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Political Lotteries in European Democratisation

Project description

Advanced statistical methods for political lotteries’ investigation

Recently, political lotteries have been used to randomly select citizens to make decisions on polarising issues, such as disaffection, abortion reform and climate change. These lotteries have allowed greater access to minorities and have contributed to stabilising political conflicts through robust deliberative systems. However, despite their potential significance, these natural experiments with lotteries have not been thoroughly investigated. To address this gap, the ERC-funded POLLOT project will compile a comparative data set of these political lotteries, legislators, parliamentary activities and offices across Europe. It will also analyse the decisions made by randomly assigned groups within each natural experiment by drawing on past experiments during democratisation in Europe and conducting new lotteries in online citizens’ assemblies today.

Objective

Political lotteries randomly select individuals to take a political decision. Recently, lotteries have put citizens together to find solutions to todays contentious, polarizing issues, such as disaffection, abortion reform, and climate change. What explains their varied success? Lotteries equalise opportunity of access to all. Random chance can strengthen those otherwise in the minority. A wider variety of opinions can also improve debate and reduce polarization. The ideal, but unfeasible experiment would randomly vary group characteristics, assign real political power, and observe effects over time. Instead, this project draws lessons from past experiments during democratisation in Europe - whereby legislators were randomly assigned to groups within legislatures - and experiments with lotteries in online citizens assemblies today. Lotteries ensured that minorities participated in deliberation in small groups, and were assigned influential legislative tasks. These natural experiments with lotteries have never before been investigated using modern statistical methods, and their role in opening access to politics is almost entirely absent from empirical studies of democratisation. This project compiles a novel, comparative dataset of these political lotteries, legislators, parliamentary activity and offices from different European countries. Next, the decisions of randomly assigned groups will be analysed within each natural experiment. A theory of debate in randomly drawn groups reducing polarization will be verified by cross-national comparison across experimental contexts, and in a present-day experiment that allows controlled conditions. By opening access to minorities and contributing to strong, deliberative party and committee systems, lotteries stabilised political conflict. They have the potential to do so again today. The research will help inform evidence-based innovation of our representative democracies, as experiments with lotteries have already begun.

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HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2022-STG

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Host institution

FONDATION NATIONALE DES SCIENCES POLITIQUES
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 499 999,00
Address
RUE SAINT GUILLAUME 27
75341 Paris
France

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Region
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 499 999,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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