Tag: Democracy
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The city successfully used random selection to solve a mediaeval crisis – and could do so again Sortition – the random selection of groups of people to study, deliberate and decide on a disputed topic – struggles to be seen as a credible option for making policy. Quite often, people haven’t even heard of the…
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It took twenty minutes for the helpful shop assistant at Waterstones in Brussels to find Hélène Landemore’s fine new book Politics without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule. “It’s our only copy,” she said apologetically. The cover was slightly scuffed. Not for the first time, I puzzled about this lack of public visibility for books…
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When the news searchlight lit upon Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney last month as the saviour of democracies from US President Donald Trump and right-wing authoritarianism around the world, did it really show us a new path forward? Or did the Canadian ex-central banker’s well-turned speech at Davos just offer a sleeker retread of the…
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Reflections of a deliberative democrat on debating the Ottoman Empire in the Oxford Union, 20 November 2025
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People feel hopeless at the state of our elected governments. But here’s news from the frontline of deliberative democracy activists who are finding another way to run our countries better.
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An account of what happened after the 56 randomly selected members Norway’s Framtidspanelet, or Future Assembly, were asked to come up with ideas for spending the country’s oil fortune.
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A top UK podcast champions sortition as democracy’s way forward
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A second anniversary celebration of the modest but unexpected success of my late father’s posthumous book, The Keys to Democracy.
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If better representation brings better government, then random selection has more potential to do the job.
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The cutting-edge podcasters shows beyond doubt that our system of election-based, representative government is broken. But – while flirting with good alternatives like deliberative democracy and citizens’ assemblies – they fall short in telling us what they think might fix the mess.
Hugh Pope 