Indeed, while I am into my own world of designing a system; I certainly never meant to imply the idea was original. Sortition was one of the original methods of expanding democracy to larger settlements, towns, and cities when direct democracy with full participation became infeasible due to there being too many people. It still has a place in many systems around the world from juries to grand juries which can indict people for crimes and investigate. For whatever reason it seems to have held on in the realm of justice more than in legislative or executive/military parts of government.
Juries have a lot of “professional supervision.” In the Common Law system, the judge restricts who can serve on the jury, determines the relevant law, tells the jury what specific question of fact they are deciding, controls the evidence shown to the jury, does the sentencing, and more. My impression is that the non-Common Law systems that use juries give them even less discretion. So when we have citizen-volunteers, we get good results only by very carefully hemming them in with professionals.
You can’t supervise the executive in the same way. By definition, the executive is the part of the government in control of the coercive apparatus. If the nominal executives aren’t able to give orders to the military without the approval of some other body, then the nominal executives aren’t really in charge; they’re just constitutional decoration, like the modern British monarchy, or the Presidium of the USSR.
Indeed, while I am into my own world of designing a system; I certainly never meant to imply the idea was original. Sortition was one of the original methods of expanding democracy to larger settlements, towns, and cities when direct democracy with full participation became infeasible due to there being too many people. It still has a place in many systems around the world from juries to grand juries which can indict people for crimes and investigate. For whatever reason it seems to have held on in the realm of justice more than in legislative or executive/military parts of government.
Juries have a lot of “professional supervision.” In the Common Law system, the judge restricts who can serve on the jury, determines the relevant law, tells the jury what specific question of fact they are deciding, controls the evidence shown to the jury, does the sentencing, and more. My impression is that the non-Common Law systems that use juries give them even less discretion. So when we have citizen-volunteers, we get good results only by very carefully hemming them in with professionals.
You can’t supervise the executive in the same way. By definition, the executive is the part of the government in control of the coercive apparatus. If the nominal executives aren’t able to give orders to the military without the approval of some other body, then the nominal executives aren’t really in charge; they’re just constitutional decoration, like the modern British monarchy, or the Presidium of the USSR.