Tuesday, November 29, 2005

The value of legislative expertise

Amar85 [FN89]. The value of legislative "expertise" has probably been overestimated. The proper function of
the legislature is not to draft narrow, technical codes, but to make basic policy choices by setting
priorities among competing values and establishing the general contours of acceptable tradeoffs. See
J.S. MILL, supra note 38, at 68-84. Ironically, current legislatures often fail to address fundamental
issues while enacting extremely complex statutory schemes. See Industrial Union Dep't, AFL-CIO v.
American Petroleum Inst., 448 U.S. 607, 672 (1980) (Rehnquist, J., concurring) (Congress refused to
strike basic tradeoff between safety and profits).

Transferable selection (lettery voting) vs. nontransferable (pure lottery)


A history of elections

Greek elections, Roman elections, British elections

References:

Amar 84, 95 (online)

Solomonic Judgements: Studies in the Limitations of Rationality
by Jon Elster (also online)

Demarchy

A citizen legislature

Duxbury

Random Selection in Politics
Carson, Lyn; Martin, Brian

The principles of representative government
MANIN, BERNARD

Statistical aspects


Fallacy of the "Marketplace View of Representation"

Pork
Electoral (or political) business cycle
http://ceterisparibus.uprm.edu/articulos/vol3/articulo7.htm

Refuting Elster's and Duxbury's arguments against sortition


Sunday, November 27, 2005

How do the electable become electable?

Tracking mentions of candidates in the press over time

Arguments against sortition are those against democracy


Oligarchy of the well-known

Only the well-known are electable

Elections work only for small groups


Athenian democracy


Sortition - the real democracy

Random election of representatives
Putting the demos back in democracy

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