Abstract

GOMEZ ALBARELLO, Juan Gabriel. LESSONS FROM THE GREEKS: WHAT CITIZEN CAPACITIES DOES DEMOCRACY BY LOT REQUIRE?. anal.polit. [online]. 2024, vol.37, n.108, pp.103-129.  Epub Jan 13, 2025. ISSN 0121-4705.  https://doi.org/10.15446/anpol.v37n108.116968.

One of the most important questions about the viability of democracy by lot, or sortition, concerns the capacities that citizens should have to make it work. In the first part of this article, I consider the response that various Greek thinkers gave to this problem in classical antiquity; I conclude that they agree in emphasizing the capacity of ordinary people, without specialized education, to deliberate and decide about common problems. In the second part, I take into account the great difference between the mode of social organization of ancient Athens and ours in order to identify what reforms would be necessary to develop the aforementioned capacity to deliberate and decide collectively. In the third part, I consider how to implement democracy by lot today, without having implemented those reforms. Although the focus of these proposals is the Colombian political context, the reflection I elaborate in this article may also be useful for other countries.

Keywords : democracy by lot; citizen capabilities; moral sense; collective intelligence.

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