You’ve alluded to this design several times already in the book. It may not be necessary to include this as a main book chapter, but having it as an appendix might be appropriate.
You’re right he’s been alluding to this the whole time, but this felt like a very important and needed chapter for me.
An unspoken question most readers will have for the author up until this point in the book has been “so what do you think we should do?” And here he definitely answers it, most importantly with a high level graphic explaining the full structure.
I don’t think the previous allusions to multi-body sortition were specific and cohesive enough to warrant getting rid of this chapter.
honestly, i would almost prefer this, with the infographic, to just be smack in the front of the book. almost like the map is often placed in fantasy novels :)
I’m really looking forward to actual examples of sortition and citizen assemblies. You have been mentioning all kinds of sortition, but it’s hard for me to grasp how this would go on the ground, so examples would be really helpful.
I don't have a hand-out about multi-body design. If an audience is new to sortition, I doubt that level of specificity is useful anyway. As for "old" It doesn't have the Coordination Council, and uses the word "volunteer, though the idea is to use the two round lottery with Stratified sampling... NOT people who put themselves forward. There is one other crude graphic of multi-body flow in this paper on page 5 https://www.academia.edu/11673683/An_Idealized_Design_for_the_Legislative_Branch_of_Government
If you need an artist/graphic designer to update this, my brother in law is a professional artist and sortition advocate. He actually initially turned me onto sortition. His name is Chris Doucette. You can get a hold of him here: https://www.artbychrisdoucette.com/
Sorta similar to what Corbin said, I think the graphic would benefit from clearer illustration of how information flows through the system. It might be as simple as making the arrows from one panel to the next darker (it took me until the 3 time looking at the graphic to even realize they existed; they’re so light). It could also be a bigger change where instead of a graphic organized as a 1 dimensional line, you break out the Panels into 2 dimensions and rearrange the Panels such that their interaction with other Panels is clear.
These are just suggestions to my main point, there’s an opportunity here for a graphic to not just show the components of system, but how information and deliberation move through those components.
I have recently learned about the existence of this blog after reading Guerreros Lottocracy book. I am very impressed and think that his and your work possess extensive commonalities, as well as some important differences. I think both approaches combined can really become, as you state in your conclusion, the North Star for system change.
That being said, I thought some of my questions are perhaps placed best under this article.
1. Regarding the Agenda Council: are the latest experiences/evaluation of the East-Belgium Model included in your thoughts? Are you aware of any problems that just started surfacing later on? How well could this be complemented with civic democracy tech for participation in your eyes?
2. Regarding the Interest Panel: this appears to me as complimentary with Guerreros idea of an "expert database", where people are drawn by lot if their work belongs to the respective subjects.
An author here in Germany suggested it to be useful if the participants of a deliberation, which would be the review panel in your model, can choose more experts/stakeholders/affected voices on their own during the course of the process - if they feel that would be useful or necessary. Do you as well believe that this can be useful and how would you incorporate it in your model?
3. Regarding the review panel: Guerrero and you essentially suggest the same model, though he calls it "SILL"s and suggests 20 of them right from the start for various subjects. However, there are voices saying that ideally, no allotted assembly should come together longer than one week (full time) in order to completely avoid internal group power dynamics buildups. Thus, complex legislation topics should rather be split into shorter chunks that can effectively be taken on by one such assembly. Than the next one in the week after will build on that work and so on. Another body would than be needed split the subjects accordingly (if thats not done prior by for example the Agenda/Coordination Council). Do you have any thoughts on this?
4. Regarding the policy jury: It appears to me that digital deliberative polling, as James Fishkin does with the platform of the Stanford deliberation lab, might be better suited than a plenary jury. Why do you believe that a (digital) plenary session is better suited, particularly for highly complex/contested topics?
5. Regarding the rules council: It appears to me that this council might better be suited as kind of co-creational digital participation process that involves as many people of the population as possible. Everybody should learn and understand how the system works. Everybody should be able to suggest changes. Why do you believe that this is also better be done but just a few people?
Last but not least: I think it would be very worthy to further engage with the counter arguments by Lafont and Urbinati in their defence against the lottocratic mentality.
Thank you for reading that comment and for all the amazing work on this substack!
Thanks for the comment. My specific design is merely a starting point, so I don't want to defend specific design notions right now. The main thing that is taking my time NOW is that I have a publisher, Taylor & Francis, that wants the book cut from around 155,000 words down to 110,000 words, so I am trying to decide what to jettison. I did write a new entire section about Lafont that isn't on Substack, but now fear there is no room for it. My critique is similar to that of Eric Shoemaker (whose doctoral thesis I discovered in researching). I will give you links to that thesis, and a journal article he published that refute Lafont.
I am thinking of editing out the bulk of the HISTORY (Athens and American and French constitutions, etc.), and also the chunk dismissing proposed American election reforms. Any suggestions for what is LEAST crucial are appreciated.
You’ve alluded to this design several times already in the book. It may not be necessary to include this as a main book chapter, but having it as an appendix might be appropriate.
You’re right he’s been alluding to this the whole time, but this felt like a very important and needed chapter for me.
An unspoken question most readers will have for the author up until this point in the book has been “so what do you think we should do?” And here he definitely answers it, most importantly with a high level graphic explaining the full structure.
I don’t think the previous allusions to multi-body sortition were specific and cohesive enough to warrant getting rid of this chapter.
honestly, i would almost prefer this, with the infographic, to just be smack in the front of the book. almost like the map is often placed in fantasy novels :)
There are several English errors in this chapter.
I’m really looking forward to actual examples of sortition and citizen assemblies. You have been mentioning all kinds of sortition, but it’s hard for me to grasp how this would go on the ground, so examples would be really helpful.
hi, the infographic is referred to as ’old’. Is there newer material available?
I don't have a hand-out about multi-body design. If an audience is new to sortition, I doubt that level of specificity is useful anyway. As for "old" It doesn't have the Coordination Council, and uses the word "volunteer, though the idea is to use the two round lottery with Stratified sampling... NOT people who put themselves forward. There is one other crude graphic of multi-body flow in this paper on page 5 https://www.academia.edu/11673683/An_Idealized_Design_for_the_Legislative_Branch_of_Government
If you need an artist/graphic designer to update this, my brother in law is a professional artist and sortition advocate. He actually initially turned me onto sortition. His name is Chris Doucette. You can get a hold of him here: https://www.artbychrisdoucette.com/
also, we should create a graphic showing the flow of the various humanities-studied facts and how the core issues arise from them
Sorta similar to what Corbin said, I think the graphic would benefit from clearer illustration of how information flows through the system. It might be as simple as making the arrows from one panel to the next darker (it took me until the 3 time looking at the graphic to even realize they existed; they’re so light). It could also be a bigger change where instead of a graphic organized as a 1 dimensional line, you break out the Panels into 2 dimensions and rearrange the Panels such that their interaction with other Panels is clear.
These are just suggestions to my main point, there’s an opportunity here for a graphic to not just show the components of system, but how information and deliberation move through those components.
Hello from Germany!
I have recently learned about the existence of this blog after reading Guerreros Lottocracy book. I am very impressed and think that his and your work possess extensive commonalities, as well as some important differences. I think both approaches combined can really become, as you state in your conclusion, the North Star for system change.
That being said, I thought some of my questions are perhaps placed best under this article.
1. Regarding the Agenda Council: are the latest experiences/evaluation of the East-Belgium Model included in your thoughts? Are you aware of any problems that just started surfacing later on? How well could this be complemented with civic democracy tech for participation in your eyes?
2. Regarding the Interest Panel: this appears to me as complimentary with Guerreros idea of an "expert database", where people are drawn by lot if their work belongs to the respective subjects.
An author here in Germany suggested it to be useful if the participants of a deliberation, which would be the review panel in your model, can choose more experts/stakeholders/affected voices on their own during the course of the process - if they feel that would be useful or necessary. Do you as well believe that this can be useful and how would you incorporate it in your model?
3. Regarding the review panel: Guerrero and you essentially suggest the same model, though he calls it "SILL"s and suggests 20 of them right from the start for various subjects. However, there are voices saying that ideally, no allotted assembly should come together longer than one week (full time) in order to completely avoid internal group power dynamics buildups. Thus, complex legislation topics should rather be split into shorter chunks that can effectively be taken on by one such assembly. Than the next one in the week after will build on that work and so on. Another body would than be needed split the subjects accordingly (if thats not done prior by for example the Agenda/Coordination Council). Do you have any thoughts on this?
4. Regarding the policy jury: It appears to me that digital deliberative polling, as James Fishkin does with the platform of the Stanford deliberation lab, might be better suited than a plenary jury. Why do you believe that a (digital) plenary session is better suited, particularly for highly complex/contested topics?
5. Regarding the rules council: It appears to me that this council might better be suited as kind of co-creational digital participation process that involves as many people of the population as possible. Everybody should learn and understand how the system works. Everybody should be able to suggest changes. Why do you believe that this is also better be done but just a few people?
Last but not least: I think it would be very worthy to further engage with the counter arguments by Lafont and Urbinati in their defence against the lottocratic mentality.
Thank you for reading that comment and for all the amazing work on this substack!
Best regards,
Maik
Thanks for the comment. My specific design is merely a starting point, so I don't want to defend specific design notions right now. The main thing that is taking my time NOW is that I have a publisher, Taylor & Francis, that wants the book cut from around 155,000 words down to 110,000 words, so I am trying to decide what to jettison. I did write a new entire section about Lafont that isn't on Substack, but now fear there is no room for it. My critique is similar to that of Eric Shoemaker (whose doctoral thesis I discovered in researching). I will give you links to that thesis, and a journal article he published that refute Lafont.
Thesis: https://utoronto.scholaris.ca/items/817b6ea7-74f6-4f8b-9603-71ae39cc8ed3
Article focused on Lafont: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/josp.12598
I am thinking of editing out the bulk of the HISTORY (Athens and American and French constitutions, etc.), and also the chunk dismissing proposed American election reforms. Any suggestions for what is LEAST crucial are appreciated.