How to Open Representative Democracy to the Future?

Abstract

In recent years, various innovations aimed at counteracting perceived presentism and democratic decline have emerged. One primary concern is the issue of inadequate representation in parliaments, which has prompted the development of various proposals for reforming the selection mechanisms of parliamentarians. In this context, lottocracy (selection of representatives at random) and proxy democracy (selection models based on self-selection and flexible nominations that determine the relative influence of representatives) are candidates as selection rules to open democratic representation. Herein, I examine the normative and contextual trade-offs underpinning lottocracy and proxy democracy. While both systems outperform electoral alternatives on the dimensions under study, they induce tensions that are often overlooked. Nonetheless, clarifying the normative compromises is crucial to addressing the challenges facing democratic systems and to informing the deployment of the future of representative democracy.