Sortition, Parties and Political Careerism

There is increasing concern that democracies are producing a political class of careerists: people who work for political parties from a young age, become staffers or political advisers, then stand for office. They often owe their position to patronage and move swiftly into ministerial roles.

Professional and career politicians are different. A professional politician does their job ‘professionally’: they work hard, and can be ideological and partisan, campaigning for causes they think important. A careerist, however, enters politics for themselves. The rise of such careerists is often identified as a reason voters regard governments as corrupt. How do we discourage careerists while encouraging professional politicians?

Sortition—choosing members of Parliament by lottery—will discourage careerism, but would not encourage professionalism or experience. As such, we propose sortition not for office, but for candidature: parties choosing candidates from their membership by lottery.

Careerism

A careerist enters politics for themselves. They usually lack extra-political interests, and progress swiftly through politics and into office, expecting—and usually receiving—rapid promotion.

This narrow background leads to a lack of true representation. Career politicians are often accused of lacking practical knowledge and not understanding how legislation affects real people. Owing their positions to patronage, in Parliament they support those who supported them.

Some argue careerism has damaged both the quality of elected politicians and of the public service. Policy advisers inside and outside government are filled with people hoping for elected positions, embedding themselves in patronage networks, bypassing policy advice of long service public servants leading to poor policy making.

Adverse selection

Solving the problem of careerists involves examining candidate selection. There are different selection systems: in centralised systems party authorities determine candidates, generally promoting acolytes; decentralised systems shift power to local party elites. The control of party elites at local and national levels means the process of candidate selection tends to promote insiders and encourage patronage.

Sortition as a solution

Sortition – choosing representatives by lottery, with everyone eligible for selection – is often seen as a solution to the problems of adverse selection. Every election would see a newly constituted parliament of randomly chosen citizens: a truly representative group.

Critics argue that sortition would create amateur politicians likely to be dominated by public servants, yet still vulnerable to being bought by special interests, and would also destroy party politics, the bedrock of competitive representative democracy.

While some have proposed other fixes – e.g., sortition in the second chamber – our solution is sortition within parties for candidates.

Sortition within political parties

There have been various experiments with intra-party sortition – including by PASOK and the French Greens – and evidence suggests this process has been successful at attracting votes and mobilising participation. There is reason to believe it yields good electoral results overall.

Our proposal is selection by lottery of party members. However, if all candidates at every election are chosen by lottery, this would mean complete turnover of parliamentarians at each election, an outcome subject to the critique of instability and amateurism levelled at standard sortition. We propose modified sortition – at each election a proportion of incumbents would be retained.

Choosing by lottery within parties – rather than parties selecting who they consider most talented – will combat the perception of parties as factional, amoral patronage networks. Sortition would also help overcome biases, enabling the selection of more candidates from underrepresented backgrounds.

The party system is integral to the modern democratic state. Within-party sortition strengthens this system, both encouraging people to join parties and incentivising parties to attract members.

Some assert that sortition produces a naïve, ignorant parliament – not the case if, as party members, candidates are de-facto politically engaged. However, sortition does not allow for accountability like having to seek re-election does.

This can be addressed: parties can keep some proportion of their incumbent MPs as candidates – allowing MPs who do a good job to retain their seats. First-timers are always sorted in, but incumbent members who have gained experience can seek to run again, which would encourage both party loyalty, and those elected taking their roles seriously.

This does mean that representatives will need to keep party elites on side but if the decision over which MPs continue on the slate is conducted at party-wide level, MPs only have to satisfy a majority of their party. This still mitigates the patronage problem while keeping party discipline.

This system would alleviate the danger of inexperienced parliamentarians being dominated by career public servants. We should acknowledge, however, that government should be directed by politicians it ought to be run by public servants, who are both responsible for, and have experience and knowledge of, what is implementable and what is likely to fail.

Another positive effect of party sortition is that people who might have sought political careers may instead work in public service. This is a good thing: policy advice is best supplied by committed, long-term public servants rather than those whose goal is election. Public servants may have conservative attitudes to potentially risky policy initiatives, but the interplay of demanding representatives and conservative public service is likely to lead to better policy.

Bureaucrats should enter the service through competitive exams and merit-based promotion only—outlawing the revolving door processes that have developed over the past fifty years. The interplay of careerist politics and politicised public service produces poor policy: sortition discourages that revolving door.

Conclusion

The public is increasingly disenchanted with democratic politics, partly because politicians seem to have selfish motivations. Introducing within-party sortition would break the systems that enable political careerism. Our proposal suggests a bridging role for parties between voters and government, helping overcome growing public distrust. It will enable parties to clearly signal their positions to voters and allow for representatives to gain experience so they can govern effectively, while mitigating special interest capture.

Within-party random selection is not post-ideological or anti-party. It enhances ideology at the expense of personality. Parties would appeal via policy: they would have to lead and persuade. Sortition in this mode would enhance rather than eliminate the party system – and lead to better politicians.

Digested read produced by Anya Pearson in collaboration with the authors.