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 | 2 Comments »

International Network of Sortition Advocates presents

Posted on November 14, 2025 by richwbrown

A Sortitional Constitution

for Denmark

How to give a sortition-based chamber equal constitutional status in Denmark

Join us for an engaging discussion on the effort to develop a constitution that would add a sortition-based second chamber of randomly selected citizens to complement the existing Danish Parliament (Folketinget). The model developed by Danish sortition advocates merges electoral legitimacy with deliberative equality, allowing both chambers to balance the other’s shortcomings.

Benny Nissen, INSA facilitator and founder of Sortition Foundation-Denmark, will describe the process, pitfalls, and outline the details in a proposed new constitution for Denmark.

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Filed under: Elections, Proposals, Sortition | Leave a comment »

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 | 73 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 | 5 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 | 10 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 »

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 | Leave a comment »

Allotting judges to speed up the judicial process

Posted on July 9, 2025 by johnedwardtaylor

When I was young, judges did not need to be trained as lawyers, but that was phased out because it was decided that the technical burdens of knowing the law were so great that every judge had to start off as a lawyer. I think that now that AI is coming to the fore, we should rethink that. True, there were major mistakes by untrained judges that prompted this change, but AI is so pervasive now that there is not as much need to have every judge have the same, un-diverse background. The main problem this would address is the huge backlog in the courts. The old saying that “justice delayed is justice denied” has pretty much gone out the window, the court is nothing but delay, delay, delay. I have seen it myself, mostly what they seem to be doing in court cases is finding a date when all parties can get together to hold the case. Then I read old, 20th Century novels (I’m thinking of P.G. Wodehouse stories, of course) and observe with dismay that back then it was routine in those days for minor cases like drunk and disorderly conduct to be tried the next day.

The NEXT DAY!

Why can we not do that now? Why are our standards so low that we have forgotten that? Trump has corrupted the entire American court system so effectively because it is so constipated and blocked up that any change, no matter how crooked, is accepted without a peep. The original democracy of Athens had the solution, but it is forgotten. Rotating sortition. First of all, make every job possible to be done by a “middling” worker (that is, easy enough to be done by the average person off the street. That is what makes a civil service democratic. That is what we lost when “credentialism” ruled out untrained lawyers for consideration as judges). Then limit their time of office, then select randomly, which “sanitizes” the process from exactly what Trump did to the U.S. Supreme Court. I think that AI is a gift of God to enable us to bring democracy into the 21st Century.

Filed under: Proposals, Sortition | 2 Comments »

A call for an institutional upheaval

Posted on July 6, 2025 by Yoram Gat

An open letter by Eric Jourdain and the CaP Démocratie collective to the president of the parliament of Wallonia published in the Belgian newspaper Le Soir (machine translation):

Mr. President,

The crisis of democracy we have been experiencing for several decades is serious and profound. Serious because it results in the rise of populism, which reminds us of the 1930s leading up to the Second World War.

This crisis is profound because the very foundations of our political system are at stake. Today, a large portion of the population feels poorly represented, or even completely unrepresented, by political parties. An IWEPS survey indicates that 80% of Walloons no longer trust politics.

It is the quality of citizen representation, over which political parties have a monopoly, that is at stake. This monopoly has existed since 1830, but the world has changed a lot in the meantime.

Yet, with a few exceptions, the political world seems hardly concerned about this situation. Improving our system of governance and the way citizens are represented within our institutions do not seem to be a priority.

A Necessary Shock Therapy

The problem is profound, and to remedy it, we need shock therapy, an institutional upheaval. Faced with the partycracy that is plaguing our country, as Mr. Prévot put it, how can we break with this system?

We demand the establishment of a true bicameral system with a second assembly completely independent of the first, and we propose that it be composed by drawing lots. This method of representation has proven itself in ancient history but also in the 21st century. Isn’t it said that in a democracy, the people are sovereign? This sovereign should always have the power to make their voice heard and thus command respect. Voting once every five years is no longer sufficient.
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