IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/polsoc/v46y2018i3p419-434.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sortition, Rotation, and Mandate: Conditions for Political Equality and Deliberative Reasoning

Author

Listed:
  • David Owen

    (University of Southampton)

  • Graham Smith

    (University of Westminster)

Abstract

The proposal to create a chamber selected by sortition would extend this democratic procedure into the legislative branch of government. However, there are good reasons to believe that, as currently conceived by John Gastil and Erik Olin Wright, the proposal will fail to realize sufficiently two fundamental democratic goods, namely, political equality and deliberative reasoning. It is argued through analysis of its historic and contemporary application that sortition must be combined with other institutional devices, in particular, rotation of membership and limited mandate, in order to be democratically effective and to realize political equality and deliberative reasoning. An alternative proposal for a responsive sortition legislature is presented as more realistic and utopian: one that increases substantially the number of members, makes more extensive use of internal sortition and rotation, and recognizes the importance of establishing limited mandates.

Suggested Citation

  • David Owen & Graham Smith, 2018. "Sortition, Rotation, and Mandate: Conditions for Political Equality and Deliberative Reasoning," Politics & Society, , vol. 46(3), pages 419-434, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:46:y:2018:i:3:p:419-434
    DOI: 10.1177/0032329218789892
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0032329218789892
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0032329218789892?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:46:y:2018:i:3:p:419-434. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.