[MUSIC] REPRESENTATIVES, ELECTIONS & LOTTERIES: AN INTRODUCTION. Hi, welcome back. In the previous segment, we considered the idea of political community. And issues regarding how we might come to define, our political communities. In this segment, we'll consider questions about how to govern our political communities. So, in particular, we'll begin thinking in more institutional detail about, how democracy might actually work in practice. And so, we'll begin thinking about various rare forms the democratic institutions can take, and some of the moral advantages and disadvantages of these forms, of these kinds of institutions. So, throughout this discussion, we'll continue to think about some of the earlier concepts such as the extent to which various institutions might help promote happiness, justice, equality, or positive freedom, or might help abide by constraints of equality, or negative freedom. So, one of the most interesting developments of the past several 100 years, along with such things as electricity, the automobile, flight, space travel, and the Internet, is the almost complete ascendancy of the democratic nation-state. So, there are many different ways of measuring democracy or defining democracy. But by a fairly plausible measure, looking at the basics at the political structure just 150 years ago, there were only one or two democracies in the world. Typically people see the United States and Belgium as being categorized in this way. Although there might be debates even there. So, that was a 150 years ago. Now, out of some 190 countries in the world, 120 or so of them are electoral democracies. That's amazing. So in 150 years we went from 102 to 120. And there are countries transitioning from autocratic or authoritarian systems, to more democratic systems almost every year. So, this makes it somewhat difficult to talk about democratic institutions as a uniform category, since there's so much variation in the details from place to place. So, for those interested in looking at some of the differences in institutional details, I highly recommend the work of the political scientist Arend Lijphart. And in particular his classic book, Patterns of Democracy. So, in this segment and the other segments in this unit, I'll consider some of the broad features of modern democracies and some of the common problems that arise. But throughout there should always be this caveat that, some of these situations, some of these institutions will be different. Depending on which particular democratic system they're talking about. So, one of the most common features of modern democracies is that they employ representatives at their center, particularly in terms of creating law in terms of the legislative task, rather than having all of the people of a political society have a say directly. Almost everywhere, we see representatives. So, people are selected and given political power, typically, as part of a relatively large led, legislative body. So, a second equally common feature of modern democracies, in addition to using representatives, is that these representatives are selected via a public election. Although the details of how these elections work can vary substantially from place to place, we're going to talk more about that in future segments, almost every democratic system uses elections and uses representatives. Okay, so third, a very common feature of modern democracy, is that these elections are relatively inclusive. So, in most modern democracies, there's a norm in favor of enfranchising, giving the vote, to all adult citizens, and allowing all adult citizens to run for office. And this holds with respect to people of all races, ethnic backgrounds, linguistic communities, economic classes, religions, gender, sexual orientations, and so on. So, it's not the case everywhere, but it's now a definite mark against the system being considered democratic, if that system limits who can participate in elections, either in terms of voting, or in terms of running for office, on the basis of any of these sort of demographic characteristics. So, that's also a really fascinating, important development. A fourth very common feature of modern democracy, is that these inclusive elections of representatives operate in at least formally an egalitarian manner. More specifically they all have rules where they count each individuals' vote equally. So, of course as we'll see, there are systems in which people end up having very different levels of political influence. Or even in which their votes do not technically count equally, because of the manner in which they are aggregated. But the general norm is one of formal electoral equality. So, finally, a central part of many modern democracies, is that they have some means of protecting free and open public political discussion. Some kind of rights and protections with respect to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and so on. So, the way in which these rights are actually protected, or the way in which this happens or is achieved, might differ considerably from place to place. But a system in which only certain views can be expressed, or in which only members of certain political parties can run for election. Are typically viewed as undemocratic, or at least partly undemocratic, even if there are elections. So, in the next several segments we'll consider how these features. These five features. The use of representatives. The use of elections. The protection of free and open political discussion. And inclusive, and formally egalitarian, voting rules. How these five elements all work together. We'll discuss both how they're supposed to work in the sort of ideal case, what values they're supposed to help us achieve and realize. And we'll talk about some difficulties that arise in practice. We're also going to push a little bit on some of these core features. In particular, we'll think about some of the problems that arise in electing representatives. And we'll consider arguments in favor of choosing representatives, not by election but by lottery. But more on that in a minute.
