Sortition-infused democracy: Empowering citizens in the age of climate emergency

Abstract

This article addresses two great global challenges of the 2020s. On one hand, the accelerating climate crisis and, on the other, the deepening crisis of representation within liberal democracies. As temperatures and water levels rise, rates of popular confidence in existing democratic institutions decline. So, what is to be done? This article discusses whether sortition – the ancient Greek practice of selecting individuals for political office through lottery – could serve to mitigate both crises simultaneously. Since the 2000s, sortition has attracted growing interest among activists and academics. Recently it has been identified in countries like the UK and France as a mechanism for producing legitimate political answers to the climate challenge. However, few theoretical reflections on the potentials and perils of sortition-based climate governance have yet emerged. This article contributes to filling the gap. Based on a critique of the first successful case of sortition used to enhance national environmental policy – in Ireland in 2017–18 – we argue that sortition-based deliberation could indeed speed up meaningful climate action whilst improving the health of democratic systems. However, this positive outcome is not preordained. Success depends not only on green social movements getting behind climate sortition but also on developing flexible, context-specific designs that identify adequate solutions to a number of problems, including those of power (providing citizens’ assemblies with clear agenda-setting prerogatives beyond non-binding consultation); expertise (allowing assembly participants to influence which stakeholders and experts to solicit inputs from); and participation (engaging wider parts of the citizenry in the deliberative process).

An Egalitarian Case for Class-Specific Political Institutions

“…7 Nor do I suggest that CSIs would necessarily deliver their promises. 8 This is not only because radical institutional reform always involves uncertainties but also because there has been barely any experimentation with authoritative CSIs in contemporary politics—and so their consequences are hard to predict (Harris 2019; Mulvad and Popp-Madsen 2021). Of course, this does not mean that more empirical analysis and precise institutional design are not possible or desirable.…”

“… 7. See Mulvad and Popp-Madsen (2021, esp. 87–89) for an excellent, recent discussion on these strategic questions. …”

When Digital Mass Participation Meets Citizen Deliberation: Combining Mini- and Maxi-Publics in Climate Policy-Making

“…Since the last decade, the profile of deliberative mini-publics has grown in relevance for urgent climate change issues [18] and is likely to continue [19]. Well-known examples are the Irish, French, UK, Scottish, Danish, and Finnish national climate assemblies, the international World Wide Views by the UNFCCC and the Danish Board of Technology, and also numerous local versions [20,21].…”

Defending democracy: Militant and popular models of democratic self‐defense

“…One contemporary example of the popular model's attempt to prevent the threat of the corruption of the state might be the spread of sortition-based climate assemblies in European countries such as Ireland, France, Scotland, England, and Denmark. If we bracketed for moment the fact that such sortition-based climate assemblies are often created by the state as a symbolic act without much legislative power (Mulvad & Popp-Madsen, 2021), such assemblies could be interpreted as a second (legislative or consultative) chamber consisting of ordinary, nonelite citizens charged with policy making on an issue, which political elites have not been able to confront. While the population at large in many European countries are in favor of a green transition and have to a certain degree voted accordingly, political elites have not responded with the conviction.…”