“A key aspect of sortition is that it is not the individual members of the deliberative body who are individually “representatives.” Each individual member has no specific constituency. It is the body as a whole that represents the population as a whole.” Exactly that is the point. 👌🙏
What I think is missing from this discussion is the concept of legitimacy. I am said to be "represented" in Congress, say, by virtue of the fact that I have an equal right to participate in the choice of my representative. Since everyone else (eligible) has an equal right, I just happen to be on the losing side when the votes are counted. Contra, though, is the idea in footnote 4 of Carolene Products, which suggests that there are impediments, structural or otherwise, that prevent even this representation.
Certainly in most legislative bodies, from organizational boards to international organizations like the UN, the elected, selected or appointed members consider themselves a delegate in the sense you discuss in the piece -- they vote either their conscience, or more likely, in political blocks. Remember that “representative” bodies become their own organization after elections or appointments. Every member represents everyone in the jurisdiction that got them there, whether a food co-op, city, country or the world. There’s little chance of you ever being represented unless you are powerful, and this is more likely the larger the jurisdiction. I think you’re right that only if selected by sortition can a legislative body have a chance at being representative of most of the population. Even then, you need more constraints in the legislature to get to true representation.
“A key aspect of sortition is that it is not the individual members of the deliberative body who are individually “representatives.” Each individual member has no specific constituency. It is the body as a whole that represents the population as a whole.” Exactly that is the point. 👌🙏
What I think is missing from this discussion is the concept of legitimacy. I am said to be "represented" in Congress, say, by virtue of the fact that I have an equal right to participate in the choice of my representative. Since everyone else (eligible) has an equal right, I just happen to be on the losing side when the votes are counted. Contra, though, is the idea in footnote 4 of Carolene Products, which suggests that there are impediments, structural or otherwise, that prevent even this representation.
Certainly in most legislative bodies, from organizational boards to international organizations like the UN, the elected, selected or appointed members consider themselves a delegate in the sense you discuss in the piece -- they vote either their conscience, or more likely, in political blocks. Remember that “representative” bodies become their own organization after elections or appointments. Every member represents everyone in the jurisdiction that got them there, whether a food co-op, city, country or the world. There’s little chance of you ever being represented unless you are powerful, and this is more likely the larger the jurisdiction. I think you’re right that only if selected by sortition can a legislative body have a chance at being representative of most of the population. Even then, you need more constraints in the legislature to get to true representation.
After “and an agent (the representative.)” in the first paragraph should be a period. Not before the closing parenthesis.