Talk:Demarchy

message: Would this be apropriate?
"An extreme form of demarchy is the focus of one episode of the science fiction television series Babylon 5. In the episode an alien race is thrown into chaos when a constitutionally required period of demarchy is reached. During this period, every community is expected to randomly sort themselves into equal numbers of "greens" and "purples" who then fight a revolutionary civil war against each other. The victors become members of a new and dominant political party until the following revolutionary period begins."
anonymous
:That doesn´t seem to be what demarchy is about to me...   . regards Sean Heron 17:02, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggestion for "Demarchy in Fiction"

message: I'm not happy with the current state of the section titled "problems on the implementation of demarchy," but rather than simply delete the problematic sections, I think I should first annotate it here to explain what I find objectionable. The section in question is as follows:
:Perhaps the most difficult part of Demarchy is amending a nation's constitution in order to allow for this form of government. Nations based upon federalism usually have a bicameral system that allows smaller entities to have the power to veto any changes. Should representatives in both houses be selected randomly?
::For starters, I'm inclined to question the formulation, "perhaps the most difficult part..." It uses weasel language ("perhaps") to soften a bold claim, for which there is scant evidence. Why is amending a nation's constitution the most difficult part of demarchy? Since no one has ever tried to amend a nation's constitution in this fashion, it's really impossible to know how difficult it would be. One could argue with equal justification that the "most difficult part" would be devising a scheme for selecting members of policy juries that is both random and representative of the population as a whole. Or perhaps the "most difficult part" would be getting people to actually volunteer to serve on decision-making panels. (In the U.S. system, a fair number of people go out of their way to avoid jury duty.)
::In addition, it isn't necessarily the case that amending a nation's constitution would be necessary to introduce demarchy. In the U.S., we already have a system of demarchy that makes decisions in criminal trials. The jury that acquitted Michael Jackson, for example, was an example of demarchy. Most political systems in practice are a hybrid of different systems of governance, and demarchy could operate at some levels of government while other processes operate at other levels. Amending a constitution to achieve "pure" demarchy would undoubtedly be a challenge, but so would amending a constitution to achieve pure democracy, or pure monarchy for that matter.
::Finally, the paragraph above discusses a problem in implementing demarchy under very specific conditions: nations based upon federalism with a bicameral system. However, not all nations operate under these particular rules. In the U.S. there is a link between bicameralism and federalism, with each state being assigned the same number of senators regardless of that state's population. This system is supposed to ensure that small states are not overwhelmed by the power of large states, but it also obviously is at odds with one of the principles of democracy, namely that each citizen has an equal voice in shaping government. Under the U.S. system, people from sparsely populated states actually have more individual power than people from heavily populated states. And in a number of countries, such as Japan or France, bicameralism is not linked with federalism at all. The passage above seems to carry an unexamined point of view which assumes that the U.S. is the norm against which a novel concept such as demarchy must be judged.
:One of the greatest problems of this process would be the acquiescence of a majority of political parties to essentially give up their power. Politicians and political parties (both major and minor) stand to lose a great deal if Demarchy is to be introduced. It would be very difficult to convince politicians in the short term to even consider the idea.
::The above paragraph really says nothing specific about demarchy at all. It's certainly true that any type of change is bound to encounter resistance from those who benefit from the existing status quo. For that matter, monarchies and dictatorships have not easily given up their power when confronted with demands for democracy, and furthermore democracies have almost never been transformed into monarchies. But does this mean that an article about democracy should have a section titled "problems of implementation" which argues that "one of the greatest problems" of democracy is that it is hard to convince monarchs to adopt it?
:Another problem arises when Demarchy is applied to the Judicial and Executive branches of the government. Should a president be elected by the people? Or should he or she be elected by randomly selected electors? In this situation, what would a person need to do in order to be recognised as a potential Presidential candidate by such electors?
::This paragraph above really only discusses an alleged problem with the executive branch and not with the judicial. As I mentioned earlier, the U.S. (and other countries based on Anglo-American common law) actually already has a judicial system that implements elements of demarchy. As for how the executive branch would be chosen, one can only speculate, but there's no reason to expect that it would involve "randomly selected electors." As for the executive branch, perhaps a governmental system based primarily on demarchy wouldn't need an executive branch at all; or, perhaps the executive branch would still be democratically elected, while other branches would be selected through demarchy. In any case, this is likely to be more of a dilemma in countries like the U.S., where the executive branch is clearly separate from the legislative branch, than in countries like England where the prime minister and cabinet actually sit in parliament.
In short, the passage above seems to make a number of speculative assertions, based on fairly arbitrary assumptions about the type of existing political system in which someone might attempt to implement demarchy. I think it would be good for this article to include some discussion of potential problems with demarchy, but the "problems of implementation" section in its current form doesn't seem to do the job. --Sheldon Rampton 06:59, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've just rewritten this section, but it's still unreferenced. -- Beland 18:25, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Problems on the implementation of demarcy

message: I reworded the BC Citizen's Assembly example to remove the claim that it "used Demarchy".  The article has just finished defining demarchy as a "political system without the states or bureaucracies" and "democracy without elections".  A group chosen by the government specifically (and solely) to recommend changes to (not the elimination of) elections does not seem to be demarchy, regardless as to whether the group itself may have been chosen by sortition!
Also, some of the later sections of the article seem to be written more as an essay on demarchy, not an encyclopedic article.  "Demarchy could also replace...", "An alternative...might be...", "Many politicians make decisions...for their own political gain".  A tonal rewrite is probably in order. - David Oberst 20:27, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: BC example and general comments

message: As I have noted above, the word "Klerostocracy" was probably invented by myself. As such, there is actually no other reference to this word that I know of outside this article. Since that is the case, I have decided to remove the word from the first sentence of the opening paragraph. I still think the word is valid and the second section of the article about the word should be included. --One Salient Oversight 03:02, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Removal of "Klerostocracy" from first sentence

message: What exactly is the difference? Should the two articles be combined in some way?
:Sortition is the process of selection of jurors. Demarchy is a theoretical system of government that runs on sortition. For example, you can have sortition without demarchy, but not demarchy without sortition. I think they are two different things, and should remain two separate articles. Jiminezwaldorf 19:16, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sortition is selection by lottery - it has nothing to do with juries as such. Apart from that, I agree that sortition and demarchy are different subjects - although the article on sortition has some content that looks more appropriate for the demarchy article. -207.6.224.49 07:42, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Sortition vs. Demarchy

message: There seems to be a battle going on. Some users keep pulling the text down, leaving this big wide open white space on the page, and some users (or user) keeps pulling it back up. I think it looks fine the way it is (right now) with the text pulled up. If you want to pull it down again, note your reasons/make your suggestion on this discussion page. Otherwise leave it the way it is. Jiminezwaldorf 02:31, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Text Battle

message: As it currently stands this article reads like a promotional piece for Demarchy, and runs afoul of WP:NPOV . The electionering section has line that assert opinions as facts and list the many unproven benefits of Demarchy. I was tempted to remove most of the first three sections because of POV statements, but I thought it would be best to bring it to the talk page for discussion. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:15, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Definitely don't just remove all of those sections. The article on demarchy should describe the beliefs of demarchy's proponents for the same reason that an article on Roman Catholicism should describe the beliefs of Catholics. If you want to rework the language in some fashion to make it more clear that these are the beliefs of demarchy theorists and not the point of view of Wikipedia itself, feel free to do so, but don't just delete the information. --Sheldon Rampton (talk) 05:41, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe my above language was a little too bold, I agree with you that there should be a section for the beliefs of Demarchy theorists, it should be just that a section about their beliefs and not state it as fact, and it should be sourced. I believe the Roman Catholicism article does this in a excellent way, and I would love to see this article do this and I will begin reworking the language. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:59, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV 

message: I don't think it is, except in a trivial sense.  Burnheim wrote:
 Democracy is possible only if the decision-makers are a representative sample of the people concerned. 
 I shall call a polity based on this principle a demarchy.  
 “Demarchy” is an archaic word which Hayek used to describe the view he advocated in 
 Law, Legislation and Liberty (3 vols., London, Routledge   and Kegan Paul: 1973, 1976, 1979).  
 How ever, since he did not employ it persistently, it has not passed into current use and I feel 
 justified in attempting to appropriate it.
In addition to anarchy there is monarchy, oligarchy, matriarchy etc.  Demarchy literally means "people-rule", more or less the same as democracy, and would have that meaning even if the word anarchy didn't exist.  Anocracy on the other hand, would mean something quite different ("no-power"?).   In short demarchy is derived from dem- and -archy, rather than democracy and anarchy.
Unless of course anyone can come up with a relevant citation from either Burnheim or Hayek.  Pm67nz (talk) 05:54, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: OED has references for 'demarchy' back to 1642.  And defines it as "the office of a demarch; a popular government.  The municipal body of a modern Greek commune." (Sortition back to 1597) -- Mindstalk (talk) 18:57, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Portmanteau? 

message: I have noticed that the Sortition article has taken a life of its own and is now pretty much an article on Demarchy. Just to reiterate:
1. Sortition is a process of random selection.
2. Demarchy is a system of government whereby representatives are selected by sortition.
In other words, sortition can be applied beyond the world of politics (eg lotto) while Demarchy is a form of politics based upon sortition. Much of the Sortition article needs to be moved over to the Demarchy article.
--One Salient Oversight (talk) 04:25, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: As can be seen above, Sortition was broken out of Demarchy in the first place.  Seems odd to merge them.  And I don't think they should be merged: sortition is a procedure, while one definition of demarchy is an application of that procedure.  But demarchy has other meanings, such as direct democracy. -- Mindstalk (talk) 18:55, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

text: I can't quite agree with your definitions, or at least I draw the line between them in a different place.  Sure the word "Sortition" has a wider meaning outside of political science (covered in Wikipedia under names like Random selection), but it is also the term most often used to label the concept described on the Sortition page: the random selection of individual people empowered to make some decision(s) on behalf of the population from which they were sampled.  The most notable current meaning of the word "Demarchy" is the particular system of bottom-up government proposed by John Burnheim, with meanings of secondary importance derived from SciFi.  If anything it is the Demarchy page which has "taken on a life of its own" and should be pruned back to its topic.  I suppose my position is summed up by the Examples section on the Sortition page, where Demarchy is just one amongst many, and by no means the most significant.  Pm67nz (talk) 03:07, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

text: I agree with Pm67nz. --Drono (talk) 05:02, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

text: Interesting suggestion.  I'd disagree because sortition focusses on the historical practice while demarchy focuses on a political theory that involves the practice as well as modern ideas like deliberative democracy, deliberative opinion polls, etc.  In particular, I'd focus on making readers more aware that both articles exist, like by referring the history section of demarchy to sortition.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.251.247.242 (talk) 14:34, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm... I agree with Winkelmolen. Not because I've read and understood the contents, history or nuances of the Philosophical origins and historical practices of the two but because I hate looking at those messages at the top of Wiki pages. Rpm2004 (talk) 03:57, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

text: The article on demarchy should focus on Burnheim's influential work (small state, reduced bureaucracies, implementation of lottery/sortion), and other historical and present uses of the term demarchy. This article should have minimal content on random selection of decision makers and related topics; this all belongs in the article of sortition. Antoine Vergne’s survey of the literature (in "A Brief Survey of the Literature of Sortition." Delannoi, Gil and Oliver Dowlen. Sortition:Theory and Practice. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2010. 69-87.) found that since 1956, there have been at least 199 texts up to 2008 that give active mention to the subject of sortition, and more than 350 writings when counting reprints, translations, etc. Let's not elevate Burnheim's work to the same level as this body of work on sortition. Mikedonovan2011 (talk) 21:17, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

text: I agree that they should be merged. The Demarchy has almost no original content and is a weak shadow of the Sortation article. Right now there is poor interlinking between them and we might as well keep the articles together until they grow large enough to need splitting. However, I think Sortation should be merged into Demarchy - it's a more descriptive name (type of government) and fits in to government templates better. Vagary (talk) 22:44, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I've reviewed the articles, and the commentary on merging them.  There seems to be consensus on the revived merger proposal, and it is clear to me that it is bad to leave the Merger header on year after year, so I've stepped forward and did the merger.  ★NealMcB★ (talk) 19:00, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Merging parts of Sortition article with Demarchy article

message: I would like to again propose to merge the two articles. Demarchy seems to have been coined by Hayek for something totally unrelated to what this article is about. Later, Burnheim used it for his proposal which includes the dissolution of the state, sortition and many other components. Again not what this article mainly about. At the time I found this article the only places where the term was used to describe "any political system which uses sortition as its main selection mechanism", was the website of Newid (now unfortunately owned by cybersquatters). All other sources using the term this way, as far as I can tell, were either inspired by this wikipedia article or by Newid (let me know if you know otherwise). What is more important, there is quite a bit of reasearch about what in this article is called demarchy (see for example ), but nobody ever uses this term, other than very rarely to refer to Burnheims proposal.
Even if we wanted to accept the definition, which I'm convinced is a mistake, it is enough to look at the two articles to see they are really covering the same ground. I suggest to try to create e new article out of the two and naming the result sortition. If it is then discovered that it would really become too long, we can always decide to put some section of it in their own article. I think the reason sortition got initially taken out was that it is a much more well understood concept, so certainly deserves its own article, only probably it just have been renamed. fela (talk) 18:02, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting suggestion.  I'd disagree because sortition focusses on the historical practice while demarchy focuses on a political theory that involves the practice as well as modern ideas like deliberative democracy, deliberative opinion polls, etc.  In particular, I'd focus on making readers more aware that both articles exist, like by referring the history section of demarchy to sortition.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.251.247.242 (talk) 14:34, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm... I agree with Winkelmolen. Not because I've read and understood the contents, history or nuances of the Philosophical origins and historical practices of the two but because I hate looking at those messages at the top of Wiki pages. Rpm2004 (talk) 03:57, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

text: The article on demarchy should focus on Burnheim's influential work (small state, reduced bureaucracies, implementation of lottery/sortion), and other historical and present uses of the term demarchy. This article should have minimal content on random selection of decision makers and related topics; this all belongs in the article of sortition. Antoine Vergne’s survey of the literature (in "A Brief Survey of the Literature of Sortition." Delannoi, Gil and Oliver Dowlen. Sortition:Theory and Practice. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2010. 69-87.) found that since 1956, there have been at least 199 texts up to 2008 that give active mention to the subject of sortition, and more than 350 writings when counting reprints, translations, etc. Let's not elevate Burnheim's work to the same level as this body of work on sortition. Mikedonovan2011 (talk) 21:17, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

text: I agree that they should be merged. The Demarchy has almost no original content and is a weak shadow of the Sortation article. Right now there is poor interlinking between them and we might as well keep the articles together until they grow large enough to need splitting. However, I think Sortation should be merged into Demarchy - it's a more descriptive name (type of government) and fits in to government templates better. Vagary (talk) 22:44, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I've reviewed the articles, and the commentary on merging them.  There seems to be consensus on the revived merger proposal, and it is clear to me that it is bad to leave the Merger header on year after year, so I've stepped forward and did the merger.  ★NealMcB★ (talk) 19:00, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger proposal (again) [december 2012] 

message: I agree with the comments of TonyBallioni and Shabidoo.  I've added the "primary sources" template, since most or all of the references come from proponents, rather than what Wikipedia is based on - secondary sources (WP:PRIMARY).
I also moved the "original research" template to the top, since much of the article is unreferenced, not just the section that had it, and it is an article-scope template.  ★NealMcB★ (talk) 16:19, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  primary sources and original research 

message: The third paragraph ends "Candidates were almost always male, Greek, educated citizens holding a minimum of wealth and status." but it's not clear whether these citizens were generally those holding *the* minimum of wealth and status (i.e. least wealthy and of lowest status) or those holding at least a minimum of wealth and status (i.e. some group consisting of the most wealthy and those of highest status). The latter seems more likely, but that's all the more reason to mention it if it really is the former. Lordandmaker (talk) 20:59, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Athenian democracy 

message: : In Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke, the futuristic society on Thalassa is ruled by demarchy.
...not so sure about this. As I recall, the government was described as having a technologically advanced form of direct democracy - a situation in which the figurehead President becomes ultimately somewhat irrelevant, so they opted for a random choice. Thoughts? --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 11:56, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Songs of Distant Earth 

message: I knew this system under the name stochocracy. (As a side note, this is in fact in my view real democracy, as opposed to our theoretical system actually beeing aristocracy, government by elites, best & elected people --but this is another story.)
The point is that both terms are mostly synonym,as mentionned in the other article, thus why do both articles exist? Also note that en. article "demarchy" in fact correlates with "stochocracy" in other languages such as fr (fr:stochocratie). What about merging the 2 article into "demarchy" (as the article is more developped and the term seems better known --or less unknown-- in en.), and redirect from "stochocracy"?
denis 'spir' (talk) 20:31, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: We probably want separate articles for these different theoretical democracy models that get tightly linked together, along wiht stuff like deliberative democracy.  If there is enough, then many demarchy could be a general page on the subject, and the different theories like stochocracy and practices like sortition could be linked.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.251.247.242 (talk) 14:40, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merging with "Stochocracy"