Demarchy

Basic Information

Also referred to as "Sortition", Demarchy is a system of government where important government positions are filled by random lot from an available pool of citizens and/or decisions of government are taken by a group of electors chosen in the same way.

Sources

Bibliography

1. Wikipedia entry

2. Worldbuilding: 36 Types of Government (Part 2)

Game and Story Use

• This is not really appropriate for campaigns where the player characters are roaming adventurers, or otherwise uninterested in politics - but in a campaign set in a single city, one of the player characters might be chosen for a government position like this. Now he must balance his adventuring career with his new job - and, of course, he will get involved in all sorts of intrigues and power plays between established influential groups and people…
• Lots of potential for overlap with other forms of government, depending on how one gets into the pool. A plutocracy might have people buying lots, a technocracy might require a certain number of recent citations in high-impact journals, and a democracy might either have the lot drawn from all adult citizens or require a certain amount of community status.
  • There may be potential, for example, for a bi-cameral legislature with one chamber being selected for life on the basis of technical competence and responsible for preparing legislation, and the other being demarchic and authorised to vote proposals into law, thus - in theory at least - balancing technocratic competence with popular consent.
• Lots of potential trouble if the ruler ends up being incompetent, an agent of influence, or just not wanting the job.
• A demarchy can be modeled by randomly generating the leader(s) at the start of each term. Work out what percentage of the population has which opinion on each issue, and assign the official a position by die roll. (For strict simulation, you should also work out how the positions interact.)