The San Francisco Chronicle: Fishkin promoting a citizens advisory council

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Lois Kazakoff, Chronicle Columnist, writes:

Concerned by California’s faltering government, a coalition of eight nonprofit good government groups conducted an experiment in June. They invited 435 Californians of every stripe from every corner of the state, from every political persuasion to spend three days in a Torrance hotel deliberating 30 proposals for government reform. The coalition raised $1 million to cover their travel costs.

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Filed under: Athens, Ballot measures, Opinion polling, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 8 Comments »

D.G. Martin: Replacing elections with lotteries

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Yoram Gat

D.G. Martin, the host UNC-TV’s “North Carolina Bookwatch,” writes:

There has to be a better way.

Some of us reached that conclusion after discussing the mess our congressional and legislative governing systems have come to.

[…]

How could we find a system that frees our elective representatives from the servitude of full-time fundraising, from the draining of energy and spirit that go with permanent campaigns, and from the tribal commitments to political caucuses and parties? How could we free them from these things so they could spend full time working on legislation to make our state and nation better?

Somebody asked, what about a lottery? Why not just select our representatives by lottery?

That suggestion sounded like a joke. At first.
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Filed under: Athens, Press, Sortition | 4 Comments »

How to design a democratic legislative system – order of questions

Posted on January 12, 2012 by davidschecter

I think it will help us, and could help many other people, to have a useful order of questions for designing a democratic legislative system. I’m not saying “the right order of questions,” or even “the most useful order” – only “a useful order.” I’m also not suggesting that we should follow this order in our conversations. Instead, I think it could act as a useful reference point for those times when someone says, “Wait a minute – it’s premature to talk about x before we’ve settled y.”

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

  1. Criteria – What criteria should define a “democratic” and “good” legislative system?
  2. Categories of actors – Which broad categories of actors (e.g. all the people, allotted representatives, elected representatives, all-purpose versus limited-purpose representatives, staff) should play important roles in the legislative process? What roles should they play?
  3. Activities – What are the main activities that must (or should?) be carried out in a democratic legislative process, and in what order? In some cases order will matter, in others it won’t.
  4. Bodies and offices – Which specific bodies and offices (e.g. allotted chamber, single issue panels) should carry out each activity, playing what roles?
  5. Processes – What processes should be used for each activity?

What do you think? I look forward to your ideas, and I’m hoping that maybe together we can create a simple structure that will not only help us, but many others as well.

Filed under: Participation, Sortition | 60 Comments »

Democracy and Social Justice

Posted on January 12, 2012 by keithsutherland

The new special issue of the journal Studies in Social Justice may be of interest to this forum, although only one of the papers (my own) is specifically on sortition. Full text freely available on line.

VOL 5, NO 2: SPECIAL ISSUE: DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Guest Editor: Bob Brecher

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: Democracy and Social Justice, Bob Brecher

Articles

Property, Propriety and Democracy, Mark Devenney
Jürgen Habermas and Bush’s Neoconservatives: Too Close for Comfort?, Vivienne Matthies-Boon
Inclusion and Participation: Working with the Tensions, Gideon Calder
The Two Sides of the Representative Coin, Keith Sutherland
The Dilemma of Democracy: Collusion and the State of Exception, Mark McGovern
Derrida, Democracy and Violence, Nick Mansfield

Filed under: Sortition | 6 Comments »

Guardians of the future

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Green ‘super jury’ idea proposed to protect the future environment
by ClickGreen staff

A new report has been launched proposing the creation of a green ‘super jury’ of ordinary people to act as guardians for the country’s future.

The ‘Guardians of the Future’ report by University of East Anglia philosopher Dr Rupert Read calls for radical constitutional reform to safeguard the basic needs of future generations.

He proposes that a council of randomly picked members of the public, like a jury, should be placed above the House of Lords to oversee all government decisions – with the power of veto to stop legislation which threatens the interests of future generations.

Filed under: Proposals, Sortition | 2 Comments »

George A. Christos: Democracy by random selection

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Yoram Gat

The abstract of George Christos’s essay Democracy by random selection is:

Abstract: We propose a non-political parliamentary system where the parliamentarians are randomly chosen from the public, using computer technology, and there are no elections. In this ‘random parliament’, government is by ordinary people with proportional representation by all groups including women, men, workers, managers, old people, young people, and so on. The random parliament is the closest thing to true democracy that is currently attainable. Local government may be a suitable place to trial the idea of random representation.

Filed under: Proposals, Sortition | 20 Comments »

French Political Scientist Advocates Sortition

Posted on January 7, 2012 by tbouricius

The English version of the French web site “Books and Ideas” has an interview with Loïc Blondiaux about the increasingly apparent undemocratic nature of traditional electoral democracy. He says in part…

Elections do not always determine new directions, but they allow retroactive democratic oversight. So, in my opinion, there can be no democracy without elections, but a democracy in which, in addition to elections, random selection is practiced along with other forms of consultation and public debate, would start to resemble a real democracy.

Filed under: Press, Sortition | 18 Comments »

2011 review – sortition-related events

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Yoram Gat

In response to my call for suggestions of mention-worthy occurrences relevant to the topics discussed on this blog, George Tridimas wrote to let me know that his paper Constitutional choice in ancient Athens: The rationality of selection to office by lot has made for a couple of weeks the list of 10 most downloaded articles from the SSRN repository in the categories of Welfare Economics & Collective Decision-Making, of History of Political Thought and of Models of Political Processes.

To me, two significant sortition-related developments that occurred this year, happened at two opposite sides of the mass-elite spectrum.

On the elite side, the newDemocracy foundation in Australia has been active in promoting policy juries and successful in garnering some press attention (1, 2). The main force behind this foundation, both intellectually and financially, it appears, is Luca Belgiorno-Nettis.

On the other hand, there have been several attempts to promote and use sortition associated with the global protest movement – the so-called Arab Spring, the Indignados, the Occupy Wall Street movement, etc. Back in February, Sa’ada Abu Bakr suggested sortition to the Egyptian revolutionaries. In June, the Greek activists in Syntagma Square were using randomization to distribute speaking turns. The idea of citizen councils appointed by lot was also featured in some May 15th platforms in Spain and in September a party which had the implementation of sortition as its main goal was organizing there. That party ultimately failed to qualify for the ballot. Finally, the People’s Senate Party promotes sortition in Canada.

Happy New Year, and best wishes for 2012.

Filed under: meta, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 14 Comments »

Legislative activities tree diagram

Posted on December 29, 2011 by davidschecter

I’m still thinking about the basic legislative activities, and the order of them.

In a previous post, I proposed a set of activities that drew distinctions between choosing issues to address, deciding the objectives and criteria for laws about each issue, and proposing laws. Despite what I said before, I now think this does represent a sequence of activities, but it’s an order of logic, and not meant to dictate the actual order in practice. For example, choosing issues is logically prior to writing bills, but often issues are discovered or clarified through the process of writing bills.

Terry pointed out that while there is value in this logical order, in actual practice advocates are likely to jump immediately into proposing laws, and that the lawmaking process should allow for this. So I wrote, “there ought to be a way to get the benefits of both the top-down and bottom-up kinds of thinking.”
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Filed under: Participation | 4 Comments »

Thomas Fleming: [W]e need to adopt the model of the ancient Athenian democracy

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Yoram Gat

Thomas Fleming advocates sortition in the Daily Mail, even though, with the sordid state of the national character, he seems unsure whether it would do any good:

If Americans ever needed a clear refutation of Churchill’s fatuous aphorism on democracy–an institution he, more than any man of his time, knew how to manipulate to his own benefit–they have it now. If modern democracy cannot do better than the presidential candidates of the two parties, we need to adopt the model of the ancient Athenian democracy, which selected political leaders by lot.

Even a national presidential lottery would not save us. We have the leaders we deserve, leaders who reflect the American character. American voters like to complain that they are dissatisfied with the politicians they elect, but Bush, Obama, McCain, and Gingrich are the political face Americans see when they look in their mirrors.

Filed under: Athens, Press, Sortition | 4 Comments »

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