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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Cagliost (talk | contribs) at 10:21, 30 August 2004. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The examples here are good, but broader than just "Demarchy", which AFAIK is a fairly specific proposal for a political structure. Idealy this page should be split into "Demarchy" and "Sortition" pages which reference each other, the more general stuff ending up under "Sortition". 

-- pm67nz

OK, sortition now exists, but I didn't find a convenient home for the old Consensus Conference text from this page:

To organize a Consensus Conference around a particular topic, advertisements are made, seeking local "lay volunteer participants" who are chosen to reflect the demographic makeup of the community and who lack significant prior knowledge or involvement in the topic at hand. The final panel might consist of about 15 people, including homemakers, office and factory workers, and university-educated professionals. The participants engage in a process of study, discussion, and consultation with technical experts that culminates in a public forum and the production of a report summarizing the panel's conclusions about the topic at hand.

"Not only are laypeople elevated to positions of preeminence, but a carefully planned program of reading and discussion culminating in a forum open to the public ensures that they become well-informed prior to rendering judgment,” says Loka Institute director Richard Sclove. "Both the forum and the subsequent judgment, written up in a formal report, become a focus of intense national attention - usually at a time when the issue at hand is due to come before Parliament. Though consensus conferences are hardly meant to dictate public policy, they do give legislators some sense of where the people who elected them might stand on important questions. They can also help industry steer clear of new products or processes that are likely to spark public opposition." 

-- pm67nz

To my knowledge no other person has come up with the term "Klerostocracy" except myself. If I am the first, then I release the copyright of the term to the public domain.
One Salient Oversight 05:49, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It would be interesting to see accountability addressed. In a representative democracy, the representatives (supposedly) are accountable. In a direct democracy, the people are accountable to themselves. In a demarchy, how would a random selection be accountable? Just curious.  :) -- Stevietheman 23:09, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I guess for the answer to that, we should look at examples of how accountability actually exists in both existing representative democracies and in existing demarchies. What does it mean, for example, to say that George W. Bush or Bill Clinton is "accountable"? Does it mean that there is much chance they will be punished for misdeeds in office? Not likely. Lower-level government functionaries are sometimes held accountable for their misdeeds, but even there it doesn't happen all that often, and in fact rewards and punishments are often meted out according to some standard other than "accountability to the public." In the U.S., for example, politicians are typically much more beholden to and responsive to the demands of large corporations and major donors than they are to everyday citizens. So "accountability" really isn't all that perfect in existing representative democracies. As for demarchy, the U.S. jury system is an example of demarchy at work. Jurors are chosen at random from a pool of the general population and are expected to give up a few days of their time to pass judgment on people who have been accused of violating the law. After they issue their verdict, they go home. It's not a perfect system either, but it works reasonably well, and most jurors deliberate in good faith. There are some cases in which individual jurors have been bribed or corrupted in other ways, but I think those sorts of manipulations are the exception rather than the rule, and overall I think juries are less likely to be corrupted by money than the professional politicians who rely on campaign donors in representative democracy.
On the other hand, no one has ever tried to run an entire government based on demarchy, so it is impossible to say whether such a system would be as susceptible to corruption as traditional democracy. --Sheldon Rampton 00:32, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Accountability is never perfect and it never will be. It's also not just about punishing people. It's also about guiding politicians into "doing the right thing" by shining light on their activities (so it's very relatable to transparence). It's also about determining who is responsible for doing what and how they can be accessed.
Transgressions aren't always punishable; for instance, a politician might get "slapped" by unfavorable news coverage, or their popularity may decrease. These are not punishments as much as they are signals to the politician to change their course.
Your response didn't include any information about how randomly selected groups can be accountable. At least one can say that representatives are somewhat accountable, while groups like juries essentially lose accountability once they leave the courtroom. -- Stevietheman 00:57, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It's true that juries lose accountability once they leave the courtroom, but that is precisely what enables them to function as disinterested parties while also acting as a representative of the broader community. Do you think juries would render better decisions if they could be pressured by financial threats and rewards or by getting "slapped" by unfavorable news coverage, or if they had to worry about getting voted off the jury (some of the mechanisms by which accountability is achieved in electoral politics)?
"Accountability" is really another way of saying "representativeness." When we say that an elected official is held accountable to the voters, what we mean is that he or she must be perceived as representing their interests or get voted out of office. (Of course, public officials are also accountable to their financial patrons and to opinion-shapers like the media who influence the electorate.) The idea of demarchy is that representativeness is achieved the same way it is achieved in opinion polls: through random selection aimed at creating a deliberative body that is a representative sample of the community. Outside of juries, however, this approach has mostly been used to create advisory bodies rather than bodies with actual enforceable authority. --Sheldon Rampton 02:08, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
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