Can a citizen lottery govern better than elected officials?

Why some political theorists are reviving a radical idea from ancient Athens.

If you want to guess what Congress is going to do tomorrow, just about the last thing you should do is check in with political philosophers and theorists in the academy. But if you want to know what Congress will do in 50 years, seeing what ideas are percolating in the academy can be surprisingly informative. That’s why I’ve been struck by the growing popularity, among academics, of a radical idea for rethinking democracy: getting rid of elections, and instead picking representatives by lottery, as with jury duty. The idea, sometimes called sortition or “lottocracy,” originates in ancient…

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• Austin Shao

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