Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T21:04:17.729Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Lot as a Democratic Device of Selection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Richard G. Mulgan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Lot is a possible alternative to election as a democratic means of selection. The prime historical instance of its political use is classical Athens. Lot was an important expression of the Athenian democrats' commitment to equality, more egalitarian than election which assumed equality of opportunity rather than desert. Lot also had certain important political effects, such as reducing factionalism and maintaining the authority of the assembly. It helped to make the Council and the courts representative cross sections of the assembly. Election, however, was preferable when important decisions were to be entrusted to only a few people. In modern democratic societies, lot is not uncommon as a distributive device but is rarely used for selecting political officials. Election remains more democratically efficient for large polities, but lot could be seriously considered in communities which approach the small size and intimacy of the Greek city-states.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 46 , Issue 4 , October 1984 , pp. 539 - 560
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 It is not referred to by, for example, Dahl, Robert A., A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago and London, 1956);Google ScholarSartori, Giovanni, Democratic Theory (Detroit, 1962);Google ScholarLively, Jack, Democracy (Oxford, 1975);Google ScholarPateman, Carole, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge, 1970);CrossRefGoogle ScholarPennock, J. R., Democratic Political Theory (Princeton, 1979).Google Scholar

2 Montesquieu, , De L'Esprit des lois, 2:2.Google Scholar

3 Rousseau, , Contrat Social, 4:3; cf. 3:4.Google Scholar

4 Aristotle, Constitution of Athens 43.2.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., 24.3, 63–69.

6 Cf. Gomme, A. W. and Hopper, R. J., “Population (Greek),” Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1970), pp. 861–63.Google Scholar

7 Aristotle, Constitution of Athens 43.1, 61.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., 56–59.

9 Ibid., 22.5.

10 Jones, A. H. M., Athenian Democracy (Oxford, 1969), p. 104.Google Scholar

11 Aristotle, Constitution of Athens 47.1.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., 48.1.

13 Ibid., 51.1.

14 Politics 1317 61–2.Google Scholar

15 Aristotle, Constitution of Athens 55.3–4;Google ScholarHignett, C., A History of the Athenian Constitution (Oxford, 1952), p. 232.Google Scholar

16 Hignett, , Athenian Constitution, p. 136 n 5.Google Scholar

17 Plato, Apology 32b.Google Scholar

18 Jones, , Athenian Democracy, p. 37.Google Scholar

19 Staveley, E. S., Greek and Roman Voting and Elections (London, 1972), pp. 51, 110–11 n 80.Google Scholar

20 Iliad 23:350–56.Google Scholar

21 Odyssey 10:206.Google Scholar

22 Iliad 7:177–82Google Scholar (translated Richmond Lattimore).

23 Cf. Iliad 3:316.Google Scholar

24 See de Coulanges, N. D. Fustel, The Ancient City (New York, 1959), p. 182;Google Scholar cf. Headlam-Morley, J. W., Election by Lot at Athens (Cambridge, 1933), p. 7 n 2.Google Scholar

25 Aeschylus, Eumenides 32;Google ScholarEuripides, Ion 416.Google Scholar

26 Laws 579c.

27 Numbers 26:52–6.Google Scholar Thanks are due to Douglas Campbell for providing biblical references.

28 Judges 20:8–10.Google Scholar

29 Proverbs 16:13;Google Scholar cf. 18:18.

30 Acts I: 24–36Google Scholar (New English Bible).

31 Headlam-Morley, , Election by Lot, pp. 4–12.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., pp. 10–11. In the Republic, Plato recommends that the rulers' selection of marriage partners be concealed behind an ingenious system of lots so that those who come off badly may blame “chance and not the rulers” (460a).

33 Memorabilia 1.2.9.

34 See Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951), p. 42;Google Scholar cf. Dover, K. J., Greek Popular Morality (Oxford, 1974), pp. 138–41.Google Scholar

35 Pindar, , Olympian Odes 12. 1;Google Scholar and Sophocles fragment, cited Lloyd-Jones, Hugh, The Justice of Zeus (Berkeley, 1971), p. 162, n 6.Google Scholar

36 Laws 757e; cf. 690c.

37 Aristotle's account of chance in Physics II 4–6, it will be remembered, assumes that chance events, though exceptional, are causally determined not random events.

38 Cf. Politics 3. 9.

39 Ibid., 1280a 24–5, 1317b 2–7.

40 History 3.80.

41 Cf Adkins, A. W. H., Merit and Responsibility (Oxford, 1960), chaps. 3, 8, 10.Google Scholar

42 Staveley, , Greek and Roman Voting, pp. 54–57,Google Scholar argues that alternation (or rotation) was fundamental and lot merely subsidiary, the most convenient method of selection once it has been decided that offices will be held in turn. Certainly, alternation was an important democratic principle (cf. Euripides, Suppliant Women 405–8;Google ScholarAristotle, Politics 1317b 20–22Google Scholar) and lot was frequently coupled with alternation as the normal method of ordering those who are to take turns. Nonetheless, lot would have been independently significant as an expression of distributive equality.

43 Politics 1317b 22.Google Scholar

44 Ibid., 1273b 40–1.

45 Thucydides, 2.37 (translated Crawley).

46 History 3.80.

47 Republic 561a–b; 557.

48 Politics 1317b 20–1.Google Scholar

49 Cf. Turner, Frank M., The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain (New Haven and London, 1981), p. 187;Google ScholarGrote, George, History of Greece (London, 1862), pp. iv, 267–75;Google ScholarMill, J. S. in Essays on Philosophy and the Classics, ed. Robson, J. M. (Toronto, 1978) 333–34.Google Scholar

50 See above, n 33.

51 Politics 1305a 28;Google Scholar 1303a 14–16. Cf. Newman, W. L., The Politics of Aristotle (Oxford, 1887–1902), 4;306–307;Google ScholarPlato, Laws 757e.Google Scholar

52 1424a 12–20.

53 Hignett, , Athenian Constitution, p. 231.Google Scholar

54 For the history of the courts, see ibid., pp. 96–97, 200.

55 These bodies were not always precisely accurate cross sections of the citizen body. Juries in the fifth century may have contained a preponderance of older citizens of the poorer class who were attracted by the small per diem allowance; in the fourth century, both the courts and the Council seem to have had slightly less than their fair share of poorer citizens. It is also true that only a minority of eligible citizens regularly attended the assembly. Thus a cross section of the citizen body was not necessarily a cross section of the assembly and vice versa. Nonetheless, we do not hear of any permanent or deep-seated clash of interests between the assembly on the one hand and the courts or Council on the other; this confirms the assumption that a panel of jurors or the members of the Council in any year, being appointed by lot, would be near enough to a cross section of the assembly as a whole (Jones, , Athenian Democracy, pp. 106, 123–24Google Scholar).

56 Three stages may be identified in this development: (1) election by all citizens of candidates drawn from the wealthiest class; (2) election by all citizens of a panel drawn from the wealthy from which final selection was made by lot; (3) selection by lot from among all citizens (Staveley, , Greek and Roman Voting, pp. 33–40Google Scholar). This development might appear to be progression towards greater democracy (Hignett, , Athenian Constitution, pp. 173–92;Google ScholarForrest, W. G., The Emergence of Greek Democracy (London, 1966), pp. 204–212Google Scholar). However, the change from the first to the second stage, from direct election to the combined method of lot from a large preselected group, diminished rather than increased the ordinary citizen's control over the archonship. While the archons were elected, the people could guarantee that these magistrates, who still made important legal decisions and who had a significant influence on public policy in general, would be generally sympathetic to a majority of citizens, even if they were all drawn from the wealthy classes. Introduction of the lot, while the archonship remained restricted to the wealthy, would have reduced the likelihood of popular leaders; it would be more likely to have produced a cross section of the wealthy, supporting the interests of the wealthy rather than the poor. This first change, therefore, from election to lot, sometimes seen as part of the inexorable development of the power of the Athenian demos, could have been reactionary in intent, aimed at diminishing the populism associated with the office of archon. If so, the intention was ultimately unsuccessful because the result of introducing lot for the archonship was to reduce the status and importance of the office itself and to transfer popularity and political influence to the elected generals. Indeed, it could be argued that this was the real purpose of the change, to diminish the importance of the archons by altering the method of their selection, from election which confers status and authority, to lot which does not. Whatever the real motives behind this particular reform (and there is no firm historical evidence beyond the bald description of the change in the Constitution of Athens 22.5), we can see that lot is not a democratic method unless all citizens are eligible to be selected.

57 Politics 1300 b 2.

58 Areopagiticus 23.Google Scholar

59 Cf. Birch, A. H., Representation (London, 1971), p. 15;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPitkin, Hanna F., The Concept of Representation (Berkeley, 1967), chaps. 4,6.Google Scholar

60 Cf. Barry, Brian, Political Argument (London and New York, 1965), pp. 88–89;Google ScholarRawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Oxford, 1971), p. 374;Google ScholarAckerman, Bruce A., Social Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven and London, 1980), pp. 285–89.Google Scholar

61 Oliver, W. H. with Williams, B. R., editors, The Oxford History of New Zealand (Oxford and Wellington, 1981), p. 60.Google Scholar

62 United States v. Holmes, 26 Fed. Cas. 360, cited Guillo Calabresi and Philip Bobbin, Tragic Choices (New York, 1978), n 114.Google Scholar

63 Ibid., pp. 41–44. See also Rae, Douglas, Equalities (Cambridge and London, 1981), note 9, pp. 172–73.Google Scholar

64 E.g., Pateman, , Representation.Google Scholar

65 Mansbridge, Jane J., Beyond Adversary Democracy (New York, 1980), pp. 59–71.Google Scholar