Originally published at: Career Politicians Have Failed Us. Here’s What Self-Governance Could Look Like. - TPM – Talking Points Memo
This excerpt is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. Democracy’s most radical, yet purist premise is people’s power as exercise of power, not simply consent to power. As I detail in my new book Politics Without Politicians, in classical Athens, governing was not the domain of a political class but…
Pericles and Athenian Democracy didn’t have to deal with massive, organized corporate misinformation campaigns poisoning the public consciousness. No, you don’t have to be, for example, a climate science subject expert to appreciate the need for climate change, but you do have to reliably know which experts to trust. That’s true now, when politicians have dedicated staff whose job is to give them exactly that knowledge. The successful ones build up that staff over a number of campaigns and offices.
Replace that with random selection of whoever, and those staffs become wildly random. And that’s before we get into the issue of keeping your actual job.
Athens in 400 BC had maybe 200,000 inhabitants, including children, women, slaves, etc. It covered an area of less than 40km2. The majority of Athenian Citizens could take a day to attend to public affairs and be back at work after lunch. Athens of the Peloponnesian War era may have been 3 times the size of Cheyenne, Wyoming, but once you get out of the Great Plains, it’s a small town in modern America.
Bob from Idaho isn’t gonna go to DC even 1 day a week and be able to keep his job. He’s either traveling 1-2 additional days every week, or he’s gonna end up exhausted. And things can happen fast, and you can’t always wait for everyone to get back into town after the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor, or there’s a massive earthquake in Georgia or something. Things don’t always need to be handled now, but when they do… they do.
So he’s gong to be gone for his term. Is his boss expected to keep his job open and not fill it? That’s a huge strain on small businesses. If they do fill it, when Bob’s term ends, does he need to find new work, or does his replacement? How’s that fair to either of them?
Athenian democracy worked because it was a product of its time, its culture, and its location. The scale of Athens, the pace at which things happened, and the amount of complexity for most of the considerations involved all played a part. As you scale up, as distances and population numbers increase, direct democracy simply becomes less and less tenable. It’s a lovely idea, but it just can’t work at a modern pace and scale.
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I appreciate the context of the Athenian experience of which you remind us.
Yeah, like I said, it’s a great idea… and its echoed in how the Founders imagined politics in America should work: people doing public service for a few years, then going back to their family’s business, moving back and forth between them when they felt they had something to offer. But as society and its problems grew, they got more complex, and the amount of time needed to understand all of the nuances well enough to govern effectively snowballed. It’s why we developed a professional political class in the first place: their job is to know the things most people don’t have time to focus on.
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We’re a rich country, so we could make the business/economic aspects of this work if we wanted.
The thing I would worry more about is how to contain the power of civil servants. Permanent staffs act as gatekeepers and give advice to elected/selected officials, and the less knowledge/experience that official has, the more power the staff has. And those people can always be bribed or captured.
On the other hand, the current system where elected officials are endlessly beholden to big donors is a complete mess, as is the system where a politician doesn’t want to offend anyone in their potential base. So randomly selected people who know they’re only going to be in office for a small part of their lives might well not be worse.
Not really. It’s not a question of money. It’s a question of people, and stability. Remember: this is random selection here. So Bob gets randomly selected. Now he’s gotta make sure all his work can be handed off, maybe has to train up his own replacement… goes off to do his public service, and comes back… to no job? To having to learn a new job that probably means a significantly different commute? Fuck all your work friendships, Bob, you get a bunch of new co-workers and get to have to integrate into that new social fabric!
It’s not just about the money.
It is. Elections should be publicly funded. No gifts to politicians except from close family so the kids don’t get screwed on birthdays and christmahaunakwanzikaah.
That’s pretty self-correcting, though, because constituents do get offended by representatives who’re utterly spineless.
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We could still make those things work if we were committed to it. It’s not dissimilar to what happened with drafts in previous generations (including drafting of professionals). It would be disruptive, but it would also be national service, and (in theory) recognized as that.
The draft, a) was infrequent, only lasting for the duration of the conflict, and b)caused massive societal issues that took decades to shake out.
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I challenge the author to go to one planning commission hearing about bike lanes.
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Apropos of nothing, put me down on Team arrendis. The 21st century in the United States is nothing like 400BCE Athens.
The closest parallel to an Athenian “senate” would be if a random selection were taken from the hundreds of billionaires. You know, the privileged (nearly all male) folks served by legions of “slaves”? Who had no real occupations or onerous daily tasks, just a lot of free time?
But then you’d get “representation” by and for money. Even worse than we currently have now, because there would be no need to make any pretense of appealing to the public.
Bingo! If you haven’t ever seen the sausage being made, maybe you shouldn’t exalt the “process.”
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As a transportation commish (volunteer) in my Chicago suburb, I can assure you the alternative “process” is much, much worse …
But we’re not talking “big town hall” v “fascist autocracy.” It’s representative government by professional, probably experienced pols v representative government by random yahoos with no experience who are just drug in off the street for a few years.
Also, GODWIN!!! Not to mention, everything isn’t about Nazis. However, Adolph would be proud.
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And that’s now evolved in the US to them dialling for dollars at every opportunity, or becoming fully owned subsidiaries of corporations, or pets of billionaires, so they can cling to power.
And the “knowing stuff” part has largely gone, even if they have it, they get derided as wonks/nerds. Though Paul Ryan was held up as a wonk for his magic asterix math so…
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Counterpoint: Susan “concerned” Collins. 5 times reelected
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Too true. But maybe six times is the charm??
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Because I’m addicted to spending OPM, I’m going to suggest a solution involving pensions/bribes. Reps who retire after, say, 5 terms in the house or 2 terms in the senate would get pensions comparable to their pay as long as they had no professional contact in any of the areas their committees oversaw, And audits if they did.
I didn’t say quickly self-correcting. 
And she’s had good fortune in her opponents the last couple of times.
Yes, because safeguards weren’t put in place to prevent it.
Let’s face it, that’s just a reflection of American society writ large.
We are these days … or haven’t you noticed the newest Norman Rockwell meme on Bluesky?