Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

In the context of the ongoing Common Knowledge symposium “Antipolitics,” this article responds skeptically to the numerous contributions calling for the supplanting of elections by sortition. While lottocracy is proposed as a solution to the flaws of electoral democracy — notably, corruption and violent partisanship — this response focuses on a single theoretical issue: the logic of chance or randomness, which, according to its proponents, should rid politics of corruption and relieve representation of partisanship so as to ultimately prevent the (...) formation of a ruling class separate from the rest of society. The problem with the solution, according to this essay, is that, however useful in many ways, the lottery system of lawmaking is not democratic. (shrink)