Search

This chapter explores some of the complexity of sortition as a distinct political form by looking at its history, the qualities and effects of the lottery, the design of schemes involving sortition and its relation to modern forms of democracy and democratic values. Direct democracy embodies the integration of the whole body politic, whereas selection by lot conveys the idea of integration more than it embodies it. The numerous Athenian citizens selected by sortition seldom performed tasks as important as the work of a legislature or of an administration in an indirect democracy. In Athens, direct democracy prevailed over sortition as well as over any kind of indirect democracy, since the complete body politic meeting in the popular assembly was ultimately responsible for passing laws. In indirect democracy, equality means an equal right to be represented. Indirect democracy usually calls for a type of representation that is far more active than descriptive.

Chapitre VI d'un ouvrage prévu sur la théorie du vote.

In their chapter on a “Legislature by lot”, Gastil and Wright propose to launch a bicameral parliament where one chamber would be composed by elected politicians and the other by sortitioned ordinary citizens. Their idea is to combine party-independent problem-solving deliberations in a chamber for which every citizen has the same chance to get selected, with adversial debates on conflicting policy preferences in a chamber for which every citizen was entitled to cast a vote. Given that election and sortition have distinct virtues, this looks like a promising proposal to reintroduce sortition in the selection of political representatives. If the authors envision the interaction between both chambers as a “creative tension”, their relationship has received less attention than it would deserve. The assemblies have not only different virtues but also different legitimacies which can become particularly conflictual if each chamber has the power to veto the proposals of the other, as Gastil and Wright recommend. If, as can be expected, the elected chamber is less popular than the sortitioned one, the legitimacy of the election mechanism might be more and more questioned. In turn, elected representatives might try to bring discredit upon the allotted representatives. The conflict would thereby not only occur during the political process but also in public opinion. We propose to address the tension between elected and sortitioned chambers both theoretically and empirically. After having discussed the conflicting legitimacies from the point of view of political theory, we will analyze different concrete propositions that have been made in Belgium by politicians, academics and intellectuals to transform the Senate, the upper-house, in a sortitioned assembly. Their propositions have prompted various reactions that we will also consider to get a better understanding of how inter-chamber relationships in a bicameral elected and sortitioned legislature can and have been envisioned both in theory and practice – and what implications this has for Gastil and Wright’s proposal.

Electoral democracy and deliberative democracy is a focus of politics and science of law research in China and a concern in various circles in the practice of democracy and rule of law in China. Democracy is the subject term of both electoral democracy and deliberative democracy as well as the core idea of democratic concept based on “the rule of the majority.” It is an important way, means, and form for mankind directly or indirectly to manage the state, govern the society, and realize self-value. In modern countries, democracy is in essence a constitutional issue about the nature of state and form of government, power and rights, state and citizen, and legitimacy and illegitimacy. This chapter will discuss the various roles and interpretations of the electoral democracy and deliberative democracy under the Chinese constitution.

In their proposal on a “Legislature by lot”, John Gastil and Erik Olin Wright (2017) propose to launch a bicameral parliament where one chamber would be composed by elected politicians and the other by sortitioned ordinary citizens. Their idea is to combine party-independent problem-solving deliberations in a chamber for which every citizen has the same chance to get selected, with adversial debates on conflicting policy preferences in a chamber for which every citizen was entitled to cast a vote. Given that election and sortition have distinct virtues, this looks like a promising proposal to reintroduce sortition in the selection of political representatives. Now, if the authors envision the interaction between the two chambers as a “creative tension”, it seems to us that this question has received less attention than it would deserve. The assemblies have not only different virtues but also different legitimacies which can become particularly conflictual if each chamber has the power to veto the proposals of the other, as Gastil and Wright recommend. If the elected chamber is less popular than the sortitioned one, the legitimacy of the election mechanism might come to be more and more questioned. In turn, elected representatives might try to bring discredit upon the allotted representatives. The conflict would thereby not only occur during the legislative process, but also in public opinion. We propose to address this possible tension between the elected and the sortitioned chamber both theoretically and empirically. In Belgium, several propositions have been made by politicians, academics and intellectuals to transform the Senate (the upper house) in a sortitioned assembly. Thereby, we use quantitative and qualitative data to analyse the opinion of both politicians and citizens on a sortitioned chamber. After exposing the complementary virtues and competing legitimacies of election and sortition from the point of view of political theory, we draw back on the reactions to the propositions in Belgium by both politicians and citizens to consider how the inter-chamber relationships in a bicameral elected and sortitioned legislature can be envisioned and what implications this could have for Gastil and Wright’s proposal. In so doing, we consider different possible distributions of power between the two chambers and try to imagine their possible political consequences, on the basis of our data regarding legitimacy perception and more general observations about bicameral interactions in contemporary democracies.

The democratic deepening of both political processes and the system’s basic structures is one of the key questions of the contemporary political theory. The option of selecting political representatives or posts by random selection (not only by voting) is a topical theme, a possibility that is also being debated when some new political parties like the Spanish Podemos party form. This article reflects on the possible transforming elements that accompany the random selection within political party structures. To this end, the debate considered during Podemos’ institutionalisation process is briefly examined to then go beyond the descriptive analysis and to go in-depth into the relation among some considerations of the democracy theory and current debates on random selection. La profundización democrática, tanto de los procesos políticos como de las estructuras básicas del sistema, es una de las cuestiones claves de la teoría política contemporánea. La opción de escoger representantes o cargos políticos mediante sorteo (no solo por votación) es uno de los temas del momento; esta posibilidad se debate también en la formación de algunos nuevos partidos políti - cos como Podemos. El presente artículo reflexiona sobre los posibles elementos transformadores que acompañan a la elección por sorteo dentro de las estructuras de los partidos políticos. Para ello, se examina brevemente el debate planteado en el proceso de institucionalización de Podemos, con objeto de tratar de trascender luego el análisis des - criptivo y profundizar en la relación existente entre algunos planteamientos de la teoría de la democra - cia y los debates actuales sobre el sorteo

The abstract democratic ideal is hegemonic nowadays, but, what is considered to be its concrete institutional forms are facing a growing “crisis of representation” and distrust. As an answer to this crisis and after centuries of absence, sortition (selecting representatives by lots) is making its return on the political stage through various academic research, practical experiments and activist claims. But each thinker, experimentation, or militant group, is giving a different explanation of what sortition is, why and how it could strengthen democracy. How could we be thinking sortition efficiently? Instead of doing a chronology of this return my proposal is to construct a more general theory of sortition in a comparative approach. A broad study seems necessary in order to grasp the theoretical constants, despite the empirical diversity of sortition concrete uses. First, I shall compare sortition to the three other selection modes: election, nomination and certification. Second, I will analyse the deliberative frameworks, that is to say “who decides what how”. Third, I will distinguish four democratic principles of sortition: equality, impartiality, representativeness and legitimacy. My first research hypothesis is that sortition is likely to offer a greater equality, impartiality and representativeness. My second hypothesis is that sortition is the only method of selection producing a specific form, a humility-legitimacy when the three other selection modes are producing a superiority-legitimacy.

In this article I present democracy as a distributive system containing two basic principles: to elect and to be elected. I call this distributive track system 'local political justice’. From this, I inquire under what circumstances a citizen adhering to these 'tracks' can be perceived as disadvantaged and as a creditor, in the public arena of modern democracies, who can present a claim. I analyze how to handle the situation of the disadvantaged with the institutionalization of the selection by lots. And finally, try to provide exploratory arguments showing that the institutions of the lottery draw (i) is not inconsistent with the preferences of citizens who do not want it, (ii) its adoption does not harm them and finally (iii) its adoption improve the condition of those disadvantaged who propose it. En este artículo presento la democracia como un sistema distributivo que contiene dos principios básicos: elegir y ser elegido. Denomino a este sistema de pistas distributivas ‘justicia local política’. A partir de ello indago bajo qué circunstancias un ciudadano que adhiere a esas ‘pistas’ puede percibirse como desventajado y como acreedor a enunciar, en la arena pública de las actuales democracias, un reclamo. Analizo de qué manera es posible atender su situación de desventajado con la institucionalidad del sorteo. Y finalmente, trato de brindar argumentos exploratorios que muestren que la institucionalidad del sorteo (i) no es incompatible con las preferencias de los ciudadanos que no la desean, (ii) por tanto su adopción no los perjudica y finalmente (iii) que su adopción mejora la condición de aquellos desventajados que la proponen.

It is widely accepted that electoral representative democracy is better — along a number of different normative dimensions — than any other alternative lawmaking political arrangement. It is not typically seen as much of a competition: it is also widely accepted that the only legitimate alternative to electoral representative democracy is some form of direct democracy, but direct democracy — we are told — would lead to bad policy. This article makes the case that there is a legitimate alternative system — one that uses lotteries, not elections, to select political officials — that would be better than electoral representative democracy. Part I diagnoses two significant failings of modern-day systems of electoral representative government: the failure of responsiveness and the failure of good governance. The argument offered suggests that these flaws run deep, so that even significant and politically unlikely reforms with respect to campaign finance and election law would make little difference. Although my distillation of the argument is novel, the basic themes will likely be familiar. I anticipate the initial response to the argument may be familiar as well: the Churchillian shrug. Parts II, III, and IV of this article represent the beginning of an effort to move past that response, to think about alternative political systems that might avoid some of the problems with the electoral representative system without introducing new and worse problems. In the second and third parts of the article, I outline an alternative political system, the lottocratic system, and present some of the virtues of such a system. In the fourth part of the article, I consider some possible problems for the system. The overall aims of this article are to raise worries for electoral systems of government, to present the lottocratic system and to defend the view that this system might be a normatively attractive alternative, removing a significant hurdle to taking a non-electoral system of government seriously as a possible improvement to electoral democracy.

This paper argues in favor of the epistemic properties of inclusiveness in the context of democratic deliberative assemblies and derives the implications of this argument in terms of the epistemically superior mode of selection of representatives. The paper makes the general case that, all other things being equal and under some reasonable assumptions, more is smarter. When applied to deliberative assemblies of representatives, where there is an upper limit to the number of people that can be included in the group, the argument translates into a defense of a specific selection mode of participants: random selection.

The paper argues that decision‐making is central to deliberative democracy, especially in its micro institutional form. However, distinct trade‐offs between theory and practice are required to ensure that this link is present. These trade‐offs also vary depending on whether the forums are based on sortition or partisanship. The paper locates the trade‐offs at the various decision‐making stages between theory and practice in a partisan citizen forum in the Peak District in the UK.

Elections and democracy have not always been closely associated. As historians of democracy often point out, classical Athenians believed that lottery – not election – was the most democratic means of selecting magistrates. Aristotle writes, for instance, that “the appointment of magistrates by lot is thought to be democratic, and the election of them oligarchical.”1 The Athenians used elections sparingly, to choose generals and financial administrators, to fill posts that required a special measure of expertise. They expected that magistrates chosen by election would be disproportionately drawn from the social and economic elite. The Athenians have not been alone in this belief; in fact, as Bernard Manin has illustrated, it can be found throughout the modern republican tradition, from Guicciardini to the framers of the U.S. Constitution. Montesquieu argued, for instance, that “selection by choice is in the nature of aristocracy.”2 In his view, elections gave citizens the opportunity to choose men of particular merit and distinction, whom he expected to be drawn from the upper classes.3 This point of view has lately been restated by a few contemporary democratic theorists. Manin himself, in his Principles of Representative Government, devotes most of a chapter to the proposition that elections have an inherent aristocratic tendency. Elections reward people who succeed in drawing attention to themselves, he says, and both wealth and social distinction attract attention.4 More recently, John McCormick has written that “election is a magistrate selection method that directly and indirectly favors the wealthy and keeps political offices from being distributed widely among citizens of all socioeconomic backgrounds.”5 Wealthy political aspirants are able to “cultivate greater reputations,” to make themselves heard more loudly, and to develop the forms of expertise (rhetorical and other) necessary for political success.6 Such concerns are vindicated by many empirical studies of the social and economic backgrounds of elected politicians. It should come as no surprise that legislators in modern democracies tend to be “better educated, possess higher-status occupations, and have more privileged backgrounds” than their constituents.7 These findings hold true across advanced, industrialized societies as well as developing democracies; they also hold true for national, state, and local office: social and economic elites are overrepresented on city councils, not just national Senates.8 One way to summarize this finding is to say that elections fail to produce descriptively representative legislatures; that is, they fail to fill legislatures with politicians who reflect the empirical characteristics of the population at large. Certain characteristics – notably wealth and social privilege – are overrepresented, while poor, socially disadvantaged citizens are (often severely) underrepresented.9 Why should it matter that social and economic elites tend to win elections? The most pressing democratic concern is that they will write legislation that favors their own interests and neglects the interests of the less well-off. “The most obvious hypothesis,” writes Robert Putnam, “so obvious that it has rarely been scrutinized carefully – is that decision makers will favor the interests of the social groups from which they come.”10 This point need not rest on an assumption of elite self-interest. J.S. Mill observed that a Parliament of even the most altruistic noblemen would be little comfort to the working class: “yet does Parliament, or almost any of the members composing it, ever for an instant look at any question with the

In introducing a series of citizens’ juries, the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown argued that the juries could help to reinvigorate representative democracy. After considering whether the deliberative rationale of citizens’ juries is compatible with, and can be integrated into the workings of, a basically aggregative and representative political system, the main argument of the paper will be that the piecemeal use of citizens’ juries by the British government is unlikely to revive political participation and trust in politicians.

The central argument of this article is that it is possible to identify one major or primary potential that sortition brings to the political community when it is used to select office holders. This is to be found when sortition is used in such a way as to maximise its most essential feature – its arationality – and where such an application has the most significant and positive impact on the political process and the political community. In such applications the advantages of using an arational process can be seen as outweighing its disadvantages. In political practice – especially in a republican context – this primary political potential is the ability of sortition to protect the public process of selection from subversion by those who might wish to use it for their own private or partisan ends. This helps to defend the polity from those seeking to exercise unconstitutional or arbitrary power – either in the form of a single tyrant or of factions vying for partisan control. In addition, sortition can produce a series of secondary benefits to the republican polity: the polity can be understood as impartial, the threshold to citizen participation can be lowered and the model of the independent citizen encouraged. These benefits, however, can be seen as deriving from initial protection of the process of selection from manipulation – a quality of lot which is present whatever the motivation of those instigating a particular lottery scheme. Although the political use of lot cannot be confined to the protection of open government, its potential to limit the power of individuals or covert groupings makes it naturally commensurate with this role.

The British Columbian Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform comprised a representative group of 160 randomly selected voters who were empowered to review the Province's electoral system and to decide if change was needed. It first met in January 2004 and issued its final report in December of that year. The Assembly has since been hailed as a democratic invention and attracted worldwide interest as a remarkable experiment in deliberative democracy. Its Terms of Reference required that it consult British Columbians. It did so via a series of public hearings held across the Province, and by establishing a website to publicise its purpose and to obtain public input. Hence, the Citizens' Assembly provides a case study or natural experiment that permits the comparative assessment of two very different forms of political communication – one traditional and the other a form of ‘e-consultation’, relying on newer information and communications technology. Based on published sources, as well as interviews with for...

Citizens' juries are a form of "minipublics," small-scale experiments with citizen participation in public decision-making. The article presents a theoretical argument that improves understanding relating to the design of the citizens' jury. We develop the claim that two discourses on democracy can be discerned: the deliberative and the pluralist. By looking at the design features of citizens' juries we conclude that they are based on pluralist reasoning to a far greater extent than most authors seem to realize, and that the association with deliberative democracy is therefore one-sided. Based on empirical findings, we attempt to shed further light on the actual operation of citizens' juries. Observations of two recent Dutch juries suggest on the one hand that a learning process and a positive effect on the sense of political involvement occurred. On the other hand, we saw a certain level of groupthink in one of the citizens' juries, and found that the juries are not greatly representative in terms of political preferences. Our findings point firstly to a need for greater awareness among the organizers of juries of the two democratic discourses. This would lead to more consistent jury design. Secondly, our research emphasizes the need for more hands-on critical research of minipublics. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2007.

We study the Bayesian implementation problem in economies that are divided into groups consisting of two or more individuals with the same information. Our results cover problems like that of allocating public funds among states, regulating activities causing externalities among firms, locating public facilities in neighborhoods, electing candidates from multiple districts etc. Instead of the standard communication protocol of direct democracy whereby the planner consults all individuals, we analyze sortition schemes whereby the planner consults only a subset of the individuals, called senators, who are selected via some kleroterion (i.e., a lottery machine) p. In general environments, under mild "economic" assumptions on preferences, we show that every social choice function (SCF) that is implementable by direct democracy is also p-implementable if p always selects two or more individuals from each group and the selection process does not partition any group into "disconnected" subgroups (in the sense that individuals belonging to different subgroups are never selected together). In quasilinear environments satisfying a generic condition on individuals' beliefs, every SCF can be implemented by a simple and economically meaningful mechanism in which the kleroterion selects a predesignated group leader and one other randomly chosen individual from each group.

We study the Bayesian implementation problem in economies that are divided into groups consisting of two or more individuals with the same information. Our results cover problems like that of allocating public funds among states, regulating activities causing externalities among firms, locating public facilities in neighborhoods, electing candidates from multiple districts etc. Instead of the standard communication protocol of direct democracy whereby the planner consults all individuals, we analyze sortition schemes whereby the planner consults only a subset of the individuals, called senators, who are selected via some kleroterion (i.e., a lottery machine) p. In general environments, under mild "economic" assumptions on preferences, we show that every social choice function (SCF) that is implementable by direct democracy is also p-implementable if p always selects two or more individuals from each group and the selection process does not partition any group into "disconnected" subgroups (in the sense that individuals belonging to different subgroups are never selected together). In quasilinear environments satisfying a generic condition on individuals' beliefs, every SCF can be implemented by a simple and economically meaningful mechanism in which the kleroterion selects a predesignated group leader and one other randomly chosen individual from each group.

After two centuries of silence, the last twenty years have witnessed renewed interest in the use of random selection (or sortition) as a political device. This interest manifests itself through several approaches: political theory, history of democracy, theory of knowledge, democratic thinking, deliberative democracy and local experiments. My aim in this paper is to address the following issues. First, to define a sortive kind of democracy in comparison with the direct and indirect kinds and then to devise possible combinations between these different kinds of democracy. Second, to recapitulate, similarly to a short instruction book or user’s manual, the different practical options for any implementation of a procedure including random selection (size of the pool and size of the sample, mandatory or facultative participation, short or long terms, training etc). Third, to provide examples of institutional design for public consultation and democratic decision-making.

This essay gives an overview of how arandomized decision mechanism (sortition)can be expected to reduce the intensity ofself-interested activity by rent-seekingfactions within democracies. The socialcosts of rent-seeking are briefly reviewed.I then make the case that randomization ofcollective decision making proceduresattenuates rent-seeking expenditures. Iillustrate the argument by reference to thehighly contested Presidential election of2000. Finally, I buttress that argument bycomparing plurality voting and sortitionwithin the context of Tullock's Efficient Rent-seeking model (1980).

This paper explores how sortition – the use of lotteries in selecting leaders – can help rekindle union democracy and overcome some of the problems stemming from the way it is currently practiced, ...

People and markets, will sooner or later abolish the office of failed parties exactly as it happened in the Athenian democracy after its defeat in the Peloponnesian War.

From the beginning of the Iraq War in March 2003 until the complete withdrawal of US military troops from Iraq in December 2011, Iraqis went to the polls on a massive scale on altogether five occasions. In January 2005, they elected a constituent assembly as well as provincial councils; in October 2005 they approved the work of the constituent assembly in a constitutional referendum; in December 2005 they elected their first democratic parliament under the new constitution; in January 2009 they elected provincial councils for a second time; in March 2010 they elected a second parliament. After the Americans left the country, the political focus in Iraq quite quickly came to focus to a third round of provincial elections of April 2013, the sixth major, nationwide election event in a decade.

In the face of widespread dissatisfaction with contemporary democratic practice, there has been a growing interest in theories of deliberative democracy. However theorists have often failed to sufficiently address the question of institutional design. This paper argues that recent experiments with citizens' juries should be of interest to deliberative democrats. The practice of citizens' juries is considered in light of three deliberative democratic criteria: inclusivity, deliberation and citizenship. It is argued that citizens' juries offer important insights into how democratic deliberation could be institutionalized in contemporary political decision-making processes.

English Citizens’ juries are currently being promoted by a range of organisations which claim that they offer an institutional setting in which citizens are afforded a meaningful opportunity to deliberate on matters of public policy. This article argues that the emphasis on deliberation in citizens’ juries should be of interest to theorists of deliberative democracy who often fail sufficiently to address the question of institutional design. The practice of citizens’ juries is considered in light of the ideals of deliberative democratic theory. It is argued that with careful attention to the design of the different stages of the jury process, citizens’ juries can offer a legitimate and innovative approach to public participation in decision-making processes in contemporary democracies.

This paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of citizens’ juries as a model for public involvement in health care. It does so through observation of two citizens’ juries run by the same Health Authority, during the summer of 1996. The framework used to evaluate the juries is that provided by IPPR in their 1997 Report, namely focusing on the themes of information, time, scrutiny, deliberation, independence and authority. Citizens' juries are compared and contrasted with other models for public involvement and linked with the broader debate on citizenship theory and practice.

In 2015, Guåhan (Guam), an unincorporated territory of the United States, could hold a plebiscite to determine its political status. This self-determination plebiscite will give the electorate the opportunity to deliberate on one of three internationally recognized political plans for the future: Statehood, Independence or Free Association. This monumental event has received little attention in the United States, with little media coverage appearing despite the recent self-determination plebiscites held around the world (e.g., Puerto Rico and the Falkland Islands). Nonetheless, the U.S. has a large stake in this election process. The people of Guåhan are U.S. citizens, yet are simultaneously denied full voting rights in U.S. presidential elections. Thus, the opportunities for political participation on Guåhan are based upon a dependent relationship with the U.S. Moments of political participation in Guåhan occur primarily through actions that both depend upon and reinforce communicative channels directed against the U.S. nation-state. The phenomenon of political dependency creates a complex situation for public deliberation amongst the Guåhan electorate. Even in Guåhan there is much confusion, contradiction, and deliberation concerning plebiscite eligibility and the ballot initiatives on the political status options. Thus, we propose a process of public deliberation, facilitated through educational programming, to analyze the arguments for each plebiscite plan and encourage even wider public deliberation. Drawing from a rich international tradition of school debate and deliberative voting guide reforms, we develop a detailed proposal aimed at both increasing voter education and turnout in the Pacific. Our proposal also stresses the pressing need for more communication scholarship on the political connections between the U.S. and Guåhan.

Sortition is the process of selecting decision makers or senators by a lottery. We introduce sortition in implementation theory by augmenting a mechanism with a kleroterion or lottery machine p that selects the senators. An outcome is implemented after consulting only the opinions of the senators. We call the corresponding notion of implementation as “p-implementation”, and provide necessary and sufficient conditions for p-implementation. Our main result is that in “economic” environments, every Nash implementable social choice rule (SCR) is also p-implementable if p selects every quartet of players with positive probability and always selects at least three senators. We apply this result to two kleroteria: “oligarchic democracy” and “random sampling”. In economic environments, every Nash implementable SCR can be implemented by oligarchic democracy of three oligarchs. In economic environments, every Nash implementable SCR can be implemented by randomly selecting four senators.

Abolition of slavery was once unthinkable. In contemporary 'democracy', civilians direct the military. Political decision-making bodies, however, are limited to elites. If legislative bodies were statistically -- not electorally -- representative, democracy would be real. And abolition of war could become less 'unthinkable.'

RESUMEN: Este trabajo examina la emergencia de la conciencia y la actividad política del Común con el objetivo de cambiar el sistema político en las villas portuarias de Cantabria en la Baja Edad Media. Los logros políticos del Común han sido cuestionados por la historiografía contemporánea casi desde sus inicios entre aquellos que sostenían que el papel del Común había sido muy limitado y los que defendían la vitalidad del legado político del Común. La actividad políticas del Común en las villas cántabras supuso la victoria de la elite urbana de los negocios. Gracias a las reivindicaciones de las cofradías profesionales y las protestas de la élite del Común en el siglo XV se llevaron a cabo las reformas concejiles, con el apoyo de los monarcas. De este modo, la monarquía, alineada con las clases medias altas, se vio fortalecida y se convirtió en la institución responsable del Bien Común en las villas del norte del Cantábrico. ABSTRACT: This paper examines the emergence of the Commons' political consciousness and actions with the aim of changing the political system in the late-medieval port towns of Cantabria. The Commons' political achievements have been the focus of intense controversy almost from the beginnings of contemporary historiography between those who defended that the role of the Commons was very limited and those others who asserted the vitality of the Commons' political legacy. The political activity of the Commons in northern towns of Spain involved the victory of the upper middle class -the urban business elite- resulting from the demands of craft guilds and the Commons' protests in the 15th century, as well as from municipal reforms supported by the Crown. In this way, the monarchy, aligned with the upper middle classes, strengthened its power and turned into the institution responsable for the Commonweal in Cantabrian port towns. Este trabajo se inscribe en el marco de las tareas de los proyectos de investigación Ciudades y villas portuarias en la articulación del litoral atlántico en la Edad Media, (HAR 2009-08474) y Las sociedades urbanas de las ciudades y villas portuarias de la Europa Atlántica en la Baja Edad Media (HAR2012-31801), financiados por el Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad del Gobierno de España.

La thèse prend comme champ d’investigation un corpus de textes dans lesquels se trouvent des propositions d’introduction du tirage au sort en politique et pose la question de leur co­ hérence et de leur pertinence : les publications forment-elles un ensemble que l’on pourrait qualifier de « théorie de la démocratie aléatoire » ? Si oui, les attentes formulées par ses te­ nants vis-à-vis de la pratique sont-elles utopiques ou, au contraire, sont-elles réalisées dans des expériences recourant au tirage au sort des participants, tels que les « mini-publics » ? L’analyse quantitative et qualitative du corpus amène à la conclusion que l’on a bien affaire à l’émergence d’une théorie qui s’articule autour d’une trame argumentative collective et d’attentes communes : le tirage serait ainsi une solution aux crises accablant les démocraties libérales. Son usage permettrait d’atteindre une meilleure représentation formelle et sub­ stantielle, une participation qualitativement et quantitativement accrue, et refondrait la dé­ mocratie sur une nouvelle légitimité, plus procédurale et dynamique. La thèse répond en­ suite à la deuxième question en passant la théorie au banc d’essai de la pratique d’une Pla­ nungszelle et d’un jury citoyen, deux modèles de mini-publics dans lesquels des citoyens sont recrutés par tirage afin d’élaborer des recommandations de politique publique. L’en­ quête empirique qualitative permet d’avancer que la plupart des attentes sont remplies, mais dans un cadre à portée limitée, ce qui pose la double question des conditions de réalisation de la théorie et des possibilités d’améliorer les dispositifs de mini-publics par le biais d’une nouvelle ingénierie institutionnelle., The field of investigation of this thesis is a corpus of texts containing proposals for the introduction of random selection schemes in politics. The thesis questions the relevance and coherence of these texts: do the publications form a theoretical ensemble that could be labelled as a “theory of aleatory democracy”? If so, do the expectations raised by its supporters remain merely utopian or do they stand the test of the political practice? The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the text corpus leads to the conclusion that we are in fact dealing with the emergence of a theory and that the analysed authors develop a common argumentative frame and common expectations: the use of random selection in politics could be a solution to overcome the crises of liberal democracies. Its use would allow a better formal and substantial representation, a qualitatively and quantitatively increased participation, and give birth to a new, more procedural and dynamic form of legitimacy. These expectations are then tested with the help of two mini-publics, that is to say, experiments in participatory democracy that use random selection to recruit their participants: a Planungszelle and a Citizens’ Jury. The qualitative empirical investigation shows that most of the expectations are fulfilled, although only in a limited geographical, social and political frame. These results raise the double question of the conditions for the realization of the theory and of the possible improvement of the mini- public mechanisms through institutional engineering.

Electoral democracy is in crisis. The use of sortition in our political systems could be a key to renewing and deepening democracy. But how to do so? And where to start? In this paper, I explore the idea that using sortition to address the problem of corruption could be a first step. Why? For two reasons. First, corruption of elected officials is an internal inconsistency of electoral democracy – it cannot be resolved adequately through electoral institutions. Second, there is also a large consensus on the fact – everybody agrees – that corruption is a problem. I suggest granting the power to convene an Investigation Commission to a randomly selected citizen body. This body should also nominate the Commission’s head and receive its recommendations. I also discuss the idea of a Citizens’ Court to directly address the problem of corruption of elected officials. This broad jury would judge and sanction corrupted elected officials. Taking Quebec’s ongoing corruption saga as an example, I also try to see how the system would work in reality and, finally, where the system, once put into place, could lead to.

It has been over 40 years since Connecticut amended its Constitution to ensure citizens a right to a free public education. Despite the constitutionally prescribed right, dramatic inequities in educational conditions continued to characterize the state’s K-12 educational system, especially between suburban/rural white and urban minority school districts. In the 1970s plaintiffs challenged the prevailing mechanism for allocating education funds with a host of court cases that tackled the thorny question of how much financial responsibility the state should assume to equalize the spending disparities between school districts. Prodded by court decisions, many formulas and approaches have been proposed by the Connecticut General Assembly in response to the various legal challenges yet the state has never fully funded the cost sharing formula nor lived up to the 50-50 cost sharing arrangement envisaged by some policymakers. The situation remains at an impasse with the latest court action, CCJEF v. Rell (2005), to be resolved no sooner than 2014 by most accounts. Our aim here is to offer an analysis of the decision-making environment that explains the current impasse. We contend that by applying the dual-error framework popular in other social policy settings, it is possible to understand the competing views and beliefs of those groups arrayed in opposition. We claim that the individual and political understanding and policy responses are prone to cognitive heuristics in the manner popularized by Sunstein, Schadke and Kahneman, and Kuran and Sunstein (Kuran & Sunstein, 1999; Sunstein C. , Cognition and Cost-Benefit Analysis, 2000; Schkade & Kahneman, 1998). This analytical approach entails a recognition that many policy makers fail to make decisions via the normative model of rational decision-making but rather rely subjectively on emotion, intuitions, biases, character traits, and social and cultural norms in a manner that diverges systematically from the rational model. We argue that differing subjective appraisals of the role of individual agency in the observed achievement gap is at the core of the debate. There are, of course, other inputs into the educational process. But it is this perception of agency that heavily influences the general population’s political choices. The existing institutional framework appears to have cemented this worldview in a situation that has little chance of a meaningful resolution. We note the perplexing conundrum in which Connecticut finds itself and conclude that the problem is a social dilemma in which the parties involved are individually powerless to resolve. Sortition mechanisms – allocation by lottery – have been known to effectively resolve social dilemmas in other domains. We examine the possibility of relying on lots to resolve the allocation of educational monies.

This paper proposes an interpretation of representative assemblies that strikes a conceptual middle ground between Burke's ideal of an assembly of trustees and the Anti-Federalists' ideal of a mirror image of the people. The normative appeal of this conceptual middle ground is supported by an argument emphasizing the epistemic properties of a descriptive assembly of trustees deliberating about the common good. Building on findings about the importance of cognitive diversity for efficient collective problem-solving, the paper argues that given the nature of political problems, a case can be made for the epistemic superiority of descriptively representative assemblies over less accurately descriptive ones. The paper further defends sortition as the best way to ensure descriptive representation over alternatives such as quotas and gerrymandering.

In recent years a number of writers have argued that sortition (the random selection of citizens for public office by lot) should augment the institutions of electoral democracy, but there is little agreement on the precise role that it should play. At one end of the spectrum James Fishkin (Fishkin, 2009) has argued that sortive bodies should be limited to an advisory or educative role; whereas radical democrats have argued that sortive bodies can do anything an elected chamber currently does (Callenbach & Phillips, 2008; O'Leary, 2006). In this paper I argue that sortition could only serve an aggregative judgment role and could therefore only ever be one element in a mixed constitution. Any attempt to extend its use beyond this aggregate judgment function undermines any claim that sortition may have to democratic legitimacy. My case is based on fundamental conceptual distinctions derived from (Griffiths & Wollheim, 1960; Pitkin, 1967). The paper concludes with a brief discussion of two additional supposed functions of sortition: the ‘sanitization’ of the political process from corruption and partisanship, and the ‘epistemic’ benefits of a diverse decision-making base.

Though the connection between equiprobable random selection and equality is facially straightforward, the democratic argument for employing sortition to select political officials is not as clear cut. I address two areas of concern regarding the legitimacy of randomly selecting democratic representatives. First, I respond to the minimalist understanding of democracy qua election by defending via historical and analytic means a democracy that expresses and aspires to equality. Second, I use this prioritization of equality to build on Stone's (2007) and Saunders's (2008) justification of lottery in cases of indeterminacy. To legitimately use lottery for democratic selection, it must be the case that the differences between the candidates are irrelevant to the choice being made. I contend that a democratic understanding of human equality warrants treating some differences between eligible candidates as irrelevant. This is only reasonable to do, however, where circumstances and institutions are arranged to benefit from equiprobable selection while ameliorating the impact of its less attractive effects. I conclude by sketching some examples of potential reforms that would incorporate these lessons, in order to illustrate what an enhanced role for sortition could do for democratic legitimacy. Random selection can both better express a democratic understanding of political equality, and better facilitate progress towards same.

A few authors have suggested re-introducing random selection in politics. In the United States, Callenbach and Phillips have proposed replacing the House of Representatives by a Representative House. In this article, the author suggests that perhaps, in the specific US context, it would be worthwhile considering replacing both Houses of Congress by randomly selected Houses.

Tocqueville describes the American jury as "pre-eminently a political institution."' A century and a half later, his remark presents a puzzle. In what sense is the jury "political"? The implication is of active participation in social governance, in the solution of public questions, but such a function is hard to identify. After all, we now have an elaborate procedural framework designed to limit the jury's power to the very narrow realm of fact-finding. It is supposed to tell us what happened. Having done as much, the outcome of the case should follow syllogistically, in light of the trial judge's interpretation of already determined legal doctrine. It is true that occasionally juries seem to run off the tracks, rendering verdicts that appear either to disregard judicial instruction or to be based on bizarre conclusions about the facts.2 But such events are erratic and widely perceived to be illegitimate. As such, they underscore the far more benign function the jury is supposed to serve and ordinarily does. Disregarding postmodern doubts about the possibility of objective, disinterested factfinding, how is it possible to conceive of the jury in political terms?

Demetrius' contemporaries were clear in their assessment of his regime and of his place within it. When Poliorcetes ousted Cassander's partisans from Athens in 307, Demetrius of Phalerum and his associates were formally charged with overthrowing the democracy. No matter what the status of Athens' institutions, there is one sense in which the regime of 317-307 could unquestionably be deemed oligarchic, and that is in terms of the citizen body. Against the background of a potentially hostile citizen body, the desire for some restriction of the democratic institutions, the assembly and the council, has intrinsic plausibility. The replacement of sortition by election for the selection of the officials of state would have been in general accord with oligarchic criticisms of sortition. With the assembly, the courts were the touchstone of Athenian democracy. The status of the Areopagus council is fundamental to any evaluation of Demetrius' programme.Keywords: Areopagus council; Athenian courts; Athenian democracy; Demetrius of Phalerum; democratic institutions; election

The basic institutions of the Athenian republic, including the assembly, the council, election and sortition, and the courts, had been fashioned before Xerxes invaded Greece in 480. But the word demokratia , first attested in the work of Herodotos, was coined later, about the middle of the fifth century, and it soon came to be applied to Athens. Thereafter it figured prominently in discussions of political theory. Yet the average Athenian, admittedly an elusive person, did not concern himself much with theoretical discussion, if one may judge from the plays of Aristophanes, who offers the modern reader a closer approach to everyday life than any other writer of the fifth century. So it is advisable first to study the institutions of the Athenians in their historical development and then to ask what principles they imply. That is, one should proceed from practice to theory. The Emergence of the Polis Modern understanding of the way society developed in Greece early in the historical period has changed radically in the last two decades. Previously it was believed that, after the collapse of the civilization of the Bronze Age (ca. 1200), migrating bands of people wandered until they found land to settle. Supposedly, when they did so, in the typical community hereditary kingship arose from the former leader of the migratory host, commanders of groups within the host became a council advising the king, and from the parade of all the warriors there arose an assembly of adult male citizens to decide issues by vote. On this view the political history of the emergent cities was to be reconstructed as a series of struggles between monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.