Just out: an article proposing that Australia select its Head of State through a multi-stage process involving sortition at the beginning and the end. The author doesn’t really seem to endorse the idea; rather, he just offers it as an alternative that’s “a little bit whacky.” Here’s the link:
https://pelicanmagazine.com.au/2024/11/17/could-we-randomly-select-a-citizen-as-our-head-of-state/
Filed under: Academia, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 1 Comment »
Hello All,
I just received the news that Bernard Manin has passed away. I learned this through Melissa Schwartzberg, one of his many excellent students. Sortition fans probably know that Manin’s book The Principles of Representative Government (1996) was one of the first major works to consider the respective democratic credentials of sortition and election. Contrary to what many suggest, he did not share Aristotle’s view that election was inherently aristocratic; rather, he suggested in his book that election was inherently Janus-faced, with both aristocratic and democratic dimensions. His book also raised the important question how sortition came to be eclipsed by election as a democratic selection mechanism. Beyond this book, Manin made many important contributions to debates about deliberation, representation, and other central topics in contemporary political theory.
I only met Manin once, at a workshop at Sciences Po organized by Gil Delannoi. He had many kind words about my book on lotteries for which I was very grateful. Sorry I did not have more opportunity for conversation with him. RIP, Professor Manin.
Filed under: Books, Elections, Sortition | 6 Comments »
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 | 2 Comments »
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 »
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: citizen juries, citizens' jury, ned crosby | 2 Comments »
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: citizens' assemblies, democracy, sortition | 4 Comments »
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 | 5 Comments »
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: democracy, sortition | 2 Comments »
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 »
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 »
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