Sortition, Rotation, and Mandate: Conditions for Political Equality and Deliberative Reasoning

Abstract

The proposal to create a chamber selected by sortition would extend this democratic procedure into the legislative branch of government. However, there are good reasons to believe that, as currently conceived by John Gastil and Erik Olin Wright, the proposal will fail to realize sufficiently two fundamental democratic goods, namely, political equality and deliberative reasoning. It is argued through analysis of its historic and contemporary application that sortition must be combined with other institutional devices, in particular, rotation of membership and limited mandate, in order to be democratically effective and to realize political equality and deliberative reasoning. An alternative proposal for a responsive sortition legislature is presented as more realistic and utopian: one that increases substantially the number of members, makes more extensive use of internal sortition and rotation, and recognizes the importance of establishing limited mandates.

Apuntes para una refundamentación de la democracia

“…Esta lista sin priorizar revela cierta confusión sobre qué fundamento normativo debe orientar la actividad de estos foros. En todo caso, la mayoría de propuestas de reforma estructural de la democracia liberal-representativa para integrar un componente deliberativo-popular, que restituya cierto control sobre el sistema político a la ciudadanía, se centran en la faceta legislativa, ya sea para generar o mejorar la calidad de iniciativas legislativas populares y referéndums mediante minipúblicos (Leib, 2004;Gastil y Richards, 2013), supervisar a los representantes políticos (Hartz-Karp y Briand, 2009;Schulson y Bagg, 2019), o establecer un poder legislativo ciudadano complementario (Buchstein, 2010;MacKenzie, 2016;Van Reybrouck, 2016;Vandamme y Verret-Hamelin, 2017;Gastil y Wright, 2018;Owen y Smith, 2018;Abizadeh, 2020) o incluso sustitutivo (Burnheim, 2006;Bouricius, 2013Bouricius, y 2018Guerrero, 2014). Como ya he comentado en relación con el republicanismo, este enfoque es inadecuado, porque plantea una solución institucional sin clarificar la raíz del problema, el conflicto de interés político fundamental.…”

Allotted chambers as defenders of democracy

“…First, random selection respects the value of democratic equality (Abizadeh, 2020; Guerrero, 2014; Stone, 2016; for counterarguments, see Landa & Pevnick, 2020; Owen & Smith, 2018; Umbers, 2018). Respecting this value means recognizing citizens as possessing an equal right to take part in political decision making, by carrying out some form of public responsibility.…”

Enhancing the Legitimacy of Offices for Future Generations: The Case for Public Participation

“…First, it generates a socially and cognitively diverse group. The second function of random selection recalls the practices of ancient Athenian democracy, where sortition (along with rapid rotation) provided a defense against asymmetries in social and economic power (Owen and Smith, 2018). Sortition was introduced in Athens as a bulwark against powerful waring families.…”

“… 6. It is these qualities of mini-publics that have led theorists, such as MacKenzie (2017b), to make the case for a randomly selected chamber to promote long-term thinking within the legislative branch. For a critique of this simple “replacement” approach, see Owen and Smith (2018). …”