I have a political philosophy now?: That comment\'s a fair sample of my thoughts on sortition, and I also wrote an article on
for k5
two years back that still has some good links, particularly Knag\'s
Let\'s Toss For It
. There\'s also the
Sortition (Lottery) pattern
from my occassional project
Government Design Patterns
.
Ratifiers are probably the culturally easiest to bolt on to the current systems in rich world democracies, because it\'s so similar to voting. This is a little strange considering it\'s the only method that requires tech greater than that available in ancient Athens. Citizen Auditors are also pretty easy to add, this is all ignoring the inevitable resistance from the rent-seekers and courtesans currently gracing our palaces of democracy.
For the more aggressive methods of sortition like appointing members of parliament, I think you\'d need different techniques in different places. I\'m not really a fan of adding a third house of parliament appointed by lottery, but in places like Queensland, Britain or Canada, with non-existent or uselss upper houses, I would happily appoint up to a half of the members by lot. (The remainder would probably be a mix of archived party appointees, the great and good etc.)
Where the house of review is a major house of parliament, like the US where it\'s the primary house, or Australia where it can be a serious brake on the government, I\'d be reluctant to put members appointed by lot in balance of power positions. The aim is representation and relevance, and this is better achieved by placing the members in the secondary house, in these cases the House of Reps. I\'d start with a dozen members or so, but you could ramp it up to a quarter of the house as long as you excluded their ability to vote on money bills, which is more happily the business of the executive of the day.
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