Organizations and initiatives

This is a partial list of organizations and initiatives that in various ways in apply sortition to political decision making. There are too many organizations that are active in this area to create an exhaustive list. More organizations are mentioned in the comments below.

  1. Democracy in Practice “works to transform open-minded groups and communities into laboratories of democratic innovation, where new approaches to governance can be experimented with and developed. We are currently experimenting with random selection and rotation in a variety of schools in Bolivia where we select members of student governments by lottery as opposed to relying on elections.”
  2. The Jefferson Center St. Paul, MN, has conducted Citizen Juries since 1974 and is one of the oldest such organizations.
  3. newDemocracy Foundation Royal Exchange, Australia, is a non-profit with the aim of promoting deliberative and participatory democracy, especially through the use of sortition
  4. The Co-Intelligence Institute Eugene, OR, brainchild of Tom Atlee an advocate of deliberative, participatory democracy through the use of citizen panels and sortition.
  5. Sortition Foundation The Sortition Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation whose mission is to institute sortition at all levels of government.
  6. G1000 An experiment tried in 2011-2012 in Belgium with a Ctitizens’ Summit and Citizens’ Panels all using sortition to “do better than politicians”
  7. Plan C Is Etienne Chouard’s platform of sortition, constitutional reform, and referenda to create “real democracy” in France
  8. Voice of the People is a campaign for a randomly-selected “Citizens Cabinets” at the national, state, and district levels in the United States.
  9. Healthy Democracy is a non-profit that conducts “Citizen Initiative Reviews” by 24 randomly selected voters who evaluate all State referenda in Oregon. The Oregon Legislature instituted this procedure in 2011, marking voter deliberation a formalized part of the election process in recent history.
  10. MASSLBP is “Canada’s home for democratic innovation and public strategy. Since 2007, MASS has led some of the country’s most original and ambitious efforts to engage citizens in tackling tough policy choices while pioneering the use of Civic Lotteries and Citizens’ Reference Panels on behalf of forward-thinking governments.”
  11. The Center for Deliberative Democracy at the Department of Communication at Stanford University is devoted to research about democracy and public opinion obtained through Deliberative Polling®.

19 Responses

  2. npruet, on September 12, 2016 at 1:18 am said:

    This was a comment on the contributor’s page a few years back. Might be something to look into…

    “Dear all
    As you perhaps know, Spain is undergoing some difficult times, both economically and politically.
    Since May a new social movement, demanding “real democracy now” has taken the streets. Its main focus is to criticize the lack of democratic participation rights and the hegemonic position of the two main political parties.
    Some discussions and debates tend to concentrate on possible direct democratic institutions, already present in other countries, such as referenda, recall and legislatitive initiative.
    However, discussion of sortition as a democratic tool is for the first time seriously hitting the streets. During the local elections in May a small political party favouring sortition launched its initiative in Galicia (www.sorteopolitico.com).
    On November 20th we will have general elections for our parliament and a new initiative to form a party is being launched: http://www.partidoazar.com/index.php. It is worthwhile to spend some minutes visiting the website and reading its well written and argued contents.
    i would be very thankful if you could post this contribution on your website.
    Best regards
    Jorge Cancio”

    Like

  3. Yoram Gat, on September 12, 2016 at 4:33 am said:

    Hi Nicholas,

    I remember the comment and we did follow up on it. The moving power behind Partido Azar was Tomas Mancebo whom we contacted and who was active on the blog for a while.

    Best,

    Yoram

    Like

  4. rcaze, on November 6, 2017 at 9:52 am said:

    Hi Yoram,

    An initiative that particularly interest me is Demorun. This a party at la Réunion were a randomly selected group of people ran for the regional election (more on http://reunionnais.re/). They are gaining momentum I just checked their new websites.

    Cheers,
    Romain

    Like

  5. rcaze, on November 6, 2017 at 9:56 am said:

    One of the reason it is so interesting to me. It’s the only example I know where random selection applies at the executive level.

    Like

  6. rcaze, on November 6, 2017 at 10:28 am said:

    And also there is #MAVOIX. With a moving video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77NNBwpVSeg). They started to do something at the last legislative election. They a website, something also of interest.

    Like

  7. Yoram Gat, on November 6, 2017 at 7:49 pm said:

    Hi Romain – Thanks for pointing those organizations out. If you follow their agenda and activities I’d be very interested in posts with updates. If I manage to understand the French I might post about them myself.

    Like

  8. npruet, on September 25, 2018 at 7:46 pm said:

    Hey Yoram, just a thought, but could there be another tab at the top that list the various examples of sortition in practice that have occurred over the years and in what countries? A big task to be sure, though I think many would appreciate it.

    Like

  9. Yoram Gat, on September 26, 2018 at 4:14 pm said:

    Hi Nicholas,

    Yes – a comprehensive list would be a lot of work to create and maintain, and it would be difficult to decide what qualifies. I am also not sure what exactly would be the value of just having a long list unless it is systematically annotated one way or another to facilitate analysis. Of course, if you or anyone else is up for the task, we can arrange that.

    In the meantime, if you click on the “applications” category (in the list of categories on the left side bar) you will reach the list of posts discussing applications of sortition in practice.

    Like

  10. Anonymous, on September 27, 2018 at 5:00 am said:

    Thanks Yoram, didn’t know about the applications section.

    Like

  11. npruet, on October 7, 2018 at 4:44 am said:

    https://www.masslbp.com/celebrate25 This organization in Canada might qualify. From all I can see on this page.

    Like

  12. Yoram Gat, on October 8, 2018 at 4:29 pm said:

    Thanks, Nicholas – added to the list.

    Like

  13. npruet, on October 23, 2018 at 1:10 am said:

    I think Fishkin’s Center for Deliberative Democracy would count. http://cdd.stanford.edu/

    Like

  14. Yoram Gat, on October 23, 2018 at 5:04 pm said:

    Thanks – added.

    Like

  15. Jorge, on June 5, 2019 at 4:26 pm said:

    In Spain, a party has been founded with the sole programmatic point of establishing the Stococracy system. “Demarquia y Libertad” (Stococracy and Freedom). His website is https://www.demarquiaylibertad.es

    Liked by 1 person

  18. Ansel, on January 25, 2023 at 8:02 am said:

    May want to add these: http://demnext.org

    Liked by 1 person

  19. Yoram Gat, on January 27, 2023 at 2:13 pm said:

    Thanks. I added a note that the list at the top is partial due to the large number of organizations active in this area.

    Like

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