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> They proposed steps that would incrementally improve that rating by a notch or two, and then discussed the ideas with their neighbors over several rounds of debate led by academics and political experts.

This is supposed to be more democratic then represenative democracy? A debate led by academics and experts? If randomly selected people can't even be trusted to lead their own debates, what's the point? Why not just put the experts in charge?

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This is much more representative; if you look at a country's population and at their politicians you will see large differences in age, education, wealth etc. This can be used to overcome that by selecting, as much as possible, a random representative group of people, much as you would in a scientific study. It also avoids party agendas and things like that.

It is not my impression that debate in most representative democracies are led by academics and experts. Many high-level decisions are not one of expertise in the first place; take the whole business with the anti-smoking bill in the UK: of course you can and should consult experts on the effects of it all, but in the end the decision is not really a matter of expertise.

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