Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
We study the effectiveness of sortition to elicit and aggregate information that is dispersed among groups of individuals facing a collective choice problem. Sortition is the process of selecting decision-makers by a kleroterion (lottery machine). In environments with private consumption, we identify a large class of kleroteria that is as effective as direct democracy in (fully) implementing social choice functions. Examples include an opinion poll, where a random sample of two (or more) individuals are selected from each group, and ‘oligarchy with random audit’, where the group leaders are ‘audited’ by a randomly selected individual.