Against elections
La democracia está en muy mal estado. Contra las elecciones es una propuesta heterodoxa, brillante y muy oportuna que ofrece un diagnóstico inesperado y un remedio muy antiguo para evitar que las elecciones destruyan la democracia. Las últimas elecciones han confirmado el auge de los populismos basados en el miedo y una amplia desconfianza hacia las élites, y se han convertido en concursos de popularidad en lugar de ser un contraste razonado de propuestas. Como explica este brillante libro, el objetivo inicial de las elecciones era excluir a la gente del poder mediante la selección de una élite que les gobernara. De hecho, durante la mayor parte de los 3.000 años de historia de la democracia, las elecciones no existían, y los cargos se repartían usando una combinación de sorteos y voluntarios que se ofrecían. A partir de estudios y ejemplos de todo el mundo, este influyente y radical manifiesto presenta una propuesta real para una democracia verdadera, una democracia que funcione de verdad. Urgente, heterodoxo y enormemente persuasivo, Contra las elecciones solo deja una pregunta sin contestar: ¿A qué estamos esperando?--Page [4] of cover.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
5mentions
4people
2019–2025years
80% recommend20% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I can also recommend the book "Against Elections: The Case for Democracy by David Van Reybrouck"
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/18/against-electi...
- Against Elections: The Case for Democracy, by David Van Reybrouck
Really good book. Not sure if this would be the "perfect" system, but I think we should at least incorporate some aspects of it.
One of my main issue with modern politics is that politicians and political parties are out of touch with people. The general populace does not have the financial means or organizational structure[1] to compete with professional lobbyists. Political parties have become an end unto themselves and they reward people within them that serve the interest of the party, over good leaders, which is evident by the sometimes ridiculous virtue signaling.
[1] Parties were supposed and used to be that organizational structure
- There is a great book on that matter: Against Elections: The Case for Democracy from David Van Reybrouck
It argues that it would be better and more democratic to randomly sample parliament instead of voting. It also describes how a transition could look like and how mixed systems could work.
The biggest issue I see is that such a system would need a very strong and well-designed bureaucracy and very well educated and moral public servants. You would have a state run by technocrats, who prepare options for decisions that the randomly drawn parliament would need to make. These technocrats could get all-powerful quickly.
- Belgian writer David van Reybrouck has written a very interesting book on this topic: Against elections. https://www.amazon.com/Against-Elections-David-Van-Reybrouck...
- David Van Reybrouck wrote "Against Elections: The Case for Democracy" about a decade ago.
I have mixed feelings about it: it sounds nice in theory, but it's unclear how well it would work in practice.
A lot of ideas from Muammar Gaddafi's early reign sound quite nice too. In practice it didn't really work out so well. Some communist movements didn't have such bad ideas either, and we all know how that worked out.
If anything, the thing that Trump and Co. have underscored is that a very important task of democratic systems is to prevent bad faith actors from doing bad faith things. It's often hard to predict how bad faith actors will try to abuse things.
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