The idea of a hybrid bicameral system combining election and sortition is investigated. More precisely, the article imagines how an elected and a sortition chamber would interact, taking into account their public perception and their competing legitimacies. The article draws on a survey of a representative sample of the Belgian population and Belgian members of parliament assessing their views about sortition in political representation. Findings are combined with theoretical reflections on election’s and sortition’s respective sources of legitimacy. The possibility of conflicting legitimacies and mutually detrimental interactions leads to considerations of the effects of different possible distributions of power between the chambers as a crucial determinant of their interactions and perceived legitimacy.
This paper explores the idea of a randomly selected chamber of representatives (RSC) through an appreciation of the promises it offers and the challenges it would face. We identify two main promises: a RSC could offset the aristocratic character of elections, thereby increasing the legitimacy of the political system; and it could increase democracy's epistemic potential, thanks to gains in terms of diversity, deliberations, humility, and long-term perspective. We then discuss four key challenges. First, participation: how can the chamber have diversity without mandatory participation or heavy sanctions? Second, how can we conceive or build legitimacy for this non-elected and somehow unaccountable chamber's views? Third, independence: how to safeguard randomly selected people from corruption? Finally, there may be a linguistic challenge: if the RSC has a deliberative role, how should it cope with the possible linguistic diversity of its members? We conclude that these challenges are not insurmountable, but reveal some trade-offs that cannot be entirely dissolved.
Suppose we value public deliberations both for their individual and collective effects. 1 From this point of view, we have reasons to be unsatisfied with the practice of secret voting. While we want voters to discuss collectively, exchange views and perspectives, justify their positions, and consider all interests impartially, we let them perform the crucial action of votingalone, in the secrecy of the voting booth (Beerbohm, 2012;Brennan, 2011). What a poor incentive to behave as a responsible citizen committed to justice! On the one hand, we want people to be influenced by the opinions of their peers. On the other hand, we use a voting system aiming at isolating people from any influence.
-De nombreux travaux se sont récemment penchés sur les bénéfices d'une réintroduction du tirage au sort en politique, le plus souvent envisagé comme complément plutôt que comme alternative aux élections. Cet article vise deux objectifs. Premièrement, mettre en évidence les propriétés et vertus de ces deux modes de sélection qui les rendent a priori complémentaires plutôt que rivaux. Deuxièmement, distinguer les usages du tirage au sort qui tirent le mieux profit de cette complémentarité et ceux qui sont susceptibles de poser des problèmes de compatibilité, voire d'engendrer des dynamiques de dé-légitimation réciproque. ABSTRACT-A great deal of work has enquired into the benefits that could result from a more frequent use of random selection in politics. Most proposals see sortition as complementary to elections rather than as a substitute. This article aims first at highlighting the properties and virtues that make these selection mechanisms appear as complementary rather than rival. Secondly, it makes a distinction between some uses of sortition able to take advantage of this complementarity, and others more likely to generate issues of compatibility and possibly mutual delegitimation dynamics. 1 Cet article a beaucoup bénéficié des commentaires et remarques de
Some luck egalitarians argue that justice is just one value among others and is thus not necessarily what we should strive for in order to make the world better. Yet, by focusing on only one dimension of what matters -luck equality -it proves very difficult to draw political implications in cases where several values are in tension. We believe that normative political philosophy must have the ambition to guide political action. Hence, in this paper we make a negative and a positive point. Negatively, we argue that the inability to offer recommendations on what to strive for potentially weakens Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen's account of luck egalitarianism. In order not to be irrelevant for political practice, a more serviceable version of luck egalitarianism that would allow for all-things-considered judgments is needed. Positively, we examine two possible routes toward such a view. One would be to stick to pluralism, but to discuss possible clashes and find a rule of regulation in each case. Another would consist in giving up value pluralism by identifying an over-arching value or principle that would arbitrate between different values. We suggest that Lippert-Rasmussen's foundation of equality carries the potential for such an overarching principle.
For people starting from a presumption in favor of equality, the very idea of a sufficiency threshold where the demands of justice would stop because everyone has enough is puzzling. However, Liam Shields, offers an account of sufficiency that has the potential to reconcile these egalitarians with the principle of sufficiency. This comes from his endorsement of what he calls "the shift thesis", stating roughly that there is a discontinuity in the weight of our reasons to benefit people once they have enough. This thesis distinguishes his theory from other accounts of sufficientarianism by not denying the injustice of inequalities above the threshold. It thereby changes the way one can look at the relation between sufficiency and equality. The principle of sufficiency becomes the first principle of a conception of justice that must be completed by another -possibly egalitarian -principle. In the first section, I start with a brief exposition of the shift thesis and the way it relates to other accounts of sufficiency. In the second, I introduce a distinction between agnosticism and indifference towards inequalities above the sufficiency threshold. In the third, I argue that pragmatism might provide positive reasons to focus on insufficiency if one is agnostic about these inequalities. I conclude with a brief discussion of this pragmatic stance and of the choice to defend a partial view of justice as Shields does.
Many rich countries are witnessing the rise of xenophobic political parties. The opposition to immigration and global redistributive policies is high. How can we pursue global justice in such nonideal circumstances? Whatever the way we want to pursue global justice, it seems that a change in the political ethos of citizens from rich countries will be necessary. They must come to internalize some genuine concern for foreigners and relativize national identities. Can education contribute to the promotion of such cosmopolitan ethos? An overtly cosmopolitan educational agenda is not likely to be endorsed in these societies where national ties and national priority may be considered fully legitimate by the majority. Nevertheless, this paper argues, some more achievable educational aims may have desirable cosmopolitan spillover effects although it is not their primary purpose. Decentration, empathy, critical thinking, understanding of social reality and social mix can be defended as necessary for a better domestic society. Yet these aims also make the widespread development of a cosmopolitan ethos more likely. This paper thus considers the arguments that can be made for these educational aims and their potential effects on citizens' attitudes towards foreigners. Then, it discusses a possible tension with another aspect of national civic education: national integration.
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