The Political Potential of Sortition: A Study of the Random Selection of Citizens for Public Office (Luck of the Draw: Sortition and Public Policy)

Dowlen, Oliver

ISBN 10: 1845401379 / ISBN 13: 9781845401375

Published by Imprint Academic, 2008

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Political Potential of Sortition: A Study of the Random Selection of Citizens for Public Office (Luck of the Draw: Sortition and Public Policy)
• Publisher: Imprint Academic
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1845401379
• ISBN 13: 9781845401375
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New
• Book Type: book

About this title

Synopsis

The central feature of every true lottery is that all rational evaluation is deliberately excluded. Once this principle is grasped, the author argues, we can begin to understand exactly what benefits sortition can bring to the political community. The book includes a study of the use of sortition in ancient Athens and in late medieval and renaissance Italy. It also includes commentary on the contributions to sortition made by Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Harrington and Paine; an account of the history of the randomly-selected jury; and new research into lesser-known examples from England, America and revolutionary France. The DPhil thesis on which this book was based was nominated by Oxford University for the Sir Ernest Barker Prize in Political Theory for 2007.

Review

"His painstaking study... goes a considerable way to recovering a largely subterranean tradition of democratic practice and bringing it to light."

(Allan Pond The Quarterly Review)