Student Movement and the Case for Randomly Selected Legislatures

Abstract

The student movement in Serbia utilizes a repertoire of political actions that transcend the boundaries of conventional political participation in electoral democracies. These include reliance on direct and deliberative decision-making, active resistance to the creation of recognizable leaders, and distancing from political parties. This paper examines the hypothesis that the mode of student organization reflects an implicit aspiration for a shift towards an analogous model of democracy at the national level. The results of a survey we conducted among students involved in faculty blockades during 2024 and 2025 showed a criticism of electoral democracy, a positive perception of direct democracy, as well as an openness to lottocracy – a political system in which randomly selected citizens hold legislative and executive power. The paper also presents a concrete proposal for a lottocratic mechanism to fulfill student demands, which eliminates many of the shortcomings inherent to electoral democracy. In conclusion, we argue that lottocracy-inspired solutions represent promising democratic innovations that respond to the students' critique of electoral democracy and their aspiration for more deliberative, participatory, and direct political institutions that can function successfully at the national level.