I don’t believe that this blog has previously discussed the proposed Citizens’ Constitution of Czech Republic, which would introduce both citizen assemblies and referenda into the Czech Republic on a massive scale. The proposal can be found at
The proposal is not always clearly worded, but judging by Article 53A, the idea seems to be to select ten citizen commissions which will meet in parallel for five days, before getting together to submit a single joint set of recommendations (presumably chosen by majority or plurality rule). Interestingly, the proposals of the commissions are meant to be advisory only (with the final say going to either the elected legislature or a referenda) UNLESS the commission is dealing with the salaries of government officials. One might wish to expand this a bit to include, say, the ethical rules that officials must follow regarding lobbyists, transparency laws, etc.
This proposal would surely lead to a great many referenda being held. I am unsure that even a small country like the Czech Republic could make so many referenda work. But if one wants citizen participation, and one is not willing to let randomly-selected bodies make binding decisions against the will of elected legislatures, then I suppose one has little choice.
RJ, “a life long citizen of Edmonton”, and DV82XL, “a 57 year old semi-retired male living in one of the oldest towns in Quebec that now is a suburb of Montreal”, offer, separately, advocacy for sortition:
Sortition, is the method of selecting decision makers from a pool of candidates by some form of lottery. In Ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was the primary method for appointing officials, and its use was widely regarded as a principal characteristic of democracy. There were thousands of public offices chosen this way; and in almost all cases, an individual could hold a given office only once. Athens was a state run almost entirely by amateurs. There were no professional politicians; no professional lawyers or judges, no professional civil service. The Athenians believed sortition to be more democratic than elections. A citizen-wide lottery scheme for public office lowered the threshold to office. Ordinary citizens did not have to compete against more powerful or influential adversaries in order to take office nor did it favour those who had pre-existing advantages or connections.
I’ve always thought that sortition, from a pool of pre-qualified candidates would be the best way to select representatives. I would also see the use of policy juries, where the pros and cons of a particular piece of legislation would be examined by adversarial debate among the interested parties, with the jury (again randomly selected) deciding if the bill was passed or killed.
However it is unlikely that any real overhaul of government will occur in my lifetime. Good enough is always the enemy of better.
…but it does deal with a fascinating problem. If you promote the best people, the argument goes, you will keep promoting people to tougher and tougher jobs until they no longer excel at them. The result will be an organization full of people stuck in positions for which they’re not particularly qualified. So says the Peter Principle, for which I can claim no credit. I’d be curious of the details as to how exactly the argument works, but the implications are striking. If you randomized the process of putting people into more difficult positions, it would seem odd to call it “promoting” them anymore. The latter term seems inherently related to merit or desert. It would then seem better just to say that the more difficult jobs (i.e., jobs requiring higher levels of competence) are reassigned by lot. (Should this happen periodically? Good question, but one I cannot answer until I actually get around to reading the study.)
Harald Korneliussen points out the following development:
Oireachtas [the Irish parliament, -YG] Joint Committee on the Constitution recommends significant changes to the implementation of the PR-STV Electoral System in this country
The Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Constitution, in a report on the electoral system published today, recommends substantial changes to the operation of the PR-STV electoral system in Ireland which it considers would significantly improve its functioning.
It presents 29 recommendations for improving the system. Areas identified where improvements are required include: the level of women’s representation; the voting age; the filling of casual vacancies; the transfer of surplus votes; ease of access to the ballot on election day; the number of seats that are contested in each constituency; the manner in which constituency boundaries are drawn; the filling of casual vacancies in Dáil Éireann; and the proportionality of vote share to seat share.
The Committee underlines the importance of legitimacy in any electoral reform process and recommends that citizens should be given every opportunity to play a part in choosing the system by which they elect their representatives.
It proposes the establishment of a Citizens’ Assembly to examine the electoral system in Ireland, and, if it deems that reform is necessary, to propose change.
I finally got around to reading “Representation and Randomness,” a collection of papers that appeared in the most recent issue of the journal Constellations (volume 17, number 3, September 2010). One paper in that collection, by Alex Zakaras, has already gotten some attention here, but I thought it worth adding some comments on the entire collection.
Philip Pettit’s “Representation, Responsive and Indicative” distinguishes (obviously) between responsive and indicative representation. A responsive representative does what I want because I can direct the representative to do what I want. An indicative representative does what I want because the representative is chosen in such a way that the representative does what I would have done were I present. In Pettit’s words, “In responsive representation, the fact that I am of a certain mind offers reason for expecting that my deputy will be of the same mind…In indicative representation things are exactly the other way around. The fact that my proxy is of a certain mind offers reason for expecting that I will be of the same mind…” (p. 427). Sortition can select indicative representatives, whereas election is supposed to select responsive representatives. But both are legitimate forms of representation, and we might find appropriate uses for each of them.
In his recent blog post, “The Elected Legislator’s Burden,” Yoram Gat challenges one of the arguments of my essay, “Lot and Democratic Representation.” In that essay, I argue that the U.S. Senate (along with state Senates) should be abolished and replaced with a citizens’ chamber, with its members chosen by lottery. In short, I propose that we preserve bicameral legislatures, but with one chamber filled through election and the other by lot. I argue, however, that the citizens’ chamber should have fewer powers and responsibilities than the elective chamber. It should have the power to veto any legislation ratified by the elective chamber; it should also have the power to draw district boundaries for the elective chamber and to compel a floor vote in that chamber on any legislation introduced there.
Gat challenges my reluctance to grant the citizens’ chamber “full parliamentary powers – to set its own agenda, initiate legislation and draft its own legislative proposals.” He suggests that citizens chosen by lottery are capable of wielding these powers responsibly—or, at least, that there is every reason to expect that they will do so as responsibly as elected legislators. He lays out several arguments in support of this claim, and I will consider each in turn.
The October issue of Harper’s Magazine has an excerpt from Roger D. Hodge’s upcoming book, The Mendacity of Hope: Barack Obama and the Betrayal of American Liberalism. [Copy of the excerpt is here.]
In an ideal system of public campaign financing, in which all political speech has been equalized by law, in which political advertising is banned and persuasion stripped of its commercial aspect—the corporate businessman and the millionaire (not to mention the billionaire) would still stand taller than the common citizen. In fact, as the political theorist John P. McCormick has argued, the wealthy are likely to dominate any political regime that chooses its magistrates and lawmakers solely by means of election.
Adam Cronkright
Ali
Ahmed R. Teleb
avanderven
avergne
Alex Kovner
azakaras
Brett Hennig
campbellwallace
Simon Threlkeld
Nick Coccoma
codyhipskind
Common Lot Sortitionist
Conall Boyle
constitutionalism
davidschecter
Ethan McCutchen
graytmatter
gtridimas
Henry Tuttle
H.J. Hofkirchner
HpR
James Kierstead
John Burnheim
jgarry20151
Jochen Krattenmacher
johnedwardtaylor
johnhuang865
Jonathan Crock
keithsutherland
Jacob Richter
kkoreilly
lukewhito
SimonPek
Nathan El
Nicholas Gruen
Owen Shaffer
Patrick Chalmers
Paul Gölz
peterstone
Pierre-Etienne Vandamme
pronfeld
Emil
rcaze
richwbrown
Roger Knights
roslynfuller
Pierre-Etienne Vandamme
shaharavin
tbouricius
Ted Wachtel
Joshua Laferriere
theodorestathis
towardsautonomyblog
Wayne Liebman
Yoram Gat
Oliver Milne
