In a recent article in The Catholic Herald Niall Gooch discusses some objections to sortition from the book Against sortition?. As he describes sortition, “[t]he idea is that involving “normal people” in such deliberation helps to spread power more widely and obtain broader perspectives”.
The contributors to the book set out various reservations about this idea, and various objections. Many of them have procedural concerns – for example, they believe that existing approaches don’t gain a wide enough spectrum of opinion, or that they are easily captured by special interests, or that they don’t really add anything new to a conventional elected legislature.
Others highlight the problems of accountability raised by citizens’ assemblies, or the way in which they dilute the legitimacy of existing bodies. But a few contributors are clearly trying to articulate something like the more fundamental problem identified by John Paul II, which we might sum up with this question: “Does involving lots more people in political decision making actually get you closer to the truth?”
Democracy cannot be idolized to the point of making it a substitute for morality or a panacea for immorality. Fundamentally, democracy is a “system” and as such is a means and not an end. Its “moral” value is not automatic, but depends on conformity to the moral law to which it, like every other form of human behaviour, must be subject: in other words, its morality depends on the morality of the ends which it pursues and of the means which it employs. If today we see an almost universal consensus with regard to the value of democracy, this is to be considered a positive “sign of the times”, as the Church’s Magisterium has frequently noted. But the value of democracy stands or falls with the values which it embodies and promotes. Of course, values such as the dignity of every human person, respect for inviolable and inalienable human rights, and the adoption of the “common good” as the end and criterion regulating political life are certainly fundamental and not to be ignored. Continue reading →
“The Citizen Assembly for Norway’s Future” (Framtidspanelet) was a 56 member body of Norwegian citizens selected through what has become the standard “citizen assembly” process and that convened in the period Januray through May 2025. The report associated with the body describes it as being “initiated by seven civil society organizations”, those organizations being Save the Children, Norwegian Church Aid, The Norwegian Children and Youth Council (LNU), Caritas, WWF World Nature Fund, Langsikt – centre for long term policy, and Framtiden i våre hender. I was not able to find a more specific description of how the initiative for this body came about.
The body’s mandate was apparently associated with Norway’s oil fund – a national fund accumulating oil revenue which holds today almost $2 trillion. Continue reading →
In 2024 The Conservative Woman magazine had two articles on the issue of citizen assemblies. A column writer was opposed to the idea and presented the standard right wing objections (basically, these are just tools by the government to promote its unpopular lefty agenda). However, a piece by a citizen who took part in an assembly was very balanced and interesting.
TCW now adds another column to this topic, echoing the ideas of the first 2024 column.
As faith in government and institutions declines, citizens’ assemblies are pushed as the solution to the perceived democratic deficit. According to the UK parliament website, ‘a citizens’ assembly is a group of people who are brought together to learn about and discuss an issue or issues, and reach conclusions about what they think should happen.’ Defined in such benign, layperson’s language, what could possibly go wrong?
The House of Commons contracted three organisations (Involve, Sortition Foundation and mySociety) to run Climate Assembly UK on its behalf. According to the Sortition website, this is the process (quoted verbatim):
Select a broadly representative bunch of people by lottery.
Bring them together in an assembly, typically at small tables or groups, and let everyone have their say.
Have those most knowledgeable about, or affected by, the issue address the assembly, bringing in diverse viewpoints and proposals.
Get the participants to discuss, listen and talk to each other – and give reasons for their opinions.
Decide! On what is the best way forward.
Call me a cynic, but I suspect manipulation at each of these stages. Continue reading →
Glenn Greenwald is a former constitutional and civil rights lawyer and a prominent independent journalist, most famous for breaking the Snowden revelations about U.S. government surveillance.
In a recent segment on his show, Greenwald takes U.S. vice president J.D. Vance to task for claiming that U.S. supreme court is subverting the “democratic” will of the U.S. voters to deport all illegal residents from the country (as expressed in the election of Donald Trump to president) by putting up legal barriers to some deportation efforts implemented by the Trump administration. Greenwald rightly points out that Vance’s claim is obviously manipulative. The U.S. system has from the outset, deliberately and explicitly, set up various restrictions on what elected officials can do, and in particular legal challenges to executive policies have always been used, including, of course, by Republicans, to block popular policies.
When presented this way, all of this is the standard grist for the liberal mill. Politicians pretend to be concerned about the anti-majoritarian nature of mechanisms that they like to utilize in their favor when it suits them. “We”, good liberals who stand for civil rights and the rule of law, should be grateful that such mechanisms exist whether or not we support deporting illegal residents. Such mechanisms make sure that government is not despotic and that majorities do not oppress minorities. Specifically, a proper procedure for deporting illegal residents is already in place and is not in any way obstructed by the courts. We should all insist that this procedure is followed whether or not a majority of the voters wish to and thus it is good that the U.S. has anti-majoritarian procedures in place. Continue reading →
Clearly, “by the people” is a non-starter, so Nathan Gardels advises those readers of Noema magazine who are members of the benevolent, if a bit misguided, elites that if they wish to stem the rise of the authoritarian strongmen they better be “with” the people.
The rigid polarization that has gripped our societies and eroded trust in each other and in governing institutions feeds the appeal of authoritarian strongmen. Poised as tribunes of the people, they promise to lay down the law (rather than be constrained by it) […]
The embryonic forms of this next step in democratic innovation, such as citizens’ assemblies or virtual platforms for bringing the public together and listening at scale, have so far been mostly advisory to the powers-that-be, with no guarantee that citizen input will have a binding impact on legislation or policy formation. That is beginning to change.
[This takes us] a step closer to government “with” the people instead of just “for” the people […]
A new paper by Nicole Curato, Amiltone Luís, Melisa Ross, and Lucas Veloso in Environmental Science & Policy includes field work eliciting comments from people in Zambezia, Mozambique regarding their views on sortition in the context of the allotted Climate Assembly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency.
Just sortition, communitarian deliberation: Two proposals for grounded climate assemblies
Abstract
Sortition or recruiting randomly selected everyday citizens is a core feature of climate assemblies. Sortition, the argument goes, enforces the principle of inclusiveness, as everyone has a fair shot at getting invited to the climate assembly. This form of recruitment, however, faces criticism. It challenges traditional structures of representation and decision-making where elders, religious leaders, elected representatives, and community organisers typically give voice to the ideas and grievances of everyday people. For some, sortition valorises the atomised individual who can speak their mind in a forum, without any mechanism for the individual to reconnect their deliberative experience to the wider community. In this article, we draw on the experience of the province of Zambezia in Mozambique as one randomly selected Assembly Member took part in the world’s first Climate Assembly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency. Based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and feedback sessions with local organisations in Zambezia, we offer practical insight on how sortition can deepen community connection and maximise the impact of climate assemblies in delivering practical outcomes for climate change adaptation. Using grounded normative theory, our study demonstrates how sortition can promote justice by elevating the voices of those most impacted by climate change. We also demonstrate why a communitarian approach to citizen assemblies enhances accountability and shared learning and empowers members to translate global deliberations into local actions.
One useful contribution of this article is a summary of the arguments for and against sortition that the authors drew from the literature. Continue reading →
Keith Dowding, William Bosworth and Adriano Giuliani
Abstract: One reason for growing distrust of politicians, parties, and governments is the increase in ‘careerism’: politicians who have never worked outside politics and seem to work inside politics for themselves as much as for the common good. Sortition—choosing representatives by lottery—is one solution. However, random selection of representatives breaks the accountability link provided by elections and leaves amateur politicians at the mercy of their civil servants. It would, critics argue, destroy competitive party politics, the foundation of modern democracy.
We suggest that parties select their candidates through sortition of party members, with successful incumbent MPs standing again. This would mitigate the ills of patronage and adverse selection without losing professionalism and political experience. It would encourage deliberation and the proper persuasive and representation function of parties, alongside the accountability that elections provide. It would also, we suggest, lead to better advice to politicians from policy units within and outside the public service.
Keywords: careerism, democracy, political careers, political parties, professional politicians, sortition
The Kleroterion is a sculpture by Taryn Simon. It was originally presented at the Storm King art center in New York in 2024. It is now on display at Gagosian Gallery in New York. Alfred Mac Adam, Professor of Latin American literature at Barnard College-Columbia University, reviews the work at The Brooklyn Rail, a website billing itself as “Critical perspectives on art, politics and Culture. Independent and Free”.
Adam explains the workings of the sculpture:
The machine randomly picked one from a group thus avoiding any possibility for corruption. Simon’s recreation, which looks something like a classic PEZ dispenser as Donald Judd might have reconfigured it, stands alone in one room of the gallery. The space is curtained in red drapery, with red carpet on the flooring forming a pathway to the kleroterion. To run the device, each of five viable candidates for office would be assigned a colored lozenge. The lozenges would be inserted into a slot and a crank turned until all but one lozenge were ejected from the machine, declaring the winner.
As Adam describes things, and indeed, looking at the device itself which has very few slots, Simon’s device is quite different from the Athenian kleroterion. Continue reading →
It appears that Mr. Smarty Pants Knows is a brief section in The Austin Chronicle which introduces readers to the lesser known words and expressions of the English language. The April 11th, 2025 of edition of this section introduces its readers to the word sortition (among a few other words). The author provides a short rationalization for the mechanism.
Have you ever been selected for jury duty? Sortition is the selection of public officials or jurors at random to get a representative sample. In ancient Athens, they believed sortition was more democratic than holding elections because oligarchs couldn’t buy their way into office.
In a recent article in The Catholic Herald Niall Gooch discusses some objections to sortition from the book Against sortition?. As he describes sortition, “[t]he idea is that involving “normal people” in such deliberation helps to spread power more widely and obtain broader perspectives”.
Clearly, “by the people” is a non-starter, so Nathan Gardels 
It appears that Mr. Smarty Pants Knows is a brief section in The Austin Chronicle which introduces readers to the lesser known words and expressions of the English language. The April 11th, 2025 of edition of this section 
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Equality by lot 