Solving Dilemmas with Multi-Body Sortition

From "The Trouble With Elections: Everything We Thought We Knew About Democracy is Wrong," Chapter 16.2

This proposal uses a variety of bodies, each with unique characteristics (such as selection method, and term of office) that are optimized for the task each body handles, and to overcome the dilemmas discussed above. The proposal below is comprehensive – a sort of “reference design” such as that used by architects. In real-world applications, it is likely that certain bodies described might be used, and others not. For example, a city government might utilize the Rules Council, Review Panel and Policy Juries within one specific policy area, but keep the Interest Panel, Agenda Council, and Oversight Council functions within the existing city council.

Setting the Agenda (by Agenda Council and Petitions)

An allotted body called an Agenda Council would have responsibility for setting the agendas of policy-making bodies – but not for developing bills, voting on them, or anything else. I call this a meta-legislative body, because it legislates about the process of legislating. This is distinct from the mature Athenian system, which did not completely isolate agenda setting from the drafting of proposals, since the Council of 500 (boule) could play a role in both. However, in cases where the People’s Assembly (ecclesia) initiated consideration of some new legislation, the task of drafting it fell to individual citizens, with the ultimate decision falling to a randomly selected Legislative Panel (nomothetai). Assigning meta-legislative tasks to a separate body from normal legislation follows the long-standing principle of “checks and balances,” or separation of powers as advocated by the likes of Montesquieu and Madison. 

This body might be selected using a two-tier lottery system of the willing, similar to that used in the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly in 2003-4 as discussed by R. B. Herath in his book: Real Power to the People: A Novel Approach to Electoral Reform in British Columbia. This two-step lottery has also been employed in the bulk of recent citizens’ assemblies around the world. A somewhat different but similar two-step lottery system was also used in Athens, where a group of 6,000 citizens over the age of 30 were randomly selected from volunteers for one year terms to serve in a sort of jury pool for the people’s Courts and Legislative Panels, with individual juries, numbering in the hundreds, being selected by lot for any given court case or law. However, in this multi-body sortition system rather than seeking volunteers to join the lottery pool, as in Athens, the “volunteers,” would be randomly invited from the entire population. However, those initially drawn could decline – thus having a second final lottery of the willing. This is an important distinction from typical volunteer systems, because many people who would never put themselves forward as volunteers would be willing to accept if invited into the pool. This would dramatically improve the representativeness of the pool and of the final body.

If stratified sampling, such that several demographic factors are balanced to match the diversity of the general population, random selection will also tend to produce a body that resembles the general population in terms of various other characteristics not specifically stratified for, such as political attitudes.

The Agenda Council and their staff would seek out problems needing attention, rather than merely react to media or special interest group pressures. For example, the United States now faces a little discussed, but indisputable, infrastructure deficit (transportation, water systems, etc.) that arguably is ignored by elected representatives because raising the issue doesn’t benefit re-election. The goal is to set an agenda rationally, in the public interest, rather than according to the dictates of electoral imperatives, where being able to blame political opponents is the priority.

In the spirit of isegoria, it would also be desirable to have an alternate means for agenda setting, open to all citizens. Therefore, anybody would be allowed to initiate a petition drive to force a topic onto the agenda. Establishing rules that allow any citizen to promote an agenda item through petitions, but that do not encourage special interests to flood the agenda, is challenging. The signature threshold and rules for such a petition effort should not be made by the Agenda Council, because it might be tempted to defend its prerogatives by establishing unreasonably steep barriers to petitions. Instead, a separate allotted body called a Rules Council (discussed in a subsequent post) would handle this task, adjusting the rules over time, seeking to optimize isegoria, while avoiding special interest domination. 

An important point here, however, is that placing a topic on the agenda by petition does not shape the resulting policy. For example, a group advocating abolishing income taxes, could put the topic of income tax on the agenda, but the final result might be higher income taxes. Thus, groups who think their preferred policy would be popular with ordinary citizens, once they were well-informed, would have an incentive to try the petition route, if their concern was sidestepped by the Agenda Council, but this would not be a productive pathway for special interests, since the outcome could be the opposite of their goal.

An Agenda Council would be intermediate in size, perhaps 150 members. This is small enough to allow quality active all-to-all deliberation, but large enough to assure broad diversity, and rough representativeness (with stratified sampling). The two-tier lottery of the willing assures a willingness to “do the work.” But, since they are not developing, let alone adopting any laws, the lack of highly accurate representativeness (only achieved through quasi-mandatory service in a general lottery) is not an issue. The use of a lottery and relatively short term in office in selecting the Agenda Council (perhaps a month or two) also promotes protection against corruption.

Drafting Proposals (by Interest Panels)

Once an agenda topic was established, there would be a call for volunteers to serve on Interest Panels, each panel being small enough to facilitate active participation (perhaps a dozen members). The Interest Panels would generate legislative proposals, but have no power to adopt them. In Athens, self-selected citizens (ho boulomenos) could propose laws or decrees, but these generally had to pass through multiple self-selected and allotted bodies (the Assembly, the Council of 500 and Legislative Panel) before final enactment.

There would be as many Interest Panels on a given topic as the number of volunteers would fill. This is derived from, but also modifies, the principle of isegoria. Unlike Athens, in this case the individual is not speaking directly to the ultimate decision-making body. However, dividing into many smaller units means the amount of input would be far greater, with the potential for any individual participating on a Panel to affect the final legislation. Interest Panels at the local level might meet in person on weekends or evenings, but, as Internet access becomes more common throughout society, many would likely use Internet collaboration tools that allow members to communicate and work on proposals sequentially, rather than needing to coordinate meeting times.

The Interest Panels could be formulated in more than one way. Some Interest Panels might be self-organized by like-minded individuals. This might lead to the generation of extreme proposals. However, since these panel members would know that they are not the final decision-makers, they would have an incentive to temper their proposals in order to win approval at the final stage before a fully representative Policy Jury. Alternatively, the volunteers could be randomly mixed on Interest Panels to promote diversity of perspectives and cognitive styles. 

Self-selection at the level of the Interest Panel allows experts who would be unelectable (due to their appearance, lack of wealth, personality, or other traits) to contribute to governance. It also means that special interests and self-deluded incompetents could participate. While a panel of a dozen would be likely to identify and discount the ideas of “wackos,” it is likely that some Interest Panels would put forth terrible legislative proposals. This is one reason why it is desirable to have a large number of Interest Panels, and why self-selected Interest Panels should not make ultimate decisions. Some of them might deadlock, or disintegrate due to quorum failures. In most cases, however, multiple Interest Panels would produce draft proposals for the next level allotted body – a Review Panel – to consider. Review Panels will be discussed in the next post.