Politics

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.