In the last third of his book, i have these, like ten solutions. One of them is sortitian for oversight. It's not sortition itself. It's sortition with a twist. The ancient greeks used this thing called the claretarion to effectively create random jury duty for citizen government. And you kno, they sted. It worked reasonably well. My problem with it in 20 22 is that some aspects of being a politician require specialist knowledge. If you negotiate a nuclear test pan treaty, you had better understand aspects of statecraft and diplomacy and nuclear weapons that the average person probably doesn't.
All societies grant more power to some citizens, and there is always a temptation to use that power for the benefit of themselves rather than for the greater good. Power corrupts, we are told — but to what extent is that true? Would any of us, upon receiving great power, be tempted by corruption? Or are corruptible people drawn to accrue power? Brian Klaas has investigated these questions by looking at historical examples and by interviewing hundreds of people who have been in this position. He concludes that power can corrupt, but it doesn’t necessarily do so — we can construct safeguards to keep corruption to a minimum.
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Brian Klaas received his D.Phil. in Politics from the University of Oxford. He is currently Associate Professor in Global Politics at University College London and a columnist for The Washington Post. His new book is Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How it Changes Us. He is host of the Power Corrupts podcast.
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