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9781793653987

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"Sortition - the lottery - was invented by the ancient Greeks as a peculiarly democratic mode of self-governance. SRD is the brilliantly inventive authors' attempt to remedy some of the failings of our modern representative democracies, and it's advocated for in a classically ancient Greek way: by use of the dialog format. Add to that fully up-to-date documentation and a classic openness to logical, rational argument and the present work offers one of the best available routes for genuine progress in a murky but essential field of human endeavor, a truly democratic politics. The play is the thing wherein this book will catch the conscience of the king, along with his needlessly loyal subjects. In The Democracy Manifesto, Wayne Waxman and Alison McCulloch stage a play inspired by Greek theater to advance an Ancient Athenian idea. They propose replacing elections with ""sortitive representative democracy,"" sometimes called a ""civic lottery,"" to fill legislative offices. They then take this method farther than most advocates to envision a sortition society, with everything from foreign policy to workplace disputes governed by random samples of the public. Given the recent successes of sortition across the globe, the authors' drama could move from fiction to fact sooner than skeptics might expect. The Democracy Manifesto is an entertaining, engaging introduction to an idea worth taking very seriously: the use of random selection, rather than elections, to choose our political representatives."

Sortition - the lottery - was invented by the ancient Greeks as a peculiarly democratic mode of self-governance. SRD is the brilliantly inventive authors' attempt to remedy some of the failings of our modern representative democracies, and it's advocated for in a classically ancient Greek way: by use of the dialog format. Add to that fully up-to-date documentation and a classic openness to logical, rational argument and the present work offers one of the best available routes for genuine progress in a murky but essential field of human endeavor, a truly democratic politics.--Paul Cartledge, University of Cambridge The play is the thing wherein this book will catch the conscience of the king, along with his needlessly loyal subjects. In The Democracy Manifesto, Wayne Waxman and Alison McCulloch stage a play inspired by Greek theater to advance an Ancient Athenian idea. They propose replacing elections with sortitive representative democracy, sometimes called a civic lottery, to fill legislative offices. They then take this method farther than most advocates to envision a sortition society, with everything from foreign policy to workplace disputes governed by random samples of the public. Given the recent successes of sortition across the globe, the authors' drama could move from fiction to fact sooner than skeptics might expect.--John Gastil, co-author of Legislature by lot: Transformative Designs for Deliberative Governance

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Wayne Waxman is retired professor of modern philosophy. Alison McCulloch is scholar of philosophy and retired journalist.

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