| Abstrakt: |
The article takes a firm stand against Hubertus Buchstein's plea for the occasional introduction and institutionalization of randomness through a "House of Lots" in cases of politicians apparently displaying neutrality deficits and a populace apparently displaying will deficits. This proposal misinterprets the institutional logics of modern representative democracy and, in consequence, leads to a conceptual decoupling of decisions, responsibility and office, hence to a serious damage of trust as a corner stone of representation and parliamentarism. More, the introduction of a randomly gathered deliberative pouvoir neutre would substitute trust by dense control in the name of a (presumed) general will of the people. Obviously, this signifies an - historically well-known - over-stretching of the concept of representation and, in the end, a dissatisfaction with the performance of professional party politicians and under-performing "citoyens". Representative democracy, however, cannot shield against bad decisions or bad policies. And its corner stones are not fairness, rationality and, therefore, good decisions but trust by delegation. Introducing elements of randomness through, for instance, a randomly selected "House of Lots" as an occasional, preference-laundered pouvoir neutre and agent of the good is, therefore, a cure which might be seriously harmful for representative democracy and its office-based multiple representation and division of powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
