Citizens’ conventions: The sweet trap of a democratic facade

Posted on November 6, 2025 by Yoram Gat

An opinion column in Le Télégramme, a regional newspaper of Brittany, France. Original in French. The version below is a translation by Google Translate with my touch-ups.

In an opinion piece, Agnès Le Brun, regional councilor and former mayor of Morlaix, shares her perspective on participatory democracy as practiced through citizens’ conventions.

They present themselves as the miracle cure for a weary democracy, the supposedly “sweet” remedy to reconcile citizens with public decision-making. Citizens’ conventions, with their reliance on sortition and participatory deliberation, are appealing because of their promise: to bring “real life” into the world of political decision-making. But behind this veneer of democratic innovation too often lies a carefully cultivated illusion, one that harms democracy as much as it claims to revitalize it.

The first pitfall is the pretense of participation. These mechanisms are presented as a break with traditional institutions. In reality, behind a supposedly depoliticized staging of the debate, the agenda is set from above, the topics are framed, and the conclusions are rarely taken seriously by those who commissioned them.

The perennial issue of decentralization, a quintessentially Breton topic, and Loïg Chesnais-Girard’s campaign promises, diluted over time, have led the President of the Brittany Region to propose a citizens’ convention in 2026, supposedly to address the subject in the most democratic way possible. Really? Sortition is primarily a convenient pretext for circumventing elections and allows for the maintenance of the illusion of representativeness. Because a few dozen Bretons are chosen at random, the claim is that “the people” are being heard.
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Filed under: Applications, Deliberation, Elections, Press, Sortition | 6 Comments »

Sortition is the only worthwhile democratic option

Posted on November 1, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Octave Larmagnac-Matheron writes in the French magazine Philosophie [Original in French. Below is an English version generated by Google Translate with my touch-ups]:

In one of his characteristically thought-provoking Facebook posts, the philosopher Valentin Husson wrote a few days ago: ‘When the world tips towards illiberal democracies and authoritarianism, political courage would dictate that we propose a radical democracy. The only worthwhile one would be sortition (as with lay juries).’ I readily agree with both the observation and the proposal.

Sortition is, I believe, one of the first political ideas I defended in my short life. I remember quite well how I first arrived at this idea, during a high school lesson on Athenian institutions, which offered an overview of the workings of this unique system where members of the legislative and judicial assemblies — the Boule and the Heliaia — were chosen by lot, using a machine called the kleroterion. I was surprised that we used the same word — democracy — for both this system of chance and our own, elective system. Discovering philosophy two years later, I came to the same conclusion. Aristotle wrote that “it is considered democratic for magistracies to be assigned by lot and oligarchic for them to be elective” (Politics). Centuries later, Enlightenment philosophers wholeheartedly agree. Montesquieu wrote: “Suffrage by lot is in the nature of democracy. Lot is a way of electing that offends no one; it leaves each citizen a reasonable hope of serving their country” (The Spirit of the Laws). Rousseau agreed: “The way of lot is more in the nature of democracy” (The Social Contract).

Intrigued by these short phrases, which didn’t seem to bother many people, I then embarked on further reading. Allow me to mention two works that particularly struck me at the time. First, Bernard Manin’s Principles of Representative Government (1995). The philosopher recounts the rise of an electoral system that conquered the world following the great revolutions and clearly explains the aristocratic character of this regime that usurped the name of democracy. Next came Jacques Rancière’s Hatred of Democracy (2005), whose impassioned prose undeniably sparked enthusiasm in my young alter ego. Democracy, Rancière emphasizes, is a scandal: “Democracy means first and foremost this: an anarchic ‘government’” — without any claim to distinction — “founded on nothing other than the absence of any right to govern. […] The scandal lies there: a scandal for distinguished people who cannot accept that their birth, their seniority, or their knowledge should have to bow to the law of fate.” Isn’t impartial chance the best option for every citizen to participate in the exercise of political power — a guarantee that this power will not be monopolized?
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Filed under: Athens, Books, Elections, History, Sortition | Leave a comment »

More Edmund Griffiths on sortition

Posted on October 8, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Edmund Griffiths, a long-time sortition advocate, has been pushing for sortition in the infighting-torn YourParty. It turns out he’s been writing a book called Sortition and Socialist Democracy to be published by Palgrave Macmillan. Griffiths also has a new article in the Morning Star discussing the sortition-related ongoings at YourParty, and in particular the fact that it turns out that the number of allotted delegates in the YourParty conference is going to be 13,000.

Your Party launch conference: the sortition of the 13,000

EDMUND GRIFFITHS makes a robust defence of sortition, the chosen method of picking attendees for the new left party’s inaugural conference from the membership at random, but sounds the alarm on the eye-watering number of suggested delegates

[A]n especially exciting plot twist [in the YourParty thriller] came in mid-September, with the announcement that delegates to the inaugural Your Party conference will be chosen by sortition.

This system — where members of decision-making bodies are picked at random — is most familiar from its use in ancient Athens and in a modern jury. The Athenians, indeed, seem to have regarded it as simple common sense that democracies choose their ruling bodies using a lottery: only oligarchies prefer to elect them.
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Filed under: Applications, Books, Sortition | 2 Comments »

Bellon: Citizens’ conventions against democracy

Posted on October 8, 2025 by Yoram Gat

André Bellon is a former French politician, a member of the French national assembly in the 1980’s and the early 1990’s, and the founder of the reformist organization, the Association for a constitutional assembly. He writes the following in Revue Politique et Parlementaire. [Original in French, Google translation with some touchups.]

Members of parliament in favor of “citizens’ conventions” want, under the pretext of democracy, to place universal suffrage, an expression of popular sovereignty, under supervision.

Like the infamous sea serpent, we periodically see the resurgence of calls for the famous “citizens’ conventions,” formed by randomly selected individuals, supervised by experts, presenting themselves as spokespersons for the people. For their promoters, this represents a democratic revolution; in fact, it is a trick for mobilizing citizens without any real political power, or even for eliminating all popular sovereignty.

Originally, this proposal was particularly supported by experts who – perhaps by chance – saw themselves as leaders of these conventions. Didn’t one of them naively declare that he was struck by the fact that at the end of the debates, those drawn by lot found themselves, for the most part, in agreement with the experts?
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Filed under: Elections, Press, Sortition | 2 Comments »

Activists blast the “the anti-democratic ‘sortition’ method”

Posted on September 27, 2025 by Yoram Gat

The “World Socialist Web Site” has a report about a recent rally in which Zarah Sultana, a co-founder of YourParty, spoke. The piece goes into some detail about the infighting in YourParty and mentions the sortition issue.

Tina Becker, from the “Why Marx?” group and a member of the Your Party “proto-branch” in Sheffield, asked Sultana about the anti-democratic “sortition” method being imposed by Corbyn’s “Organising Committee” to select delegates to the founding conference. Becker explained it meant “We can’t put forward motions, we can’t put forward amendments. There will be a lottery system to choose delegates.” She asked Sultana, “Should the regional meetings be able to vote and have amendments? Should we not be the ones who decide how Your Party should be run and not the six MPs, and what are you trying to do to change that?”

Sultana replied, “I too am quite critical of sortition, but that is what has been announced for the conference, and so we need to make sure it’s democratic. And I think there’s a way to still do that.”

Her remarks made clear there would be no organised challenge to Corbyn’s anti-democratic stitch-up. She did not and could not explain how delegates randomly selected based on “gender, region and background” could be “made democratic”. Sortition is being employed to block members from exercising democratic control, preventing them from nominating delegates who are accountable and who best reflect their views, suppressing any political challenge to Corbyn’s (and Sultana’s) unelected cliques.

Filed under: Press, Proposals, Sortition | 6 Comments »

Sortition in YourParty

Posted on September 22, 2025 by Yoram Gat

YourParty is an attempt to create a new left-wing party in the UK. The attempt seems to be in a lot a trouble due to infighting. One of the causes, or perhaps the symptoms, of the infighting is a struggle around the idea of employing sortition for selecting delegates to the founding conference of the party. This idea may have originated in, or at least given a non-negligible push by, a proposal made by Edmund Griffiths.

The official website of YourParty says:

In November, thousands of in-person founding conference delegates will be chosen by lottery to ensure a fair balance of gender, region, and background. These delegates will have a big responsibility – to debate the founding documents, propose amendments and vote on them at the conference. The final decision will be up to all members through an online, secure, one-member-one-vote system.

This statement, it seems, represents the position of one faction of the YourParty organization. However, other elements are opposed to the idea. One of those elements is an organization called the “Alliance for Workers’ Liberty”. On its website, it has an article expressing its displeasure with the idea:

For democracy, against sortition

How and when, or even if, the “Your Party” conference will be convened is unclear as of now. But the main current proposal for it is “sortition” – that those who can attend the conference and vote will be chosen at random from the membership. We believe that this method, like the e-plebiscites proposed to supplement it, is undemocratic, and having delegates elected after deliberation in local groups is much better.

Sortition is vulnerable to people who have signed up for individual reasons and have no real day-to-day involvement in activity or discussion. Especially in a party as amorphous as this one, delegates being selected at random from the membership allows for landlords, say, or transphobes, to decide on its policy. The same person would probably not be elected by a branch.

New activists can easily be deflected by finer details of amendments, smooth speeches or technical points in meeting procedure. The best guard against that is to have experienced and capable democrats who know how to argue – and how to protest when the meeting is not being run democratically – and procedures which enable new young activists constantly to learn those skills (in a way that a randomly-selected delegate to a single conference can’t possibly learn).

Filed under: Proposals, Sortition | 11 Comments »

Hallam: Sortition is democracy

Posted on September 20, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Roger Hallam, a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, recently released from a year-long stay in jail where he was serving a sentence for criminal political activities, has been a sortition advoacate for some time. Hallam has a new forceful article in The New Stateman (and a new book). Unlike other authors, for Hallam, sortition is not an add-on. It is democracy. If memory serves, Hallam is the most high-profile consistent advocate for sortition to date.

Hallam starts by a full frontal assault on elections.

Voting isn’t democratic. We need sortition

Randomly selecting people to rule would be a hell of a lot better than holding elections

[V]oting and elections do not, and never have, produced rule by the people. What they produce is oligarchy – rule by the few. Don’t take my word for it. This was standard political knowledge from ancient times up to the French Revolution. What you got with voting and elections was a few people in charge – obviously! Because, as everyone who observes what actually happens knows, so-called electoral “democracies” are always controlled by the few. Sure, if you like voting and elections and oligarchies that’s fine. They have their pros and cons, but don’t delude yourself and others that you are a democrat. You are not.
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Filed under: Books, Elections, History, Press, Sortition | 5 Comments »

Sortition and rotation, a school of self-organization

Posted on August 27, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Edmund Griffiths is a long-time advocate for sortition. Griffiths revisits the topic in the context of the new party that is in the process of formation in the UK.

The most immediate topic is the matter of a founding conference. It seems that the plan is to somehow have a procedure of mass voting: “one member one vote, it looks like having an accessible way of engaging which is both in-person and hybrid [online, presumably -YG]”. But of course the final up-or-down vote is a small part of the decision making process.

Griffiths writes:

As in most plebiscitary systems, nearly everything would come down to how the questions were worded and presented; the faceless masses, atomized and unable to suggest amendments, would vote as they were invited to. This hybrid-OMOV system would thus devolve almost all the real decision-making power on the people who hold it now—the new party’s still-invisible leadership. Naturally we don’t know all their names. But it is hardly a secret that at least some of them are (a) independent bigwigs; I would not be astonished to learn that the others include (b) leading members of left groups who have worked with the bigwigs in front organizations; and there could even be a handful of (c) mouthy individuals among them.

[I]n fairness, you could do worse. I am proud to count (a) bigwigs (well, small-time bigwigs), and (b) left group factional operators, and (c) let’s call them people who don’t hate the sound of their own voices, among my friends. But if we want something more representative, something genuinely democratic, there is only one easy and obvious way to get it: just pick the delegates at random out of the entire membership.

Griffiths then fleshes out his proposal a bit:
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Filed under: Deliberation, Elections, Participation, Proposals, Sortition | 1 Comment »

Riz Ahmed’s subway take

Posted on August 25, 2025 by Yoram Gat

“Subway Takes” is a popular media series operated by Kareem Rahma with channels on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and X, each with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. In each short video Rahma interviews a person, often a celebrity of sorts, and the interviewee lays out their “take”: an idea that they present as unusual and important. In a recent episode, Rahma interviews Riz Ahmed, a fairly known actor, whose take is

We need to stop having all elections and elect leaders through a random lottery!!

Filed under: Elections, Sortition, video | 3 Comments »

A predictable critique of Guerrero’s Lottocracy

Posted on August 23, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Niko Kolodny, Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley has a lengthy piece in the Boston Review which reviews Alexander Guerrero’s Lottocracy. Unsurprisingly, Kolodny is not sympathetic to the idea of sortition. Predictably, Kolodny finds ample opportunities to criticize Guerroro’s “relentlessly thorough”, eclectic argumentation.

In particular, Kolodny effectively exploits Guerrero’s reliance on the supposed inability of the public to represent its own interests without proper guidance. For example:

Guerrero imagines that each SILL [single-issue, lottery-selected legislatures] would be guided in its deliberation by a poll of those few citizens who somehow are able to take a week off of work and other responsibilities to pay attention to the five day-long discussions of the final five proposals. Again, if the powerful can, in effect, buy off the general public to support a particular electoral party, then why can’t the powerful mobilize a (again, presumably quite small) group to pay attention to the review of proposals for the Water Access and Water Quality SILL and support what they favor? No one but the powerful, one worries, would be minding the store.

Kolodny’s argument above, as well as his other arguments (e.g., his assertion that people cannot be expected to accept offers in an allotted body), are standard. He goes so far as to inflict on his readers the electoralist dogma about how “[b]y choosing some political programs and parties over others, [voters] shape the political/ideological space within which the elected representatives must operate until the next election”. A formula he quotes from Cristina Lafont and Nadia Urbinati’s The Lottocratic Mentality: Defending Democracy Against Lottocracy.

Such arguments are easily refuted and have been refuted many times. However, Guerrero’s book is not up to the task. Instead, the book makes it easy for the opponents of sortition – or more to the point, for the opponents of democracy – to rehash the old superficial talking points and present them as “a splendid and convincing recent counterpoint to arguments for lottocracy”.

Filed under: Academia, Books, Elections, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 1 Comment »

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