Randomly Selected Leaders May Make Politics More Efficient

Randomly Selected Leaders May Make Politics More Efficient

Injecting randomly selected politicians into legislatures could create a more efficient political process, according to a group of scientists.

In a research project, a team led by Alessandro Pluchino from the University of Catania in Italy and colleagues discovered that when they added independent politicians to the mix in their simulations, more laws passed and average societal welfare increased.

Further Reading

In ancient Greece, the cradle of democracy, governing bodies were largely selected by lot. The aim of this device was to avoid typical degenerations of any representative institution. In modern democracies, however, the standard is choosing representatives by vote through the Party system. Debate over efficiency of Parliament has therefore been centred on voting systems, on their impact on parliamentary performances and, ultimately, on the efficiency of economic system. In this paper, rediscovering the old Greek wisdom and recalling a famous diagram about human nature by C.M.Cipolla, we show how the injection of a measure of randomness improves the efficiency of a parliamentary institution. In particular, we develop an agent based model of a prototypical Parliament and find an analytical expression, whose predictions are confirmed by the simulations, that determines the exact number of randomly selected legislators, in an otherwise elected parliament, required to optimize its aggregate performance (number of approved acts times average social gain) after that free elections would have established the relative percentage of the two Parties or Coalitions. This result is also in line with the recent discovery that, under certain conditions, the adoption of random promotion strategies improves the efficiency of a human hierarchical organization

They even provide you with a simulation to see how well randomly selected political leaders would perform which I find particularly fascinating. Of course you could question their algorithms, but interesting nonetheless.

An image of the results from the simulator ran for our House of Representatives:




Thoughts?

In ancient Greece, the entire population was not included. Only "select" men were allowed to participate.

Which is essentially what we already have now

It's a lovely theory, but it is an idealistic one, based on the assumption that the majority of the population would be suitable and at least acceptable in the job. I doubt that part vehemently, becaise otherwise Democracy would not require fixing. If the majority of voters were suitable to run the country, they would be suitable and effective at electing leaders.

Originally posted by ReluctantShaman
In ancient Greece, the entire population was not included. Only "select" men were allowed to participate.

Which is essentially what we already have now

It's a lovely theory, but it is an idealistic one, based on the assumption that the majority of the population would be suitable and at least acceptable in the job. I doubt that part vehemently, becaise otherwise Democracy would not require fixing. If the majority of voters were suitable to run the country, they would be suitable and effective at electing leaders.

Can't disagree with that.

I do believe, however, that this study lends credence to the fact that career politicians are not a good idea. How would you feel about term limits for legislators, something similar to what we have for the president today?

Though I am not of the Baha'i faith, this ideology of world governance seems like an appropriate solution for todays democratic needs.
A quote from their world governance web page: There is no clergy in the Baha'i Faith. Baha'is elect their leadership by secret ballot, in a distinctive system without campaigning or nominations.

So no one campaigns, no nominations, people elect you whether you want the job or not but accept it as part of your civil duties.......like jury duty. No party ideologies just vote for what you believe will bring the most prosperity and comfort to your community.
What does everybody think, good idea or bad one?

bahai.in...

reply to post by brice


I wouldn't oppose seeing it here, but I think it would fail due to the difference of scale. Reading your link, it seems as though it works well for them, but I just don't see it working as well over here.

I think one issue we need to address is the overall size of government, ie what is the maximum number of people that can be effectively governed? I think it has been demonstrated over and over that a society of tens of millions is just too big to be ruled by one government.

I like the idea - but think it needs re-working. As has been said by others, you can't just elect anybody - they mightn't be qualified to make informed decisions.

Perhaps there could be a "bar exam" that anyone over the age of 25 is free to study and sit for, should they pass it - they then go into a pool of candidates that could be randomly selected from every 7-10 years or something.

reply to post by ghostsoldier


Part of the election process is, you vote for someone to take office. The person you choose would be the person that you think could bring the most comfort and prosperity to your community. If many people think the same as you then that person will be elected. This process should eliminate people not suited for decision making. Keeping in mind, the last thing we need are more lawyers running things.
brice

reply to post by brice


Isn't that what essentially happens now, people vote for who they think will best serve their interests - even though the candidates may have little intention of doing so, they campaign on that assumption and people vote for them.

reply to post by ghostsoldier


These are career politicians campaigning, begging for a position. The other way someone could and probably is much better at being a leader but may not want the position but takes it for the honor and responsibility to it. So yes, the process is similar but the outcome should be completely different.
Is there a Bahi'i on this thread that could more fully explain your process of world elections and how it could be used in politics today for the masses?
Peace,
brice

Originally posted by ReluctantShaman
In ancient Greece, the entire population was not included. Only "select" men were allowed to participate.

Which is essentially what we already have now

It's a lovely theory, but it is an idealistic one, based on the assumption that the majority of the population would be suitable and at least acceptable in the job. I doubt that part vehemently, becaise otherwise Democracy would not require fixing. If the majority of voters were suitable to run the country, they would be suitable and effective at electing leaders.

Umm, check yourself or I will blast you and get another 1,000 or so points taken from me. Ancient Greece was never "Greece". Each Greek City state was different. And frankly spoken, if I was an Athenian male citizen and took one look at Sparta, I would be very hesitant to support equal rights with women for fear of future generations of Athenians living in a Sparta like hell hole(which many feminist's and traditionalist women seem to be veering towards such a state now).

For women it was a sweat deal(Sparta). They got to lord over slaves all day while Spartan boy's were beaten into submission to make good little slave soldiers to protect the Spartan Matriarchy.
--
The only way it could work is to use an automatic electoral system(meaning use the concept of electoral points but ditch the electoral college) and have "voter confirmation" to prevent craziness.

Heck such a system should be in place anyways(meaning Congress writes the law's, the President is given Veto to prevent the wasting of Citizens time, and Citizens vote the law's into becoming a part of the law).

reply to post by brice


I'm a Bahai.

The Bahai administrative order is an interesting model of governance, but it is a way of running a religious community, without clergy: it is not a form of government in the narrow sense. The details of this administrative order are not made up ad hoc; all the main institutions and details are given in Bahai scriptures.

However the Bahai scriptures, written by Baha'u'llah and his son Abdu'l-Baha, and authoritatively interpreted by Shoghi Effendi, also speak a great deal about the need for world peace, and the international treaties and institutions needed to achieve it.

It's important to be clear that these are two different things, otherwise the Bahai scriptures look like a mass of contradictions because the way the Bahai administration works -- with the goal of governing the community and preventing schism and the corruption of the religion -- is not the same as the Bahai vision on how international secular government should work, to guarantee peace and progress for all humanity. These are in Abdu'l-Baha's words "two calls" - which are complementary. Nevertheless, there are a lot of ethics and attitudes that are common to both, and the mere fact that Bahais from many cultures and countries are able to govern their global religious community without professional clerics or other religious experts in charge, suggests that humanity could do something analogous in rethinking global governing systems world-wide, and at the national and local levels.

What the Bahai writings envisage for the global political order is an international pact, formed by the great powers and approved by all the peoples of the world, leading to the formation of a world commonwealth of nations, formed by the national governments, with a code of law, a judiciary and legislature, and an executive with the ability to enforce decisions. Shoghi Effendi summarises it:

Some form of a world super-state must needs be evolved, in whose favor all the nations of the world will have willingly ceded every claim to make war, certain rights to impose taxation and all rights to maintain armaments, except for purposes of maintaining internal order within their respective dominions. Such a state will have to include within its orbit an international executive adequate to enforce supreme and unchallengeable authority on every recalcitrant member of the commonwealth; a world parliament whose members shall be elected by the people in their respective countries and whose election shall be confirmed by their respective governments; and a supreme tribunal whose judgment will have a binding effect even in such cases where the parties concerned did not voluntarily agree to submit their case to its consideration. A world community in which all economic barriers will have been permanently demolished and the interdependence of Capital and Labor definitely recognized; in which the clamor of religious fanaticism and strife will have been forever stilled; in which the flame of racial animosity will have been finally extinguished; in which a single code of international law—the product of the considered judgment of the world’s federated representatives—shall have as its sanction the instant and coercive intervention of the combined forces of the federated units; and finally a world community in which the fury of a capricious and militant nationalism will have been transmuted into an abiding consciousness of world citizenship—such indeed, appears, in its broadest outline, the Order anticipated by Bahá’u’lláh,

see reference.bahai.org...
and a similar but more detailed outline from Shoghi Effendi here:
reference.bahai.org...

Abdu'l-Baha describes the formation of this commonwealth of nations in "The Secret of Divine Civilization":

True civilization will unfurl its banner ... whenever a certain number of its distinguished and high-minded sovereigns ... shall, ... make the Cause of Peace the object of general consultation, and seek ... to establish a Union of the nations of the world. They must conclude a binding treaty and establish a covenant, the provisions of which shall be sound, inviolable and definite. They must proclaim it to all the world and obtain for it the sanction of all the human race. This supreme and noble undertaking ... should be regarded as sacred by all that dwell on earth. ... In this all-embracing Pact the limits and frontiers of each and every nation should be clearly fixed, the principles underlying the relations of governments towards one another definitely laid down, and all international agreements and obligations ascertained. In like manner, the size of the armaments of every government should be strictly limited, ....

reference.bahai.org...

There was a movie about this,, in the 60's ,,70's,, anyway an 18 yr. old WON,,, and immediately rounded up anyone over 35.
Ya was a terrible movie,, if u were 35,, lol,,, sighhhh.

Me.

corporate America = pay to the order of "Randomly Selected" is all that would change.