall, they could have been executed more efficiently. For example: the idea that the general public should be actively involved in creating a new constitution is indubitably right. But this could have been better carried out. The selection process didn’t have the legitimacy it needed and random selection should have been used as well. The time given to the process was too short. There was not enough debate all over the country and in the media. Of course, in comparison with the constitution being rewritten by a small group of politicians in closed session, as usually happens, the new process was great. But it could have been better.

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Filed under: Elections, Proposals, Sortition | 20 Comments »

A Lottery for Eton school

Posted on November 10, 2012 by Conall Boyle

There must be a lottery fan at work in the Guardian! (There is of course. Our very own kleroterian Martin Wainwright.)

Unthinkable? The Eton raffle

It seems only fair to offer every 13-year-old the same chance of being immersed in a community entirely directed to helping them shine

A cursory glance at the background of the new establishment confirms that Eton is flourishing beyond Henry VI’s wildest ambitions. It’s not only the new archbishop of Canterbury, nor the next but one in line for the throne, nor of course the PM, his chief of staff, nor even the chief whipand the chancellor’s chief economic adviser. There are the actors (Eddie Redmayne, Dominic West, Damian Lewis), the diplomats, the mandarins and all those cabinet ministers. And the London mayor. The school hasproduced 19 of 53 prime ministers, but who would have expected such a 21st-century renaissance of privilege? Eton always boasted that it was comprehensive. The difference between it and, say, neighbouring Slough is the indefinite article and approximately £30,000 a year. This buys your lad world-class academic, artistic and sporting facilities plus star teachers drawn by top-dollar pay. For seven days a week, 24 hours a day, pupils are immersed in a community entirely directed to helping them shine. It seems only fair to offer every 13-year-old the same chance. All parents of 10-year-olds (yes, girls too) would be issued with a special 09- phone number. It would cost, say, £15 a call to defray lost fees, and the number could only be used once. Two hundred names would then be drawn from a top hat. For the next three years they’d prepare, learning to tie a white tie while mugging up on Latin so they too could cry “Floreat Etona”. Twenty years on, high offices might at last be filled from humble homes.

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News Limited sings the praises of sortition

Posted on November 10, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Vikki Campion writes in news.com.au about the wonders sortition can do for those communities looking for ways to save money:

Consulting the people – radical approach to democracy

THEY sacked sister cities, slashed mowing services and cut spending on glossy council brochures.

A pilot panel of 36 randomly selected mums, dads, students, retirees and pensioners have taken hold of Canada Bay Council’s budget for the next four years, slashing and burning inefficiencies and finding new revenue to address its mounting infrastructure backlog.

The pioneers were guinea pigs in an Australian-first method of community consultation which could be the future for cash-strapped councils which need to cut waste instead of raising rates.

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In praise of … drawing lots (in The Guardian UK)

Posted on November 7, 2012 by Conall Boyle

In praise of … drawing lots

Experts say that a legislature drawn from the people at random would be more representative, especially of minority communities

Forget campaigns that cost $5.8bn, and which ignore voters outside swing states and seek to reduce their number within them. None of those issues troubled the process by which Egypt’s 10 million Copts chose a new pope. First, over 2,000 clergymen and laymen shortlisted three candidates. Next, a blindfolded boy, himself chosen by lottery, picked out a plastic ball containing one of the three names, the idea being that his right hand doubles as the hand of God. Thus was Pope Tawadros II chosen. Experts say that a legislature drawn from the people at random would be more representative, especially of minority communities. Think it couldn’t happen here? Jury selection shows we are already happy to leave some crucial appointments to chance. And in May, in Runnymede’s Chertsey South and Rowtown ward, the Tory and the independent tied at 503 votes apiece. How was this democratic deadlock broken? By drawing lots, of course.

Filed under: Elections, Press, Religion, Sortition | 5 Comments »

Beyond the principle of distinction

Posted on November 3, 2012 by Yoram Gat

The primary negative effect of the electoral system is the obverse of its ostensible function. This effect is what Bernard Manin called “the principle of distinction” – the delegation of political power to people whose situation and outlook is significantly different from those of the population at large. As a result of this difference, the political elite serves interests that are different from, and often antithetical to, those of the average voter.

However, the electoral system is often presented by academic advocates and by electoral activists and politicians as providing a value to society above and beyond its function for selecting government officials. It supposedly encourages meaningful popular participation in government through voting, informed discussion, organized activism in electoral campaigns and awareness of the importance of compromise and coalition building. In fact, the electoral system encourages none of those patterns – on the contrary: it is antithetical to them. This is due to several characteristics of the electoral system that do not follow from the principle of distinction.

1. Politics as competition The electoral system is a mechanism in which groups compete for power. Allocation of power through competition has several related effects:
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Filed under: Academia, Elections, Participation, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Obligation and Consent

Posted on October 31, 2012 by keithsutherland

The last Paris sortition meeting was devoted to Bernard Manin’s argument that sortition was replaced by preference election on account of the natural right theory of consent. I challenged Manin on this with an argument based on Fishkin’s claim that the decision process of an allotted assembly modelled on a Deliberative Poll would be a proxy for the informed consent of all citizens. During the report presented to the recent Dublin meeting Peter Stone returned to this point by arguing, with Bentham, that the whole social contract theory of consent was just nonsense on stilts.

Peter recently referred me to Hanna Pitkin’s two-part paper on Obligation and Consent. The paper is hard work, but could be boiled down into just two claims:
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Filed under: Academia, Elections, Sortition, Theory | 51 Comments »

The Random Assignments of Legislators to Constituencies

Posted on October 29, 2012 by peterstone

Scott Wentland (Longwood University) and I are working on a paper in which we explore the idea of randomly assigning legislators to districts when they come up for reelection. The working paper has received some attention at the Washington Post‘s blog: Would Congress work better if legislators were randomly assigned?

Kudos to Scott for his well-thought-out words to the press. We hope to have a revised version ready before the year is out. When it’s done, we’ll let you know.

Filed under: Elections, Press, Proposals | 2 Comments »

Sanitization, Arrationality or should it be called Super-Humanity?

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Conall Boyle

Describing what a lottery can contribute to the process of choosing.

Sanitization, Arrationality or should it be called Super-Humanity?

Whatever it is used for, a lottery does something for the process.  Sanitizing  is Stone’s description; Arrationality is Dowlen’s.

I do not disagree with either definition, but feel that both are a bit lacking.

Sanitization implies a clean-up, removal of contaminating elements, but leaves open the question: Cleansed of what?

Arrationality, besides being a neologism, hence not easily understood, might also even be taken to mean some kind of crazy departure which abandons the only human attribute that truly sets us above the animals – the ability to use our brains to think about things.

So either incomplete or liable to be mis-understood; can I come up with something better?
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Filed under: Distribution by lot, Religion, Theory | 15 Comments »

Sortition is natural to democracy, as elections are to aristocracy

Posted on October 6, 2012 by Yoram Gat

An introductory presentation about sortition for a talk I’ll be giving to a general audience. Comments are welcome.

Filed under: Sortition | 52 Comments »

How Lotteries Affect Choices

Posted on September 29, 2012 by peterstone

Watched a TED talk this evening featuring a Stanford Business School Professor.  (We’ve never met.) He presented a study suggesting that people might have more difficulty with certain types of tasks if they are presented with a difficult choice in advance than if the choice is made for them–even if the choice is made for them randomly. The argument isn’t completely clear to me, but that’s par for the course for TED. The talk is here–

Baba Shiv: Sometimes it’s good to give up the driver’s seat

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