While seemingly a threat to established power, Ireland's use of citizen assemblies actually reconciled the public with the political system. By integrating lot-based democracy for contentious issues like same-sex marriage, politicians gained legitimacy, making it an ironic case where the reform strengthened the very system it was meant to supplement or replace.
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Politicians are fundamentally incapable of drawing fair electoral boundaries due to an inherent conflict of interest: they want to ensure their party wins. Using a randomly sampled citizens' commission, as Michigan did, removes this conflict. This allows ordinary people, guided by a sense of fairness, to create equitable maps where politicians and courts have failed.
The perception of a deeply divided society is largely an artifact of a political system built on competition and elections, which forces people into two opposing camps. A system based on deliberation would reveal that most people's views are not so rigidly coherent, and it would encourage finding common ground rather than winning at all costs.
When leaders are chosen by lottery instead of election, they are less likely to feel they are "the chosen one." This fosters a sense of duty, humility, and servant leadership because they recognize their position is due to chance, not special merit. This structure serves as a protective mechanism against the selfishness and hubris often seen in politics.
Effective activism doesn't try to persuade politicians or stage a revolution. Instead, it should 'inject a retrovirus': build and run privately-funded alternative institutions (like citizens' assemblies) that operate on a different logic. By demonstrating a better way of doing things, this strategy creates demand and allows new institutional 'DNA' to spread organically.
Representation by sampling, the method used for juries, is one of two fundamental forms of democratic representation, the other being elections. While we have doubled down on elections, sampling offers a powerful, underutilized model for governance in areas like redistricting, where ordinary citizens can make fairer decisions than conflicted politicians.
Effective citizen assemblies require experts, but not in their traditional, top-down authoritative role. Experts must learn to be "on tap, not on top"—simplifying their language and responding to citizens' needs rather than dictating solutions. This creates a difficult but necessary learning curve, shifting the expert's role from a leader to a service provider.
Citizen assemblies don't require pre-existing expertise from participants. The inclusion of diverse individuals, like the homeless or elderly, changes the conversation's nature, fosters empathy, and provides a therapeutic function for the political body. This emotional and social bonding is considered at least as important as technical problem-solving.
Expecting politicians to vote themselves out of a job is unrealistic. The path to reform is a bottom-up approach, using numerous local citizen assemblies to prove their value. When politicians realize these assemblies can solve problems and reconcile people with the system, they will adopt them to secure their own legitimacy and hold onto power.
Paradoxically, the undemocratic nature of the UK's House of Lords makes it a highly effective legislative body. Composed of non-partisan experts who scrutinize bills in detail, it forces the government to justify its policies and improve legislation, a function the elected chamber often fails to perform.
Public goods are either "competitive" (schools, roads), suitable for electoral debate, or "unitary" (redistricting, judicial appointments), requiring non-partisan consensus. Applying competitive electoral logic corrupts unitary goods. Representation by sampling, like a jury, is the appropriate, unbiased mechanism to govern these essential functions that underpin the rules of the game.