District council in the UK will take steps to fulfil citizen assembly plan

Posted on November 15, 2025 by Yoram Gat

An announcement on the website of the Forest of Dean District council.

Forest of Dean District councillors have agreed to act on recommendations put forward in a new citizen visioning plan developed by Coleford residents. As a result, the council will now take steps to fulfil the plan’s recommendations in partnership with others, which include improving local employment opportunities, increasing social interaction across all generations and maximising community spaces.

The visioning plan was developed by a group of Coleford residents selected through a ‘sortition’ process – a random selection from all households in the town – ensuring that participants reflected the diversity of the local community.

Councillor Jackie Dale, Cabinet Member for Thriving Communities at Forest of Dean District Council said:

“I’m delighted that we can now begin addressing the recommendations made by Coleford residents. Their priorities closely align with our own commitment to tackling the Climate, Biodiversity and Ecological Emergencies, and to building thriving, resilient communities and a strong local economy.”

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Delannoi: Are you a lottocrat?

Posted on November 15, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Gil Delannoi’s opinion piece “Are you a lottocrat?” appears in the second issue of the Journal of Sortition.

Are ‘lottocracy’, ‘lottocratic’ indispensable, necessary, useful, superfluous, or pernicious words? These words already exist, and like most words ending in ‘cracy’ or ‘ism’, they are used in a pejorative, anxious, indifferent, descriptive, positive, or enthusiastic way.

To what category are these words supposed to belong? Political regimes. Among the various approaches Aristotle used in his typology of political regimes, it is true that his reflection included the typical selection procedure of each regime. He thought, at his time, that a typical or radical democracy would include the use of sortition, but it was only a more pronounced use among the other procedures used in a democratic regime. Typical does not necessarily mean dominant. Moreover, both by observing common usage and for the sake of clarity, he retained the criterion of the number of holders of sovereignty as the name of each regime.

We could break with this tradition, though this exciting exercise is rather pointless. If a procedure were to give its name to a regime:

Hereditocracy? Votocracy/Psephocracy? Lottocracy/Klerocracy? Why not Marketocracy? (combined with Bureaucracy in the EU). Bureaucracy is characteristic of regimes as soon as it is linked with another word: autocracy, oligarchy, one-party system, partitocracy or partycracy.

The full piece is at https://www.imprint.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Delannoi_PtP.pdf.

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