On Sortition. Comment on “Proposals for a Democracy of the Future” by Bruno Frey

Abstract

Among the several thought provoking arguments for reforming democracy, Bruno Frey advocates sortition, that is, appointment to (some) public offices by lottery. Sortition was the hallmark of the direct democracy of ancient Athens. The paper assesses the Athenian practice of sortition by the criteria of representativeness, equity, partisanship, rent seeking, resource economy, and suitability of candidates for office. It concludes that, in view of fundamental conceptual differences between the Athenian democracy and the modern representative government, introduction of sortition into modern representative democracy poses extremely demanding challenges.

Why lot? How sortition could help representative democracy

“…20-21) argued that probabilistic methods could even overcome the "impossibility" of his own theory. 2 See the related responses by Köppl-Turyna (2018) and Tridimas (2018). 3 As any other tyranny, the tyrannie de la majorité, which De Tocqueville (1850) cautioned against, may be considered as a case of factionalism.…”