Alan Ryan: “Do We Really Believe in Democracy?”

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Yoram Gat

YouTube has a talk by Prof. Alan Ryan discussing what he calls “real democracy, using lotteries in the way the ancient world used them”, and contrasting it with the existing system – which he describes as being similar to the Roman system – a system mixing elements of monarchy, aristocracy and monarchy. Ryan concludes by endorsing Fishkin’s “Deliberative Polling”.

Part one:

Part two:

This is a thoughtful, if brief, lecture and the points that are raised are worth discussing, I think, in comments and in future posts.

Filed under: Athens, Elections, History, Sortition | 3 Comments »