Sortition Foundation: a new campaign for government by sortition

Posted on January 28, 2015 by Brett Hennig

Last week a new campaign was launched to demand government by sortition.

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Its aim is to promote sortition and build a movement demanding the replacement of elections with sortition.

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To support or promote it, visit http://www.sortitionfoundation.org/, like it on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SortitionFoundation or follow it on Twitter @SortitionNow

For more information, or to give feedback or offer to help, please use
the contact page: http://www.sortitionfoundation.org/contact

[Editor’s note: this post was modified after posting as the group changed its name]

Filed under: Action, Sortition | Tagged: , , , | 40 Comments »

Manuel Arriaga: Rebooting Democracy

Posted on May 15, 2014 by Yoram Gat

A review of Manuel Arriaga’s Rebooting Democracy: a citizen’s guide to reinventing politics

Rebooting Democracy is a short and enjoyable book (available at Amazon; the first 50 pages are available online). Its introduction explicitly positions it as being motivated by the sentiments of the Occupy protests and the author’s proposals as responding to those sentiments. Like the Occupy protests Arriaga’s message is to a considerable extent anti-electoral:

[V]oting out one politician or party to bring in a different one will not solve our problems. Time has made it clear that this is not merely an issue of casting. If the play stinks, replacing the actors will not make it any better.

The first two chapters present an explanation of why the Western electoral system does not serve “us”. Arriaga summarizes his explanation with the following two points:

1) We have delegated power to the political class and hardly supervise it.

2) As voters, we are condemned to unreflective and easy-to-influence decision-making. Even if we were inclined to effectively supervise politicians, this would severely limit our ability to do so.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Books, Elections, Initiatives, Proposals, Sortition | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 27 Comments »

BBC: The Philosophy of Russell Brand

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Yoram Gat

A recent segment on the BBC radio show Analysis is titled “The Philosophy of Russell Brand”. The audience is warned ahead of time to hold on to their hats as “Jeremy Cliffe enters a world without rules, without government, but with plenty of facial hair”. Following this introduction, and the expected sound bites from the Brand-Paxman interview, the segment talks about the attention Brand received, the Occupy/Indignados protest movement and features interviews with Paolo Gerbaudo, David Graeber, Michael Hardt, Peter Turchin, Daniel Pinchbeck, and a few friends of Cliffe.
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Filed under: Academia, Athens, Elections, History, Juries, Participation, Press, Proposals, Sortition, Theory | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 20 Comments »