Sortition has a lot going for it and certainly encourages participation far beyond our current democratic engagement. I'd like to see it start to appear on a small scale, beyond Juries, in modern democratic states.

There's an interesting EconTalk discussing the Ancient Greek economy where Russ Roberts asks his guest: "We certainly romanticize Greece as this great democracy; but it wasn't much like the United States, tell us about it"

But after Josiah Ober describes Athenian democracy it ends up sounding like what we call modern democracy is a very poor imitation.

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/08/ober_on_the_anc.htm...

Thank you for this. Just last week I thought of this, but didn't know there was a name for it, or that it had been used before.

I think people are turned off by the idea of some random "crazy" running things, but that's exactly what I think would provide checks and balances to a government (namely, that the "crazies" don't reach a consensus as easily as the corrupt).

And on another level, our laws would have to be understandable! What would that be like? Would I actually know why I am being arrested?