How to answer the problem of accountability in sortition?

Posted on September 30, 2024 by johnhuang865

One of the most common criticisms against sortition is that there is no accountability, whereas election allegedly does have an accountability mechanism. What is the appropriate rebuttal to this criticism? I have tried to answer this poorly in a blog post here. I make up a matrix of hypothetical, idealized scenarios and assess elections vs sortition. I find that elections only achieve accountability contingent on high voter competence. When voter incompetence is assumed, I find that sortition will lead to better outcomes.

In other words, I find that sortition only makes sense in worlds where we do not have competent voters. Moreover, I find that sortition fails in worlds populated by solely Machiavellian personalities (maybe you could call these people homo economicus).

Voter incompetence is manifested as the inability of voters to control and create representative political parties. And their inability to wrest electoral power away from elites. Or their incompetence in participating in the right political primaries or the right elections. Or their inability to effectively compete against wealthy special interests. The public lacks the capacity to win the electoral contests.

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Democratic accountability, part 2

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Yoram Gat

Part 1 describes what “democratic accountability theory” is.

“Accountability” has a generalized positive connotation. Surely it is better when power is held accountable than when it is unaccountable or arbitrary. Scratching the surface, however, various considerations make it evident that the appeal of “electoral accountability” is illusory.

  • First, an “accountable government” is presumably self-evidently superior to an “unaccountable government” whose mandate is permanent and therefore cannot be replaced. But the charm of accountability seems less clear when the alternative is a different “unaccountable” government – a government whose mandate is temporary and cannot be renewed. If elections are the only method of accountability then such a limited mandate government is not accountable either. Accountability, it turns out, is not about replacing government any more than it is about permanent government. For some reason, a government must be re-electable to be “accountable”. It is the ability to award the prize of re-election that makes a government electorally accountable. If a prize cannot be awarded, or cannot be withdrawn, the spell of accountability is nullified.

    • Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Elections, Sortition | Tagged: , , , | 210 Comments »