Equality by lot

Sortition proposal in the Indian ThePrint

Posted on October 22, 2023 by Yoram Gat

A reader of the Indian political news website ThePrint contributes a sortition proposal.

The case for Sortition to replace elections

For most democrats electing politicians is the essential feature to prevent a free society from becoming a dictatorship.

Questions are raised about the legitimacy of [elections-based] systems! Politicians have little in common with the people they govern. Parliaments around the world are filled with crooks, criminals, frauds, imposters, illiterates or incompetent, uninformed, immature, lazy or questionable people. Rent-seeking or the perks of the office seem more on their mind than fulfilling duties of their office or campaign-promises. Elections create the illusion of choice, a circus masquerading as exercise of democracy.

Sortition presents an elegant solution. It was first implemented in the democracy of ancient Athens. Instead of electing Parliamentarians / Alders, Members of those bodies are randomly selected from a pool of suitable applicants. It has been a widely debated alternative to elections to pry politicians from the hands of all powerful Party-Presidents without them falling prey to deep-pocketed donors.
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Filed under: Elections, History, Press, Sortition | 1 Comment »

A quarter of US voters ready for exploring “alternative forms of government”

Posted on October 19, 2023 by Yoram Gat

A recent poll has found that about 27% of U.S. registered voters support the following statement:

Democracy is no longer a viable system, and America should explore alternative forms of government to ensure stability and progress.

Filed under: Elections, Opinion polling | 1 Comment »

Consumerocracy to better the conditions of the free market

Posted on October 19, 2023 by theodorestathis

In previous articles, I have presented the reasons that do not allow today’s supposedly democratic regimes to stop the frantic course of unfair and provocative distribution of the wealth produced. In the series of those articles I also presented a peaceful way, through which non-democratic regimes can be transformed into democratic ones, whose existence is essential for a market to function free. These ideas are found in greater details in my book entitled A Therapy for Dying Democracies, published by Dorrance Publishing Co., which aim at braking the course of corrupt capitalism and thus gradually freeing the free market from the chains with which it has been enslaved over time.

An important intervention in many areas of business’ activity is, in my steadfast opinion, the use of a special type of public company, by which it is possible to transform the market, controlled by speculators and monopolies, into a free one. The specificity of this company is due to the fact that it must satisfy certain prerequisites, which derive from a fundamental axiomatic principle of democracy that recognizes equal state or power status to each citizen.

On the basis of this principle of democracy, what could be the case in the field of consumption? But of course the obvious one which I call: consumerocracy, similar in meaning to democracy, where consumers in the field of consumption have equal power status, regardless of the volume of purchases made by each consumer. That is, the same low prices of goods and equal opportunities for all, something that unfair competition does not provide.

To deal with profiteering, the special type of company is used, which intervenes in ways that allow the instrument-tool of consumerocracy to give its customers-consumers the notorious equal state status. One way, in which the company achieves this for its clients, is the full return of its net profits to its customers-consumers, provided that the initial capital invested for the establishment of this special type of company remains at market value constant.

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Filed under: Books, Proposals, Sortition | 1 Comment »

London borough to hold a citizens assembly to scrutinize the police

Posted on October 15, 2023 by Yoram Gat

Stories in the Waltham Forest Echo and the Evening Standard.

Waltham Forest announces citizens assembly to scrutinise Met Police

The assembly, the first of its kind in the country, comes as Waltham Forest has the lowest trust in the Metropolitan Police out of any London borough

A citizens’ assembly scrutinising police officers in Waltham Forest will be held in the Spring.

The move has been described by Waltham Forest Council as the first time a local authority in the UK has held such an assembly.

The goal of the assembly will be to hear local people’s views on how policing can better reflect Baroness Casey’s report on the Metropolitan Police. The March report found the police to be “institutionally racist, sexist, homophobic”.

The council says the assembly makeup will aim to reflect the population of Waltham Forest in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, whether or not they have a disability, and where in the borough they live.
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Filed under: Applications, Press, Sortition | Tagged: police | 4 Comments »

The American Democrat by James Fenimore Cooper

Posted on October 11, 2023 by Yoram Gat

It turns out that the American author James Fenimore Cooper (1789 – 1851), primarily known today for the novel The Last of the Mohicans, wrote in 1835 a book of political theory titled The American Democrat. The book is a rather interesting document of the political views of the “democratic” elite of his time, which are remarkably similar to the views of the “republican”, explicitly anti-democratic, elite of a generation or two before – i.e., of the American founders.

Underneath the similarity, it is clear that there are now new concerns. While the founders expended most of their efforts optimizing and justifying “checks and balances” and considered their sentiment against the rule of the mob as an easy case to make, Cooper is concerned with dispelling any misapprehensions about the equality of men – indicating that democratic ideology is gaining political power in the early 19th century. Cooper explains to his readers that if men were really thought to be equals elections would be replaced with sortition:

The absolute moral and physical equality that are inferred by the maxim, that “one man is as good as another,” would at once do away with the elections, since a lottery would be both simpler, easier and cheaper than the present mode of selecting representatives. Men, in such a case, would draw lots for office, as they are now drawn for juries. Choice supposes a preference, and preference inequality of merit, or of fitness. (p. 79)

Filed under: Books, Elections, History, Sortition, Theory | 2 Comments »

The Keys to Democracy by Maurice Pope

Posted on October 7, 2023 by Yoram Gat

Maurice Pope’s book The Keys to Democracy is the third book ever written advocating the use of sortition as a major component of a modern government. (The two earlier ones being Ernest Callenbach and Michael Phillips’s A Citizen Legislature and John Burnheim’s Is Democracy Possible?, both first published in 1985. Pope, who seems to have started writing at about the same time, was apparently unaware of either.) The great strengths of Pope’s writing are his independence of thought and his evident sincerity. Coming early into the field, and being a classicist rather than a political scientist, Pope was clearly breaking new ground, following his own logical train of thought. He was thus free from the burden of formulaically making connections to prior writings and from the petty-political considerations of self-promotion. This unique situation made a thoroughgoing impact on the book as a whole.

Authors of works about sortition (including Pope) generally share the ostensible aim of achieving some measure of democratization of society. But while this general aim is broadly shared, the consensus ends there because the detailed aims and the proposed mechanisms for achieving them vary widely. At the conservative end, the problem with the existing system is conceived as some sort of sclerosis. The main symptom of the problem is fatigue, or a lack of confidence. Sortition-based institutions are then seen as a way to infuse the system with new blood or new vigor, rejuvenating a system that is essentially sound but has for various reasons, that generally remain vague, fallen into a bad state. Associated with this view of things are generally quite modest proposals – advisory bodies that “help” current decision makers make more informed decisions. Even those more informed decisions are perhaps less important than the mere fact that allotted citizens are widely recognized as having had a part in the process. Indeed, what exactly the problems are with the current outcomes of the process and what are the expected improvements in terms of policy is usually not specified. In fact, sometimes the entire point is to have the allotted citizens themselves become more informed rather than making any changes in decision making. Writings in this vein tend to be heavy with references to the canon of “deliberative democracy” and light on the idea that democracy is a regime of political equality.
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Filed under: Academia, Athens, Books, Elections, Fiction, History, Juries, Participation, Press, Sortition | 10 Comments »

The way to democracy: democratically operating political parties

Posted on October 6, 2023 by theodorestathis

Sortition as a concept and as a method of selecting members of a deliberative group has been in the headlines for some time now and the most important gain the followers of sortition have gotten from it it is that more people now know about its purpose and of its use, especially as being a potential alternative to election for selecting members of a board of an organization or of other institutional bodies, as is the case of legislative assemblies for local, regional and national level.

The purpose of its use up to now, as far as I know, has been to bring into the deliberations of existing governmental legislative assemblies more democracy. This remains to be seen, for this new approach has first to be accepted by the present systems of government, which are based on their main futures on those of republicanism, which at the same time are being called democracies, even though they do not have any connection to democracy. Unless some of the followers of sortition have it as part of their revolutionary program through which they plan to get to power, even though revolutions have been abandoned even by the Marxists, since the time of Hitler’s lesson on how to grab power with only just through elections.

It is though about time to give more attention to the peaceful ways, which can lead to power without any revolutions and without methods creating abnormal conditions in the present republican systems of government, for the purpose of democracy is not to divide but to unite the people. That is what my approach, presented by articles and comments in this blog and in a more expanded way in my book with the title: A Therapy for Dying Democracies intends to do. In my view this approach has several advantages over other approaches on matters concerning the quality of representation and the method of materializing peacefully the objective, which is to have at last democracy at work.

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Filed under: Books, Elections, Proposals, Sortition | Leave a comment »

A New Zealand farmer proposes sortition, but “strictly tongue-in-cheek”

Posted on October 5, 2023 by Yoram Gat

From the NZ Herlad‘s “The Country” section:

Election 2023: Jane Smith thinks about ancient Greek voting options we might prefer

No-nonsense North Otago farmer Jane Smith is the last person you’d expect to get swept up in a TikTok trend but she may have inadvertently created an alternative version of “How often do you think about the Roman Empire?”

In Smith’s case, the question is “How often do you think about ancient Greece?”

The sheep farmer told The Country’s Jamie Mackay that she’s so tired of Kiwi politicians and election campaigning that she had gone back in time, in an attempt to find a more palatable way of choosing leaders.

Admitting that this was all strictly tongue-in-cheek and “off the top of my head” Smith listed her favoured election processes from Ancient Greece.

Sortition – lottery system

Sortition is when officials were in large part chosen by lottery.

“So, a wee bit like jury duty,” Smith said.
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Filed under: Athens, Elections, Press, Sortition | 1 Comment »

Santa Monica, CA: Allotted panel to guide airport’s future

Posted on September 27, 2023 by Yoram Gat

A report in the Santa Monica Lookout:

Randomly Chosen Panel Should Guide Airport’s Future, Officials Say

By Jorge Casuso

September 25, 2023 — The future of Santa Monica Airport should be hammered out — not by the usual community activists and civic volunteers — but by randomly selected “everyday people,” City officials told the City Council Monday.

The information item from top Public Works officials proposes using a democratic lottery to “engage new residents through a randomized selection process,” instead of relying on “the same self-selected individuals.”

After meeting in person for six weekends over the course of some nine months starting next fall, the panel would make recommendations to the Council for the 227-acre site that under a 2017 agreement with the FAA would cease to operate as an airport at the end of 2028.

The panel will be charged with what City officials have said “is likely to be the most transformative urban planning event of the century for the City”.

The lottery system — which is not common in North America — “would result in a panel that demands broad demographic representation, and minimizes the influence of special interests,” said the report from Public Works Director Rick Valte.

Previous long-range planning efforts by the City have “suffered tremendous opposition from vocal community members whose resistance to key elements of each plan — or even the entire plan itself — resulted in protracted land use battles,” the report said.
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Filed under: Applications, Press, Sortition | 7 Comments »

Josine Blok reviews Pope’s The Keys to Democracy

Posted on September 23, 2023 by Yoram Gat

Josine Blok, a historian from Utrecht University, has a review of Maurice Pope’s The Keys to Democracy in H-Soz-Kult. In the last two paragraphs of the review, Blok gives her opinion about the substance of the book:

The quality of the argument is in my view quite uneven. Some of the political analyses and in particular the historical sections suffer from oversimplification, generalisation, and special pleading. For instance: “The political ideals and most of the political practices of Western civilisation go back through Venice and ancient Rome to classical Greece.” (p. 115). No, they don’t, this is simply not true, nor is Pope’s account of how sortition got “lost” in the course of history. On p. 123, Pope contends: “It would be possible […] to define history itself as the story of how experts have been proved wrong. For otherwise […] it would not be history at all, but current practice. […examples in] the history of science. Being history, it is possible to tell which side was wrong.” This view of history is simply bizarre. If Pope resorted to such sweeping statements to help easy reading, I don’t think they are the proper means to that end.

But, making up for such drawbacks, Pope offers excellent observations on deliberation as a crucial ingredient of democracy and on the potential of sortition to prevent oligarchisation (the “law of Michels”), meritocracy and other problematic forms of hierarchy. Sortition enables implementing the equality of citizens and bringing their engagement in policy making about. Importantly, Pope points out that sortition, whenever it is employed, must be rigorous and compulsory to be effective, and allotted bodies must be selected from the whole population (p. 167; complemented by the outstanding comment by Potter in the appendix). He underlines that allotted panels of citizens must have moral authority and real responsibility (to which should be added a transparent system of accountability). Written with an open, engaging style, The Keys to Democracy is set to win a wider audience for its important and pressing message.

Filed under: Academia, Athens, Books, Deliberation, Elections, History, Opinion polling, Press, Sortition | 2 Comments »