Democracy and sortition. Arguments in favor of randomness

Democratic Theory, 2016

After centuries of oblivion, the idea of using civic lotteries to select citizens to participate in major decision-making bodies has started gaining popularity among certain democratic theorists. Undoubtedly, this is an idea worth exploring, given the constantly rising dissatisfaction with the operation of major representative institutions. One should not, however, infer from this fact that any proposed sortition-based institutional arrangement is compatible with basic democratic principles. This article critically examines two such proposals: (a) that we should establish fully powered legislative bodies consisting entirely of allotted citizens and (b) López-Guerra's enfranchisement lottery, the gist of which is that voting rights should be granted only to a very small random sample of current electors, who will be subjected to a "competence-building process." The article argues that both proposals run counter to the idea of rule by the people conceived as equally valuable and fully participating memb ers of a self-governing political entity.

Legislature by Lot: Transformative Designs for Deliberative Governance, 2019

After centuries of absence, sortition is making its return through academic research, practical experiments, and activists’ calls for linking participation and deliberation. These invocations of sortition, however, offer divergent accounts of the concept and different justifications. Gastil and Wright’s proposal for a “sortition chamber” provides one such example, but sortition can be conceptualized more broadly. When properly analyzed in this larger sense, one can better appreciate how sortition satisfies democratic principles—often in novel ways that go beyond those enumerated in the lead chapter of this volume. To better understand the implications of sortition, I begin by contrasting it with the other modes of selection democracies use to place people in positions of power, including not only elections but also nomination and certifi cation. I then distinguish varieties of sortition that differ by their mandate, the population from which a random sample is drawn, and the degree to which service is voluntary or compulsory. Depending on the design considerations such as these, sortition can provide a novel means of realizing the democratic aspirations of equality, impartiality, representativeness, and legitimacy. Courant Dimitri (2019), "Sortition and Democratic Principles: A Comparative Analysis", in Gastil and Wright (eds.), Legislature by Lot: Transformative Designs for Deliberative Governance, Verso, New York/London, p. 229-248. https://www.versobooks.com/books/2969-legislature-by-lot

Following (Waldron, 2013), this paper draws a distinction between ‘social’ and ‘political’ theories of sortition, focusing principally on the latter. The two leading theories – the ‘blind break’ and the ‘invisible hand’ of descriptive representation – rely on different principles, focus on different levels of analysis (individual and collective) and have little in common. The attempt by epistemic democrats to bridge the gap via small-group face-to-face deliberation fails on account of the lack of concern for statistical representativity and the lack of distinction between the different roles of advocacy and judgment (proposing and disposing) in political decision-making, sortition only being relevant to the latter function.

Homo Oeconomicus

Among the several thought provoking arguments for reforming democracy, Bruno Frey advocates sortition, that is, appointment to (some) public offices by lottery. Sortition was the hallmark of the direct democracy of ancient Athens. The paper assesses the Athenian practice of sortition by the criteria of representativeness, equity, partisanship, rent seeking, resource economy, and suitability of candidates for office. It concludes that, in view of fundamental conceptual differences between the Athenian democracy and the modern representative government, introduction of sortition into modern representative democracy poses extremely demanding challenges.

Common Knowledge, 2023

Part 1 of this article, which appeared in the first installment of the Common Knowledge symposium “Antipolitics,” argues that elections are not the best basis for democracy. Elections promote corruption, do not result in accurate representation of the populace in government positions, and prevent open-minded dialogue about reliable information as the means to arrive at optimal decisions on public policy. Here, in this second installment of “Antipolitics,” part 2 of my project treats an alternative and epistemically superior basis for democratic self-rule — sortition, “a system whereby multiple, short-duration, representative samples of the full population are constituted into bodies that, like large courtroom juries, are chosen randomly from among ordinary equal citizens.”1 Parts 1 and 2 both focus on the American electoral experience, and while some of its faults may not be relevant to other electoral systems (such as those with party-based, proportional representation), the core of the argument does apply to elections generally.

Ruch Prawniczy, Ekonomiczny i Socjologiczny, 86(4), 307–310. , 2024

Comprising a preface, twelve chapters, and two appendices, the book The Keys to Democracy: Sortition as a New Model for Citizen Power by Maurice Pope, begins with a foreword written by Hélène Landemore and an introduction by Paul Cartledge. The individual chapters cover a wide range of issues, including an attempt to reconstruct a definition of democracy, a critique of rep-resentative democracy, a justification of the need for greater citizen participation, a character-ization of public opinion polls, an explanation of the idea of juries, a description of ancient and medieval sortition practices, and a range of ideas about how these past experiences could change the contemporary face of democracy. However, the author’s most significant proposal is a ‘new’ model of governance that involves replacing elected politicians with randomly selected assemblies (‘panels’)

Political Studies, 2009

The central argument of this article is that it is possible to identify one major or primary potential that sortition brings to the political community when it is used to select office holders. This is to be found when sortition is used in such a way as to maximise its most essential feature -its arationality -and where such an application has the most significant and positive impact on the political process and the political community. In such applications the advantages of using an arational process can be seen as outweighing its disadvantages. In political practice -especially in a republican context -this primary political potential is the ability of sortition to protect the public process of selection from subversion by those who might wish to use it for their own private or partisan ends. This helps to defend the polity from those seeking to exercise unconstitutional or arbitrary power -either in the form of a single tyrant or of factions vying for partisan control. In addition, sortition can produce a series of secondary benefits to the republican polity: the polity can be understood as impartial, the threshold to citizen participation can be lowered and the model of the independent citizen encouraged. These benefits, however, can be seen as deriving from initial protection of the process of selection from manipulation -a quality of lot which is present whatever the motivation of those instigating a particular lottery scheme. Although the political use of lot cannot be confined to the protection of open government, its potential to limit the power of individuals or covert groupings makes it naturally commensurate with this role.

In recent years, democrats both inside and outside the academy have begun to reconsider the merits of the age-old practice of sortition, the random selection of political officials. Despite this fact, however, the comparative assessment of the merits of voting and sortition remains in its infancy. This paper will advance this project by treating the problem of assigning public responsibilities as a problem of allocative justice. To treat the problem in this manner is to treat public office as a type of good to which citizens might have various claims. Random selection is the appropriate method for distributing public office when all citizens have equal claims to that office and there is not enough to go around. Universal distribution is more appropriate when all claimants have equal claims to the office and there is enough to go around (as with universal suffrage, for example). Election (or possibly other procedures, such as appointment) makes sense when citizens do not enjoy equal claims to the office and that office is in scarce supply. This approach captures a crucial component of democratic equality. Different understandings of democratic equality lay behind sortition and election. Each might be appropriate under different circumstances, but both place rights-based constraints on the design of a democratic political system.

For some further thoughts prompted by this volume, see: https://jamesk508.medium.com/is-democracy-western-the-case-of-sortition-1f0bbfaa78e8