The assignment of political office by lot

Engelstad, Fredrik

doi:10.1177/053901889028001002

Cited by 32 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Further, appointment by lot meant that any citizen might hold office, while with rotation every citizen might hold office at some point (Engelstad 1989). Randomly selected officers who owe their positions to the luck of the draw, and appreciate that in turn they will be ''ruled'' by those they now rule, cannot be thought as a ruling elite or an exclusive body.…”

Section: Equitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Tridimas

2017

Homo Oecon

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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.

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Section: Equitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Tridimas

2017

Homo Oecon

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“…20 The past has known important cases in which random selection has been used. Classical democracy in Athens in the fifth and fourth century B.C., which is still a model for today, used random selection as a central feature (Manin, 1997;Hansen, 1991;Engelstad, 1989). The Assembly, which every one of the between 30,000 and 60,000 citizens could attend, took the most important decisions.…”

Section: Past Experiencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making International Organizations More Democratic

Stutzer¹,

Frey²

2006

Review of Law &Amp; Economics

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World governance today is characterized by international organizations lacking democratic legitimacy and control by the citizens they claim to represent. These organizations are also often criticized for being inefficient. This has led to violent protests and to NGOs having great influence. To address these problems, we propose international governance based on the democratic idea of citizen participation: All citizens of the member countries of international organizations have the potential right to participate in the decision-making of international organizations via initiatives, referendums and recalls. In order toreduce transaction costs, a representative group of citizens is randomly selected who can actually exercise their participation rights.

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“…The annual term limits meant that substantial rotation took place. Thus, sortition implied that any citizen might hold office, while rotation implied that every citizen might hold office at some time, see Engelstad (1989). Using the estimate of 20,000 eligible citizens, Hansen (1999) concludes that in the fourth century the rule that a man could be councilor no more than twice in his life implied that ''over a third of all citizens over eighteen, and about two-thirds of all citizens over forty, became councilors, some of them twice'', p. 249.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It was also used in ancient Rome, some medieval and renaissance Italian city-republics, most prominently Florence (1328-1434 and again 1494-1512) and Venice (697-1797)-although in comparison to Athens all of the above restricted severely the number of participants. 4 Mayors were also selected by sortition in some of the Swiss Landsgemeinden during the period 1640-1837, when according to Engelstad (1989) it was used as a mechanism to distribute the perks from public office. 5 Appointment by lot was also 4 See Engelstad (1989), Manin (1997) and Dowlen (2008) for details.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constitutional choice in ancient Athens: the rationality of selection to office by lot

Tridimas

2011

Const Polit Econ

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Contrary to modern democracies ancient Athens appointed large numbers of government officers by lot. After describing the Athenian arrangements, the paper reviews the literature on the choice between election and lot focusing on representativeness of the population, distributive justice, minimization of conflicts, quality of appointees and administrative economy. It then examines why in drawing up the constitution a self-interested citizen may give up voting for government officials and appoint them by lot. It is shown that appointment by lot is preferred when the effort required to choose candidates is less than the benefit expected from their actions as government officials. It is also found that, given the choice, office motivated candidates may unanimously agree to selection by lot but not to election.

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The assignment of political office by lot

Cited by 32 publications

References 16 publications

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

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

Making International Organizations More Democratic

Constitutional choice in ancient Athens: the rationality of selection to office by lot

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