Beyond Elections? Public Support for Sortition, Referendums and Expert Rule in Spain

In the face of growing public disenchantment with conventional political institutions, some scholars have advocated complementing (or even replacing) electoral mechanisms with systems in which citizens selected by lot are empowered to make (part of) political decisions. However, beyond French-speaking countries, little is known about public support for this far-reaching democratic reform proposal. In this paper, we examine the determinants of support for assemblies of randomly selected citizens as policymakers and compare them with support for two other well-known reform proposals: political decision-making through referendums and experts as policymakers. To do so, we analyse original survey data collected in Spain in June 2023 from over 3,000 respondents as part of the AUTODEMO project. This comparative approach allows us to identify the factors shaping support for these alternative decision-making models and to provide the first systematic evidence on public attitudes toward sortition in Spain, thereby contributing to ongoing debates on democratic reform beyond electoral politics.