Brett Hennig: What if we replaced politicians with randomly selected people?
Brett Hennig co-founded and directs the Sortition Foundation, which campaigns to institute the use of stratified, random selection (also called sortition) in government. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
one of the big questions,
who perhaps live in a city
the rules that govern us?
an important question.
it's even more important than ever
climate change, the refugee crisis,
themselves this question
in organized societies.
for the greater good of everyone.
they could be those guardians,
they tended to lose their heads.
his answer of how to live together.
a different kind of answer,
into hibernation for 2,000 years,
at the modern history of democracy,
to put the last 200 years.
the number of democracies.
of democracy's triumph,
the end of history,
has been answered,
living in a democracy is a good thing?
keep your hands down.
who didn't raise their hands,
are functioning well?
in the audience somewhere.
is the end of history,
or contradiction here.
is about the ideal of democracy,
are very appealing.
our politicians aren't trusted,
by powerful vested interests.
to resolve this paradox.
it doesn't work.
who will ignore democratic norms,
is to fix this broken system,
in our parliaments
evidence-based laws
"Why wouldn't this work?"
afterwards about it.
and put them in parliament.
for a few more minutes, shall we?
and you and you and you down there
for the next couple of years.
to make sure that it matched
profile of the country
sample of people.
some would be old,
ordinary people like you and me.
how we would all think,
the moral crux of political decisions.
someone of your gender,
and someone with your background
would build on the wisdom of crowds.
than the sum of their parts.
that diversity can trump ability
of societal questions and problems.
by public opinion poll.
would move beyond public opinion
one major side effect:
truly representative of society,
pretty sad to see that.
of how democracy was done
is called a kleroteria.
random-selection device.
randomly selected citizens
of their political posts.
were aristocratic devices.
were a thing to be avoided.
the ancient use of random selection
of random selection in politics
too many examples to talk about.
that it's going to be difficult
with randomly selected people."
separate his recycling."
but overwhelming and compelling evidence
they act responsibly.
Would this be perfect?
will continue to exist.
to me at least, is obviously yes.
to our original question:
things that we can do,
happening right now.
and workplaces and other institutions,
is doing in Bolivia.
and citizens' assemblies,
is doing in Australia,
is doing in the US
is doing right now.
demanding change,
is doing in the UK.
a second chamber in our parliament,
for a citizens' senate in France
right here in Hungary.
right into the heart of government.
in the current system,
elections with sortition.
systems have been created,
torn down and replaced
(Hungarian) Thank you.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Brett Hennig - Author, activistBrett Hennig co-founded and directs the Sortition Foundation, which campaigns to institute the use of stratified, random selection (also called sortition) in government.
Why you should listen
Before co-founding the Sortition Foundation, Brett Hennig wore a variety of hats: as a taxi driver, a software engineer, a social justice activist, a mathematics tutor and the primary carer of four boys. He finished his PhD in astrophysics just before his first son arrived.
After spending several disheartening years in civil society organizations and politics, Hennig became inspired by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's trilogy on political philosophy and began investigating and researching network forms of democracy. The resulting book, The End of Politicians: Time for a Real Democracy, has been called "a book for visionaries" by New Internationalist contributing editor James Kelsey Fry and described as "a powerful critique and provocative alternative" by Professor Erik Olin Wright of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Hennig has given many talks promoting sortition and has contributed a chapter, "Who needs elections? Accountability, Equality, and Legitimacy under Sortition," to the forthcoming book Legislature by Lot: Transformative Designs for Deliberative Governance (Verso, 2019).
Brett Hennig | Speaker | TED.com