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The big problem with sortition (which Landemore appears to be arguing for) is that it's uh non-democratic. Instead of allowing citizens to vote for their repres

• jerojero 4y ago
  That's not really something I agree with? I find sortition to be one of the most democratic form of participation. Modern political systems in the west, that is to say, liberal democracy through representative voting is entirely oligarchical. Look at parliaments all over the world and how they correlate with the population as whole in terms of socioeconomic indicators, race, gender, etc. They are not representative at all of who makes up the population but instead they represent who the population believes and who the system allows to be capable of making decisions. And this final part is what I really want to put emphasis on: who makes the actual decisions? I think here we might have different views but to me, who makes the decisions is the most important even more important than making the optimal decisions. I believe a system is more democratic if the decisions are being made by people who are actually, materially, involved in the consequences of said decisions. And with that in mind, I think sortition is indeed much more democratic than voting because in sortition you get a group of people that are truly, socially, economically, gender-wise, race-wise, representative of the wider population. Not only that but in sortition everyone has the same chance of being able to access power, whereas in voting only those that are appealing to big demographics will be. I mean, it is not a coincidence that politicians tend to be extroverted and charismatic... but what about people who are shy and introverted? Is the only method of participation for them the vote? So I guess in a few words: I believe sortition is more democratic because everyone gets the same chance to do active participation, rather than most people simply being able to vote for the few people who actually have the chance to debate, review and make decisions. I really encourage you to read maybe Camila Vergara's book "Systemic Corruption" if you have a chance to get it which might change your perspective in terms of sortition and voting. Though in fairness, she suggests a system that's based on a network of local assemblies; but also argues in favor of sortition for certain position (as opposed to voting).
  • anonymouskimmer 4y ago
    The problem with sortition is the problem of people using various means to opt out of jury duty. Jury duty, which typically lasts less than a week, still gets a variety of people opting out. Sortition for decision making would have far more people opting out, or would have to resort to draconian methods to prevent people opting out. > "I believe a system is more democratic if the decisions are being made by people who are actually, materially, involved in the consequences of said decisions." I believe a system is typically better if this is the case. Things can be done to bias elected decision makers toward behaving as if they are consequentially subject to the decisions. Term limits is one idea, increasing the number of members of the legislative bodies is another.
    • jerojero 4y ago
      Why do you say sortition for decision making would have more people opting out? What's the basis for this? But also, I think you might be underestimating the amount of people required to get actual representative samples of our populations. If you look at the experiments that have been done in France, Iceland, the EU even in countries in South America; minipublics haven't really had a big problem getting enough people to participate. You might be surprised just at how much people want to be able to have an input in how politics is done in our countries. It's very different than jury duty in that when you're a juror you're going to be judging someone on their innocence, going through trials is tremendously emotionally taxing. I don't think that's something most people want to do; this is a different beast, I would say. > I believe a system is typically better if this is the case. Things can be done to bias elected decision makers toward behaving as if they are consequentially subject to the decisions. Term limits is one idea, increasing the number of members of the legislative bodies is another. We already have term limits, and most bicameral chambers in the world have people with both 4 and 8 (or similar numbers) term limits. Yet the problems that I described are shown in both chambers. In reality, after 4, 6 or 8 years most things have been forgotten. And the real problem doesn't come from big bad decisions that these people make but all the small decisions that benefit them as an oligarchical class over everyone else; these small decisions over the course of decades do add up and we are left in this position we are right now with complete polarization and political classes that are unable to tackle the complexity of the problems that in great part, they've created. And yes, more people in legislatives bodies could be better; but minipublics can be summoned much more easily and you can have many of them in parallel to discuss specific issues as well which is a design that they've proposed for the canton of Vaud in Switzerland. In any case, I think the healthiest way to go about things is not to replace our current bodies with minipublics just yet, but instead to incorporate them as a third (or second) chamber. As you've pointed out, this could have the desired effect of making elected officials behave more consequentially. Although I do think citizens assemblies through sortition are superior and should eventually replace elected officials, I'm all for a hybrid model for now; and that's actually kind of what's starting to be explored in Europe. Just look at France's efforts in the past few years as well as the Conference on the future of Europe (CoFE).
• User23 4y ago
  How can sortition be undemocratic when it was the basis of the Athenian democracy, from which we get the word?