Abstract How do political lotteries affect choices and outcomes? We study the monthly lotteries used to assign all legislators to deliberation committees in 19th century Belgium. We focus on the period of democratization around the entry of a new, third, and Socialist party. We ask whether random, more extensive exposure to certain MP types affected voting over all roll-call votes between 1892 and 1902, i.e. debating more Socialists, more incumbents, or more of those from majority Flemish-speaking districts. We find small but significant exposure effects on rebelling against the party majority, against the deliberative ideal but along government-opposition logic. Legislatures may similarly limit lottery’s potential today.
Coppenolle et al. (Wed,) studied this question.