Thanks for sharing and inspiring. Here are my terse answers to your questions, if interested I will be happy to expand:
1. What should we call the post-democratic paradigm?
I believe that thinking about democracy as means, not as an end, helps clarify things.
I contend that democracy is just means for achieving (political) equality, and should be evaluated, measured, praised, condemned, and revised based on how well it does achieve this goal.
Clearly, representative democracy in most western countries is failing miserably, where money easily buys political power and hampers political equality, having a detrimental effect also on economic equality. But Switzerland could be a good example to the contrary, where citizens and not money is still in power. As an anecdote, the amount of a speeding ticker in Switzerland is correlated with one's annual income, so a 1M CHF speeding ticket is possible (current record is around CHF 300,000).
So, no need to fix the name 'democracy', but there is a clear need to fix many dysfunctional democracies :)
2. Who decides who decides?
Political equality means much more than 1 person - 1 vote.
The work of my team at Weizmann and colleagues for the past several years tried to address many aspects of equality in democratic decision making processes, including:
3. Proposition for an entirely new governing system in a post-conflict time of peace?
I am working with colleagues (Procaccia, Halperin, Talmon) on "Grassroots Sortition of Federated Assemblies for Scalable Egalitarian Governance". Will be happy share this when we are done.
4. How do we shift decision-making power to Citizens’ Assemblies? And what does accountability and legitimacy entail if Citizens’ Assemblies have binding decision making authority?
I think our grassroots approach offers a path for legitimacy, since with it all citizens are/can be members of assemblies. So it can become a mass movement, which could eventually receive the requisite authority.
5. Should participation in Citizens’ Assemblies be compulsory in the same way as jury duty?
With our approach, everyone (who wants to have a say) is a member of one or many assemblies that protect and advance their political goals and interests. As members of higher assemblies are selected by sortition from lower assemblies, if any individual wishes not to serve (also) in a higher-level assembly, many peers should be available as a substitute.
6. When carrying out sortition processes, how should we decide which quotas are appropriate, fair, and legitimate?
This is the key question grassroots sortition tries to answer: People voluntarily form and joins assemblies that address their identity, issues, and goals. A personal can be a member of multiple such assemblies (my neighborhood, my religion, my gender, my environmental/economic/other agendas), and the mathematics of grassroots sortition aims to reflect peoples interests in a correct way without external quotas or intervention, only based on the structure and size of the grassroots communities/assemblies they form.
7. How should we ‘scale’ public deliberation?
Grassroots citizens assemblies offer a clear path to scalability. Questions are deliberated at all levels, and a representative of a lower assembly carries the knowhow, ideas and opinions of their lower assembly to the deliberation at the higher assembly. The process can be interactive, in that questions and approaches discussed at the higher assembly can be brought down for deliberation at the lower assembly by such a representative, only to have the results percolate back up to the higher assembly.
8. Should we use the word ‘citizen’?
Eventually, we should have a notion of a 'global citizens', to which every human being is entitled. This is a long discussion:)
9. How could we transition towards an elections system without political parties?
Grassroots federated assemblies offer a path to achieve that goal, I believe.
10. How do we bring in the more-than-human world into our conception of the next governance paradigm?
I am sorry if I repeat myself, but I think grassroots federated assemblies offer a path to achieve that goal too, as follows.
If there are people who care about animal rights, about biodiversity, about climate change, etc., all they have to do is form assemblies that address these interests. They will be represented at the various level of the hierarchical citizens assembly according to their relative sizes.
The more people who care about these issues, the stronger their political power will be.
11. How are rapid advances in AI and other new technologies impacting how we should think about agency accountability, authority, responsibility?
I think this is a huge question, and is closely tied to inequality: AI is controlled by big corporations and serves their interests and thus will help tilt the scale against ordinary people and in favor of money. Citizens must defend themselves against this, and vehemently. The more power we have to the people, and the sooner we have it, the better we can protect against further increase of political and economic inequality caused by AI.
Its important to recognize that "AI" is not neutral - it can be trained, and the trainer has ample and subtle control of its behavior, which is very difficult to discern just by observing the actual behavior of AI. The issues are similar to those of the "algorithms" of social networks, but are much more profound and grave and require knowledgable and responsible governance and regulation.
12. What does leadership look like in a new governance paradigm?
My preferred leadership model is Switzerland, with the unfailing question that no one can answer:
Name a Swiss leader since William Tell (circa 1307)?
Nobody knows. And Switzerland has managed quite well for the last 700 years or so without any memorable leaders. And with a solid democracy. That's the answer. If you have strong citizens participation, they don't need strong leaders, only servants of the public will.
(Yes, I know it took them forever to give woman voting rights; that's another discussion).
Hi Ehud, thanks for the taking the time to share a thoughtful reply. I’ll read the papers you shared. And would love to know more about the work you’re doing on "Grassroots Sortition of Federated Assemblies for Scalable Egalitarian Governance". I’ve been in touch with Ariel Procaccia recently and will hopefully see him next week when I’m back in Cambridge. It seems to go in the direction of how my thinking is evolving on these issues. A big point of contention and discussion is the assumption that political equality is the goal.
Would love to dig in to the question of leadership sometime too. I think that’s a valid point you make re Switzerland’s leaders, and I’ve always thought the rotating leadership positions made a lot of sense. But have found the constant referendums problematic and not very democratic in some ways, and a vehicle for extremist positions to dominate some parts of political debate. As well as what you say re women’s right to vote. It’s a nuanced example of good and bad, Swiss democracy!
I always enjoy following where your brain is going, and am looking forward to speaking soon. For what it's worth, though, I don't feel like I can go with you on the central idea that we need to go "beyond democracy" - just as I don't think we can or should abandon the word "citizen" - and in all honesty it worries me a little. For me (and I think you know this!), it's more about moving the qualifying adjective to the existing system... so for example I think we need to start insisting on calling what we have today "Consumer Democracy" rather than abandoning the frame of democracy entirely. Established language and frames don't die because you refuse to use them, they just get more easily occupied by those who would reduce them to exclusionary concepts. My view is that a big part of 2024 is going to be about fighting for ownership of critical language, and I'd hate to lose you as an ally in that work... As ever, though, I look forward to the debate!
Indeed, not entirely surprised we don’t agree on this point. I think the language matters a lot, and I feel that without having the words that describe the new reality we want it limits the action to enable us to get there. I’m not fully convinced we just need a different qualifier to ‘democracy’.
Hi Claudia,
Thanks for sharing and inspiring. Here are my terse answers to your questions, if interested I will be happy to expand:
1. What should we call the post-democratic paradigm?
I believe that thinking about democracy as means, not as an end, helps clarify things.
I contend that democracy is just means for achieving (political) equality, and should be evaluated, measured, praised, condemned, and revised based on how well it does achieve this goal.
Clearly, representative democracy in most western countries is failing miserably, where money easily buys political power and hampers political equality, having a detrimental effect also on economic equality. But Switzerland could be a good example to the contrary, where citizens and not money is still in power. As an anecdote, the amount of a speeding ticker in Switzerland is correlated with one's annual income, so a 1M CHF speeding ticket is possible (current record is around CHF 300,000).
So, no need to fix the name 'democracy', but there is a clear need to fix many dysfunctional democracies :)
2. Who decides who decides?
Political equality means much more than 1 person - 1 vote.
The work of my team at Weizmann and colleagues for the past several years tried to address many aspects of equality in democratic decision making processes, including:
- equality in constitution formation and amendment: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.03111
- equality in making the proposals to vote upon: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.06277
- equality in coalition formation: https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.08031
- equality in choosing ministers for the executive branch: https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.09734
- and even equality in deciding to fork: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.03652
3. Proposition for an entirely new governing system in a post-conflict time of peace?
I am working with colleagues (Procaccia, Halperin, Talmon) on "Grassroots Sortition of Federated Assemblies for Scalable Egalitarian Governance". Will be happy share this when we are done.
4. How do we shift decision-making power to Citizens’ Assemblies? And what does accountability and legitimacy entail if Citizens’ Assemblies have binding decision making authority?
I think our grassroots approach offers a path for legitimacy, since with it all citizens are/can be members of assemblies. So it can become a mass movement, which could eventually receive the requisite authority.
5. Should participation in Citizens’ Assemblies be compulsory in the same way as jury duty?
With our approach, everyone (who wants to have a say) is a member of one or many assemblies that protect and advance their political goals and interests. As members of higher assemblies are selected by sortition from lower assemblies, if any individual wishes not to serve (also) in a higher-level assembly, many peers should be available as a substitute.
6. When carrying out sortition processes, how should we decide which quotas are appropriate, fair, and legitimate?
This is the key question grassroots sortition tries to answer: People voluntarily form and joins assemblies that address their identity, issues, and goals. A personal can be a member of multiple such assemblies (my neighborhood, my religion, my gender, my environmental/economic/other agendas), and the mathematics of grassroots sortition aims to reflect peoples interests in a correct way without external quotas or intervention, only based on the structure and size of the grassroots communities/assemblies they form.
7. How should we ‘scale’ public deliberation?
Grassroots citizens assemblies offer a clear path to scalability. Questions are deliberated at all levels, and a representative of a lower assembly carries the knowhow, ideas and opinions of their lower assembly to the deliberation at the higher assembly. The process can be interactive, in that questions and approaches discussed at the higher assembly can be brought down for deliberation at the lower assembly by such a representative, only to have the results percolate back up to the higher assembly.
8. Should we use the word ‘citizen’?
Eventually, we should have a notion of a 'global citizens', to which every human being is entitled. This is a long discussion:)
9. How could we transition towards an elections system without political parties?
Grassroots federated assemblies offer a path to achieve that goal, I believe.
10. How do we bring in the more-than-human world into our conception of the next governance paradigm?
I am sorry if I repeat myself, but I think grassroots federated assemblies offer a path to achieve that goal too, as follows.
If there are people who care about animal rights, about biodiversity, about climate change, etc., all they have to do is form assemblies that address these interests. They will be represented at the various level of the hierarchical citizens assembly according to their relative sizes.
The more people who care about these issues, the stronger their political power will be.
11. How are rapid advances in AI and other new technologies impacting how we should think about agency accountability, authority, responsibility?
I think this is a huge question, and is closely tied to inequality: AI is controlled by big corporations and serves their interests and thus will help tilt the scale against ordinary people and in favor of money. Citizens must defend themselves against this, and vehemently. The more power we have to the people, and the sooner we have it, the better we can protect against further increase of political and economic inequality caused by AI.
Its important to recognize that "AI" is not neutral - it can be trained, and the trainer has ample and subtle control of its behavior, which is very difficult to discern just by observing the actual behavior of AI. The issues are similar to those of the "algorithms" of social networks, but are much more profound and grave and require knowledgable and responsible governance and regulation.
12. What does leadership look like in a new governance paradigm?
My preferred leadership model is Switzerland, with the unfailing question that no one can answer:
Name a Swiss leader since William Tell (circa 1307)?
Nobody knows. And Switzerland has managed quite well for the last 700 years or so without any memorable leaders. And with a solid democracy. That's the answer. If you have strong citizens participation, they don't need strong leaders, only servants of the public will.
(Yes, I know it took them forever to give woman voting rights; that's another discussion).
Hi Ehud, thanks for the taking the time to share a thoughtful reply. I’ll read the papers you shared. And would love to know more about the work you’re doing on "Grassroots Sortition of Federated Assemblies for Scalable Egalitarian Governance". I’ve been in touch with Ariel Procaccia recently and will hopefully see him next week when I’m back in Cambridge. It seems to go in the direction of how my thinking is evolving on these issues. A big point of contention and discussion is the assumption that political equality is the goal.
Would love to dig in to the question of leadership sometime too. I think that’s a valid point you make re Switzerland’s leaders, and I’ve always thought the rotating leadership positions made a lot of sense. But have found the constant referendums problematic and not very democratic in some ways, and a vehicle for extremist positions to dominate some parts of political debate. As well as what you say re women’s right to vote. It’s a nuanced example of good and bad, Swiss democracy!
I always enjoy following where your brain is going, and am looking forward to speaking soon. For what it's worth, though, I don't feel like I can go with you on the central idea that we need to go "beyond democracy" - just as I don't think we can or should abandon the word "citizen" - and in all honesty it worries me a little. For me (and I think you know this!), it's more about moving the qualifying adjective to the existing system... so for example I think we need to start insisting on calling what we have today "Consumer Democracy" rather than abandoning the frame of democracy entirely. Established language and frames don't die because you refuse to use them, they just get more easily occupied by those who would reduce them to exclusionary concepts. My view is that a big part of 2024 is going to be about fighting for ownership of critical language, and I'd hate to lose you as an ally in that work... As ever, though, I look forward to the debate!
Indeed, not entirely surprised we don’t agree on this point. I think the language matters a lot, and I feel that without having the words that describe the new reality we want it limits the action to enable us to get there. I’m not fully convinced we just need a different qualifier to ‘democracy’.