A review of Lottocracy in the Journal of Sortition

Posted on December 17, 2024 by Yoram Gat

The first issue of the new Journal of Sortition is going to be published in 2025.

Keith Sutherland, the publisher, wants to emphasize that all those who register on the webpage of Imprint Academic’s sortition hub will get a free printed copy of the first issue of JoS. Please visit https://www.imprint.co.uk/sortition-hub/.

A review of mine of Alex Guerrero’s book Lottocracy will be appearing in this first issue.

The discussion around sortition and the possibility of applying it in modern political systems has been intensifying in academia over the last two decades. A debate between sortition-optimists and sortition-pessimists (as well as intermediate positions) has been taking shape. Alex Guerrero’s Lottocracy, with its over 450 pages, recaps this debate with considerable breadth while arguing for what may be perceived as the sortition-optimist position par excellence, namely, for replacing the elections-based system with one which is sortition-based.

Among some other points, I discuss how Lottocracy, like the academic discussion of sortition as a whole, adopts a Socratic viewpoint, according to which the experts are those who should shape and authorize (or choose not to do so) the use of sortition as a tool of politics.

Filed under: Academia, Books, Press, Sortition | 38 Comments »

A PhD Dissertation Written in favor of Democracy without Elections

Posted on December 15, 2024 by johnhuang865

I just stumbled across a PhD thesis recently published in November, 2024. It is entitled “The Rule of Ordinary People: The Case for a Sortition-Based Democracy without Elections,” by Eric Shoemaker, from the University of Toronto’s Philosophy Department. I have not read it yet but you can find the thesis here.

The abstract is:

In this dissertation, I challenge the orthodox position that elections are the democratic method for selecting political representatives. I reconstruct the concept of democracy shared broadly by democratic theorists to demonstrate that assemblies of randomly selected citizens are more democratic, as representatives of the public, than elected politicians. The primary arguments against sortition focus on the idea that the random selection of legislators is not democratic. Having argued that random selection is more democratic, I divide these criticisms into three different interpretations of why it is normatively significant that the members of the mini-public are not chosen by those whom the mini-public represents, and rebut each of them. In addition to defending the use of legislative mini-publics, I propose and defend institutional blueprints for a political executive and judiciary which put ultimate authority in the hands of randomly selected officials. In doing so I demonstrate that a representative democracy without elections is possible, and that because it would be more democratic, it is the model of democracy which we ought to strive for.

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

Members of the Journal of Sortition editorial board present themselves

Posted on December 10, 2024 by keithsutherland

Sortition: Past and Present

Since ancient times sortition (random selection by lot) has been used both to distribute political office and as a general prophylactic against factionalism and corruption in societies as diverse as classical-era Athens and the Most Serene Republic of Venice. Lotteries have also been employed for the allocation of scarce goods such as social housing and school places to eliminate bias and ensure just distribution, along with drawing lots in circumstances where unpopular tasks or tragic choices are involved (as some situations are beyond rational human decision-making). More recently, developments in public opinion polling using random sampling have led to the proliferation of citizens’ assemblies selected by lot. Some activists have even proposed such bodies as an alternative to elected representatives. The Journal of Sortition benefits from an editorial board with a wide range of expertise and perspectives in this area. In this introduction to the first issue, we have invited our editors to explain why they are interested in sortition, and to outline the benefits (and pitfalls) of the recent explosion of interest in the topic.

Arash Abizadeh (Department of Political Science, McGill University). Democratic theory, as I understand it, is committed to two fundamental values: political agency (meaning people’s power and participation in political decision making) and political equality (meaning their equal political agency). I am interested in elections as a mechanism for political agency and in sortition as a mechanism for political equality; I am also interested in the tension and tradeoffs between these two fundamental democratic values (Abizadeh, 2019, 2021).

Josine Blok (Department of History and Art History, Utrecht University) & Irad Malkin (Department of History, Tel Aviv University). Our book on sortition among the ancient Greeks, Drawing Lots: From Egalitarianism to Democracy in Ancient Greece (Oxford University Press, 2024) contains some lessons for today, especially focusing on why sortition, with its emphasis on equality and mixture, is as efficient as it is just. Continue reading →

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

Journal of Sortition launch issue

Posted on November 30, 2024 by keithsutherland

The launch issue of the Journal of Sortition is nearing completion. You can read the Foreword and Table of Contents at imprint-academic.com/sortition-hub and also register for a free printed and bound inspection copy, to be mailed to you on publication.

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

A New Advocate for a Randomly-Selected House of Lords

Posted on November 27, 2024 by peterstone

The Mirror recently ran an article about Baroness Smith of Llanfaes, currently the youngest member of the House of Lords. She is a Plaid Cymru nominee for a peerage who advocates for both Welsh independence and a randomly-selected House of Lords.

Meet the youngest House of Lords member plotting to bring it down from the inside

Next week, the Baroness will speak in favour of radical change at an event in Westminster calling for a House of Citizens – where every person in the country would have the chance to be randomly selected for a stint in the second chamber, as for jury service.

Filed under: House of Lords, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 1 Comment »

On Randomly Selecting Australia’s Head of State

Posted on November 24, 2024 by peterstone

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 »

Coccoma: The Case for Abolishing Elections

Posted on November 11, 2024 by Yoram Gat

Nicholas Coccoma writes about sortition in the Boston Review. While some of the narrative is standard, Coccoma makes some crucial points that are often avoided by the prominent members of the sortition milieu.

The Case for Abolishing Elections

They may seem the cornerstone of democracy, but in reality they do little to promote it. There’s a far better way to empower ordinary citizens: democracy by lottery.

In response to [popular] discontent, reformers have proposed a slew of solutions. Some want to expand the House of Representatives, abolish the Electoral College, or eliminate the Senate. Others demand enhanced voting rights, the end of gerrymandering, stricter campaign finance laws, more political parties, or multi-member districts and ranked-choice voting. The Athenians would take a different view. The problem, they would point out, lies in elections themselves. We can make all the tweaks we want, but as long as we employ voting to choose representatives, we will continue to wind up with a political economy controlled by wealthy elites. Modern liberal governments are not democracies; they are oligarchies in disguise, overwhelmingly following the policy preferences of the rich. (The middle class happens to agree with them on most issues.)
Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, History, Press, Sortition | 1 Comment »

Sortition in The Washington Post

Posted on November 8, 2024 by Yoram Gat

A little more than a year ago, Adam Grant offered sortition to the readers of The New York Times. Now Daniel Pink offers it to the readers of the The Washington Post. Interestingly, and encouragingly in terms of the foothold that the idea of sortition may now have gained, Pink writes that he is merely echoing proposals made by readers whose ideas for “improving our country, our organizations or our lives” were solicited by the Post.

On Election Day, we affirm with our actions an unspoken principle of governance: The fairest and most democratic way to determine who wields public power is by asking citizens to cast ballots.

But what if there’s an alternative — not autocracy or monarchy but a more radical form of democratic representation and popular sovereignty?

“Why not make serving in Congress like jury duty?” asks a reader in Salt Lake City. “If you meet the criteria, you could be selected to serve for a term, which would give a broader cross-section of people representing regular Americans.”

The article is typical in the sense that instead of engaging with arguments previously made it merely repeats such previous arguments, even when these were addressed and refuted. (And even if they are transparently self-contradictory.)

It’s a bit nutty — complicated and replete with unintended consequences. But first, let’s examine its virtues.
Continue reading →

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

Sabine Hossenfelder on democracy, republic and sortition

Posted on November 3, 2024 by Yoram Gat

Sabine Hossenfelder is a physicist and fairly prominent YouTube figure with over 1.5 million followers. Her clips are about the physical sciences, but she occasionally strays outside this area. Her most recent video is titled “Is the USA a Democracy or a Republic?”. The analysis she offers is not too perceptive in my mind, but it does have the advantage of mentioning the idea of selecting political decision making bodies using a lottery. This idea gets a brief teaser in the introduction and a bit more detail toward the end of the video.

Naturally, most of the thousands of comments to the video focus on the democracy vs. republic matter, but at least one comment does pick up on the sortition idea:

Problem with representative democracy is that strangers, who do not know you, cannot represent you. The premise is simply false.

Voting is entering a contract, asking to be ruled by a handful of strangers. Extending them Power Of Attorney, four years into the future … If you sign that, whatever happens, you have no right to complain, because you accepted the deal.

Here is what we should do instead : Government by lottery

1000 citizens randomly selected. 200 replacements selected every year, giving five years in government for each. Then perhaps a quarterly online voting session for the rest of us; Yes/No to the bill with slimmest decisive vote, in the 1000-man parlament during that quarter.
Continue reading →

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

Dawkins’ Office-seeks-the-man electoral college, Roger Knight’s “Demiocracy”

Posted on October 29, 2024 by Roger Knights

Richard Dawkins writes in The Spectator:

The Electoral College is nonsense

In an ideal world, I wouldn’t have chosen an election year for my American book tour. It’s not that I dislike elections generally. And — praise be — a population of 300 million Americans has managed to raise one presidential candidate who is not a convicted felon awaiting sentence.

No, my problem with American elections — and it viscerally distresses me every four years — is the affront to democracy called the Electoral College. I’ve done the math. The Electoral College can hand you the presidency even if your opponent receives three-quarters of the popular vote. Of course that’s a hypothetical extreme. The familiar reality is that campaigns ignore all but a handful of “swing” states.

A genuine electoral college, however, could work rather well. Voters in every state would elect respected citizens to meet in conclave to find a president — like a university search committee or the College of Cardinals. They’d headhunt the best in the land, interview them, study their publications and speeches, exhaustively vet them — and finally after a secret ballot announce the verdict in a puff of white smoke.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Elections, History, Press, Sortition | 12 Comments »

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