Innovating Democracy Via Sortition, Deliberation and Popular Votes: Theoretical Perspectives

Abstract

There has been a rapid increase of academic interest in participatory processes and democratic innovations that go beyond elections, such as referendums and citizens’ assemblies (and other forms of minipublics). But to what extent does the recourse to “ordinary” citizens as co-creators and co-decision-makers properly meet the requirements of normative democratic theory? Citizens are typically selected randomly via sortition or by means of stratified random sampling and the method of deliberative democracy is used to facilitate their discussions. In some places they had the opportunity to propose electoral reforms (e.g., Ontario). In other contexts, they held debates on salient issues (e.g., on abortion in Ireland) or at the beginning of becoming a regular forum of interaction (e.g. Eastern Belgium). The scope of this panel is to offer theoretical perspectives on sortition, deliberation and direct democracy, by drawing inspiration from some of the most interesting empirical cases.

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