Citizen juries for government decisions could curb corruption, new research suggests
Departmental Lecturer Dr Samuel Bagg’s new research proposes an innovative new “Citizen Oversight Jury” (COJ) model - a political system that would give 'ordinary' people the power to check & approve elected leaders' legislation.
In Sortition as Anti-Corruption: Popular Oversight against Elite Capture published in the American Journal of Political Science, Samuel proposes that COJs could play a key role in protecting government institutions from corruption and self-dealing.
By selecting citizens to sit on an ‘Oversight Jury’ at random, some of the unofficial channels of communication wealthy elites use to influence government policy would be blocked.
While concerns are often raised over the risks of random selection for political office, Samuel argues in favour of a ‘middle-ground’, whereby ordinary citizens are given narrower tasks they are more likely to perform successfully – based around oversight rather than legislation.
The real democratic promise of sortition-based reforms lies in obstructing elite capture at critical junctures: a narrower task of oversight creates fewer opportunities for elite manipulation.
In such contexts, the benefits of empowering ordinary people—resulting from their immunity to certain distorting influences on career officials—plausibly outweigh the risks
Long term, Samuel hopes the concept will be implemented by movements and parties to mitigate against corrupt practices. This includes examples such as where public resources are biased towards the benefit of those of superior social status in detriment to the welfare of the larger population.
Samuel developed his research paper during his time as Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow (2019 - 2022), and his paper was discussed at the Nuffield Political Theory Workshop, which helped in focussing the paper. This research builds on his previous work on deliberative democracy and writing on sortition, links to which you can see on this page.
He became a Departmental Lecturer in Political Theory at DPIR in February 2022.
