A reader comments on participatory democracy:
Sortition sounds like just exactly what this country needs at this moment. Of course, it’ll never happen in my lifetime.
If the idea caught on with one of the two major parties, and that party took control of government, we could see the first toes into the water within a few years, I think. Remember the project to privatize Social Security during the Bush II Administration1? I recall reading such proposals in the libertarian press during the ’80s – they’d point at Chile with great enthusiasm.
So sometimes these sorts of things – even fairly extreme items – can move quickly if they gain popularity. Whether sortition would prove popular is difficult to say. Possibly more in the liberal camp than the conservative camp.
1From the Brookings Institute in 1997:
Policymakers and the public show growing interest in the idea of replacing Social Security with a private system of individual retirement accounts. It is too soon to tell whether curiosity will lead to popular acceptance, but it is already plain that many Americans are thinking about private alternatives to Social Security for the first time.
