Guerrero in Jacobin

Posted on December 12, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Alexander Guerrero’s book Lottocracy was published a bit more than a year ago. Guerrero discusses the book in a recent interview in Jacobin magazine. Jacobin has, by the way, offered sortition to its readers at least once before, back in 2018.

Interestingly, Guerrero’s argumentation is much more effective and to the point in the short interview format than it was in the book. While in the book supposed epistemic difficulties of well-meaning elected officials are played up in order to explain why elected government does not promote the general interest, in the interview the principal-agent problem faced by society regarding its decision makers is treated as a self-evident case of a conflict of interests where the agent is simply promoting their own interest at the expense of those of the principal. Applying to electoral systems the same straightforward understanding of the problem that is generally taken for granted when dealing with non-electoral systems makes for a much more convincing and effective argument.

Also interesting is the fact that in the short interview Guerrero finds room to mention Bernard Manin’s important book Principles of representative government, a reference which is sorely and inexplicably missing in Lottocracy. Guerrero now refers to Manin as explaining that elections were set up as a deliberately aristocratic mechanism. This is an important historical point, which (I believe) is also missing in Lottocracy. That said, Manin’s most important idea – his “pure theory of elections” – is still missing in Guerrero’s argumentation. This theory explains why elections must produce elite rule and thus can be expected to promote elite interests at the expense of the general interests, without having to resort to the standard popular ignorance argument which is problematic both as a matter of fact and as a matter of principle.

Finally, the fact that the interview skims quickly over Guerrero’s proposal for how sortition is to be used also benefits the presentation. This brevity leaves the stage for the democratic ideas behind the mechanism of sortition and does not obscure these ideas with Geurrero’s elaborate proposed set-up which aims to prevent the allotted citizens from going democratically “wild”.

Filed under: Academia, Athens, Books, Elections, History, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 3 Comments »

Delannoi: Are you a lottocrat?

Posted on November 15, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Gil Delannoi’s opinion piece “Are you a lottocrat?” appears in the second issue of the Journal of Sortition.

Are ‘lottocracy’, ‘lottocratic’ indispensable, necessary, useful, superfluous, or pernicious words? These words already exist, and like most words ending in ‘cracy’ or ‘ism’, they are used in a pejorative, anxious, indifferent, descriptive, positive, or enthusiastic way.

To what category are these words supposed to belong? Political regimes. Among the various approaches Aristotle used in his typology of political regimes, it is true that his reflection included the typical selection procedure of each regime. He thought, at his time, that a typical or radical democracy would include the use of sortition, but it was only a more pronounced use among the other procedures used in a democratic regime. Typical does not necessarily mean dominant. Moreover, both by observing common usage and for the sake of clarity, he retained the criterion of the number of holders of sovereignty as the name of each regime.

We could break with this tradition, though this exciting exercise is rather pointless. If a procedure were to give its name to a regime:

Hereditocracy? Votocracy/Psephocracy? Lottocracy/Klerocracy? Why not Marketocracy? (combined with Bureaucracy in the EU). Bureaucracy is characteristic of regimes as soon as it is linked with another word: autocracy, oligarchy, one-party system, partitocracy or partycracy.

The full piece is at https://www.imprint.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Delannoi_PtP.pdf.

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

Second issue of the Journal of Sortition

Posted on November 11, 2025 by Yoram Gat

The second issue of the Journal of Sortition is available. Half-price subscriptions are also available.

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

Addressing the Limitations of Election and Sortition With Jury-Based Deliberative Democracy

Posted on October 20, 2025 by kkoreilly

I recently finished a draft paper on sortition, arguing for three hybrid systems that use large, randomly selected juries to choose from among bills and appointees proposed by elected legislators.

The discussions on this forum have helped shape my ideas, and I would greatly appreciate any feedback.

Abstract: Randomly selected representative bodies have the potential to address seemingly intractable problems with electoral systems. However, existing designs are at risk of becoming polarized, insular, and corrupt like elected legislatures. I propose three systems based on short-term, evaluative, conclusive, and multi-choice juries, which are supported by contemporary and historical precedent. These large random juries choose between options proposed by elected legislators, reducing gridlock and polarization. This hybrid approach leverages the differing strengths of politicians and jurors, separating partisan proposers and dispassionate deciders to make both more effective. The three proposed designs address the limitations of both pure sortition and election, achieving the responsiveness and equality of sortition, while retaining the expertise and participation of election. First, deliberative law uses juries to choose agenda items and bills from among those proposed by legislators. Second, deliberative appointment uses juries to choose from among candidates nominated by legislators for judicial and independent executive positions. Finally, a deliberative senate is selected through deliberative appointment in each region. These designs of deliberative government provide a pragmatic pathway for testing and adoption by retaining existing systems while addressing their flaws.

Filed under: Academia, Proposals, Sortition | 74 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 »

Anti-sortition attitudes

Posted on August 12, 2025 by Yoram Gat

It is an unfortunate state of affairs that, despite the fact that proposals of empowering allotted bodies do enjoy significant popular support, most people are not mobilized into action by the idea of sortition. Much of that can no doubt be attributed to despair. There is no point in being politically attached to radical ideas since such attachment has insignificant impact on society and is bound to end in frustration, and quite possibly to being seen by friends and acquaintances as slightly unhinged.

Still, it is rather surprising that despite the unending contempt that many people heap on the existing electoralist system, or more accurately, on its outcomes and on those who act within the system, there is still a strong attachment to the idea of elections and aversion toward proposals at eliminating them altogether in favor of a sortition-based system. Of course, a long list of arguments against sortition is available, and they are endlessly regurgitated (often as if they were brand new) to justify the suspicion toward sortition. However, since all of these arguments are easily refuted, it is quite clear that the arguments are not the cause behind the aversion toward sortition, but rather that some underlying attitudes against sortition must be common, attitudes for which the arguments merely serve as rationalizations.
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Filed under: Academia, Elections, Opinion polling, Sortition | 21 Comments »

Fishkin & Berkowitz in Conversation

Posted on July 5, 2025 by peterstone

James Fishkin, creator of deliberative polling, was recently interviewed by Roger Berkowitz on the podcast of the Hannah Arendt Center (which Berkowitz directs). The conversation is far-ranging, and discusses many of the most prominent deliberative experiments over the past 30 years. At the end, they discuss the difference between citizen assemblies and deliberative polls. The podcast can be found here: https://hac.podbean.com/e/can-deliberation-cure-democracy-with-james-fishkin-bonus-episode/

Filed under: Academia, Elections, Sortition | 1 Comment »

Democracy and Truth

Posted on June 21, 2025 by Yoram Gat

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?”

Gooch refers his readers to, Evangelium Vitae, The Gospel of Life, a 1995 essay by Pope John Paul II. In it John Paul II writes:

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.
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Filed under: Academia, Books, Elections, Participation, Religion, Sortition | 4 Comments »

Just sortition, communitarian deliberation

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Yoram Gat

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 →

Filed under: Academia, Applications, Deliberation, Sortition | 25 Comments »

Dowding, Bosworth and Giuliani: Sortition, Parties and Political Careerism

Posted on April 22, 2025 by Yoram Gat

A new paper in The Political Quarterly:

Sortition, Parties and Political Careerism

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

Filed under: Academia, Elections, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 9 Comments »

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