Trends in Theorizing Sortition

Posted on April 17, 2024 by peterstone

Delighted to see my new review essay (co-authored with Audrey Plan, one of our department’s former Ph.D. students) appear in print. The essay deals with recent theoretical work on sortition. You can check it out here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00208345241247492.

I should add that Yanina Welp, a friend of mine, is publishing shortly a similar paper in the same journal focused more on the empirical literature on sortition. Not sure when that will appear.

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

Interview with the Classical Republican

Posted on May 12, 2023 by peterstone

I was interviewed some time ago about sortition for the Classical Republican. It was a wide-ranging conversation that included discussion of this blog. The interview is now on Youtube, and can be viewed here. Note that the Classical Republican has an entire Youtube playlist devoted to sortition which features, in addition to my interview, an extended conversation with longtime sortition advocate Oliver Dowlen and other interesting videos. The playlist can be found here.

Filed under: Academia, Books, History, House of Lords, Proposals, Sortition, Theory | 5 Comments »

Ned Crosby (1936-2022)

Posted on July 2, 2022 by peterstone

Saddened to learn of the death of Ned Crosby, founder of the Jefferson Center and creator of Citizens’ Juries. Crosby was one of the first to envision selection by lot playing an important role in modern democratic politics. I only saw him speak once, and I’m sorry never to have met him.

Further details can be found here: https://www.cndp.us/announcement-on-the-death-of-our-founder-ned-crosby/.

The Minnesota Star Tribune has a full obituary.

RIP, Ned.

Filed under: Deliberation, History, Press, Sortition | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Finding Genius Podcast

Posted on June 17, 2022 by peterstone

I’ve been meaning to post about this, but sadly the end of term proved rather hectic for me. I was interviewed in April about sortition for the Finding Genius podcast. It was a good interview–wish I’d seen the interview with Simon Pek beforehand, as the topic of sortition inside of firms came up. The picture they found of me is ten years old, but I’m not going to complain about that! The podcast can be accessed here: Revolutionizing Democracy – The Benefits Of Sortition and Selected Citizens Councils with Dr. Peter Stone.

Filed under: Academia, Press, Sortition | Tagged: , , | 4 Comments »

Interview with Hélène Landemore about Lottocracy

Posted on September 2, 2021 by peterstone

The Nation Magazine just ran an interview with Hélène Landemore, author of Open Democracy, dealing with the state of democracy today, with a particular focus upon the promise of lottocracy. It can be found here.

Filed under: Academia, Sortition, Theory | 4 Comments »

Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality

Posted on August 9, 2021 by peterstone

There’s a report out on the recent Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality. The report, by Jane Suiter, Kirsty Park, Yvonne Galligan, and David M. Farrell, focuses on “the quality of the deliberative process and the attitudes of the members towards the process”. The report can be found at:

https://arrow.tudublin.ie/aaschsslrep/39/

Filed under: Academia, Applications, Sortition | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

Defending Democracy

Posted on July 3, 2021 by peterstone

Anthoula Malkopoulou (Lund University) and I just published a paper in Constellations entitled “Allotted Chambers as Defenders of Democracy.” Here’s the first paragraph:

In this paper, we identify a problem—the problem of which actors should serve as defenders of democracy—and propose a solution to that problem—the creation of randomly selected citizen bodies, or allotted chambers (hereafter ACs). Having in place institutions that are tasked with democratic self-defense, is, we argue, a critically important pillar of democratic government, but its importance has often been neglected. This neglect is exacerbated by the evasive nature of the task that these democratic defense institutions are called to perform. Part of the problem is that the task of democratic self-defense is often mistakenly conceived as an ad hoc response to an occasional problem, rather than a routine task to which democracies should devote regular attention. Once the task of democratic self-defense is properly specified, the advantages of assigning this task to ACs, rather than courts or legislatures, become evident.

You can read it here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-8675.12580

Filed under: Academia, Applications, Elections, Sortition, Theory | 18 Comments »

Two New Articles on Citizens’ Juries

Posted on June 30, 2021 by peterstone

Read two interesting articles on Citizens’ Juries today. The first, entitled “The Wisdom of Small Crowds: the Case for Using Citizens’ Juries to Shape Policy,” was written largely by researchers affiliated with the Brookings Institute.

The emphasis in the article is on the epistemic advantages of citizens’ juries (with, say, 12-24 members) and not on the descriptive representation provided by citizens’ assemblies or deliberative polls (with hundreds of members).

That article led me to another one, “Respect: A New Contract with the Middle Class”, also from Brookings researchers.

The emphasis in this article, in contrast to the previous one, is on citizens’ juries as a respectful way of involving citizens in the political process.

In scholarly circles, Citizens Juries are seen as an example of “participatory action research.” To us they are a tangible expression of partnership between state and citizen, and of democratic respect. To date, they have been the result of largely voluntary and philanthropic efforts, and patchy in terms of quality. We believe that Citizens Juries should be seen as an important part of the standard policymaking process.

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

IPSA World Congress, 25-29 July 2020

Posted on September 24, 2019 by peterstone

The Call for Papers is currently out for the World Congress of the International Political Science Association. The congress will take place on 25-29 July 2020 in Lisbon. I am currently involved with an effort to assemble a panel or two for this meeting. The focus will be on combining sortition with election and other institutional mechanisms.

The Call for Papers can be found here: https://wc2020.ipsa.org/wc/home. If you have any interest in joining a panel like this, please let me know ASAP. The deadline is coming rather fast–10 October, in fact.

Filed under: Academia, Elections, Sortition, Theory | Leave a comment »

EPSA

Posted on December 6, 2018 by peterstone

The 2019 Annual Meeting of the European Political Science Association (EPSA) will be held on 20-22 June in Belfast next year. I’m organizing the Political Theory panels for this meeting. I know there are plans afoot to organize one on sortition and related democratic institutions, as well as another democratic theory panel (on epistemology and democracy). Unfortunately, the deadline is a bit tight–17 December. (I meant to post about this earlier, but was distracted by other matters. Apologies.)

If you might be interested in joining one of these panels, please drop me a line ASAP. (Or just go ahead and propose a paper–I can add you to a panel later.) The website for the meeting is at

http://www.epsanet.org/conference-2019/

Thanks!

Filed under: Academia, Sortition, Theory | 3 Comments »

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