Democratic Lotteries: Should Organizational Decision-makers Consider Decision-making By Chance?

Abstract

Best-selling author and podcaster Malcolm Gladwell brought democracy activist Adam Cronkright to the Lawrenceville School in Princeton, New Jersey, for his podcast to debate the merits of student government elections versus democratic lotteries with 20 of the school's high school students. Based on his work implementing lotteries in schools in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Cronkright contended that democratic lotteries were a fairer way to select student representatives than elections because they resulted in student councils that better reflected the school's diverse population compared with traditional elections. He argued that whereas lotteries gave each student who wished to participate an equal chance to do so, elections privileged the few students who were comfortable performing during a campaign and willing to face peer rejection. According to Cronkright, elections amounted to popularity contests where few students participated, the students elected were not necessarily the best leaders, and the set of elected representatives did not reflect the diversity within the population they were representing. Cronkright outlined the findings of his tests of the lottery system in two schools where he found that lottery-selected councils took on more challenging issues, discovered unrecognized leadership talent, and were preferred by students and teachers. Interested in other possible applications of the concept, Gladwell explored its potential use for selecting the student government at the New Jersey private school, as well as for awarding research grants at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). After the debate, the Lawrenceville students must decide whether to retain the current election system or switch to lotteries, and students studying this case must decide whether contemporary organizations should seriously consider adopting democratic lotteries.

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