Rejection of Drawing Lots & Limits of Representative Democracy PDF

# The rejection of drawing lots - the rejection of drawing lots, particularly from the 17th and 18th centuries, is increasingly being seen as a bad thing in light of the growing philosophy of liberalism. - Liberalism claims that all people are free and equal by nature. - This means that people sho...

# The rejection of drawing lots - the rejection of drawing lots, particularly from the 17th and 18th centuries, is increasingly being seen as a bad thing in light of the growing philosophy of liberalism. - Liberalism claims that all people are free and equal by nature. - This means that people should only obey a government that they have freely chosen. - This means that the government will not violate individual rights. - This is the first guarantee that the power will not violate individual rights. - The idea of drawing lots to decide the leader is therefore being rejected by liberal thought because it is a selection method and not a method of legitimizing government. # Arguments against drawing lots - The elected official feels obligated to the people who elected him and his decisions are important because they are chosen by the people. - An elected official who is randomly chosen through a drawing may feel less responsible for their actions and their decisions may appear weaker. - Drawing lots to decide a leader is not possible in diverse places. - Only in small, ethnically, culturally, and religiously homogeneous places, in groups of similar people is it possible. - How can you accept to be led by someone you have not chosen, and who is different from you?. You will only accept to be led by someone you have not chosen if they're very similar to you. # The limits of representative democracy - Representative democracy is a type of government where the people, using the intermediary of their representatives, exercise their sovereignty. - Is it really representative democracy if the representative is not acting on behalf of the people?. Can representative democracy genuinely say "we are the people"? - This depends on how the representatives are chosen by the people. - In contemporary societies, this is achieved by democratic elections. - Elections are supposed to be a non-discriminatory means of choosing candidates that are similar to the people. - It also needs to be equal in a way that allows each person to make a political choice, and every voter has an equal voice. - However, not all voices are equal, as the influence of each voice depends on the size of the riding and the electoral system. - The representative view is that elections are fundamentally an aristocratic system and that electing a person is always based on the leader being better in some way than the other candidates. - This means that the leader is chosen because he has qualities that other candidates do not. - This can also lead to people working to appear better than they actually are. - This includes working to appear as though one is more dynamic in order to make a good impression on a voter. - However, there is no guarantee that the elected official will make decisions based on his performance during the election, and will always be a good leader. - They may also be chosen based on their inherent qualities which they cannot change. - That means that even if people are chosen based on their qualities, a person may be chosen based on their physical features, such as race, appearance, etc. - So, electing someone is both a process of discrimination and distinction.