Democracy without elections?

Elections cannot exist without a democracy. Can a democracy exist without elections?

Exorbitant campaign expenses, the manipulative power of opinion polls and corporate-run mass media, and the immense clout of lobby groups, among others, have come to subvert elections and routinely throw up governments with little scope for genuine citizen participation. Can the procedures for deciding on issues of public interest be shielded from partisan capture? Can political power become less remote and more amenable to citizen participation?

Several theorists have passionately probed alternatives to Western electoral democracies: John Burnheim, the Australian political scientist (Is Democracy Possible?; The Demarchy Manifesto), James Fishkin, the American political scientist (When the People Speak; Democracy When the People Are Thinking), Terry Bouricius, former American politician (Democracy without Politicians); Hélène Landemore, the French political scientist (Open Democracy; Politics without Politicians), and David Van Reybrouck, the Belgian writer (Against Elections).

These theorists advocate the forming of citizen assemblies where members are recruited through random lottery rather than elections. This method – sortition – is known to have prevailed in ancient Athens, where several public offices were filled by lot since elections were seen as susceptible to the influence of wealth and elite power. The contemporary advocates of sortition similarly wish to eliminate corruption and political influence in how issues of the public good are decided.

Recruited through lots for a limited term, the citizens’ juries or assemblies deliberate on matters of public relevance openly. They can access domain specialists if needed. Their membership size, their remuneration, the duration of their term, among others, will vary across countries, but it is key that the citizens’ bodies are sufficiently representative of the diversity of local society. Some argue that these bodies ought to include those directly affected by policy decisions who then negotiate and coordinate their decisions with other bodies.

Should citizens’ groups be funded by independent public foundations unconnected to political parties or commercial interests and sustained solely through voluntary contributions? Is it better that social movements take the lead to institute these groups rather than politicians? Or can governments legitimately allocate public funds for the creation and functioning of these bodies? Views vary on this front as well.

Sortition makes democracy less about the sharing of power through elections and more about reliable ways of making public decisions. It shifts focus from the national interest to the interests of many small publics.

Advocates of sortition rarely ask that citizens’ bodies should possess legislative authority. They contend instead that elected representatives should be obliged to respect the deliberative processes of citizens’ bodies. By supplementing representative democracy, sortition can infuse fresh vitality to a system fatigued by the rigid routines of electoral politics. This discussion is not purely a theoretical one: between 2004 and 2013, Ireland, Iceland, Canada, and the Netherlands constituted randomly drawn citizens groups to deliberate over electoral law reform.

Does this discussion have any significance for India? Gandhi’s skepticism towards parliamentary-style representative democracy, together with his advocacy of small-scale political and economic units that placed local communities in charge of matters affecting them directly, is of course legendary. Intense discussions and initiatives in participatory governance and decentralisation of power have occurred here for decades. But they are not usually presented as efforts to revitalise a strained electoral system that is short-changing Indian democracy.

Many concerned Indians have indeed proposed a variety of electoral reforms to help protect the sanctity of elections. They nevertheless allow elections to narrow the imagination of Indian democracy into a one-dimensional affair. Sortition, along with other models better suited to Indian conditions, that can create legitimate spaces for rethinking this election-driven model of democracy, needs to be explored. New pathways for enabling robust citizen participation in policy and governance processes, and for revitalising Indian democracy in a complementary spirit, need to be urgently explored.

The writer is a Vidyashilp Professor who looks for new ways of looking.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.