Rotation, Lottery and Majority Rule: A Reply to the Critics * ROBERT E. GOODIN AND CHIARA LEPORA DOUBTLESS there are myriad practical prob- lems to be solved in implementing our pro- posal for institutionalising rotation in office. Some of them might be subject to general constitutional engineering solutions. If policy stability is a worry, for example, the constitu- tion might require a supermajority to repeal recently enacted legislation (a four-fifths majority to repeal it in the first year, perhaps, a three-quarters majority in the second year, a two-thirds majority in the third year). 1 Some of the problems are probably best just lived with. If we want stability in education policy for a generation or more, for example, that ought to be achieved through inter-party consensus rather than constitutionally ensur- ing any one party’s tenure in office for that long. 2 Most of the practical problems, how- ever, probably admit of no general resolution but rather depend heavily on particularities of the place in question. In any case, recall that a raft of pressing issues of a purely pragmatic sort inevitably arises in implementing any broadly demo- cratic procedures in the sorts of societies with which our proposal is concerned. Point- ing to practical difficulties with any one solution in no way resolves the question of which of the several alternative solutions has more practical merits, on balance. Where the greater weight of practical rea- son lies is, thus, best left as an open question to be resolved on a case-by-case basis. Here we will merely add a few brief remarks on the comparative merits of the main alterna- tives, from a principled point of view. Lotteries 3 The prime virtue of a system for deciding who rules via a lottery is that it gives every- one ex ante an equal chance of being the one to rule. There is fairness in that, which is certainly attractive. 4 Notice, however, that it is more attractive from an ex ante perspective than from an ex post one. Ex post, what sort of reason can you give the losers for excluding them from office, except ‘the coin came up heads’? And they can well be forgiven for asking, ‘What kind of reason is that?’ In the days when it was thought that there was a god’s hand that decided the coin toss, there might have been an answer (even if the god’s reasons were unfathomable to us mere mortals). But nowadays, when it is seen as pure dumb luck which way the coin came down, there is no reason whatsoever—and, indeed, it’s in the nature of genuinely random processes that there is not and cannot be. That seems deeply disturbing. It seems unlikely to be accepted, as a way of deciding anything so deeply consequential as who gets to rule over others. It does so, particularly, given that a better alternative is available. Rotation in office gives us the same ex ante equality of chances —while at the same time giving us ex post equality of outcomes over time as well. A lottery is a good way of respecting people’s equal claims in situations where dividing the thing in question equally is not an option. But ‘time in office’ is not like that. Over time, time in office can be divided equally, via for example a system of rotation in office. In those circumstances, there is no need to resort to second-best ways of honouring equal claims ex ante, through a lottery for example. They can be fully honoured ex post instead—which is of course the way that equal claims should ideally be honoured, wherever we can. The Political Quarterly, Vol. 86, No. 4, October–December 2015 © The Authors 2015. The Political Quarterly © The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2015 472 Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA