From Deliberative to Radical Democracy? Sortition and Politics in the Twenty-First Century*

Yves Sintomer

Politics & Society, 2018, vol. 46, issue 3, 337-357

Abstract: This article defends four claims. The first is that in the last few decades, two waves of democratic innovation based on random selection must be differentiated by their partly different concrete devices, embodying different social dynamics and pointing toward different kinds of democracy. The second claim is that the rationale of the first wave, based on randomly selected minipublics, largely differs from the dynamic of political sortition in Athens, as it points toward deliberative democracy rather than radical democracy. Conversely, empowered sortition processes that have emerged during the second wave capture better the spirit of radical Athenian democratic traditions. The third claim is normative: these empowered sortition processes are more promising for a real democratization of democracy. The last claim is that any proposal of a legislature by lot must rely on this lesson when trying to defend a normatively convincing and politically realistic perspective.

Keywords: deliberative democracy; democratic innovation; minipublics; political sortition; radical democracy; representative democracy; self-government (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0032329218789888 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:46:y:2018:i:3:p:337-357

DOI: 10.1177/0032329218789888

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Politics & Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().