49. Citizens’ Assemblies reduce the risk of corruption

Citizens’ Assemblies reduce the risk of corruption because they are only selected for one specific task. Critics of electoral politics argue that electing representatives by vote is subject to manipulation by money, media and other powerful means. Additionally, legislative elections give power to a few powerful groups, which is believed to be less democratic system than selection by lot from amongst the population.

Citizens’ Assembly system may be less corruptible than voting but only if it regards one-off issues dealt with by Citizens’ Assemblies. Just to see the potential scale for corruption, in the USA, there are on average 20 official lobbyists per Congressman. To overcome that problem, specific training, increased level of transparency, ability to remove a disruptive member, stiff penalties for corruption might be needed. Larger size of sortition say 1,000 members could dilute this weakness, as might good remuneration for sortition service.