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Random Acts of Democracy [1]
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Date: 2022-10-12
A kleroterion (Ancient Greek: κληρωτήριον) was a randomization device used by the Athenian polis during the period of extreme democracy to select citizens to the boule, to most state offices, to the nomothetai, and to court juries.
Random Acts of Democracy
Sometimes a little randomness is the key to a more effective democracy.
At first blush this is a remarkable assertion. We are justifiably incensed when the poor are jailed and the rich go free. Our faith in democracy is shaken when legitimate elections results are questioned, or settled precedent is upended by a partisan court.
As Blackstone argued in Commentaries on the Laws of England (1783), the law should be “permanent, uniform, and universal”.
But perhaps stability can emerge out of chance. After researching over 2500 years of democratic governing experience, scholars such as Bernard Manin observe that randomness, historically speaking, was the ultimate guarantor of fair elections and predictable lawmaking.
Beginning with ancient Athens in 508 B.C.E:
For centuries despots and political elites controlled the city-state. Outraged citizens, refusing to accept perpetual chaos, implored the populist leader Kleisthenes to free them from this vicious cycle.
His innovative solution was systemic randomness.
After forcing existing cliques apart, Kleisthenes established a vibrant democracy with representatives chosen by lottery. In lieu of corrupt elections and hereditary positions, volunteers (free male citizens in good standing with both god and mammon), randomly served on enormous juries of five hundred or more. They filled government bureaucracies, the general legislature[i] and even served as chief executive for a day. Citizens could question any law, and demand accountability from any representative.
Sortition ruled. Political parties endured, but they governed Athens in random order, diffusing their authority[ii]. Independent, ordinary citizens replaced dishonest partisan bureaucrats. Large, ad hoc juries could not be bribed, and the courts handed down universally admired decisions. Confidence emerged from chaos.
Was there an occasional “clunker”? Of course, but only for a brief moment in time. Compared to Washington DC, where pedophiles, conspiracy wing-nuts and dark money candidates serve in Congress, the luck of the draw is a refreshing alternative to the ballot box[iii].
And sortition wasn’t limited to ancient Greece. Venetian governments filled their legislative bodies by lottery until the end of the 18th century, and even the republican Montesquieu thought "the suffrage by lot is natural to democracy."
Americans are unlikely to pivot to systemic sortition, but “residual randomness” continues to inform our representative democracy[iv]. At the local level, juries are filled by lot. Jury service, inspired by Athens[v], is one of our few surviving direct-democracy roles.
States are “laboratories of democracy” where messy political experimentation and citizen referenda are often the precursors of tomorrow’s national policies. Nationally, random inspections are an effective means for OSHA, the NRC and IRS to uncover fraud and spur the majority towards honesty.
Given its long, successful (and mostly forgotten history), how can we bring systemic randomness to bear in a modern and increasingly complex world[vi]?
In government contracting, don’t favor the lowest bidder. Instead, any proposal that meets a broad range of criteria is acceptable, and the winner is chosen by lottery. Randomness opens space for ingenuity, thwarts rigged bidding, and shakes up the procurement system.
For judicial appointments, both parties nominate candidates to enter a vetted pool in proportion to their seats in Congress. Judges are appointed from the pool at random. Sortition blocks the majority’s impulse to pack the bench, and more faithfully reflects the aggregate political will. A lottery could help restore legitimacy to a tarnished court.
And if we did pivot towards sortition, representative elections are a prime opportunity. When the top candidates are within 5% of each other in votes, the winner should be chosen by lot. Pervasive distortions, like hanging chads, gerrymandering, voter manipulation, incumbency, Super PACS, wealth, decision fatigueand low voter turnout may, in aggregate, overwhelm a 5% difference in certified votes. Why should we presume a narrow electoral victory is fundamentally more legitimate than the blind impartiality of fate erasing these democratic stains?
Similarly, an electoral college of 5,000 randomly selected volunteer citizens might outperform the circus that is our presidential system. Even a national popular vote can be held hostage to the biases of a captured primary system, voter suppression, dark money, Russian disinformation, or the temporal vagaries of an SNL skit.
Lotteries bend the arc of democracy towards justice.
Representative governments materialized in conjunction with a ruling class averse to sharing power. Anxious that a vibrant democracy might compromise their property and status, they restricted the voting franchise and limited direct citizen participation. Perhaps the tensions of our flawed representative democracy will compel a new generation to seek inspiration from Kleisthenes, and once again enjoy the benefits of systemic randomness.
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