When democracy seems everywhere in crisis, it may sound paradoxical, to say the least, that the solution to our troubles is to scrap elections altogether. But that is precisely what political philosopher Alexander Guerrero proposes in his bold and illuminating book, Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections. We should select political officials not by voting, he contends, but by lottery from among the entire adult citizenry.
As radical as it sounds, the idea, indeed the reality, of “sortition”—using random selection to select political officials—is nothing new. Nor is it the prerogative of any particular political persuasion. The Athenians used such a system more than two thousand years ago. The Trinidadian Marxist C. L. R. James celebrated this system when he argued, echoing Lenin, that “every cook can govern.” The idea has seen something of a popular revival in recent years thanks to the writing and advocacy of people like political theorist Hélène Landemore and Belgian historian David Van Reybrouck. And it has been put into practice in a variety of deliberative and citizens’ assemblies, including in Europe and the United States. What sets Guerrero’s analysis apart is that he has thought through how such a system might work in modern societies in exhaustive detail. The result is a landmark argument that must be reckoned with.
Guerrero spends much of the book putting flesh on the bones of the abstract idea of lottocracy, presenting a picture sufficiently well specified for meaningful comparison with real-world electoral democracy. In the rest of the book, he makes the case for the relative superiority of lottocracy and offers ideas about how we might get there from here. The book’s central claim is not that lottocracy is perfect but that, for all its flaws, it is still preferable to other political systems.
Of course, there are many ways to compare political systems. One might ask how well they comport with political equality: the ideal that everyone should have, at some level, the same say over policy. Or one might ask how well they offer opportunities for participation: the ideal that everyone be able to contribute to making policy. Guerrero contends that lottocracy does as well if not better than other systems on these criteria. But his primary interest is different: how well a political system solves problems, whether it delivers the objectively correct policy (which he thinks exists). While the capacity of a political system to solve problems—to, among other things, make people’s lives better—may not be a condition of a system’s counting as democratic, Guerrero is certainly right that it is something that we should want.
The argument is superbly detailed, even relentlessly thorough. Guerrero offers a response to just about every objection a reader might think of. But ultimately, the case is not convincing.
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2025
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yeah...sortition is one of those things that seems tempting, in a "this One Weird Trick fixes problems with government corruption" way, but falls apart when you try to hammer out the details.
maybe this is addressed in the book and this summary skips over it, but there's already many problems I'm seeing with this.
a common objection to sortition is that you can't expect a person chosen at random to be informed enough to make decisions about the entire government. they'd end up relying on lobbyists, which defeats the purpose of sortition. he's addressing that objection by splitting the legislature up into 20 parts, each of which handles a single issue.
but this doesn't solve the problem, it just shuffles it around.
(I'd be curious to know if the book lists all 20 of these single-issue legislatures, because this review only gives one example - Water Quality and Water Access)
who decides which issue gets taken up by which SILL?
it's plausible that you'd have a Technology SILL, and an Environment SILL. there's a desire to regulate the environmental impacts of AI datacenters. which SILL takes up the issue?
if both of them do, and they produce contradictory legislation, how does that get reconciled?
if there's an Education SILL, and they say "hey, people are using AI in education, so we want input into this AI regulation bill too" who decides if they have enough of an interest to weigh in?
the real-world end result of this would go in one of two ways - either you'd have omnibus "regulate everything related to AI" type bills that all 20 SILLs would want input on, defeating the entire purpose of these "single-issue" legislatures.
or, you'd have balkanized bills, where each SILL passes a bill that is only "regulating the environmental impacts of AI", "regulating AI in education", etc. and those bills inevitably overlap and contradict each other, which means you effectively delegate all the power to the Supreme Court to sort through the morass and figure out what it actually means.
experts could be selected at random from a database. yep, uh-huh. except...who populates the database? who decides who qualifies as an expert? if I say I'm an expert in nuclear physics, and should be on the list of people who might get randomly selected to testify on a bill about nuclear power plant regulation, who checks my credentials? (and not just "oh, PhD in nuclear physics from MIT, approved" but actually doing a background check on me to confirm that degree is real)
similarly, advocates and stakeholders get selected from "official group endorsements". cool, where does that list of "official" groups come from? because I am the founder and CEO of the official group Citizens for Cute Puppies and Me Not Paying Any Taxes. my official group should be able to make endorsements that the legislature considers.
on top of all this, there's pretty obvious logistical problems:
I was on a jury, 10+ years ago.
the judge warned the potential jurors that it would be a relatively long trial, lasting two or three weeks, and asked if anyone had non-refundable plane tickets or anything similar that would be disrupted if they were chosen. several people were excused for that reason.
the courthouse was in downtown Seattle. everyone in the jury pool lived in Seattle, so they could just go home at the end of the day. and there was still an understanding that a 2-3 week trial would be disruptive to people's lives.
even if all the other problems got worked out and sortition was implemented...I get chosen, and I'm expected to move cross-country to Washington DC for 3 years? I don't have kids, so I can be relatively more flexible about relocation than a lot of people, but hell no.
(alternately, maybe you don't expect people to move to DC, and instead try to conduct everything remotely - over Zoom calls with 450 people in them, trying to follow something resembling Robert's Rules of Order? yeah, no thanks, I have a root canal scheduled every day for the next 3 years that I'd rather do)