Warrior_of_Freedom
05-31-2010, 05:34 PM
From Wiki:
Demarchy (or lottocracy) is a form of democracy in which the state is governed by randomly selected decision makers who have been selected by sortition (lot). These groups, sometimes termed "policy juries," "citizens' juries," or "consensus conferences," deliberately make decisions about public policies in much the same way that juries decide criminal cases.
Demarchy attempts to overcome some of the functional problems with conventional representative democracy, which is often subject to manipulation by special interests and a division between professional policymakers (politicians and lobbyists) vs. a largely passive, uninvolved and often uninformed electorate. According to Australian philosopher John Burnheim, random selection of policymakers would make it easier for everyday citizens to meaningfully participate, and harder for special interests to corrupt the process.
More generally, random selection of decision makers is known as sortition. The Athenian democracy made much use of sortition, with nearly all government offices filled by lottery rather than by election. In the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Ontario, a group of citizens was randomly selected to create a Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform to investigate and recommend changes to the provinces' electoral systems. The Old Order Amish use a combination of election and sortition to select church leaders; men receiving two or three nominations to fill a vacancy (the number varies by district) are then asked to select a psalm book containing a slip of paper, one of those slips being marked to indicate who will take on the burden of the position.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy
Demarchy (or lottocracy) is a form of democracy in which the state is governed by randomly selected decision makers who have been selected by sortition (lot). These groups, sometimes termed "policy juries," "citizens' juries," or "consensus conferences," deliberately make decisions about public policies in much the same way that juries decide criminal cases.
Demarchy attempts to overcome some of the functional problems with conventional representative democracy, which is often subject to manipulation by special interests and a division between professional policymakers (politicians and lobbyists) vs. a largely passive, uninvolved and often uninformed electorate. According to Australian philosopher John Burnheim, random selection of policymakers would make it easier for everyday citizens to meaningfully participate, and harder for special interests to corrupt the process.
More generally, random selection of decision makers is known as sortition. The Athenian democracy made much use of sortition, with nearly all government offices filled by lottery rather than by election. In the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Ontario, a group of citizens was randomly selected to create a Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform to investigate and recommend changes to the provinces' electoral systems. The Old Order Amish use a combination of election and sortition to select church leaders; men receiving two or three nominations to fill a vacancy (the number varies by district) are then asked to select a psalm book containing a slip of paper, one of those slips being marked to indicate who will take on the burden of the position.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy