Ancient Rome's goddess of justice Zhu Sititian
From the perspective of historical development, in the democratic practice of the ancient world, what really plays a balance valve and prevents power monopoly is the lottery mechanism, not the voting mechanism. This is the case in ancient Greece and Roman times. In the medieval Italian city-states, the role of the lottery system in maintaining fairness was magnified in the process of countless internal and foreign wars. This process is enough to prove again and again that in maintaining fairness in talent selection, lottery is actually no less effective than elections and examinations. This also complies with an old saying: Don’t overdo everything.
1. From a chaos to aristocratic system: the historical background of the birth of the Italian city-state
Medieval Italian territory
After the demise of the ancient Roman Empire, Italy's political territory was very divided, and the Byzantine Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Holy Church and the Arabs and other invaders started a fierce struggle. During the chaotic times, many ancient Italian towns were hit or decayed, leaving only some bishop cities ruled by bishops, or surviving cities inhabited by ancient Roman remains, such as Venice. By the middle of the 11th century, the political territory of the Italian city-state had basically stabilized. In the south, the Norman Kingdom of Sicily was ruled by the Greeks and Arabs. It was relatively centralized in political system, with the Papal Kingdom in the middle, and in the north, the Holy Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic Church and local forces competing for living space.
Medieval Italian town militia
Under such a general background, various autonomous communes appeared in northern Italy, among which the large communes finally developed into actual towns. By around 1300, there were 26 towns with more than 20,000 people. In the 15th century, after some annexation and expansion, only Milan , Venice, Florence and other physical city states were left.
Medieval Italian internal strife was very fierce
In the process of the formation of early city-states, internal and foreign wars were very fierce: between 1190-1250 alone, 1,465 civil wars of all sizes occurred in each city-state. Similar to the small city-states of ancient Greece, most of these city-states were centered on cities and then ruled by consuls with a certain term. It is also similar to the political evolution of ancient Greece. The early consuls were directly elected by citizens. Later, the consuls were no longer directly elected by the people, but instead elected by the previous ruling committee. Because the factors of hereditary and governing experience undermine the fairness of the election, some hereditary governing families began to appear in large numbers, and family factors began to affect the internal affairs of the city-state.
The towers of the Italian city-state are used for civil war
and class differentiation leads to the ongoing urban civil war: many Italian cities have towers, and these buildings were first built to facilitate the aristocratic families to monitor hostile families.
2. Civil rule or aristocratic rule: the dispute over the rights between citizens and aristocrats
Italian citizen militia, an important role in the internal affairs of Italian city-states in the medieval period
Because of the frequent internal struggles of aristocratic families, in many Italian city-states, there were magistrate communes in many Italian city-states, that is, each major family introduced a governor from aristocrats, and override each major family to rule the term. Correspondingly, the traditional general civic conference was abolished, and a large parliament mainly composed of aristocrats appeared in the city-state. However, the governors quickly participated in various civil wars, which in turn intensified the conflicts between the city-states. They often became puppets of the city-state aristocrats, which was a reversal.
The Fourth Crusade changed Italy's history
After the governor's system, the guild citizenship began to rise.In the 13th century, as major city-states leveraged the Crusades and intercontinental trade in Asia, Africa and Europe, the states had developed economies, rich people's lives, and the cultural and educational level was very high in the entire Western Europe. Therefore, in the Italian city-states with developed industry and commerce, skilled craftsmen, masters, doctors, teachers, bankers, shipping providers and other existing civilians began to rise, and they began to demand civilians to obtain more parliamentary seats and gain greater voice in political activities. Later, each city had more than a dozen or even dozens of guild workshops, and each guild had its own small leader, decision-making agencies and related leaders, just like miniature republics.
fighting among Italian city-states
Because guild organizations cannot win infight through legal laws or political means, existing citizens who lack corresponding political rights began to organize armed groups of famous armed self-defense. The captains of more than a dozen militia groups in each city-state are militia captains. Similar to the governors of the nobles, militia captains must also be from a foreign country to avoid having connections with local forces and to fairly coordinate the relationship between the two after conflicts between the nobles and civilian forces.
In addition to forming a militia, although the sparrow is small, it is complete with all internal organs. The people began to organize a complete set of political systems similar to the aristocrats: the People's Committee, the legislative body corresponding to the aristocrats. In addition to these, financial officials, messengers, diplomats and even court officials all appeared shadow institutions similar to those of aristocratic institutions. Through violent struggles, some urban civilians gained urban dominance, such as Bologna, or some cities were forced to recognize part of the authority of civilians, and a situation of common governance between aristocrats and civilians emerged.
Medieval Italian aristocrats
Of course, similar to the citizenship rights of ancient Athens, when citizens fought against aristocrats, they demanded rights from the nobles, and restricted the poor from entering the political arena. The specific method is also very similar, which is to limit the property, years, residence time, and tax time on citizenship, so as to maintain the number of citizens who can participate in politics to a certain small proportion.
However, in the 14th century, the civil politics, which relies on the small city-state system, began to decline. The reason was that several major city-states began to rise at that time, annexed relatively small industrial and commercial cities. Moreover, within the city-state, due to the limited spatial and actual material freedom, the civilian strength of different cities varies greatly. Finally, in those inland cities, the lords rose first and counterattacked. Moreover, the ruling institutions of civilians also continued to fight internally and did not fundamentally cut off corruption and civil war. Therefore, after being tired of internal struggle, the powerful lords who could end the civil war, like the tyrants in the ancient Greek era, gained absolute leadership for a certain period of time. After his death, his sons and grandsons usually ascended the throne. In the end, many lords were recognized by the pope and became the real local lords. As a result, after the 14th and 15th centuries, the republic system almost disappeared in Italy.
rulers and ruled people are generally in the structure of pyramids
To sum up, although the Italian city-state governments in the medieval times set up a rotation mechanism for rights, from the summary of later generations, at that time, only 1% of the population was repeatedly ruled. It is they who constitute the consul, the executive committee, and the advisory committee of the executive committee. In terms of size, their total population is only about 200-600. In addition, there are other official positions. So at that time, this republic system was still an oligarchical republic. Moreover, this oligarchy is highly institutionalized and lacks mobility than the city-state citizenship system of ancient Athens and Greek city-states. However, within the aristocratic group, the circulation of official positions is relatively common. For example, Venice has a total of about 2,000-3,000 aristocratic population, and they are candidates for most civil servants. The country needs only more than 800 civil servants, and civil servants are constantly rotating, so the nobles have great opportunities to participate in state management, so the nobles have great opportunities to enter politics.
3. Lottery + Voting: The institutional innovation of the Republic of Venice
Lottery is actually more fair
For these small countries, it is already very dangerous when the ruling power has been concentrated in a small group of ruling families. So how should we prove to the people that our system of selecting officials is feasible and can represent the interests of the people?
In order to avoid the rule of law being completely in the hands of one person, there were roughly 29 of the 16 Italian city-state republics who selected officials at that time, including the selection of officials, votes and draws. recommendations and nominations are easy to play tricks, but the selection respects the randomness of probability. In the face of random probability, this is the most equal. Perhaps some big families can be selected multiple times, but there is also the probability of winning by weak families. At the same time, it will also take into account the mobility of the regime, the fairness of rights, and the equality of opportunities.
For example, when selecting young nobles to enter the Grand Parliament, the Venetians adopted the method to only draw about 30 people from young nobles aged 20-25 at a time, and then the golden balls and white balls drawn in one urn, and all the business card cards of those participating in the lottery are placed in another urn, and the grand duke draws the business card cards, and then ask the lottery person to draw the ball randomly. Only when the lottery person draws the golden ball, he has the opportunity to become a new member of the Grand Parliament. Generally, if he enters the Grand Parliament, it is equivalent to half an official.
In order to avoid monopoly of official positions caused by long-term employment, the official selection system at that time was a combination of lottery and voting: first draw votes to draw candidates, and then vote to select the list of officials, taking into account the principles of people's hearts and randomness.
actually behind the election is the elite thinking
In fact, in this step, compared with the voting principles of modern Western countries' regime elections, in fact, in the pure voting principles, most people have become the foil of a few elites. Most people participate in the election, but they are just a mere formality. Due to interpersonal, human relationships and relationship factors, voting will become fake voting and actual human operations. However, if the lottery and voting are combined, the candidates will be drawn first by voting, and then the final official position will be elected.
In terms of specific operations, the Venetian approach is to set up 3 urns in the center of the hall under the surveillance of all surveillance officials, and then draw 120 people from the left and right urns, a total of 60 people to participate in the election, and then select the right person from the 60 people to select the officials. Before the first stage, the lottery boy first pours 30 white balls and 30 golden balls into the jar on the left. The can on the right is also operated in the same way. When pouring the jar, children, who are about the same height as the jar, need to pour the balls into the jar to prevent the lottery boy from playing tricks. The children's height needs to be as high as the jar. In this way, the winning balls are randomly distributed in the probability distribution; and when drawing lots, they will also cover a partition on the lottery box, so that the lottery guys will not peek and cheat. And the 60 lucky guys who drew the Golden Ball in the first round had the chance to enter the second round, and so on, drawing out the 36 people who were finally confirmed to be elected. In the two draw groups in the first round, if you find candidates from the same family in the two groups, you also need to stagger them.
Since the ancient Greek era, speeches have been used to influence public opinion
Moreover, in the current election, there will be a clear canvassing and election war, and the variables in this quota are very large; but in the Venetian system, the time interval from drawing lots to determining candidates to voting to determining the final list is very short, which means that candidates selected by God’s will (random probability) cannot perform canvassing, bribery and other operations. In this way, the Grand Parliament considers the real talent and practical skills of the electors, rather than the human factors affected by the outside world.
It can be seen from this that in the election, the most important thing is not voting or speech, but random draws of lots, because draws of lots are the possibility of handing over the election results to heaven and unpredictable. Only in this case can there be real relative fairness.
Although this mechanism has great scientificity and restraining mechanism, in fact, many nobles have found ways to cheat: for example, carry themselves to secretly make the winning golden ball, pretending to have drawn the golden ball when they draw lots, but after the government discovers it, they start to make specific golden balls, with dark patterns on the balls, which can only be discovered by the government to prevent someone from cheating with the balls they bring, and after the lottery draws, the number of balls in the box will be checked.
Late Middle Ages The bribery trend among aristocrats was prevalent
After their failure in dribbling, the nobles began to look for opportunities to cheat collectively. For example, in the 16th century, some nobles only had their identities and voting rights, and their family property was so poor that they promised to vote with each other in orchards, cocktail parties, weekend fellowships, mass, naming day celebrations and other occasions. They invented a complete set of codes to send messages and dock to imply other nobles to vote for themselves. For example, getting up, changing seats, and going to the toilet all became signals of cheating. By the end of the 16th century, the election of official positions in the Republic of Venice almost became synonymous with corruption. Although all members of the Grand Parliament will swear before the election: "I will elect officials for everyone according to the principle of fairness and recommend real talents", when it comes to the operation, everyone will give priority to recommending their families, fathers and brothers. This shows that the Venetian official election system that combines electiveness and randomness is highly rational, and it is underestimated by the principle of rationality, and ultimately becomes a tool for oligarchy.
4. Lottery and Voting: Absolute Fairness and Tension Between the Elite System
From the Venice official selection system, we can see that in fact, compared with voting elections that are easily considered operational and influenced by human factors, family factors, and bribery factors, lottery is the most fair. Because this system is to make sure that all candidates have similar levels and talents can assume great responsibilities, the opportunity to serve officials falls on different people in a completely random state, thereby overcoming the damage of absolute fairness by human factors.
But from the other hand, absolutely fair lottery will lead to insufficiency in administrative efficiency and political failure: For example, in his work "History of Florence", Guiccidini believed that what influenced the absolute election system of Florence is not the voting but the election. Moreover, the important positions of the country are elected through lottery, which leads to political failure, which can easily lead to political turmoil and national destiny. Therefore, the pure and anti-elite political lottery system will also lead to another extreme problem of inefficiency in administrative efficiency.
The rise and fall of the Italian city-state system has become a classic example of political research
Therefore, the Venetian official election system that combines lottery and election is similar to what the ancient Chinese believed in "everyone can be Yao and Shun". The lottery system can increase the recognition of the system by the ruling groups, because cheating and bribery are excluded from the system. Moreover, lottery is actually to hope that the aristocratic groups can improve their own quality and serve citizens better. But like the systems of many ancient city-state republics, a beautiful vision and a simple starting point may not lead to a good result. Therefore, relying solely on the system itself cannot avoid the loopholes in instrumental rationality. Only by comprehensively considering a variety of factors can the ancient government select appropriate talents and serve the country.
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