With Pierre-Etienne Vandamme, "A Randomly Selected Chamber: Promises and Challenges", Journal of Public Deliberation, 13 (1), 2017: 1-24. (original) (raw)
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A Randomly Selected Chamber: Promises and Challenges (Journal of Public Deliberation, 2017)
This paper explores the idea of a randomly selected chamber of representatives (RSC) through an appreciation of the promises it offers and the challenges it would face. We identify two main promises: a RSC could offset the aristocratic character of elections, thereby increasing the legitimacy of the political system; and it could increase democracy’s epistemic potential, thanks to gains in terms of diversity, deliberations, humility, and long-term perspective. We then discuss four key challenges. First, participation: how can the chamber have diversity without mandatory participation or heavy sanctions? Second, how can we conceive or build legitimacy for this non-elected and somehow unaccountable chamber’s views? Third, independence: how to safeguard randomly selected people from corruption? Finally, there may be a linguistic challenge: if the RSC has a deliberative role, how should it cope with the possible linguistic diversity of its members? We conclude that these challenges are not insurmountable, but reveal some trade-offs that cannot be entirely dissolved.
Making Direct Democracy Deliberative through Random Assemblies
We examine closely the problems that beset modern direct-democratic elections. These include the provision of inadequate or unusable information about ballot measures to voters; the distortion of policy information by campaigns and the media; the frequent enactment of measures that are unconstitutional or that result in unintended consequences, such as the substantial erosion of state and local tax bases; the exercise of majority tyranny; and the manipulation of public sentiment by special interests. We then review the history of randomly selected citizen assemblies, from the legislative bodies of ancient Athens through twentieth- and twenty-first century proposals, such as demarchical institutions and popular legislative branches. Finally, we propose five different varieties of random assembly forms — Priority Conferences, Design Panels, Citizens’ Assemblies, Citizens’ Initiative Reviews, and Policy Juries — and explain how they can address the deliberative deficit of direct democracy. After selecting members through stratified random sampling of citizens, each of these assemblies would operate at a different stage of the legislative process, from initial problem identification through approval of a finished ballot measure. Highly structured procedures guided by professional moderators and featuring expert testimony on policy and legal matters would ensure deliberative quality and adherence to democratic standards of participant interaction. Further, these procedures would yield measures that are more likely to achieve desired policy objectives, less likely to result in unintended consequences, and more robust to court challenges than measures produced by today’s flawed initiative and referendum processes.
Allotted chambers as defenders of democracy
Constellations , 2022
The rise of anti-democratic political movements suggests that democracies pay a price for neglecting a critically important task—the task of democratic self-defence. This task has been neglected, in part, due to controversy regarding democratic guardianship, i.e. the proper institution for safeguarding democratic institutions. Existing institutions are often decried as either too legalistic (courts) or too partisan (parliaments). Courts lack democratic legitimation for deciding on politically-sensitive issues, while parliaments face a conflict of interest when regulating political competition. These considerations suggest the need for protective institutions that enjoy strong popular legitimacy while remaining nonpartisan. We suggest that randomly-selected assemblies might effectively serve as citizen tribunals creating and enforcing democratic self-defence measures, including but not limited to anti-extremist measures. Random assemblies respect universal inclusion and political equality through their selection procedures, thereby providing a strong form of democratic legitimation. In addition, properly-designed random assemblies can ensure impartiality; they are not bound to follow a partisan agenda and resist capture by political elites. We conclude by imagining three different roles—weak, moderate and strong—that allotted chambers can play in the process of democratic self-defence.
The fallacy of representative democracy and the random selection of legislators
2017
In this paper we discuss the problems of modern representative democracy and we look at the random selection of legislators as an extreme form of the proportional political representation, arguing that it is the way to make representative democracy as close to direct democracy as possible. In this respect we present a new mathematical model which attempts at describing a more efficient parliament where part of the members are selected by lot. It will be shown that starting from a parliament working with two parties (or coalitions), where the costs of representative democracy are quite apparent, one can beneficially move towards a parliament where independent legislators, randomly selected from the population of constituents, sit alongside with party members. The paper shows that increasing the number of independent legislators up to a point enhances the efficiency of the parliament.
dalus The Prospects & Limits of Deliberative Democracy
2017
This essay proceeds in three steps. First, it will briefly outline the often invoked “crisis” of representative democracy and its major symptoms. Second, it will discuss a popular yet, as I shall argue, worryingly misguided response to that crisis: namely, the switch to plebiscitarian methods of “direct” democracy, as advocated, for example, by rightist populist forces in many European Union member states. The United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum of June 2016 illuminates the weaknesses of this approach. Third, it will suggest a rough design for enriching representative electoral democracy with nonelectoral (but “aleatory,” or randomized) and nonmajoritarian (but deliberative and consultative) bodies and their peculiar methods of political will formation (as opposed to the expression of a popular will already formed). One core question of political theory is how best to make collectively binding decisions: who should make those decisions, and by what rules and procedures? The modalitie...
Journal of Deliberative Democracy, 2018
While democracy remains a firmly-held ideal, the present state of electoral democracy is plagued by growing disaffection. As a result, both scholars and practitioners have shown considerable interest in the potential of random selection as a means of selecting political representatives. Despite its potential, deployment of this alternative is limited by concerns about its perceived legitimacy. Drawing on an inductive analysis of the replacement of elections with random selection in two student governments in Bolivia, we explore stakeholders' perceptions of the legitimacy of random selection by investigating both their overall support for randomly selecting representatives as well as the views that inform this support. Overall, we find that random selection is indeed accepted as a legitimate means of selecting representatives, with stakeholders broadly preferring random selection and recommending its use in other schools-views which are informed by a critical assessment of random selection's relative merits. Moreover, we find that perceptions may be affected by contextual factors that extend beyond individuals' own values. Our findings thus contribute to work on random selection, its contextual embeddedness, and on the values underpinning democratic structures.
Deliberation and Representation: Squaring the Circle
This paper argues that the 'deliberative turn' in democratic theory could undermine the very institution (representative democracy) that it is seeking to enhance, unless steps are taken to ensure that the sample of citizens chosen to deliberate accurately reflects the interests and preferences of the whole political community. The model of representative deliberation proposed in this paper is, paradoxically, derived from Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Deliberation in the Public Policies Planning Process. Experiences and Future Challenges, 2022
The purpose of the paper is to present the elements of deliberative participatory governance on the example of citizens' assembly becoming more and more popular mini-public all over the world. In order to achieve this goal, I analyzed the certain aspects of two fundamental organizational standards of citizens' assemblies, namely random selection of participants and related assembly demographic representativeness. In this context I performed research on the certain methods of participant random selection referring to the issue of diversified selection algorithms, criteria of eligibility for participation in citizens' assembly and personal profiles of participants. Both indicated standards are focused on achievement of democratic equality, thus providing individuals with the chance to be selected to work within an assembly with equal probability. However, in practice, this demand is very difficult to achieve, mostly because of different participation ratios in certain subpopulations.