Equality by lot

Lottocracy as Democracy: Political Equality, Representation and Public Control without Elections? is the Ph.D. thesis of Julia Jakobi written in 2024 at the university of Hamburg under the supervision of Christine Straehle and Annabelle Lever. In the introduction Jakobi writes that “[i]n the following I will ask: is lottocracy the better form of democracy?” and “[t]he aim of this thesis is […] to assess the democratic legitimacy of randomly selected citizens’ assemblies, independent of additional approval by elected politicians. To do so, I focus on Alexander Guerrero’s (2014; 2020; 2021a; 2021b) utopian proposal of lottocracy.” (Interestingly, this was being done exactly at the time that Guerrero was finally publishing his long promised book on this subject.)

I have not read the thesis carefully from end to end but it seems like it is to a large extent a typical product of the genre of academic work on sortition. It cites the usual sources and covers the usual topics (equality, representation, participation, accountability, deliberation) in the usual manner, ultimately leaving the reader without a clear structure for understanding the issues involved. It is however an accessible work (and much shorter than Guerrero’s book, for example) and can serve as a starting point for those who are interested in and are unfamiliar with the academic work on the subject.

Filed under: Academia, Deliberation, Elections, Participation, Proposals, Sortition | Leave a comment »