[EM] history of random component in government

[Stephen Turner]

I mentioned recently that there was a conference on
the Problems of Democracy here in Madrid.  I went to
quite a few of the sessions.  There was not much about
voting methods, though other stuff of interest.

One of the papers, about a proposal to randomly select
trustees for international organizations, contained a
bibliography for historical uses of randomness in
politics.

As I know this is of interest on this list, here is a
quick summary of what the paper said, and the
bibliography that they give.

Examples given
--------------
i) Lottery for draft in USA and elsewhere (Forest
Simmons mentioned this recently)
ii) Selection for juries
iii) Athens, 4th and 5th centuries B.C.E.  The city
was governed by the Assembly of 30,000 to 60,000 (all
citizens could attend: no women or slaves of course). 
The Assembly´s business was run by the Council of 500
members, 10 groups of 50 members each.  Each group of
50 was selected by lot from one of the 10 tribes.  
The Council itself had a Committee, which was one of
the 10 groups (these rotated: the order was chosen at
random).  The presiding officers of all three bodies
were chosen randomly on the day of the session.  Most
public officials were randomly selected also (but not
where competence was important, like for financial or
military posts).  Randomly selected officials had to
be over 30 years old, and were subject to an
assessment when selected, and again at the end of
their term.

Also in other Greek city-states, but the rules are not
known.

iv) Florence 14th-16th centuries: some members of city
govt chosen at random.  Also Bologna, Parma, Vicenza,
Barcelona.  Selection of Doge in Venice until time of
Napoleon.  
San Marino until a few years ago.

Paper
-----
Frey, Bruno S. and Stutzer, Alois : Citizenship and
Democracy in International Organizations (preprint,
Sept 2005.  Both authors are at Zurich University).

Books
-----
Elster, Jon (1989): Solomonic Judgments (Cambridge
U.P.), chapter 2;

Carson, Lyn and Martin, Brian (1999): Random Selection
in Politics (Praeger, Westpoint, Conn. and London)


		
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