Mini-Publics and Political Authority

Mini-publics - small, demographically representative groups chosen by lottery and given time, information, and expert access - have become a prominent reform proposal amid widespread dissatisfaction with electoral politics. Their main appeal is epistemic: by deliberating under favourable conditions, mini-publics can indicate what public opinion might look like if citizens were better informed, thereby usefully supplementing electoral democracy in enhancing policy makers democratic responsiveness. Increasingly, however, theorists have proposed a more radical shift: transferring political authority itself from elected parliaments to randomly selected bodies. This paper evaluates that proposal by asking whether rule by mini-public could claim democratic legitimacy. It argues, first, that there is no conceptual obstacle to vesting political authority - the right to make collectively binding rules - in a mini-public; constitutions can allocate authority in many ways. The core issue is normative. Outcome-focused accounts of authority suggest that legitimacy turns on decision quality alone. By contrast, this paper defends a second, distinct dimension: the democratic character of the process by which rulers acquire authority. After reconstructing the strongest egalitarian case for lotteries - equal chance of office as an expression of political equality - it argues that government by mini-public fails a minimal democratic condition: authorization by the demos. Citizens do not choose who rules and thus do not meaningfully exercise political authority. Mini-publics may therefore strengthen democracy as supplements, but cannot replace elections while retaining the authority of democracy itself.