The low electoral turnout of young people raises serious concerns about intergenerational justice and representative democracy. A powerful method is needed to address this low electoral turnout: if young people can be encouraged to vote in greater numbers then this may lead to a virtuous circle for which politicians take young people’s views and interests more seriously; and more young people vote as a result. I argue that a scheme of financial incentives for young voters between the ages of 18 (...) and 28; paid only once a young person has attended an hour long information session and an hour long discussion session on the election; offers such a method. Section 1 of this paper outlines the extent of the problem of low voter turnout among young people; section 2 establishes that this is a problem for democracy; and section 3 analyses the reasons why young people choose not to vote. In section 4; I consider two prospective solutions to the low electoral turnout of young people; compulsory voting and financial incentives; and argue that while compulsory voting constitutes an unacceptable violation of our liberty; offering financial incentives to vote does not; and; in the form that I propose; such a scheme offers a powerful short-term and long-term solution to the low electoral turnout of young people. Finally; section 5 summarises the key arguments of sections 1-4; and argues that if academics and politicians are genuinely concerned about improving the political representation of young people and reducing the democratic deficit then they must seriously consider my proposed scheme of financial incentives for young voters. (shrink)

The "Commentariolum Petitionis" has long served to demonstrate the validity of the theory that Republican electoral politics were founded on relationships of patronage that permeated the entire society, and that appeals to the voting citizenry were relatively unimportant for election. Yet the attention the author pays to the necessity of cultivating the popularis voluntas strongly implies that a successful canvasser cannot rely on the direct or indirect ties of patronage and amicitia but must win the electoral support of the anonymous (...) mass of voters. A consular campaign emerges as to a great extent a public performance before the populus in which the candidate seeks to demonstrate to those who do not know him personally that he is dignus consulatu. While the exploitation of personal connections is undeniably important, certain features of the treatment of the studia amicorum in the Commentariolum suggest that the traditional, Gelzerian emphasis on noble patronage is misplaced. Noble allies are particularly prized not for networks of clients but for the luster they shed on a candidate; on the other hand, the homines gratiosi whose electioneering activities are most suggestive of patronage tend to be of middle and lower rank. Nor can all the personal political relationships discussed in the Commentariolum be plausibly subsumed under the concept of patronage, which entails asymmetry between the parties and a connection of some duration; rather, the picture presented here is one of a relatively "free market" of political deal-making between candidates and vote-brokers. The "Commentariolum Petitionis" offers no obstacle to a new model of Republican politics that assigns a much greater role to symbolic appeals to a voting citizenry, and a less dominant role to personal patronage, than have until recently been accepted. (shrink)

Sortition, i.e. random appointment for public duty, has been employed by societies throughout the years as a firewall designated to prevent illegitimate interference between parties in a legal case and agents of the legal system. In judicial systems of modern western countries, random procedures are mainly employed to select the jury, the court and/or the judge in charge of judging a legal case. Therefore, these random procedures play an important role in the course of a case, and should comply with (...) some principles, such as transparency and complete auditability. Nevertheless, these principles are neglected by random procedures in some judicial systems, which are performed in secrecy and are not auditable by the involved parties. The assignment of cases in the Brazilian Supreme Court is an example of such a procedure, for it is performed using procedures unknown to the parties involved in the judicial cases. This article presents a review of how sortition has been historically employed by societies and discusses how Mathematical Statistics may be applied to random procedures of the judicial system, as it has been applied for almost a century on clinical trials, for example. A statistical model for assessing randomness in case assignment is proposed and applied to the Brazilian Supreme Court. As final remarks, guidelines for the development of good randomization procedures are outlined. (shrink)

Assortative mechanisms can overcome tragedies of the commons that otherwise result in dilemma situations. Assortativity criteria include genetics, preferences, locations and actions, usually presuming an exogenously fixed matching mechanism. Here, we endogenize the matching process with the aim of investigating how assortativity itself, jointly with cooperation, is driven by evolution. Our main finding is that only full-or-null assortativities turn out to be long-run stable, their relative stabilities depending on the exact incentive structure of the underlying social dilemma. The resulting social (...) loss is evaluated for general classes of dilemma games, thus quantifying to what extent tragedy of the commons may be endogenously overcome. (shrink)

A diferencia de lo que podría parecer de entrada, la escogencia de cargos públicos por selección aleatoria no es ni absurdo, ni una práctica desconocida en la historia política de Occidente. Una indagación, tanto en las constituciones de las más significativas ciudades-estado de la Antigüedad y de la Edad Media, así como en la filosofía política anterior a la Revolución Francesa, revelará, con facilidad, que el sortear cargos, no sólo era conocido, sino que era bastante común, al punto de ser (...) considerado un mecanismo esencial a las formas de gobierno basadas en la libertad. El propósito de este trabajo es, primero, demostrar lo común que era la selección aleatoria tanto en la práctica como en la teoría política anteriores a la Revolución Industrial y, luego, tratar de esbozar una teoría que analice el porqué de dicha institución y su importancia en garantizar la Libertad y la Igualdad, tan caras a los Occidentales. (shrink)