The most important book I read for this essay was The Principles of Representative Government by Bernard Manin (Cambridge, 1997). It was followed by several other excellent works. British political thinker Oliver Dowlen wrote The Political Potential of Sortition: A Study of the Random Selection of Citizens for Public Office (Exeter, 2009), German professor of political theory and the history of ideas Hubertus Buchstein published Demokratie und Lotterie: Das Los als politisches Entscheidungsinstrument von Antike bis zur EU (Frankfurt, 2009), Parisian political scientist Yves Sintomer was responsible for Petite histoire de l’expérimentation démocratique: Tirage au sort et politique d’Athènes à nos jours (Paris, 2011), and from Canadian professor of political science Francis Dupuis-Déri came Démocratie: Histoire politique d’un mot aux États-Unis et en France (Montreal, 2013).
Those seeking a more general history of what has befallen democracy will learn a good deal from The Life and Death of Democracy by John Keane (London, 2009). More technical, but extremely impressive, are the studies by Pierre Rosanvallon: Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust (New York, 2008), Democratic Legitimacy: Impartiality, Reflexivity, Proximity (Princeton, 2011) and The Society of Equals (Cambridge, MA, 2011). The two best books on democracy in Classical Antiquity are Mogens Herman Hansen’s The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes (London, 1999) and Paul Cartledge’s Democracy: A Life (Oxford, 2016). Sound, factual information about the current system can be found in the excellent reference work Representative Government in Modern Europe by Michael Gallagher, Michael Laver and Peter Mair (London, 2011). By Mair, the Irish political scientist, who died far too young, a posthumous collection has been published called Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy (London, 2013). His essays influenced me greatly in writing Chapter 1.
Arguments in favour of sortition have been looked at and discussed openly in recent years in academic circles. Barbara Goodwin, professor of politics at the University of East Anglia, published the influential Justice by Lottery well over twenty years ago (Chicago, 1992), placing the essential value of sortition in democracy back on the agenda. Lyn Carson and Brian Martin, two researchers from Australia, wrote Random Selection in Politics (Westport, 1999). Lately research has accelerated and Oliver Dowlen, whose Political Potential of Sortition I mention above, is one of the founders of the Society for Democracy Including Random Selection. Along with Gil Delannoi he edited the collection Sortition: Theory and Practice (Exeter, 2010). He is also the author of the more succinct Sorted: Civic Lotteries and the Future of Public Participation (Toronto, 2008), which is available free as a pdf (http://ebookpoint.us/scribd/sorted-civic-lotteriesand-the-future-of-public-participation-11446805). Terrill Bouricius is working on a book with the promising working title The Trouble with Elections: Everything You Thought You Knew about Democracy is Wrong.
I found concrete proposals for the reintroduction of sortition in Ernest Callenbach & Michael Phillips, A Citizen Legislature (Berkeley, 1985), in Anthony Barnett & Peter Carty, The Athenian Option: Radical Reform for the House of Lords (London, 1998), in Keith Sutherland, A People’s Parliament: A (Revised) Blueprint for a Very English Revolution (Exeter, 2008) and in the abovementioned works by Sintomer and Buchstein. This is merely a selection. A more complete list can be found in Antoine Vergnes’ contribution to the collection by Gil Delannoi & Oliver Dowlen, under the title ‘A brief survey of the literature of sortition’. My Figure 5 refers to the latest proposals. The article by Terrill Bouricius, ‘Democracy through multi-body sortition: Athenian lessons for the modern day’, Journal of Public Deliberation (2013) 9, 1, article 11 is available online (http://www.publicdeliberation.net/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1220&context=jpd).
The literature on deliberative democracy is extensive. Among works to which I refer are James Fishkin, When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation (Oxford, 2009) and a recent French anthology, La Démocratie délibérative: Anthologie des textes fondamentaux (Paris, 2010), by Charles Girard and Alice Le Goff. The most recent developments can be followed in academic journals such as International Journal of Public Participation and Journal of Public Deliberation.
A great deal has been published in recent years on the subject of citizen participation. On the situation in Flanders, Filip De Rynck and Karolien Dezeure published Burgerparticipatie in Vlaamse steden: Naar een innoverend participatiebeleid (Bruges, 2009) and on France, Georges Ferreboeuf wrote Participation citoyenne et ville (Paris, 2011). Valuable practical advice for local policy can be found in ‘Wij gooien het de inspraak in’: Een onderzoek naar de uitgangspunten voor behoorlijke burgerparticipatie by the Dutch National Ombudsman (the Hague, 2009) and in Beslist anders beslissen: Het surplus voor besturen als bewoners het beleid mee sturen by Samenlevingsopbouw West-Vlaanderen (Bruges, 2011). The King Baudouin Foundation has published an excellent handbook called Participatory Methods Toolkit: A Practitioner’s Manual (Brussels, 2003), which is available online as a pdf (http://archive.unu.edu/hq/library/Collection/PDF_files/CRIS/PMT.pdf).
In the Low Countries debate is raging over the future of parliamentary democracy. For Flanders I refer readers to Thomas Decreus, Een paradijs waait uit de storm: Over markt, democratie en verzet (Berchem, 2013) and Manu Claeys, Stilstand: Over machtspolitiek, betweterbestuur en achterkamerdemocratie (Louvain, 2013). For the Netherlands I think first of all of the work of Willem Schinkel, De nieuwe democratie: Naar andere vormen van politiek (Amsterdam, 2012), but also Polderen 3.0: Nederland en het algemeen belang by Yvonne Zonderop (Loused, 2012) and Vertrouwen is goed maar begrijpen is beter: Over de vitaliteit van onze parlementaire democratie by Gerdi Verbeet (Amsterdam, 2012). The most interesting academic studies are two collections: Democratie doorgelicht: Het functioneren van de Nederlandse democratie, compiled by Rudy Andeweg and Jacques Thomassen (Leiden, 2011), and Omstreden democratie: Over de problemen van een succesverhaal, compiled by Remieg Aerts and Peter de Goede (Amsterdam, 2013).
Several organisations campaigning for reforms to democracy are particularly active on the internet. The international sites that spring to mind are:
More and more Western countries have national platforms for democratic innovation, and many of their sites are extremely interesting: