麻豆视频

In many contemporary democracies, legislators are chosen through regularly scheduled elections in which adult citizens are entitled to vote. This election-based system, commonly understood as a central feature of representative democracy, is widely taken for granted as the normal way of organizing political decision-making. Yet an important question remains: is election-based representative democracy truly the best available system for making laws? Is it the most suitable way to determine the policies that shape the future of a political community?
 
This book addresses these questions by comparing the familiar system of electoral representation—referred to here as electocracy—with two alternative systems of political decision-making. The first is epistocracy, which distributes political power unequally on the basis of knowledge or competence, for example by restricting the right to vote to those who pass a political knowledge test. The second is lottocracy, in which legislators are selected by lot from among ordinary citizens. Epistocracy has attracted attention in response to concerns about widespread political ignorance among voters. Lottocracy, by contrast, has been proposed as a means of making legislative decisions more closely reflect citizens’ views, particularly where electoral systems systematically generate divergence between the preferences of elected representatives and those of the broader public. Both systems have therefore been discussed as possible alternatives to the prevailing electoral model.
 
The book evaluates these three systems according to two criteria. The first is non-instrumental value, which concerns the desirability of the decision-making process itself—whether people are treated as equals and whether the institutional structure satisfies the requirements of collective self-government. The second is instrumental value, which concerns political outcomes and asks whether a system is likely to produce better laws and policies.
 
The central argument of the book is that electocracy, at least in its dominant contemporary form, is not necessarily the best or most desirable political system. Although it is often praised for its non-instrumental value under the appealing label of representative democracy, electocracy in practice maintains a substantial imbalance of power between elected representatives and ordinary citizens. The political influence available to voters does not adequately satisfy the normative requirements of self-government.
 
From an instrumental perspective, moreover, considerable evidence suggests that electoral systems tend to produce decisions that disproportionately favor the wealthy. This problem becomes especially apparent when the actual performance of electocracy is compared with the potential advantages of lottocracy. In addition, the common justification for excluding children from the franchise—namely, that they lack sufficient knowledge or competence—sits uneasily with standard objections to epistocracy, which condemn the exclusion of adults on substantially similar grounds.
 
Taken together, these considerations suggest that electocracy alone is insufficient. A mixed institutional system incorporating elements of electocracy, epistocracy, and lottocracy may therefore be necessary to establish a more desirable system of legislative decision-making.
 

(Written by: YAMAGUCHI Akito / July 17, 2026)

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The 6th 麻豆视频 Jiritsu Award for Early Career Academics  (麻豆视频  2025)
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Related Article:
Yamaguchi A, Hata M, Inoue A. How can we accept ‘our’ decisions?: an experimental study on lottocracy, epistocracy, and electoral democracy.  Japanese Journal of Political Science. 2024;25(3):123-139.