Sortition
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] Sortition is often classified as a method for both direct democracy and deliberative democracy.
Further reading
- Sortition — Wikipedia
- Equality by Lot — blog tracking sortition research and practice globally
See also
- Citizens' Assembly
- Isegoria
- Cognitive Division of Labour
- Sortition Foundation
- newDemocracy Foundation
- MASS LBP
- G1000
- Healthy Democracy
- What if we replaced politicians with randomly selected people? — Brett Hennig TED talk, discussed at DOD 2018
- Your Party is using sortition — UK case study, 2025
- Victoria's Upper House inquiry: the case for a citizens' assembly