A new paper by Nicole Curato, Amiltone Luís, Melisa Ross, and Lucas Veloso in Environmental Science & Policy includes field work eliciting comments from people in Zambezia, Mozambique regarding their views on sortition in the context of the allotted Climate Assembly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency.
Just sortition, communitarian deliberation: Two proposals for grounded climate assemblies
Abstract
Sortition or recruiting randomly selected everyday citizens is a core feature of climate assemblies. Sortition, the argument goes, enforces the principle of inclusiveness, as everyone has a fair shot at getting invited to the climate assembly. This form of recruitment, however, faces criticism. It challenges traditional structures of representation and decision-making where elders, religious leaders, elected representatives, and community organisers typically give voice to the ideas and grievances of everyday people. For some, sortition valorises the atomised individual who can speak their mind in a forum, without any mechanism for the individual to reconnect their deliberative experience to the wider community. In this article, we draw on the experience of the province of Zambezia in Mozambique as one randomly selected Assembly Member took part in the world’s first Climate Assembly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency. Based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and feedback sessions with local organisations in Zambezia, we offer practical insight on how sortition can deepen community connection and maximise the impact of climate assemblies in delivering practical outcomes for climate change adaptation. Using grounded normative theory, our study demonstrates how sortition can promote justice by elevating the voices of those most impacted by climate change. We also demonstrate why a communitarian approach to citizen assemblies enhances accountability and shared learning and empowers members to translate global deliberations into local actions.
One useful contribution of this article is a summary of the arguments for and against sortition that the authors drew from the literature.
Arguments in favour of sortition
- Realises the principle of equality and fairness by giving everyone a fair shot at being selected to take part in policy deliberations.
- Fosters epistemic diversity, which enhances the quality of collective decisions.
- Encourages open-minded and non-partisan communication that can break political deadlocks.
N. Abbas, Y. Sintomer (2022). Three contemporary imaginaries of sortition: deliberative, antipolitical, and radically democratic. Common Knowl., 28 (2), pp. 242-260.
H. Landemore (2013). Deliberation, cognitive diversity, and democratic inclusiveness: an epistemic argument for the random selection of representatives. Synthese, 190, pp. 1209-1231.
Arguments against sortition
- Creates a new participatory elite of people who have the resources to take part in a demanding form of political participation.
- Promotes an overly deterministic assumption that descriptive representation guarantees epistemic diversity.
- Neutralises political disagreement and disconnects Assembly Members from their communities.
Curato, N., & Calamba, S. (2024). Deliberative forums in fragile contexts: Challenges from the field. Politics.
A. Michels (2019). Participation in citizens’ summits and public engagement
Int. Rev. Adm. Sci., 85 (2), pp. 211-227.Elliott, K. J. (2023). Democracy for Busy People. University of Chicago Press.
Grandjean, G. (2024). ‘Sortition in Politics: Towards an Apolitical Model of Representation?‘ in Against Sortition? The Problem with Citizens’ Assemblies. Edited by G. Grandjean. Exeter: Imprint Academic. pp. 1-18.
Lafont, C. and Urbinati, N. (2024). ‘Defending Democracy against Lottocracy‘ in Against Sortition? The Problem with Citizens’ Assemblies. Edited by G. Grandjean. Exeter: Imprint Academic. pp. 157-174.
Filed under: Academia, Applications, Deliberation, Sortition |
Adam Cronkright
Ali
Ahmed R. Teleb
avanderven
avergne
Alex Kovner
azakaras
Brett Hennig
campbellwallace
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Common Lot Sortitionist
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Wayne Liebman
Yoram Gat
Oliver Milne
Equality by lot 
I’m tired of hearing the first objection, which is easily raised with pay and a lifelong pension.
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I very much agree. I think all three objections are not made in good faith. Each of them, to the extent it is valid at all, can be addressed with good design. This is typical of the academic discourse around sortition. The anti-democratic conclusion is foregone. Arguments for it do not have to be convincing – they are just talking points.
Indeed, also typically, the arguments listed in favor of sortition are not particularly good ones either. The root democratic value of sortition is not about fairness, epistemic diversity or resolving partisan deadlocks. All of those are, if anything, means to the democratic end which is about producing policy outcomes that serve the public at large.
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Well, being able to freely choose how to use one’s individual share of sovereignty (Rousseau) has definitely something going for it.
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> freely choose how to use one’s individual share of sovereignty
Like “rule of the people” this seems more of an aspirational slogan than something concrete. How do you interpret this practically?
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For a discussion on Rousseauian popular sovereignty see https://sortition-agora.com/sortition/citizen-jury-or-referendum-a-rousseauian-perspective/
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I posit that both the synecdochical and metaphorical ways of representation (in Sutherland’s parlance) are equally legitimate and that a political regime is oppressive unless it gives every citizen the choice of one or the other.
Each citizen must be free to choose whether she wants to give her aliquot of popular sovereignty to a candidate in the election or rather to keep it for herself as a chance in the lottery.
The final outcome is a mixed parliament.
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Although synechdocical (descriptive) and metaphorical (Hobbesian) representation may or may not be equally legitimate, I don’t see how they can be combined (and electoral representation is not metaphorical). One of the mistakes lottocrats make is accepting Rousseau’s reification of individual volunté as the yardstick for civic freedom. I agree with Yoram that the best we can hope for is for policy outcomes that accurately reflect public preferences. How to achieve that is another matter, as sortition is not a magic bullet.
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If electoral representation is not metaphorical, then I had not understood what metaphorical representation meant. Serves me right.
Whatever you call them, you can combine elected and allotted members and form a mixed parliament. An Italian whose name I don’t remember did some kind of quantitative exercise and derived a number of desirable properties as a function of the preordained elected/allotted proportions he was setting: less factionalism, more consensual outcomes, things like that.
In my proposal, the shares of elected and allotted members are an organic result of the individual choices of the citizens.
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“Allotted members” is a rare example of a substantive that only exists in plural form. In Cammack’s words:
“Synecdochical representatives are undifferentiated parts of the wholes they represent and serve as representatives in virtue of their essential similarity to the represented rather than any perceived or actual difference from them.”
The similarity only exists at the aggregate level, so there is no such (singular) creature as an “allotted representative”. The mistake lottocrats make is to assume that they are individuals who have been selected by a different balloting method. This is a category error.
To understand symbolic representation you should read Chapter 5 of Pitkin’s classic text.
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> equally legitimate
What makes a certain mechanism of selection of decision makers legitimate? As far as I can tell, the only thing that can make a mechanism legitimate is that it tends to produce desired outcomes. I don’t understand how elections, an inherently elitist mechanism, can be expected to produce outcomes that serve the people.
> An Italian
Presumably you are talking about Pluchino et al. I think putting faith in such superficial analysis is unjustified.
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In Yoram’s democratic utopia the vast majority of citizens play an entirely passive role. Deprived of the ability to make policy choices (in referenda) or to elect their preferred advocates, all they get to do is affirm the decisions of those elected by chance or appointed by other mechanisms. Such people are (equally impotent) subjects, not sovereign citizens. Is Gatocracy an equality worth having?
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PS approval of government policy is operationalised in public opinion surveys and (presumably) the passive consent indicated by ongoing membership of the polis.
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> the vast majority of citizens play an entirely passive role
The false notion that those who are not allotted must remain “passive” is no more than a reflection of the electoralist mindset according to which “active” means being a voter. Citizen may act politically in various ways. In fact, the legitimate and democratic among those ways (as opposed to the corrupt and anti-democratic ones) would become more effective when decisions are made by an allotted body rather than by an elite body.
> Deprived of the ability to make policy choices (in referenda) or to elect their preferred advocates
Oh, how could we give our precious pretense of sovreignty through voting for our elite rulers and instead opt for the debased state of living in a society that promotes our values and interests?
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>Citizens may act politically in various ways
Examples, please, as to how the average citizen (as opposed to the activist minority) might act politically.
>living in a society that promotes our values and interests?
Most democrats would go along with that as the goal, but without a (non-axiomatic) plan to achieve it it’s no more than a slogan. The issue is how to represent the ideological diversity (“discourses” in Dryzek-speak) of large multicultural states in a way that ensures both inclusivity and proportionality, so that the allotted jury can choose between them. Your expression “our” (values and interests) suggests a simple dichotomy of mass and elite values and interests and might be taken to mean that the former are epiphenomenal. One thing that pluralists and cultural Marxists agree on is the diversity of values and interests, hence the fad for stratified sampling. But who gets to choose the strata?
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The most common form of political action is conversations with family, friends and acquaintances. Such activity is today just idle talk, but it would become much more meaningful if your friends or their friends may very well find themselves in a decision making position.
> Your expression “our” (values and interests) suggests a simple dichotomy of mass and elite values and
It only suggests this to you and your ilk who see the status quo, i.e., imposition of elite values and interests on society as the natural order of things, and who live in fear that the values and interests of the hoi polloi would get reflected in policy.
“Our” does not imply homogeneity and does not exclude an elite. It simply means that democratic politics can lead to policies that would reflect the diversity of values and interests in the public and which would be perceived by most members of the public as being a legitimate reflection of this diversity, and in particular of their own values and interests.
> stratified sampling
As I have repeatedly written, “stratified sampling” (which is really a misnomer for what is being done) is in fact no more than a device for hiding the poor design of the recruitment procedure. It should not be part of a functional sortition design.
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I think occasional conversation is a poor substitute for an equal share in choosing which discourses to favour.
>democratic politics can lead to policies that would reflect the diversity of values and interests in the public
Sure, that’s why Alex and I floated the Superminority principle. But a conversation between a diverse group of people still has to reach a decision, and those who were excluded from the allotment and lost the vote would be unlikely to perceive this as a legitimate process.
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> I think occasional conversation is a poor substitute for an equal share in choosing which discourses to favour.
Naturally. For you (and for the Urbinatis and Lafonts of this world) the privilege of choosing from a short menu of “discourses” set by the elite[s] is so much better than being allowed to speak for yourself.
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The length of the menu depends on the superminority threshold and the discourses represented will be the ones that receive most public support.
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Yes, the convoluted arguments (“voting or passivity”), proposals (“the allotted choose among the proposals of the elected”) and marketing terms (“superminority”) will keep on coming all aimed at avoiding the ultimate horror of the hoi polloi speaking for themselves. That must be avoided at all costs.
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“Conversation is not the soul of democracy” (Schudson, 1997)
PS “the hoi polloi” translates “the the many”. There are quite a lot of (us) so the conversation would be a cacophony.
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> there is no such (singular) creature as an “allotted representative”.
Of course there is. Let’s assume a district with four seats and 8K electors, where 6K of them vote for a candidate and the remaining 2K opt for the lottery. The district will be represented by three elected MPs and one allotted MP.
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Arturo
I was questioning the democratic legitimacy of an individual allotted MP, as the descriptive-representation mandate only applies in the plural case, and to a reduced subset of activities. What is the democratic mandate of an individual selected by chance? Why privilege the speech acts of Jill, rather than John, given that her representative claim has not been endorsed by her fellow citizens?
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Jill’s democratic mandate has been endorsed by the 2K electors who chose to be represented by an individual selected by chance. The three elected candidates have no better endorsement than her.
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Why would anyone choose to elect a single representative by chance? With preference election voters are endorsing the candidate’s representative claim.
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Every elector choosing a chance at the lottery instead of voting for a candidate in a list possibly hoped that all their fellow citizens will make they same choice, in which case they would have ended up with four allotted representatives and not a single elected one.
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