About the book and author
DEMOCRACY WITHOUT POLITICIANS
This book explains how electoral “democracy” is inherently undemocratic— enshrining rule by elites rather than popular self-rule—and argues that sortition (the use of random selection to form genuinely representative deliberative bodies) is a superior democratic alternative.
Making the case that representative government can function better without the exclusive reliance on elections, the author sets out the problems with modern elections, the inadequacies of the commonly proposed reforms, and examines the cognitive biases, detrimental psychological effects and societal polarization that elections exacerbate. The book further delves into the progression of democracy and sortition in ancient Greece, and the abandonment of sortition in the framing of the American Constitution and French Republic. Finally, it sets out both immediate and long-term prospects for renewing democracy through the use of multi-body sortition.
Written by a former elected politician and policy analyst, this book will be of interest to students, researchers and citizens interested in comprehensive democracy reform.
Terrill “Terry” Bouricius is a political theorist and recovering politician. From 1981 to 2001, he served as a City Councilor and then as a member of the Vermont House of Representatives. After a decade working on election reform internationally, his focus shifted to sortition. He has written influential journal articles on sortition, and helped found the international democracy reform organization, Democracy R&D.
Title page
Terry Bouricius
DEMOCRACY WITHOUT POLITICIANS
Government By the People
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Copyright and publication details
Designed cover image: Mr. Fish
First published 2026 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2026 Terrill Bouricius
The right of Terrill Bouricius to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 International license.
Any third party material in this book is not included in the OA Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. Please direct any permissions enquiries to the original rightsholder.
For Product Safety Concerns and Information please contact our EU representative GPSR@taylorandfrancis.com. Taylor & Francis Verlag GmbH, Kaufingerstraße 24, 80331 München, Germany.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
ISBN: 978-1-041-12557-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-041-12554-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-66537-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003665373
Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra