Is Picking Representatives by Lottery More Democratic Than Electing Them?

 

There is widespread agreement these days that elections aren't working very well for the people of supposedly democratic polities around the world. There's a lot of blame to go around and plenty of suspects to nail it on: Parties, Single-Winner Districts, First-Past-The-Post Majoritarianism, Special Interests, Incumbency Stickiness, Campaign Finance Shortcomings, Endless Campaigns, Polarization, Vote Splitting, Referendums, Lack of Referendums, Anti-Majoritarian Federalism, Recall Perils, Lack of Recall Availability, Etc., Etc., Etc. As a result of all these flaws, it has seemed for some time that electoral politics is a waste of time and money--at least for regular folks.

It's unsurprising, then, that there has been a big renewed interest in doing things the way the Ancient Athenians (sometimes) did them. The Occupy Wall Street movement notwithstanding, most modern countries--and even their major political subdivisions--seem much too big to have all of the legislative, executive and judicial obligations of government handled exclusively by the entire mass of citizens anywhere, but the idea of picking representatives by lot has made a huge comeback. After all, if that single (though radical) change were made, a lot of the problems mentioned above could simply be scratched off the list.

And it isn't just political scientists and historians who have been pushing this change* advocates have found their way into popular media as well. A tiny selection of the organs that have included positive pieces on the idea recently include: Vox, Irish Times, Bloomberg, Boston Review, NJ.Com, San Diego Union-Tribune, Aeon, The Boston Globe and India Today. There are many other examples that could be given.

So, does the ancient past give us the best solution to our current political morass? I take up that question in my new review of David Van Reybrouck's book, Against Elections: The Case for Democracy, here.

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* Although there definitely are a bunch of recent books on the subject. You can find a batch of them listed here. (One quite engaging book on the alleged superiority of Athenian democracy not mentioned there is Roslyn Fuller's Beasts and Gods.)