Sortition, voting, and democratic equality

Bibliographic Data

ID12610554
AuthorsPeter Stone (0000-0003-1546-752X, Trinity College Dublin, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume19
Issue3
Pages339-356
Publication date2016-03-10
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1369-8230 • E-ISSN: 1743-8772
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13698230.2016.1144858
OpenAlexW2313987921
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited38

In recent years, democrats both inside and outside the academy have begun to reconsider the merits of the age-old practice of sortition, the random selection of political officials. Despite this fact, however, the comparative assessment of the merits of voting and sortition remains in its infancy. This paper will advance this project by treating the problem of assigning public responsibilities as a problem of allocative justice. To treat the problem in this manner is to treat public office as a type of good to which citizens might have various claims. Random selection is the appropriate method for distributing public office when all citizens have equal claims to that office and there is not enough to go around. Universal distribution is more appropriate when all claimants have equal claims to the office and there is enough to go around (as with universal suffrage, for example). Election (or possibly other procedures, such as appointment) makes sense when citizens do not enjoy equal claims to the office and that office is in scarce supply. This approach captures a crucial component of democratic equality. Different understandings of democratic equality lay behind sortition and election. Each might be appropriate under different circumstances, but both place rights-based constraints on the design of a democratic political system

Allocative efficiency · Democracy · Economic Justice · Economics · Law and economics · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Suffrage · Universal suffrage · Voting · Game Theory and Voting Systems · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Public Administration

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