Widespread political ignorance is a serious problem for modern democracy. In recent years, many scholars have argued that we can overcome it by relying on "sortition": delegating various political ...

Throughout history, countless men and women have been willing to sacrifice their lives for their belief in the superiority of their country and its way of governance. But virtually none of them were ...

An article examining the practice of sortition today and its role as organic and necessary, but highly neglected, part of the direct democracy as anti-authoritarian form of self-management. Democracy ...

The Red & Black publishes opinions from a number of contributors and staff columnists. Their opinions do not reflect the opinions of the editorial staff. The editorial staff is in no way involved with ...

Recent controversies over election rules and the coronavirus threat have bolstered advocates of decision-making by randomly selected groups of voters. But this approach still has serious flaws. Some ...

If you’re looking for an unrepresentative group of Americans, the House of Representatives isn’t a bad place to start. Its members are disproportionately old and white. More than 80 percent of them ...

Paul Rosenfeld, a 56-year-old Tappan, New York, man, plotted to bomb the National Mall in Washington D.C. on election day to draw attention to sortition, a political belief that government officials ...

At a seminar on the topic of ‘sortition’ in about 2006, one participant was moved to claim it is ‘one of the sexiest ideas in political theory’. Of course, sortition is as old as democratic thought ...

In 1983 the Eighth Amendment to the Irish constitution enshrined an abortion ban that had prevailed in the nation for more than a century. Public opinion on the issue shifted in the new millennium, ...

A WWI hero, renowned ornithologist, medical doctor, trade union organiser and founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain all rolled in one. MAT COWARD tells the story of a life so ...