You mostly failed to mention the two largest problems with our "democracy".
In theory, representative democracy means elected officials trying to fulfill their promises to their voters and look out for their interests.
This system can break down in two ways:
1. Politicians systematically not delivering on their promises.
2. Power being vested in people other than elected officials.
Both of these undemocratic phenomena are rampant in nearly all so called democratic states.
1.
Politicians are far more susceptible to media pressure than voter pressure, and media organisations have become interest groups of their own rather than guardians of the public interests.
Donor interests also plays a role, especially in those countries where few limits are placed on the size of political donations.
2.
Civil service bureaucracies have their own institutional incentives and ideological leanings, and often manage to frustrate elected officials from implementing their own policies.
Government decision making and policy implementation is often outsourced to NGO's and expert panels, who are not accountable to voters at all.
Law courts are also more activist than ever before, not content to merely enforce laws but rather to stretch their interpretation to or beyond the limit in accordance with their own political preferences.
I don't think I failed to mention your first point at all. My discussion of Brexit was to make this exact point! You're right about civil service--and this likely played a large role in Brexit's failure to be properly implemented.
Both of these problems disappear with Athenian-style sortition. But yes, I agree that they are problems with our current systems.
No, the second problem would not. Given enough complexity, you need a bureaucracy. The solution to this problem is a very strong spoil system, the solution to delegated politics is decentralization.
Athenian democracy worked with sortition and direct democracy because there were at best 60.000 citizens (adult, athenian-born males), only a fraction of them actively partecipating (Aristophanes was quit clear about it, Aristoteles too). In fact, Swiss direct democracy exists only in very small cantons.
In short, an Athenian assembly of 6000 worked for 30,000 citizens, but it would also work for 300 million citizens (in the same way that you can get nationally representative polls from a few thousand respondents).
And you don't need a permanent bureaucracy. The Athenians used sortition to create specifically purposed small legislative panels. This could easily be applied across scales of government within a modern nation state.
"Terrifying" and "completely deranged". Great arguments!
I think you should probably read the paper I linked before you continue to make arguments against sortition that the paper directly addresses.
To engage with the substance of your argument:
On decentralisation, I completely agree with you. That's why I gave a nod to federalism in the essay. Sortition works incredibly well when combined with decentralization, so I'm slightly confused why you seem to be against sortition?
On a strong spoils system: sure it solves the issue of the government not responding to the will of the voters, but it brings with it other issues (corruption, instability, polarisation, inefficiency). I maintain that sortition solves more problems with fewer tradeoffs.
While sortition could help with the second, the first seems better fixed with referendums (especially recall elections) than with sortition. And in fact, if the bureaucrats serve at the behest of a directly elected person, such as the USA's president, and that person can be recalled, that may be close enough to being accountable to the people. Or perhaps the appointed officials could be recalled even though they were not elected - I don't know if that idea's ever been tried, but I think it has potential.
The article doesn't mention it, but only free adult male Athenian citizens born to Athenian parents could participate in Athenian democracy.
Women, slaves, and foreigners were excluded. Pretty racist stuff!
That's actually close to the original American standard for democratic participation (free White men in good standing).
Makes one wonder, how did the inclusion of Ursula von der Leyens, Alexandria Occasional Cortices, and yesterday-arrived non-binary transgenders improve the process?
Yessir, that's exactly right. Not inherently malicious or necessarily malignant. Today's forced "diversity" is shortsighted and willfully ignorant. Even the Bible addresses slavery, not to condemn, but to regulate
Whenever I advocate for Virtue Ethics I always get some numbskull telling me, as if for the first time, that "Aristotle believed that slavery was good, you know", as if that invalidates his ethics. I decided to save myself the headache here (mostly from my audience rather than Aporia's, to be fair). So I apologise for that!
But you're right. Though it'd be hard to fully elaborate on the pros and cons of Athenian slavery in fewer than 3000 words really. Doing so probably belongs in its own piece.
The general point that homogeneity within citizenry is very important for democracy to work is completely validated by historical analysis.
1. In Switzerland it often takes years to implement referenda results, and it's not uncommon for the state to implement an interpretation of the results. Often many referenda are done on a subject and the state goes back and forth as a result. That the UK took long to actually leave the EU is not strange, or even a reflection of lack of democracy - certainly not with regards to the EU. It's normal that something as complex as Brexit would take years to implement, and simply leaving immediately would have caused havoc.
2. I don't think there's evidence to suggest that participative democracy only works in homogenous places with high IQs - as I'm sure you know it has been a feature of Swiss society for a fairly long time, and works pretty well across cultures, languages, religions, urban/rural environments, social classes, etc. It works well in the upper Ticino, just as it does in Basel Stadt. I would say the evidence suggests the arrow of causation points the other way - the more direct the democracy, the better the outcomes (lower profligacy, higher incomes, greater civic satisfaction, among other things).
3. Landsgemeinde present a bit of a conundrum because the vote is not secret - I believe Switzerland is not a signatory to some international human rights agreements because of this.
4. I generally agree with your argument, and again Swiss democracy is the model of constitutionalist liberal democracy to be followed. The multi-party executive without power concentrated in a head of state is especially important.
5. I would say the representative democracies of Europe have a democratic deficit, especially those that use the Westminster system. Representative democracies inherently create a moral hazard which referenda address.
> "2. I don't think there's evidence to suggest that participative democracy only works in homogenous places with high IQs"
It's generally difficult to make any stable technocratic institutions (including vote-counting machinery) work in low-IQ countries, and I'd suggest looking at Amy Chua's World on Fire for examples of the problems with market-dominant minorites in multiethnic democratic societies.
I'm not of the opinion that Democracy is automatically bad, but there are conditions where it's clearly prone to breaking down and I'm not axiomatically attached to the idea that absolutely everybody needs to get the vote or have the same voice in government. (I think more votes for self-supporting parents would be socially beneficial, for example.)
You think 19th century farmers in the upper alpine valleys had high IQs? Some valleys have two religions and four languages so they're hardly monoethnic.
There's pretty good evidence that western citizens' vocabularies peaked around the mid-19th century, IIRC, and even rural areas of Europe have had good literacy rates for centuries, so I wouldn't find high genotypic IQ surprising in that context at all. With that said, there's a difference between the machinery required to run a local assembly of a couple thousand people and the machinery needed to count votes in a state with a 100-million electorate.
It's also true that Switzerland was relatively ethnically and religiously diverse by the standards of the period, but Chua's observation pertains to situations where a particular minority group dominates market ownership. The different Swiss ethnicities were pretty genetically similar, probably intermarried a fair amount, and I don't think any of them had a monopoly on trade or finance? Correct me if I'm wrong.
But up front, I must admit I am no fan of democracy, or, for that matter, a republic. One of my favorite aphorisms of a republic is: 'A republic is just a democracy with lipstick.' One of the main problems with suffrage is that there are damn few disqualifying requirements for the candidate or elector, only a heartbeat, and sometimes not even that.
"This is Ursula von der Leyen’s very subtle attempt to imply that the EU represents democracy and democracy is what matters."
Of course, she is wrong on both counts; like most 'leaders' of the West, she is vacuous.
"But if the “mob” comprises intelligent and virtuous citizens, who have skin in the game and shared cultural values, then such rule is preferable to the alternative—i.e., professional politicians buying votes, and elites playing status games over which views are more fashionable."
I can only view this as a hypothetical, as an American, I do not know what it would be like to have an intelligent and virtuous electorate.
"Indeed, it has been conjectured that ancient Athenians had IQs around a standard deviation higher than modern-day Greeks (though polygenic scoring of ancient Greeks does not support this more broadly outside of Athens).
I suspect that this is key for direct democracy to work well."
Yes, a relatively small population, with high Intelligence and integrity, and nary any avaricious megalomaniacs. Again, I was born in the United States over eighty years ago, and I have never observed such a situation.
Bottom line: a near-perfect form of government is currently unattainable.
"Bottom line: a near-perfect form of government is currently unattainable". Yes, this is hard to argue with. Perhaps we can try again when we get to Mars, eh!
I agree with you that ancient Athenian democracy 'worked' and that the trial of Socrates is no refutation of it (though the trial of the generals after the battle of Arginusae might be), but I don't think you've got the analogy with modern political structures quite right. As Gaetano Mosca observed in The Ruling Class, "what Aristotle called a democracy was merely an aristocracy of very broad membership". The Athenian citizenry had subject cities paying tribute to it, was outnumbered in its own city by slaves and resident aliens, and the restriction of political participation to adult males made the 'active citizenry' even smaller. Had this not been the case it would not have been able to function as the collective ruler of a state.
The true analogue to such a demos in the modern state is not the broad mass of nominal citizens, who do not participate directly in politics, but the 'deep state', 'blob', or 'civil society' – interpreted most widely, the top 10-15% of the population whose business is running and directing the extended state (as bureaucrats, journalists, activists, lobbyists, etc.), as opposed to labouring for it or paying tribute to it or being kept as one of its client wards. The nominal citizens correspond rather to the subject population of Athens and the Athenian empire, with the difference that they have the right to elect an Archon Basileus and Areopagus that are supposed to be in charge of the modern 'demos' – which, unsurprisingly, thinks 'democracy' means allowing these elected officials as little real power as possible, and would probably just love to bring back sortition and short terms of office and other 'anti-oligarchical' methods so as to straitjacket them further.
There is no reason why direct democracy cannot 'work' at a very local level in the modern world (think villages, towns, districts of cities), but in practice it would have to exist at the sufferance of modern territorial states. So the crucial matter is still the politics of these states, and when we discuss this, we need to use the word 'democracy' in a way that makes clear what we mean by it. For example, if we want to introduce sortition or faster rotation of offices into the system we have now, that should be understood as furthering the 'democracy' of the civil society class; whereas if we want to further the 'democracy' of the masses, that is to say the capacity of the people's elected representatives to assert their will over the state, then strictly speaking that is a demand for elective monarchy or oligarchy. For the most part the right is hopelessly confused on this subject, so it is always good to see discussion of Athens and the original meaning of 'democracy'.
Great points, thanks. I hadn't considered the civil service to be analogous to Athens' citizenry. A depressing thought!
But yes I agree with you over the lack of agreement over who the "demos" actually are. Even in modern times we see this category being stretched and stretched.
So what would you have the so called West do? You have something better in mind? As for Socrates, neither of us were there at the time. Death seems a little extreme. What was his crime? His affiliation with that gang of 30 justifies death?
In the extended version of the essay I explain that Socrates actually wanted to be executed, and he got his way in the end. Had he wanted to live, it would've been completely within his ability to ensure as much.
In terms of "something better in mind", I think a neo-Athenian system would be ideal (sortition, referenda, etc). I just doubt it would work in countries that think that people deserve rights without also being bound by duties (which is basically all of the West). Culture is upstream of politics in my view. Then the question becomes: how do you ameliorate culture?
service to the community is a requirement. someone should write a paper on how to move in this direction. I am afraid the social cultural shrink and deformation makes it a hard road
Return to the original Athenian (or American) standard, i.e. exclusion of women, non-natives (non-Whites), and incompetents. Problems solved in a decade.
Can we make such a course correction via democratic means? Of course not. But all the other alternatives will take longer and will be harsher.
It’s questionable as to how possible it would be to implement Athenian style democracy today. We would need to solve the immigration problem first. Not only would countries need to be as ethnically homogenous as possible, but we would also have to shrink countries considerably. Small countries have their advantages when it comes to cohesion, but how feasible is that barring a huge catastrophe of some sort?
You mostly failed to mention the two largest problems with our "democracy".
In theory, representative democracy means elected officials trying to fulfill their promises to their voters and look out for their interests.
This system can break down in two ways:
1. Politicians systematically not delivering on their promises.
2. Power being vested in people other than elected officials.
Both of these undemocratic phenomena are rampant in nearly all so called democratic states.
1.
Politicians are far more susceptible to media pressure than voter pressure, and media organisations have become interest groups of their own rather than guardians of the public interests.
Donor interests also plays a role, especially in those countries where few limits are placed on the size of political donations.
2.
Civil service bureaucracies have their own institutional incentives and ideological leanings, and often manage to frustrate elected officials from implementing their own policies.
Government decision making and policy implementation is often outsourced to NGO's and expert panels, who are not accountable to voters at all.
Law courts are also more activist than ever before, not content to merely enforce laws but rather to stretch their interpretation to or beyond the limit in accordance with their own political preferences.
I don't think I failed to mention your first point at all. My discussion of Brexit was to make this exact point! You're right about civil service--and this likely played a large role in Brexit's failure to be properly implemented.
Both of these problems disappear with Athenian-style sortition. But yes, I agree that they are problems with our current systems.
No, the second problem would not. Given enough complexity, you need a bureaucracy. The solution to this problem is a very strong spoil system, the solution to delegated politics is decentralization.
Athenian democracy worked with sortition and direct democracy because there were at best 60.000 citizens (adult, athenian-born males), only a fraction of them actively partecipating (Aristophanes was quit clear about it, Aristoteles too). In fact, Swiss direct democracy exists only in very small cantons.
Not true. Sortition solves the entrenched ideology problem and sortition is scalable. See section 1.2 here: https://www.medialab-matadero.es/sites/default/files/multimedia/documentos/2018-10/Democracy%20Through%20Multi-Body%20Sortition.pdf
In short, an Athenian assembly of 6000 worked for 30,000 citizens, but it would also work for 300 million citizens (in the same way that you can get nationally representative polls from a few thousand respondents).
And you don't need a permanent bureaucracy. The Athenians used sortition to create specifically purposed small legislative panels. This could easily be applied across scales of government within a modern nation state.
The most terrifying point is you confused "legislative panels", the 6000 juris's pool and bureaucracy/enforcment: completely deranged.
"Terrifying" and "completely deranged". Great arguments!
I think you should probably read the paper I linked before you continue to make arguments against sortition that the paper directly addresses.
To engage with the substance of your argument:
On decentralisation, I completely agree with you. That's why I gave a nod to federalism in the essay. Sortition works incredibly well when combined with decentralization, so I'm slightly confused why you seem to be against sortition?
On a strong spoils system: sure it solves the issue of the government not responding to the will of the voters, but it brings with it other issues (corruption, instability, polarisation, inefficiency). I maintain that sortition solves more problems with fewer tradeoffs.
The point is "you confused": pure bad faith. Blocked.
While sortition could help with the second, the first seems better fixed with referendums (especially recall elections) than with sortition. And in fact, if the bureaucrats serve at the behest of a directly elected person, such as the USA's president, and that person can be recalled, that may be close enough to being accountable to the people. Or perhaps the appointed officials could be recalled even though they were not elected - I don't know if that idea's ever been tried, but I think it has potential.
The article doesn't mention it, but only free adult male Athenian citizens born to Athenian parents could participate in Athenian democracy.
Women, slaves, and foreigners were excluded. Pretty racist stuff!
That's actually close to the original American standard for democratic participation (free White men in good standing).
Makes one wonder, how did the inclusion of Ursula von der Leyens, Alexandria Occasional Cortices, and yesterday-arrived non-binary transgenders improve the process?
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/uk/non-binary-indian-on-student-visa-elected-to-scottish-parliament/articleshow/130998924.cms
Racist maybe, but there's merit to it and had results are impossible to deny
Much of what is called racism today is just accurate pattern recognition and/or fundamental moral norms.
Yessir, that's exactly right. Not inherently malicious or necessarily malignant. Today's forced "diversity" is shortsighted and willfully ignorant. Even the Bible addresses slavery, not to condemn, but to regulate
Whenever I advocate for Virtue Ethics I always get some numbskull telling me, as if for the first time, that "Aristotle believed that slavery was good, you know", as if that invalidates his ethics. I decided to save myself the headache here (mostly from my audience rather than Aporia's, to be fair). So I apologise for that!
But you're right. Though it'd be hard to fully elaborate on the pros and cons of Athenian slavery in fewer than 3000 words really. Doing so probably belongs in its own piece.
The general point that homogeneity within citizenry is very important for democracy to work is completely validated by historical analysis.
A few things come to mind:
1. In Switzerland it often takes years to implement referenda results, and it's not uncommon for the state to implement an interpretation of the results. Often many referenda are done on a subject and the state goes back and forth as a result. That the UK took long to actually leave the EU is not strange, or even a reflection of lack of democracy - certainly not with regards to the EU. It's normal that something as complex as Brexit would take years to implement, and simply leaving immediately would have caused havoc.
2. I don't think there's evidence to suggest that participative democracy only works in homogenous places with high IQs - as I'm sure you know it has been a feature of Swiss society for a fairly long time, and works pretty well across cultures, languages, religions, urban/rural environments, social classes, etc. It works well in the upper Ticino, just as it does in Basel Stadt. I would say the evidence suggests the arrow of causation points the other way - the more direct the democracy, the better the outcomes (lower profligacy, higher incomes, greater civic satisfaction, among other things).
3. Landsgemeinde present a bit of a conundrum because the vote is not secret - I believe Switzerland is not a signatory to some international human rights agreements because of this.
4. I generally agree with your argument, and again Swiss democracy is the model of constitutionalist liberal democracy to be followed. The multi-party executive without power concentrated in a head of state is especially important.
5. I would say the representative democracies of Europe have a democratic deficit, especially those that use the Westminster system. Representative democracies inherently create a moral hazard which referenda address.
> "2. I don't think there's evidence to suggest that participative democracy only works in homogenous places with high IQs"
It's generally difficult to make any stable technocratic institutions (including vote-counting machinery) work in low-IQ countries, and I'd suggest looking at Amy Chua's World on Fire for examples of the problems with market-dominant minorites in multiethnic democratic societies.
I'm not of the opinion that Democracy is automatically bad, but there are conditions where it's clearly prone to breaking down and I'm not axiomatically attached to the idea that absolutely everybody needs to get the vote or have the same voice in government. (I think more votes for self-supporting parents would be socially beneficial, for example.)
You think 19th century farmers in the upper alpine valleys had high IQs? Some valleys have two religions and four languages so they're hardly monoethnic.
I agree with your second paragraph though.
There's pretty good evidence that western citizens' vocabularies peaked around the mid-19th century, IIRC, and even rural areas of Europe have had good literacy rates for centuries, so I wouldn't find high genotypic IQ surprising in that context at all. With that said, there's a difference between the machinery required to run a local assembly of a couple thousand people and the machinery needed to count votes in a state with a 100-million electorate.
It's also true that Switzerland was relatively ethnically and religiously diverse by the standards of the period, but Chua's observation pertains to situations where a particular minority group dominates market ownership. The different Swiss ethnicities were pretty genetically similar, probably intermarried a fair amount, and I don't think any of them had a monopoly on trade or finance? Correct me if I'm wrong.
Excellent analysis of Democracy.
But up front, I must admit I am no fan of democracy, or, for that matter, a republic. One of my favorite aphorisms of a republic is: 'A republic is just a democracy with lipstick.' One of the main problems with suffrage is that there are damn few disqualifying requirements for the candidate or elector, only a heartbeat, and sometimes not even that.
"This is Ursula von der Leyen’s very subtle attempt to imply that the EU represents democracy and democracy is what matters."
Of course, she is wrong on both counts; like most 'leaders' of the West, she is vacuous.
"But if the “mob” comprises intelligent and virtuous citizens, who have skin in the game and shared cultural values, then such rule is preferable to the alternative—i.e., professional politicians buying votes, and elites playing status games over which views are more fashionable."
I can only view this as a hypothetical, as an American, I do not know what it would be like to have an intelligent and virtuous electorate.
"Indeed, it has been conjectured that ancient Athenians had IQs around a standard deviation higher than modern-day Greeks (though polygenic scoring of ancient Greeks does not support this more broadly outside of Athens).
I suspect that this is key for direct democracy to work well."
Yes, a relatively small population, with high Intelligence and integrity, and nary any avaricious megalomaniacs. Again, I was born in the United States over eighty years ago, and I have never observed such a situation.
Bottom line: a near-perfect form of government is currently unattainable.
Thank you!
"Bottom line: a near-perfect form of government is currently unattainable". Yes, this is hard to argue with. Perhaps we can try again when we get to Mars, eh!
I agree with you that ancient Athenian democracy 'worked' and that the trial of Socrates is no refutation of it (though the trial of the generals after the battle of Arginusae might be), but I don't think you've got the analogy with modern political structures quite right. As Gaetano Mosca observed in The Ruling Class, "what Aristotle called a democracy was merely an aristocracy of very broad membership". The Athenian citizenry had subject cities paying tribute to it, was outnumbered in its own city by slaves and resident aliens, and the restriction of political participation to adult males made the 'active citizenry' even smaller. Had this not been the case it would not have been able to function as the collective ruler of a state.
The true analogue to such a demos in the modern state is not the broad mass of nominal citizens, who do not participate directly in politics, but the 'deep state', 'blob', or 'civil society' – interpreted most widely, the top 10-15% of the population whose business is running and directing the extended state (as bureaucrats, journalists, activists, lobbyists, etc.), as opposed to labouring for it or paying tribute to it or being kept as one of its client wards. The nominal citizens correspond rather to the subject population of Athens and the Athenian empire, with the difference that they have the right to elect an Archon Basileus and Areopagus that are supposed to be in charge of the modern 'demos' – which, unsurprisingly, thinks 'democracy' means allowing these elected officials as little real power as possible, and would probably just love to bring back sortition and short terms of office and other 'anti-oligarchical' methods so as to straitjacket them further.
There is no reason why direct democracy cannot 'work' at a very local level in the modern world (think villages, towns, districts of cities), but in practice it would have to exist at the sufferance of modern territorial states. So the crucial matter is still the politics of these states, and when we discuss this, we need to use the word 'democracy' in a way that makes clear what we mean by it. For example, if we want to introduce sortition or faster rotation of offices into the system we have now, that should be understood as furthering the 'democracy' of the civil society class; whereas if we want to further the 'democracy' of the masses, that is to say the capacity of the people's elected representatives to assert their will over the state, then strictly speaking that is a demand for elective monarchy or oligarchy. For the most part the right is hopelessly confused on this subject, so it is always good to see discussion of Athens and the original meaning of 'democracy'.
Great points, thanks. I hadn't considered the civil service to be analogous to Athens' citizenry. A depressing thought!
But yes I agree with you over the lack of agreement over who the "demos" actually are. Even in modern times we see this category being stretched and stretched.
So what would you have the so called West do? You have something better in mind? As for Socrates, neither of us were there at the time. Death seems a little extreme. What was his crime? His affiliation with that gang of 30 justifies death?
In the extended version of the essay I explain that Socrates actually wanted to be executed, and he got his way in the end. Had he wanted to live, it would've been completely within his ability to ensure as much.
In terms of "something better in mind", I think a neo-Athenian system would be ideal (sortition, referenda, etc). I just doubt it would work in countries that think that people deserve rights without also being bound by duties (which is basically all of the West). Culture is upstream of politics in my view. Then the question becomes: how do you ameliorate culture?
service to the community is a requirement. someone should write a paper on how to move in this direction. I am afraid the social cultural shrink and deformation makes it a hard road
Return to the original Athenian (or American) standard, i.e. exclusion of women, non-natives (non-Whites), and incompetents. Problems solved in a decade.
Can we make such a course correction via democratic means? Of course not. But all the other alternatives will take longer and will be harsher.
Your are either a satirist or unhinged
The alternative to voting with your pencil is to vote with your feet.
Can be done every day instead of once every four years.
https://frankkarsten.substack.com/p/10-reasons-why-democracy-fails
It’s questionable as to how possible it would be to implement Athenian style democracy today. We would need to solve the immigration problem first. Not only would countries need to be as ethnically homogenous as possible, but we would also have to shrink countries considerably. Small countries have their advantages when it comes to cohesion, but how feasible is that barring a huge catastrophe of some sort?