Elections and lotteries: responsiveness, capture and efficient policymaking

Abstract

Democracy by lot has been gaining support among political scientists as an alternative to replace electoral democracy due to its normative advantages. However, I argue that electoral democracy based on proportional representation can produce better or equal results than those based on political sortition regarding responsiveness and efficiency in policymaking while not increasing the probability of legislative capture. I build a formal model that describes the incentives faced by legislators selected by lotteries and elections and conclude that electoral rules can produce better legislative outcomes because of the dangers of biased sampling. Majority rules can achieve efficient policymaking through accountability in homogenous societies and proportional rules via representativeness in heterogenous communities.