I am obliged to confess that I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.
-William F. Buckley, Jr., Rumbles Left and Right: A Book about Troublesome People and Ideas (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1963), p. 134.
I know this quote has been mentioned here before, but this is the first time I’ve ever had in my hand an actual primary source by Buckley for it. Thanks to Ralph Keyes’ The Quote Verifier (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2006) for directing me to it.
Greg requested an outline of my structural proposals for the introduction of sortition, so here goes. It’s a talk I gave recently to the University of Brighton Philosophy Society. The focus is the UK parliament, but the principles are more general.
It’s become a commonplace that our political arrangements are in bad shape. Party leaders know we’ve twigged that there is no connection between manifesto commitments and actual policies, yet for some reason we don’t call their bluff – those of us who still turn out to vote give politicians the benefit of the doubt by maintaining that polite fiction called democracy. Party membership has declined catastrophically since the middle of the last century – parties now do little more than reflect what focus groups say we want, rather than continuing to stand for a particular manner of thinking, or specific socio-economic interests. So what is the point of the party?
The argument that I want to put forward this evening is that tinkering around with the electoral system by introducing AV or proportional representation is just re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. What is needed is clear thinking, we need to bring to bear the tools of the philosopher via:
A clear analysis of the relevant concepts and categories
A thorough understanding of the history of political thought
With the imminent arrival (?) of elective democracy in Egypt and other Arab countries, those who claim that
For better or for worse the immediate future, politically speaking, (by which I mean, the next 30 or 40 years) belongs to the parliamentary democracies
(which is more of less what Fukuyama predicted as ‘The End of History’). You can read more about this, and the extended and interesting range of comments it provoked at Crooked Timber (an excellent blog btw)
No mention of what might come after elections, only that elections were somehow the end point of history. So I added a comment as follows: Continue reading →
One of the new pro-sortition bloggers recently posted this homemade video on the subject–
Two comments. First, I do think that a lot of sortition fans act as though it was obviously bad that a system doesn’t give everyone exactly an equal probability of getting into office. But it’s just not an obvious problem. I can’t think of any job where “equal opportunity” means having all candidates getting the job with equal probability. (The legal scholar Lesley Jacobs is good on this point.) Second, I think it’s important to stress the internal problems with parties. It’s true that (in England at least) you can’t win office without a political party. But the modern ideal says that it’s good to have a different groups of people organized behind different principles competing for office. It takes a separate critique to show why this is a bad thing. (Incidentally, has anyone read Nancy Rosenblum’s recent book on partisanship and political parties? It’s on my “to read” list.)
Posted on February 1, 2011 by Common Lot Sortitionist
I found this PBS documentary enlightening. From my understanding of the classical Athenian political system, this presentation overplays the role of elections and underplays the role of sortition. [Obtained through Netflix.]
Athens: The Dawn of Democracy
2007 NR 120 minutes
In this PBS program, historian Bettany Hughes explores the realities of ancient Athens’s “Golden Age” and uncovers a mix of brilliant, humanity-changing philosophies and dark, war-like themes that co-existed in one turbulent time and place. Although ancient Athens still retains its reputation as a pure and shining democracy, its history tells a more complicated story that includes slavery, black magic and an unquenchable thirst for war.
Cast: Bettany Hughes
Genres: Documentary, Historical Documentaries, PBS Documentaries, TV Documentaries
…will go anywhere or have an impact, but I hope that sortition fans around the world can use blogs like this to find each other. I encourage readers to visit this new blog and say hello.
A look back and a look forward from the perspective of the year 2030 when sortitional selection of a Citizen Chamber in the U.S. Congress will have been recently instituted.
George Tridimas of the School of Economics of the University of Ulster circulates via the Kleroterians mailing list a draft of a paper, soliciting readers’ comments. The abstract is below. Please contact the author for the full text of the draft.
When is it rational to give up rationality?
Appointment to office by lot in Ancient Athens
Contrary to modern democracies ancient Athens appointed large scores of government post-holders by lottery. After describing the Athenian arrangements, I review the choice between elections and lottery from the perspective of the citizen focusing on representativeness of the population, distributive justice, minimization of political conflicts, administrative economy and policy making ability of appointees. Adopting the methodology of public choice, I then examine why a contestant for office may choose the lottery rather than elections as a method of winning office. Although the outcomes of both mechanisms are uncertain, a contestant may influence the probability of winning an election through his campaign efforts, but not of a lottery. I establish conditions for choosing one or the other mechanism depending on the availability of campaign funds and campaign effectiveness of the contestants and I show that despite its mechanical character appointment to office by lot is consistent with self-interested behaviour and can be voluntarily agreed by all contestants.
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