The Political Potential of Sortition by Oliver Dowlen

The Political Potential of Sortition by Oliver Dowlen

Author:Oliver Dowlen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Lottery, sortition, politics, democracy, political community, random, jury, democractic practice, blind break
ISBN: 9781845407032
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2017
Published: 2017-04-03T00:00:00+00:00


Guicciardini’s presentation of the lot/voting controversy in the History of Italy, therefore, is a deliberate inversion of the traditional links between sortition and popular republicanism on the one hand and between voting and the ottimati on the other. The effect is to hide the combative role of lot in the defence of the Second Republic, and to portray preference voting as the popular choice.

Conclusion

This chapter, and this story, is central to the study. We have seen two battles for control of the process of selection of public officers, one during the period of Medici rule, and one during the first few years of the Second Florentine Republic. In the first case republicans were attempting to break the hold on government exercised by a rich and influential family that held power by maintaining complex systems of patronage and intimidation. In the second a popular movement was attempting to keep the republic out of the control of a new aristocratic party whose platform was based on a Venetian style settlement for Florence. In both cases sortition played a central part in the political tactics of the republicans and in both cases that role was to keep the selection of public offices in public hands.

It is clear, moreover, that this use was well understood. Sortition had been part of Florentine republican practice since the Primo Popolo of the mid-thirteenth century, and possibly earlier. In both instances the application of lot was strong - it made positive use of the blind break - and lot was used in circumstance where the political stakes were high. It was obviously known that if control over the process of selection was lost, the type of political process which valued open discussion, citizen participation, and freedom from arbitrary rule was also in jeopardy. This possibility was defined by Guicciardini’s second speaker as a potential state of servitude. Although Del modo di Eleggere. is laced with invention and rhetoric, I have little doubt that this was how the popular republicans of Florence understood their situation. In this context sortition was a tactical mechanism, but we should also think of it as linked to matters of political principle.

In this chapter we also saw, for the first time, the interaction of political thought and practice in respect to sortition. Guicciardini, I would argue, is astute enough to realise the potential of lot to frustrate the ottimati cause. He is the only writer of this period to give it serious consideration, and at the same time the first writer to attempt to develop a platform for election in the context of the popular republic. What is also significant is that he seeks to hide the full potential of lot from successive generations by failing to state its republican content clearly and by removing it from the republican tradition to which it so obviously belonged. As well as writing for his time, Guicciardini’s works seem to prefigure many aspects of modern government. Although the line between them is a little thin, liberal democracy



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.