The idea for this book came to fruition when I was walking the Pyrenees from west to east in the summer of 2012. Stranded in the French-Basque village of Aldudes by persistent fog, I came upon a copy of The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in an old school building. The passage about drawing lots had such an effect on me that I copied it into my diary and for weeks I went round with it lodged in my brain, building the basic structure of the essay in my head, during long climbs in the high mountains. Yet this book is more than the daydream of a solitary walker. It’s the result of several years of reading, travelling and listening.
Without the experience of the G1000 I would never have started writing the book. When I decided in February 2011 to initiate a wide-ranging project to increase citizen participation in Belgium I had no idea it would be such an intense undertaking or that it would teach me so much. I owe a great debt of thanks to the extraordinarily inspiring team behind the organisation. We barely knew each other, if at all, beforehand, but I invariably experienced the group as warm, intelligent and dedicated. It was columnist Paul Hermant who first drew my attention to sortition. Constitutional specialist Sébastien Van Drooghenbroeck spoke with me at the very first meeting about the work of Bernard Manin. Our methodologists Min Reuchamps and Didier Caluwaerts had just completed their doctorates on deliberative democracy and they told me about the experiments carried out by James Fishkin. Our campaign organiser Cato Léonard was from the telecoms sector and during countless car trips to and from fundraising events she drew my attention to the growing importance of ‘co-creation’ and stakeholder management in business life. I cherish the memories of all those avid, enthusiastic conversations. I also had a great time talking with Benoît Derenne. He became G1000’s spokesman on the French-language side as I was on the Flemish side. Having set up the Foundation for Future Generations, he had a great deal of practical experience in organising citizen participation at a regional and European level, and as a Swiss Belgian he often had refreshing ideas about democracy, such as the time when, during a meeting, he asked himself out loud why some members of the Senate could not simply be chosen by drawing lots.
Within the G1000 I would also like to thank Peter Vermeersch, Dirk Jacobs, Dave Sinardet, Francesca Vanthielen, Miriana Frattarola, Fatma Girretz, Myriam Stoffen, Jonathan Van Parys and Fatima Zibouh: not only great interlocutors but good friends. Aline Goethals, Ronny David, François Xavier Lefebvre and many others joined them along the way and are now helping to carry the load. This is not the place to thank the project’s hundreds of volunteers, thousands of donors and more than twelve thousand sympathisers, but I would especially like to mention all the participants in the citizens’ summit of 2011 and the citizens’ panel of 2012. More than anything they convinced me that citizens can and will collaborate to build the future of democracy.
This book began to take shape when I had the honour of occupying the Cleveringa chair at the University of Leiden in the academic year 2011–12, an honorary professorship established to reflect on law, freedom and responsibility in the spirit of the great, courageous law professor Rudolph Cleveringa, who in 1940 spoke out against the dismissal of Jewish colleagues. The title of my inaugural lecture was ‘Democracy gasping for breath: the dangers of electoral fundamentalism’. I would like to thank the College of Deacons, and especially the late Willem Willems, former deacon of the Faculty of Archaeology, and former rector Paul van der Heijden, for their faith in me. Thanks also to all the students of the honours college for the investigative seminars on elections and democratisation in non-Western countries such as Afghanistan. Belgian academics including Philippe Van Parijs, Chantal Mouffe, Min Reuchamps and Paul De Grauwe offered me the chance to talk about my ideas. Two leading ancient historians, Mogens Herman Hansen from Copenhagen and Paul Cartledge from Cambridge, very generously shared their views on sortition in ancient Greece. I am sincerely grateful to all of them.
On trips abroad I had the privilege of meeting countless political scientists and democracy activists. In the Netherlands I learned a great deal from Josien Pieterse, Yvonne Zonderop and Willem Schinkel. In Germany Carsten Berg and Martin Wilhelm made a great impression and the same goes for Carl Henrik Frederiksson in Austria, Inga Wachsmann and Pierre Calame in France, Igor Štiks and Srec´ko Horvat in Croatia, and Bernice Chauly and A. Samad Said in Malaysia. The latter is a national icon, a legendary poetdissident who at the age of eighty continues indefatigably to fight for democracy.
I do not belong in the category of citizens who despise politicians by definition. In fact I found it instructive to listen closely to what people like Sabine de Bethune, former president of the Belgian Senate, and Gerdi Verbeet, former president of the Dutch Lower House, told me from the perspective of handson politics. In preparation for writing this book I had long conversations with several veterans of Belgian politics. Sven Gatz, Inge Vervotte, Caroline Gennez, Jos Geysels and Hugo Coveliers were particularly generous in sharing their experiences. I have not quoted them directly – the book goes beyond the Belgian context – but what they told me enriched my outlook, so many thanks to all of them.
Various people answered my questions: Marc Swyngedouw, Marnix Beyen, Walter Van Steenbrugge, Filip De Rynck, Jelle Haemers, Fabien Moreau, Thomas Saalfeld and Sona N. Golder. With Kenneth Carter I was able to exchange ideas about the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform, for which he was chief researcher. No less fascinating was the contact I had with Eiríkur Bergmann and Jane Suiter, who were closely involved with the constitutional councils in Iceland and Ireland. I would particularly like to thank Terry Bouricius and David Schecter from the US for a lively and ongoing exchange about their multi-body sortition model. The same goes out to Iain Walker and Janette Hartz-Karp for their fantastic and innovative work in Australia.
Peter Vermeersch, Emmy Deschuttere and Luc Huyse read the text and pleased me greatly, as always, with their discerning comments. I’d be nowhere without their friendship. Charlotte Bonduel helped me with online research and the compilation of a number of figures and it was a pleasure to work with her. Wil Hansen was once again my magnificent editor and it was he who one fine day in my studio suggested the title. He thought of Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag, I of Against Method by Paul Feyerabend, and together we savoured the words.
Brussels, July 2013