Welcome to the Journal of Sortition Forum
Submissions (which should be comments on published JoS articles) should be sent to Anna-Lena Konder anna@imprint.co.uk. Once published, they will be open for response from the original authors and forum participants. Other posts on sortition should be addressed to equalitybylot.com or other relevant forums.
In the wake of the claims of political bias at BBC News, former UK government minister Rory Stewart has argued that the body overseeing BBC governance should be selected by sortition. Stewart’s interest in sortition dates back to the time of his London mayoralty candidature, and his recent argument is on The Rest is Politics podcast (@ 31:46).
The case for the use of sortition in media oversight has been made in Journal of Sortition papers by Oliver Milne et al. and Oliver Dowlen.
Written by Alex Kovner
We can broadly classify the justifications for sortition into two categories: (a) positive justifications that focus on the virtues of sortition irrespective of other mechanisms, and (b) negative justifications that focus on how sortition can mitigate or eliminate undesirable features of electoral democracy. Positive justifications can be emotionally appealing and often come packaged with uplifting slogans; popular books such as Hélène Landemore’s Open Democracy and James Fishkin’s When the People Speak come to mind. (more…)
Given a measure of hermeneutic charity, Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan could be taken to acknowledge the validity of decision making by citizen jury:
“if the representative consist of many men, the voyce of the greater number, must be considered as the voyce of them all.” (Leviathan, Part 1, chapter 16)
The Leviathan frontispiece is composed of several hundred figures (which happens to be the minimum for a statistically-representative sample). So long as there are “many men” that’s all that matters – alteration of the numbers only affects the descriptive fidelity of the representation. Note that in the 1651 manuscript drawing, the heads are facing outwards towards the reader . . .
admin
Abstract: Hélène Landemore’s Open Democracy (2020) offers both a normative conception of popular rule and an institutional schema intended to advance it. This schema is grounded in a normative conception of popular rule that associates democracy with the values of inclusion and equality. But this association misses a historically important dimension of popular rule—popular sovereignty—which requires the people as a whole to play a critical part in decision making. Landemore’s dismissal of popular sovereignty informs her institutional schema, which relies upon both sortition and self-selection. It leaves no significant room for the people as a whole to act, either directly (via referenda) or indirectly (via election). Landemore never explicitly defends this dismissal of popular sovereignty from her conception of popular rule. Given the historical importance of this dimension of popular rule, and its continuing intuitive appeal, any such dismissal requires careful justification.
Keith Sutherland
Abstract: Daniela Cammack’s rejoinder to my claim that lawmaking juries would not contravene Rousseauian strictures on popular sovereignty argued that all citizens should register their ‘willingness’. This short response focuses on the inherent Cartesianism in the notion of volunté in contemporary social philosophy, and contrasts it with the contingent/situated/biological perspective of cognitive science and philosophy of mind. This has important implications for democratic decision making.
Welcome to Sortition Agora—your new online home for exploring the exciting world of sortition! We’re thrilled to have you join us on this journey, where we bridge the gap between thoughtful academic research and lively public debate.