Elections vs Lotteries: Retrenching or Renewing Democracy?

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

In recent years there has been great excitement about the use of random samples for deliberative decision making. Should this practice of sortition, sometimes called “lottocracy,” replace our elected representative institutions? Or what role should they play, if any, in the reform of democracy? On the one hand critics of lottocracy argue that lottocratic assemblies leave out the millions of voters who are not selected to deliberate. If given authority, they would usurp power from the rest of the electorate. On the other hand, advocates of lottocracy say that our system of elected representatives rarely captures the public will and is too easily subverted by special interests, intense minorities, and disinformation. Lottocracy can better represent the will of the people. This roundtable will inform this debate by engaging three forthcoming books that take very different positions on this issue: "Lottocracy: A New Kind of Democracy" by Alexander A. Guerrero; "Can Deliberation Cure the Ills of Democracy?" by James Fishkin; and "The Lottocratic Mentality: Defending Democracy against Lottocracy" by Cristina Lafont and Nadia Urbinati. Whereas Alex Guerrero defends replacing electoral institutions with randomly selected assemblies, Jim Fishkin proposes to use randomly selected institutions to greatly revise, but not replace party competition democracy. In contrast to these proposals, Cristina Lafont and Nadia Urbinati oppose conferring any legislative power to randomly selected institutions and defend their use as intermediaries between legislative institutions and the citizenry without usurping their sovereignty. Simone Chambers, drawing on arguments from her book Contemporary Democratic Theory, defends the view that lottocratic assemblies can play a role in legislation as second chambers in bicameral systems or mixed legislative bodies. Giulia Oskian explores how randomly selected institutions can serve as intermediaries between the people and their representatives and argues that they cannot replace or have priority over other intermediary bodies like associations and parties.
Mark Warren (University of British Columbia)

Presenters:
Simone Chambers (University of California Irvine),
James Fishkin (Stanford University),
Alexander Guerrero (Rutgers University),
Cristina Lafont (Northwestern University),
Giulia Oskian (Yale University),
Nadia Urbinati (Columbia University)

Sub Unit

• Division 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Chair

• Mark E. Warren University of British Columbia

Presenters

• James S. Fishkin Stanford University

• Simone Chambers University of California, Irvine

• Alexander Guerrero Rutgers University - New Brunswick

• Giulia Oskian Yale University

• Nadia Urbinati Columbia University

• Cristina Lafont Northwestern University