ABSTRACT
Sortition, or random selection, has had a long history of political use. The main manifestation of this lies in the selection of citizens for public office – a form that now survives in the institution of the randomly-selected jury. Recently, however, there has been a revival of interest in this mechanism and with this comes the prospect of its reintroduction into the modern political landscape. This chapter explores some of the complexity of sortition as a distinct political form by looking at its history, the need for theory, the qualities and effects of the lottery, the design of schemes involving sortition and its relation to modern forms of democracy and democratic values.
