And they gave forth their lots; and the lot fell upon Matthias; and he was numbered with the eleven apostles.
- Acts 1:26
- Acts 1:26
The Old Order Amish use a combination of election and sortition to select church leaders. Men receiving two or three nominations to fill a vacancy are asked to pick a psalm book containing a slip of paper, one of those slips being marked to indicate who will take on the burden of the position. This time-honoured custom is meant to imitate the example set by the Apostles, who appointed new members of their group by casting lots. Could this quaint little practice hold promise for deadlocked political systems riven by partisan agendas?
Over here in the UK, our political system has hit impenetrable deadlock over Brexit.
Parliament is divided, the body politic is divided. There are all sorts of factions among politicians - Remainers (like myself) in favour of holding a second referendum or "People's Vote", Hard Brexiteers who want to crash out without striking a trade deal, May loyalists backing her deeply unpopular negotiated settlement and backstop, supporters of the Norway model - and no consensus among the different groups for any one option over the others.
If a new general election were called, it would be likely to lead to yet another hung parliament or minority government that cannot pass the necessary legislation or push through its desired policies.
There is a strong sense all round that the system, as it stands, is broken. Perhaps irreparably so.
Somehow, this fractured political landscape needs some kind of heavy brinkmanship.
Could sortition and demarchy offer a possible solution?
A year before Ireland voted in a landslide plebiscite to legalise abortion, ninety-nine random strangers - housewives, students, ex-teachers, truck drivers and others - met in a North Dublin hotel to discuss this most vexing and emotive issue that had long divided Irish society, resulting in deadlock. They met as a representative sample of the wider population, a so-called "Citizens’ Assembly": comprising pro-lifers, pro-choicers and undecideds whose views broadly reflected opinions in the wider Irish population.
And they managed to do what the Irish political class - bitterly at odds over the issue, between liberals and conservatives - had failed to achieve for decades. Around a table, after just five weeks of sipping coffee and getting down to business, they broke the longstanding stalemate in Irish politics by agreeing a consensus on the way forward.
In the political lexicon, the process these ordinary citizens took part in is known by various names - participatory democracy, citizens assembly or citizens jury, sortition, selection by lot, allotment, and demarchy.
Now, I'm a firm believer in representative democracy. It's still a very recent phenomenon in the grand-sweep of human history, when you consider the long-lasting nature of empires or the five-hundred year legacy of the Roman Republic. We have a long way to go and while it has survived grave tests like the surging fascism of the 1930s, it hasn't been around half as long as it needs to be for us to be absolutely sure of its reliability in perpetuity.
Nevertheless, I continue to believe that our mixed model of democracy - with separation of powers between legislature, executive and judiciary - is the best form of governance that our species has yet come up with. I am critical of direct, plebiscitary democracy - as the French Revolution and Brexit have proven; this is not a stable, efficient, consensus-building or enduring version of democracy.
In Republican France the experiment with direct, commune-style democracy - spearheaded by the whims of the mob, or sans-cullottes - lasted a ridiculously short seven years after the abolition of the monarchy before disintegrating in a pool of blood, fury and tears that saw Napoleon Bonaparte establish an absolute dictatorship to end the Reign of Terror that had ensued.
But I am open-minded about Irish-style "demarchy" or "sortition". Let me be clear: I wouldn't want it to replace parliamentarism - returning us to a sort of Athenian-style system of committees of citizens appointed by lot and exercising direct democratic power. That would, again, be too much direct democracy for my liking.
The Athenian system of democracy, involving a large degree of sortition. persisted for a measly 50 years - twice interrupted by oligarchic uprisings - and was even worse than revolutionary France in terms of unnecessary violence. In 427 BC, for instance, the people of Athens voted, democratically, to put to death the entire adult male population of the town of Mytilene and to throw into slavery their women and children. Before that, in 399 BC, the Athenians had voted to put Socrates - the greatest philosopher and freethinker of the ancient world - to death because he preferred listening to the voice of his conscience rather than blindly following the ancestral customs and rituals of the city. Athenian democracy - glorified by many today, and in my opinion unjustifiably - was an abortive failure. Not a model to be emulated or praised.
I am happy to say that, despite my serious reservations with Brexit, we haven't gone that far off-base.
Liberal values, secularism, the rule of law, equality under the law and separation of powers make democratic decision-making enlightened. Without these first existing and there being a societal-consensus and consciousness in their favour, people voting by majority can do all sorts of horrible, unfortunate stuff.
But with Irish-style demarchy, I think it could be a useful mechanism to gradually phase into terribly gridlocked political systems, to avoid nasty campaigns and government shut-downs - when conventional parliamentary and direct democracy (in referenda) stalls.
I welcome the thoughts of my esteemed RF colleagues on this!
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