What is it about?
The aim of this paper, therefore, is to explore the claim that lotteries are more democratic than elections. The paper starts by looking at the two main forms of equality which give lotteries their democratic appeal and shows that they cannot be jointly realised. Indeed, as we will see, even taken individually, their egalitarian appeal is more apparent than real. Finally, the paper considers the democratic reasons to value randomly selected assemblies, even if claims about their distinctively egalitarian properties are exaggerated.
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Why is it important?
The article shows that a common claim about legislative elections - that they are inegalitarian in ways that selecting legislatures by lot would not be - is unpersuasive. Hence, the defects of elections as currently practiced are not a reason to think that replacing elections with lotteries would be better.
Perspectives
This paper is based on the inaugural lecture that I gave at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Aalborg after receiving an Honorary Doctorate from them. the reviewers at the Danish Yearbook of Philosophy helped me materially to improve my argument and the way that I develop it. As I know from having presented this paper since then, there are lots of other things that could be clarified/better supported. Still, for the moment this is basically what I wanted to say on the topic, so I'm very happy for having had the opportunity to do so.
Annabelle Lever
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Democracy: Should We Replace Elections with Random Selection?, Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, July 2023, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/24689300-bja10042.
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