Reviving the Boule: Randomly Selected Assemblies for Democratic Agenda Setting

Randomly selected assemblies have recently been proposed as key to reimagining democracy in the 21st century, whether in the form of legislative assemblies selected through sortition, advisory mini-publics, or popular tribunates. However, these proposals have also been criticized for, among other things, undermining citizens’ collective political agency, political equality, and democratic legitimacy. There is, however, a potential use of randomly selected assemblies which is arguably free from these ills and could play an important role in democratic innovation, namely, in agenda setting. Agenda setting is the pre-decision phase of policymaking in which issues and problems are selected for addressing. In contemporary representative democracies, agenda setting is largely the result of informal deliberation among policymakers and issue-proponents, e.g., special interest groups, lobbyists, and so on, which largely excludes ordinary people. Institutionalizing randomly selected citizen assemblies for the purpose of setting agendas for policymaking bodies, importantly, legislatures, would expand ordinary citizens’ participatory capacity and influence over the policymaking process without undermining the collective capacity of citizens to rule itself via electorally authorized representatives. Indeed, there is historical precedent for such an institutional structure. In ancient Athens, the agenda for the main legislative and policymaking body, i.e., the ecclesia or citizens’ assembly, was prepared by a randomly selected body of citizens called the boule. This paper argues that a modern revival of this institution may play an important role in renewing democracy.