Equality by lot

Citizens’ assemblies and sortition

6 Responses

1. 

   Anonymous, on October 19, 2024 at 10:38 am said:

   As I understand it, sortition is a tool that may be used in citizens’ assemblies but also anywhere else (Lottocracy e.g.); isn’t it? 🤔

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2. 

   Anonymous, on October 19, 2024 at 11:20 am said:

   I imagine all of us have gone round and round on this. I have been surprised at how few people outside the world of democratic reform know the word “sortition”. So in conversations with, or writing for newly interested folks, I stagger the new terms I introduce!

   For now, to refer to the citizens’ assembly movement as a whole, I find that “deliberative democracy” is the broadest and most inviting phrase to use. Then I say that “at the heart of this are citizens’ assemblies. Participants in these are randomly chosen from a community or country by lot, a process called sortition.”

   I always get to sortition in the end, because talking about just random selection or lots misses out stratification and the rest of the process. Building a wider understanding of the word sortition will I’m sure be vital to persuading more people that it’s all a good idea.

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3. 

   tbouricius, on October 20, 2024 at 12:10 am said:

   Lots of sortition reformers (like in the Democracy R&D network) use the term “Deliberative Democracy.” But that is problematic, since it has a very different meaning within the political science and philosophy academic realms (based on the writings of people like Habermas and Rawls). And sortition-selected bodies don’t fit in that definition. Deliberative democrats of this sort, like Cristina Lafont, attack citizens’ assemblies having any power. The political science meaning is tied to mass public participation, and deliberation just within mini-publics are anathema. The current crop of sortition reformers who use the term “deliberative democracy” are generally unaware that the term already HAS a definition that is incompatible with what a lot of us are trying to do… They use it simply because it is democracy and it stresses good deliberation.

   Of course sortition is a just a tool (lottery selection) and can be used for undemocratic purposes as well (such as among the elite families in the aristocratic city republics of medieval Italian city states.)

   So there isn’t a good term that is agreed upon. I tried promoting “jury democracy”… but Adam Cronkright points out that African Americans often have negative associations with the criminal justice system in the US, so “jury” is problematic.

   I keep ending up back at “sortition democracy.”

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4. 

   Anonymous, on October 20, 2024 at 12:30 am said:

   Terry, what about Landemore’s “Open Democracy”?

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5. 

   Anonymous, on October 20, 2024 at 7:54 am said:

   That’s why we need the Journal of Sortition (launching in January 2025). https://www.imprint.co.uk/product/jos/

   The publishers (Imprint Academic) have a good track record of introducing novel topics into academia and beyond. Before we launched the Journal of Consciousness Studies (in 1994), mention of the c word sent eyeballs rolling towards the ceiling https://www.imprint.co.uk/product/jcs/ We are planning doing the same thing with the s word. I agree with Terry that we need to distance sortition from the deliberative democracy movement.

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6. 

   Oliver Milne, on October 20, 2024 at 1:44 pm said:

   As I see it, citizens’ assemblies are to sortition what LLMs are to neural-network-based AI: a flashy gimmick with inherently limited potential, built on an inherently extremely promising technology. As the bubble inflates, it benefits the underlying development at first; when the bubble pops, it’ll hold back the development of the technology temporarily, but it’ll still leave it in a better position than it was in before.

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