Equality by lot

The 2019 ECPR General Conference will be held at the University of Wrocław, Poland in September. It will feature hundreds of panels and thousands of papers. One of those papers will deal with sortition:

Sortition as a Finalite Politique for EU Democracy
Paweł Glogowski, University of Wrocław

Abstract: The issue of democratic deficit in the European Union has been present in the academic and political debate for many years now. The first natural reaction to that complex and multilevel problem was to strengthen democracy known as a representative system. The cure was supposed to come primarily through better representation of citizens’ in the European Parliament. As we know, this has not helped the EU in solving the issue. In fact, together with the dynamic increase of EP powers, the voters turn out in European elections has dropped. In consequence, the Union proposed to fight the democratic deficit with participatory democracy, and such innovative tool like European Citizens’ Initiative. Seven years of experience show that this instruments has also failed to empower and engage EU citizens. Hence, this article will try to answer the question whether deliberative democracy is the last chance to solve the issue of EU’s democratic deficit. The author will examine the pros and cons of sortition on a transnational level, and if this kind of democratic innovation has any chance to heal democracy in the European Union.

Filed under: Academia, Sortition |