Back in June 2016 a friend provided the link to this The Guardian’s “long read” section, where David Van Reybrouck (as translated by Liz Waters) published an extract of his book in which he criticizes some of the more traditional processes of Western democracies, such as elections and referenda, holding up the results such as Brexit as a condemnation, and suggests a replacement – the idea of sortition.
People care deeply about their communities and want to be heard. But a much better way to let the people speak than through a referendum is to return to the central principle of Athenian democracy: drafting by lot, or sortition as it is presently called. In ancient Athens, the large majority of public functions were assigned by lot. Renaissance states such as Venice and Florence worked on the same basis and experienced centuries of political stability. With sortition, you do not ask everyone to vote on an issue few people really understand, but you draft a random sample of the population and make sure they come to the grips with the subject matter in order to take a sensible decision. A cross-section of society that is informed can act more coherently than an entire society that is uninformed. …
Sortition could provide a remedy to the democratic fatigue syndrome that we see everywhere today. The drawing of lots is not a miracle cure any more than elections ever were, but it can help correct a number of the faults in the current system. The risk of corruption is reduced, election fever abates and attention to the common good increases. Voting on the basis of gut feeling is replaced by sensible deliberation, as those who have been drafted are exposed to expert opinion, objective information and public debate. Citizens chosen by lot may not have the expertise of professional politicians, but they add something vital to the process: freedom. After all, they don’t need to be elected or re-elected.
David may have a little too much faith in politicians’ “expertise” – most are lawyers, few have any notion of science behind high school, and here in the United States there is often a suspicion of science – even as they benefit from it – because it doesn’t correspond to certain of their prejudices.
But it does sound interesting as one method of using the idea of representative democracy to isolate the common citizen from the some obscure decisions that must be taken in the larger world, without necessarily excluding them as a group – and building up resentment. I do think there’d have to be some concern about non-participation – think of how much people generally hate doing jury duty; however, I had jury duty about 11 months ago, and I didn’t actually notice much resentment.
Perhaps it’s more of a step towards participatory democracy – the idea that there’s more to civic life than just voting once in a while and braying in a blog, with little thought towards consequences.
