Elections and Sortition: two systems, two destinies, two ways to do politics

 

In the pretty likely event of a hung parliament after the next Australian election, the cross-bench becomes kingmaker. I’m hoping — and expecting — the crossbench to seek greater use of citizen assemblies in governing Australia. But what comes next is crucial.

Some think it would be great if a citizen assembly was held on an important issue — or two or three. Allegra Spender proposes one on tax. Others want one on housing. It would be nice to see them go ahead. But I’m sceptical they can achieve a lot.

First, on their own, citizen assemblies can be useful in lots of circumstances, but I’d say they’re most successful where they solve problems for politicians.

Ireland has become the pin-up boy for citizen assemblies

They’ve probably acquired a higher visibility in Ireland than anywhere else. And two of them have gone very well — allowing same sex marriage and the repeal of anti-abortion provisions of the constitution. That’s because both solved problems for the politicians.

Irish citizen assemblies haven’t done noticeably better than elsewhere on the other occasions where they typically created problems for the politicians. In these circumstances, if politicians can’t ignore the citizen assembly on account of the profile it’s acquired, they cherry-pick its recommendations.

More importantly, whether or not the politicians accept their recommendations, the citizen assemblies usually contemplated are temporary and, as such, don’t aspire to leave any institutional trace. They also rehearse existing relationships in which we the people propose and the Government disposes.

I’ve gone to some lengths to propose an alternative, A standing citizen assembly effectively operating as a third house. (There’s something similar in the German-speaking part of Belgium). It is not more ‘radical’ than existing suggestions. It establishes an institution with exactly as much formal power as the other citizen assemblies just discussed. None.

The idea that it is more radical comes from what I call its greater ‘imaginative vigour’. Without proposing any change in formal power structures, it follows through on the idea that a different logic needs to enter the system.

I don’t see a citizen assembly as a tricky new ‘hack’. Nor is it that important to me that it seems more democratic. That’s a good thing, but, as we’ve seen in Iraq and Afghanistan and as the ancient Athenians discovered during the Peloponnesian War, more democratic structures don’t always arrive at better decisions.

The more I’ve thought about representation by sampling as opposed to representation by election, the more deeply I’ve appreciated their differences.

By their nature, elections separate the governed from those who govern. That’s why Aristotle called selection by lot ‘democratic’ and elections aristocratic or oligarchic. Montesquieu and America’s founding fathers agreed.

Electoral systems are also intrinsically competitive. And the competition for votes rewards performativity, manipulation and dissimulation.

That plunges electoral democracy into deep pathologies.

We feel aggrieved that the leaders we elect don’t tell us the truth. But, successful politicians aren’t candid with us because if they were, we’d vote for others. In every election I can remember, the competing parties tell us how fiscally disciplined they’ll be — in general. But not in particular.

(And whenever they give specifics, as Theresa May did, making the fair and efficient suggestion that nursing home care be funded from the estate of the beneficiaries, those who’ll lose from the policy are easily alerted by a hysterical media campaign.)

You might think I’m demonising one system and lauding the other. In fact, I think competition is incredibly important to human functioning not just in the economy but more widely. My point is not the superiority of one system over another, but rather that the logic of each of these two ways to represent the people is so different.

That’s why I believe that we’re going through a Magna Carta moment. As they did in 1215, we can use selection by lot as a bulwark against the corruption of elites. And by that, I mean mainly the subtle corruptions of careerism through which so much power works today — the power that enabled RoboDebt to be perpetrated without those responsible being held properly to account.

Just as modern democracy was built from the 18th to the early 20th century by building checks and balances into government, the 21st century should start building the other way to represent the people into those checks and balances.

So for me, the hung parliament might establish an institution to continually showcase this different logic of democracy. That’s why I’ve proposed a mechanism by which it might build its internal leadership, traditions and corporate memory and also proposed the first power I’d like it to seek — the ability to require a second, secret ballot of a parliamentary chamber it disagrees with.

But all that need be done is to start the thing off with imaginative vigour, but no formal power so the fledgeling institution, the parliament and the Australian people can then work out what becomes of it.

But when they see it in action, I think people’s reaction will be like the woman at the next table in a famous movie scene.

 

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Geoff Edwards
14 days ago

Nicely expressed, Nicholas. On Norfolk Island, having low trust in the local government administration appointed by the Commonwealth after they sacked the elected Council, the Island’s opinion leaders have appointed a “Shadow Council” to attend the ersatz Council meetings, meet the administrators beforehand, track Council business and go public with criticism. The “Shadow Council” has no legal power and is not recognised by the authorities. It’s not exactly what you propose, but it reflects a similar logic, being grounded in trust in the informed judgement of the general population.

Hugh Ferguson
Hugh Ferguson
7 days ago

Nicholas. If you haven’t already come across it, you might find Systemic Corruption by Camila Vergara interesting: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691207537/systemic-corruption

KT2
KT2
4 days ago

Veto = Power.
Great minds think alike it seems NG. If aware of this, well, say it and keep saying it. Trump, Murdoch & Musk do.

“Intelligent Democracy: Answering the New Democratic Scepticism

“8 The Sortition Branch 
Jonathan Benson
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197767283.003.0009
Pages 205–233
Published: May 2024

“The chapter therefore offers a new proposal for a sortition branch of a deliberative system which involves the formation of many short-term and randomly selected assemblies with the power to veto legislation. The sortition branch is argued to institutionalize random selection in a way which can balance substantive powers with reasonable burdens on citizen members, while also guarding against different forms of elite capture. It is therefore able to improve the intelligence of democracy in a way previous proposals cannot.”
https://academic.oup.com/book/56448/chapter-abstract/448523387

Nicholas Gruen
4 days ago
Reply to  KT2

Thanks for the reference.