In a recent issue focused on the U.S. constitution – not the best issue topic, but I digress – Jacobin published an interesting discussion between Anand Gopal and Ben Burgis on sortition.

For those not hip to fancy terms, ‘sortition’ refers to government by lot. It’s the random selection of public officials among regular citizens. It’s associated mainly with ancient Athens, notably the period around the time of the trial and execution of Socrates.

Is Sortition the Answer?

So, is sortition the answer to our problem of government by corporations and the elite?

Gopal comes off as more open to sortition than Burgis. But the two converge on the point that it makes more sense for a small local government than a national one. That’s the level where everyone can stay engaged and involved. It’s where we can – as Aristotle pointed out – rule and be ruled in turn.

That’s all well and good. But even here, making it work assumes that citizens will ‘opt-in’ to public service and to active engagement with public officials. The re-emergence of apathy, either through the collapse of public engagement or the disinterest of officials in a job they were randomly selected to rather than actively sought, would ruin the effectiveness of sortition. Sortition, in this scenario, becomes little better or even worse than what it replaces.

Sortition in DSA?

To effectively govern by sortition seems to require mass active citizenship. People need to ‘opt-in.’ In that respect, it reminds me of anarchist leaning ‘abolitionist‘ alternatives to the criminal justice system. I’m referring, of course, to voluntary restorative justice. These proposals work for small groups of people who opt-in. But they’d never work beyond small groups.

There’s a leftist org out there where sortition might work at a small level. At the very least, it would be worth trying in limited cases.

That org, of course, is DSA.

Would sortition work for DSA at the national level. I doubt it. Nor would it even be a good thing, insofar as DSA is trying to build conscious class politics. But I could imagine a small local chapter trying it out. The chapter might rotate its offices among its most active members, for instance.

Maybe it would fail. I mean, probably it would fail. But it could be worth trying. Maybe it would increase member engagement and investment in the org.

That’s not a bad thing.

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