Democracy and Equality of Opportunity

There is a growing interest within contemporary democracies in sortition – the selection of political officials by lot. Some proponents of sortition claim that random selection furthers the goal of equality of opportunity, and does so better than the dominant democratic selection method in the modern world, election. This chapter argues that this claim represents a category mistake. A careful examination of the foundations of sortition and voting suggests that the two practices represent radically different conceptions of equality of opportunity, to such an extent that it makes little sense to compare the practices along this dimension. The chapter concludes that the conception of equality of opportunity associated with election is the more compelling one, but that this in no way compromises the case for sortition. It simply makes plain the difference in the values the two selection methods advance.