In governance, sortition (also known as selection by lottery, selection by lot, allotment, demarchy, stochocracy, aleatoric democracy, democratic lottery, and lottocracy) is the selection of public officials or jurors using a random representative sample.[1][2][3] This minimizes factionalism, since those selected to serve can prioritize deliberating on the policy decisions in front of them instead of campaigning.[4] In ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was the traditional and primary method for appointing political officials, and its use was regarded as a principal characteristic of democracy.[5][6]
Today, sortition is commonly used to select prospective jurors in common-law systems. What has changed in recent years is the increased number of citizen groups with political advisory power,[7][8] along with calls for making sortition more consequential than elections, as it was in Athens, Venice and Florence.[9][10][11][12]
^Engelstad, Fredrik (1989). "The assignment of political office by lot". Social Science Information. 28 (1): 23–50. doi:10.1177/053901889028001002. S2CID 144352457.
^OECD (2020). Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. doi:10.1787/339306da-en. ISBN 9789264837621. S2CID 243747068.
^Landemore, Hélène (January 15, 2010). Deliberation, Representation, and the Epistemic Function of Parliamentary Assemblies: a Burkean Argument in Favor of Descriptive Representation(PDF). International Conference on "Democracy as Idea and Practice", University of Oslo, Oslo January 13–15, 2010. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 8, 2013.
^Graeber, David (April 9, 2013). The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement. Random House Inc. pp. 957–959. ISBN 978-0-679-64600-6. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
^Headlam, James Wycliffe (1891). Election by Lot at Athens. The University Press. p. 12.
^Cambiano, Giuseppe (2020). "Piccola archeologia del sorteggio". Teoria Politica (in Italian) (10): 103–121.
^Fishkin, James (2009). When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy & Public Consultation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199604432.
^Ostfeld, Jacob (November 19, 2020). "The Case for Sortition in America". Harvard Political Review. Retrieved February 24, 2023.
^Reybrouck, David Van (June 29, 2016). "Why elections are bad for democracy". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved February 24, 2023.
^Rieg, Timo; Translated from German by Catherine McLean (September 8, 2015). "Why a citizen's parliament chosen by lot would be 'perfect'". SWI swissinfo.ch (Op-ed.). Retrieved May 24, 2023.
^Wolfson, Arthur M. (1899). "The Ballot and Other Forms of Voting in the Italian Communes". The American Historical Review. 5 (1): 1–21. doi:10.2307/1832957. JSTOR 1832957.
In governance, sortition (also known as selection by lottery, selection by lot, allotment, demarchy, stochocracy, aleatoric democracy, democratic lottery...
The Sortition Law (Portuguese: Lei do Sorteio), officially Law No. 1,860 of 4 January 1908, introduced compulsory military service for the Brazilian Armed...
an oligarchic institution and most political offices were filled using sortition, also known as allotment, by which officeholders were chosen by lot. Electoral...
Proportional representation Referendum Right to petition Right to protest Sortition Territorial peace theory Tyranny of the majority Voting War referendum...
Cleromancy is a form of sortition (casting of lots) in which an outcome is determined by means that normally would be considered random, such as the rolling...
sometimes used to resolve a dispute between two parties. It is a form of sortition which inherently has two possible outcomes. The party who calls the side...
rather than acquiring their positions by inheritance or sortition (at the Greco-Roman time, sortition was conventionally regarded as the principal characteristic...
power. A demarchy has people randomly selected from the citizenry through sortition to either act as general governmental representatives or to make decisions...
established in 1115, was led by the Signoria whose members were chosen by sortition. In 10th–15th century Frisia, a distinctly non-feudal society, the right...
delegates from among themselves, typically by election or, less commonly, by sortition. These select citizens then meet to form a governing body, such as a legislature...
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to politics and political science: Politics – the exercise of power; process by which...
only wealthy males could vote, and the Athenian democracy, which used sortition to elect candidates, almost always male, Greek, educated citizens holding...
Certain governments in the United Kingdom have, for more than a century, attempted to find a way to reform the House of Lords, the upper house of the Parliament...
with social justice in mind. It consisted of 150 citizens selected by sortition and stratified sampling, who were sorted into five sub-groups to discuss...
Medieval Italy Italian Renaissance Italian city-states Maritime republics Sortition Signoria on Encyclopædia Britannica "Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance...
direct democracy might entail passing executive decisions, the use of sortition, making laws, directly electing or dismissing officials, and conducting...
Proportional representation Referendum Right to petition Right to protest Sortition Territorial peace theory Tyranny of the majority Voting War referendum...
(including all single-winner systems) Proportional Semi-proportional Other: sortition, etc. Mixed system (yes/no) Single-winner/multiple winner system List...
Climate change mitigation Nature conservation Environmental protection Sortition Region International Fields Conservation movement Environmental movement...
bodies chosen from the general public by random selection, also known as sortition. Juries, planning cells, consensus conferences, and deliberative polls...
the Assembly and in large part chosen by lottery in a process called sortition. The assembly had four main functions: it made executive pronouncements...
juntas differ from the directorial system by not being elected. Utilizing sortition to select multiple executives can lead to a directorial system. Switzerland:...
handled by large juries, drawn from the citizen body in a process known as sortition. By far the most well-documented and studied example is the Athenian democracy...
voting Delegated voting Indirect STV Liquid democracy Random selection (sortition, random ballot) Social choice theory Arrow's theorem Gibbard–Satterthwaite...
the same year, Verne was required to enlist in the French army, but the sortition process spared him, to his great relief. He wrote to his father: "You...
Global Information
Politics portal