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.