Preface to the Special Issue *

The articles in this special issue of Politics & Society are drawn from a September 2017 conference in the “Real Utopias Project” series around the idea of creating a legislative assembly in which legislators were chosen by lot. The conference was anchored by a specific proposal from John Gastil and Erik Olin Wright for a bicameral legislature in which the members of one chamber were elected and in the other chamber chosen by random selection. This special issue begins with that article, which reviews the democratic flaws intrinsic in electoral representation, lays out a set of principles that should guide the construction of a sortition chamber, and argues for the virtue of a bicameral system that combines sortition and elections. Participants in the September conference wrote engagements with this proposal, and a selection of those appear in this special issue.

Yves Sintomer begins with “From Deliberative to Radical Democracy? Sortition and Politics in the Twenty-First Century.” He presents a broad historical overview of the role of sortition in democratic theory.

James Fishkin draws on extensive experience using deliberative minipublics, as well as some lessons from ancient Athens, to explore what could be the optimal use of sortition in a legislative system. In “Random Assemblies for Lawmaking? Prospects and Limits,” he argues against a long-term, full-function sortition legislature in favor of a more targeted use of sortition assemblies.

Pierre-Étienne Vandamme and his coauthors present an empirical exploration of attitudes toward sortition in Belgium, including a sample of political officials. In “Intercameral Relations in a Bicameral Elected and Sortition Legislature,” they provide a context for discussing the possible public support for sortition proposals.

In “Should Democracy Work through Elections or Sortition?,” Tom Malleson lays out a general scorecard for evaluating the democratic quality of different legislative systems, and he then makes a point-by-point comparison of electoral and sortition assemblies.

David Owen and Graham Smith advance this argument further in “Sortition, Rotation, and Mandate: Conditions for Political Equality and Deliberative Reasoning.” They are sympathetic to the goals of sortition but skeptical about the viability of a full-function sortition legislature. They lay out a series of critiques and then propose an alternative way of using sortition in which the agenda-setting function is generated through nonsortition processes and a different kind of sortition assembly scrutinizes proposed legislation.

Finally, in “Why Hybrid Bicameralism Is Not Right for Sortition,” Terrill Bouricius argues strongly against retaining an electoral chamber and against the feasibility of a full-function sortition legislature. His favored alternative uses a series of more special-purpose sortition lawmaking bodies.

Together, the authors of these essays explore the real potential for sortition to satisfy fundamental democratic principles. Although more than one author strikes a note of caution, the time may soon arrive when theories of sortition gain an infusion of empirical evidence. Before long, small and large bodies may begin to experiment more vigorously with this ancient method of democracy.