Citizen assemblies: a sortition-based way to improve modern democratic systems

Since several decades modern democracies have been showing clear signals of decline in the representativeness of people needs. Recent research literature suggests that the random selection of citizens to participate in legislative or advisory assemblies – also known as sortition – can enhance the efficiency and representativeness of democratic systems. In recent years several studies demonstrated, through agent-based modeling, that including randomly selected legislators in parliament can reduce inefficiencies caused by party discipline and strategic voting, thereby improving overall decision-making outcomes [1, 2]. Sortition can serve as a valuable corrective to the growing democratic deficit in representative systems by introducing diversity, reducing polarization, and increasing public trust. At the same time, several practical experiences around the world have provided a strong support for incorporating sortition-based citizen assemblies as a complement to electoral democracy [3]. In this paper we present an overview of these new deliberative tools for improving modern democracies and try to support their efficacy with numerical simulations.