Since the 1980s, political disaffection throws a dark shadow upon democratic and participatory culture in western societies. In order to bridge the gap between political officials and laypersons, reinvented recruiting-procedures resort to political lotteries, i. e. Public Opinion Polls, Citizen Jurys and „Planungszellen“. While empirical research in the field of aleatoric democracy usually focusses on the deliberative outcomes of these procedures, theoretical approaches mainly ask whether political lotteries, compared to traditional ways of recruiting political personnel (esp. elections), are just or not. Other discussions broach the subjects of political representation, equality or input- and output-legitimacy. Down to the present day, a key-question to the problem of legitimacy of aleatoric demcrocacy has been most widely ignored: whether laypersons chosen by lot should be obliged to participate in the committee where they have gained a seat, or whether aleatoric procedures should be mainly founded on the principle of voluntariness. The present paper will discuss this question, combining liberal and republican perspectives (Rawls, Arendt, Macchiavelli) on the one hand and applied views on participatory and political institutions which are founded on the principle of obligation on the other hand, i. e. compulsory voting, jury trial and compulsary military service. During the presentation, it will be argued that compulsory participation in aleatoric procedures is unfeasible unless an individual option of each particular person to exit (and to return to) the aleatoric process during the whole lifespan of political subjects is ensured.
