Against Elections! Fix Democracy with Sortition and Sociocracy | DEGROWTHIFY #5
Today, we’ll talk about democracy. Why is not working? How can we do better? How would society and government look like if we got rid of elections? Yes, really, today we will be against elections while advocating for a much better form of democracy. Let’s see how it would look like.
48% of respondents in a survey from 19 democratic countries said they were satisfied with the way democracy is working. 71% of Americans feel that political systems do not allow citizens to have influence on politics. Voter turnout is far from being perfect.
World Values Survey, a large-scale international research project, questioned more than 73,000 people in 57 countries, representing almost 85% of the world’s population. When asked whether they believed democracy to be a good way of governing a country, no fewer than 91.6% answered in the affirmative.
Transparency International found in their Global Corruption Barometer that political parties everywhere are regarded as the most corrupt organisations on earth. In practically all Western democracies they come in at number one while in the European Union the figures are nothing less than tragic.
At the same time, global indices for the quality of democracy from representation to participation have not progressed much in the last decades, despite globalisation, the internet, some emancipation of minority groups, and some improvements in the quality of life for some humans, not all of them.
Politicians continue to be elected based on their charisma, on how much money they have or how much money they raise, on how they manipulate the emotions of the masses, or whether they are celebrities or have name recognition, or whether they are cute, or tall, or good at debates, or photogenic.
Democracy suffers from several symptoms. There is enthusiasm in the idea, and mistrust in elected representatives, at the same time. The crisis of legitimacy makes fewer and fewer people show up to vote. Then voters are more volatile than ever. They easily switch support for political parties. Fewer and fewer people are members of political parties. In the European Union the average is at around 4%. Democracy suffers also from a crisis of efficiency. Its vigour has declined. Coalition negotiations are taking longer than ever, parties in government are attacked more and more, government business is slow. Here in Toronto, a metro line was started in 2011 and it is still under construction. David Van Reybrouck writes in Against Elections:
“If eagerness to promote an image wins out over governing, if election fever becomes a chronic disorder, if compromise is consistently described as treachery, if party politics systematically evokes contempt, if participation in government is guaranteed to lead to heavy electoral defeat, why would an idealistic young person go into politics?”
In history, there were several designs for ruling countries in the Western world, from feudalism where there is no consultation between lords and serfs, to the American and French revolutions that attempted to empower only a select group of humans, namely rich men, then the slow emergence of political parties and universal suffrage, then the rise of authoritarian extremism on both the left and the right, a resurgence of representative democracy in the 1950s, then the encroachment of the public sphere by commercial mass media from the 1980s to the 2000s, only until the rise of social media that encroached all public life and severely distorted the rules of democracy.
I will skip the long discussion about diagnoses. Why has democracy become so flawed? Has it always been like this? Can it be any different? Instead, I will talk about sortition and sociocracy, because I think they are very interesting approaches to fixing and refreshing democracy.
Sortition is selecting representatives by drawing lots. It is how juries are selected in criminal cases in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and Ireland. How can sortition fix democracy?
It’s best to look at an example. The multi body sortition proposed by researcher Terry Bouricius. These institutions will replace the elected parliament and government of the country. It starts with the Agenda Council that will choose topic for legislation. It will be made from 150-400 people, chosen by lot from among volunteers. These citizens will work full time in the Agenda Council for 3 years each, however a third of the members will be replaced each year. They will be paid a salary.
(Van Reybrouck, Against elections : the case for democracy)
In a second phase, various Interest Panels will come into play. There can be a hundred or less. Interest Panels are groups of twelve citizens that can each propose a law, or part of a law. Members are neither elected nor chosen by lot, they simply volunteer to help think about a particular subject. They can discuss traffic safety, food provisioning, energy sovereignty, job guarantees, education.
(Van Reybrouck, Against elections : the case for democracy)
In a third phase, all these proposals for laws are put before a Review Panel, of which there is one for each policy area. Proposals concerning traffic safety, for example, come before the Review Panel that concerns itself with mobility. These panels can be compared with parliamentary committees as they do not have the right to initiate legislation nor to vote on its adoption. They just do the work in between. They use the input from Interest Panels, they organise hearings, invite experts and work on developing legislation.
To avoid all power being concentrated in the Review Panels there is a fourth institution. Legislation is put before a Policy Jury. It has no permanent members. Every time a vote on a piece of legislation is needed, four hundred citizens are chosen by lot to come together for one day or in certain cases for several days. These lots are drawn from the entire adult population, like jury service for a criminal trial. Participation in this random draw is quasi-mandatory. It instills an egalitarian principle of fair chances to be picked, regardless of personal identity. This Policy Jury will hold a secret vote without further discussion. There are no political parties. No party discipline. No ideological labeling or identities. No behind the scenes haggling. No back scratching. It is a secret vote based on personal conscience and thinking.
To streamline the process, the model has two more institutions. A Rules Council and an Oversight Council, both again chosen by lot. The Rules Councils develops the procedures for the actual drawing of lots, for hearings with experts, and for voting, when it’s required by the Policy Jury. The Oversight Council ensures that citizens selected by lot follow the procedures. They also deal with complaints. These two institutions are meta-political, they only ensure that the game runs smoothly.
There is no need to elect any public office representatives because sortition can actually address the objections to this proposal. Selecting citizens at random was the practice in Ancient Athens. It is still a democratic process that simplifies representation by eliminating grouping by ideologies, parties, by making campaigning obsolete, by removing money from politics and so on. Regular citizens can be as competent as any career politician. No politician acts in a void, without advice from experts. There are no objective criteria by which a lawyer is better than an electrician in representing their fellow citizens in a parliament or government.
David Van Reybrouck writes:
“Everyone contributes according to his or her talents and ambitions. Those who think themselves able to take on demanding governmental work can put their names down for the Agenda Council, the Review Panels, the Rules Council and the Oversight Council while those who have concrete ideas for specific legislation are welcome on an Interest Panel. Those who prefer to take things easy can wait to see if they are called to join the Policy Jury for one or two days, which is like going to vote when you don’t follow politics daily.”
Sortition is already being used in selecting Citizen Assemblies, so why not refreshing democracy completely and truly engage all citizens in the process?
Time now to add sociocracy in the mix. I am involved in an organisation that runs on sociocracy. It’s the Degrowth Collective. The International Degrowth Network is another organisation that runs on sociocracy. So, what is it? Sociocracy is a governance system based on consent. It is also known as dynamic governance. There are no hierarchies of power or decision. A sociocratic organisation is comprised of groups of people called circles. Each circle has a specific purpose, responsibilities and domain. Circles in a sociocratic organisation are quasi-autonomous. They do not tell each other what to do. They do not report to each other, or to a central board of directors. Decisions in each circle are fundamentally made by consent, which is when nobody inside a circle has objections to a proposal. There are specifics on how an objection is defined, on how rounds of decision making are supposed to take place, how circles connect to each other and so on.
The beauty of sociocracy is that every single voice in a group matters. A minority cannot be ignored or silenced, as it happens in decisions based on majority rule. Sociocratic processes are thoughtful and can actually be even more effective than traditional voting.
Mixing sortition with sociocracy is an interesting exercise. Say for example, we replaced parliaments with the six-body model or something similar where members are selected by lot. Interest Panels could be governed by sociocracy, in which decisions are made based on consent. The Agenda Council can also be an autonomous sociocratic organisation in itself. The same goes for the Rules Council and the Oversight Council. The Policy Jury is the only body that would not require sociocracy because they do not need deliberation. Surely, rules can be made that the policy jury approves laws by simple majority or supermajority. In any case, all members count equally as individual humans. They will not be boxed in by belonging to political parties.
How about in corporations? I am advocating strongly for economic democracy. A system based on one worker equals one vote. Adding sortition and sociocracy into the mix would create a solid model for economic democracy. Say, for example, five people are qualified for a management position, based on skills. What if no one gets 51% of the vote from workers? We can add a rotation system based on sortition. Volunteers, and those voted to be capable, can take turns at being managers, at random, for a limited time. The same goes in a sociocratic organisation. Roles in circle can also be distributed based on sortition from lists of volunteers.
Democracy is clearly flawed in our political life. Surely, we can do better if we used sortition and sociocracy.
But in our economic life, democracy is completely absent. Capitalism works on top-down directives. There is zero participation in decisions and power by employees. Two excuses used to maintain this non-democratic system are fiduciary duty, and the freedom to contract. In the name of fiduciary duty, the executives and the board of directors are given the power to decide on everything of substance. There is no recourse to their decisions by those affected by them. We just have to accept their decisions and live with them. At best, if we do not like them, the only way to change something is to replace the board of directors. Only if you own enough shares in the company, you have the power to replace the board, who then can replace the CEO, while the CEO can replace whoever they want in the pyramid of people below them.
Look how much Americans trust the media. This is a severe crisis of legitimacy. It has to do with the absence of democracy inside media corporations, that are by design, capitalist corporations.
The second excuse, which is the freedom to contract, says that you are free to become an employee of the company, and accept this dictatorship. If you do not like it, you can quit at any time. Go, try your luck with another employer that functions on the same principle. Or become a capitalist yourself, become an owner of a company and replicate the system yourself. Surely, you are also free to create a democratic worker co-op if you can find enough funding, and enough fellow humans to partner with. Good luck with all that.
In the last part of this essay, I’d like to discuss some principles for democracy. They will help us understand how sortition and sociocracy, in different mixes, can refresh democracy.
1 Intentionality by participation.
There is a lot of intention in seeking a position of power, in our current economic and political system. You have to want it. You need to have purpose, even though that purpose may be a secret known only to you, while you tell others that “I want to serve”, or “I can lead the company into more growth, more profit”. A refreshed democracy will have a different kind of intentionality. In sortition, all citizens participate in democracy, equally, because they have the same chances of being drawn in the lot. Or, if you want to volunteer for an Interest Panel, you will participate because you have shown intent. In sociocracy, all members in circles have the intention of being members, by definition, or else they would not act as members. You can leave a sociocratic organisation by simply not showing intent anymore.
2 Efficiency by streamlining.
We want to believe democracy is efficient because we have elections every four years. But after politicians get elected, they take that power and almost do whatever they want with it, and use it for four years. They assume passive consent from us, for everything they decide. They can go to war on our behalf, they can cut taxes for the rich, they do whatever they can to maintain the status quo.
Until the next election, the only way to force them to change their minds is if we took our discontent to streets, or write petitions with huge support, or do sit-ins, or go on strike. Sortition would effectively eliminate passive consent from politics, and streamline the process because there will be no more elections. Representatives will be accountable every day while on the job, and if they break the rules, they will be kicked out by the Oversight Council, and a new citizen will be selected by lot, in their place.
Sociocracy, on the other hand, has specific rules for efficiency. Groups can decide to use active consent or inactive consent, depending on the interest of each member in every decision. Decisions do not have to take a long time, they can be very quick, if the collective wants them to be quick.
Sortition streamlines efficiency by eliminating elections. Sociocracy streamlines efficiency by using consent.
3 Inclusion by representation.
In political democracy, many groups are disenfranchised. They can be minorities, so their representative will never be elected. Or their issues are marginal, so they will not get legislation passed for their needs. Some groups find it even hard to vote. Many have lost the trust in the system. They feel left out because they are actually left out. Refreshed democracy reforms inclusion, by redefining representation. Instead on relying on elections, representation will be based on equal chances on being drawn by lot. The system can make sure that chances are calibrated to reflect the demography of the population.
In sociocracy, there is no question of representation, because members in a circle are all included, by definition, in all decisions. All members need to express consent, whatever active or inactive, in order for a proposal to be adopted.
4 Adaptability by decentralization.
A refreshed democracy, political and economic, will be much more adaptable to the needs of society. Hierarchies that we used for the past few centuries have failed us. Corporations do not have to be top-down kingdoms, where the CEO and managers are not elected, and have unchecked power. Parliaments and governments do not have to be fiefdoms of corrupt politicians that are beholden to their corporate sponsors. Sortition and sociocracy, with proper designs, can help public and private governance become much more adaptable.
5 Empowerment by equality.
Power is having the ability to influence others to do something. In politics, some humans earn that power by being elected to public office. In economics, managers earn the power by being anointed into their position by someone above them in a higher position. Mind you, there is always a bigger fish, in capitalism. The chain never ends. Even the owners of capital answer to other owners of capital, by entering oppressive contracts, or by taking out loans. Capitalism is a chain of oppression.
To fix this broken system, empowerment can only be, by the people, for the people, and of the people. Anything else will leave somebody out of the game. Both sortition and sociocracy are constructed with a strong attachment to equality, whether it is by drawing lots, or by being a member in a circle. In fact, I would argue, it cannot get any better than this, where every human voice and intent matters equally. If we are to survive this century, we must refresh democracy.
In conclusion, fellow humans, let’s get rid of political parties, elections, and illegitimate bosses. Democracy can be and should be what the word really means, rule by the people. Sortition and sociocracy can make democracy for the people and of the people.
*Published as a video essay here. Subscribe for more.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. - Thomas Jefferson
See also:
Legislature by Lot:Transformative Designs for Deliberative Governance by John Gastil and Erik Olin Wright