Home>Olivier Dowlen
Research Interest(s): Random selection of citizens for public office ; defence and extension of democracy ; Constitutional and institutional design ; history of democratic innovation.
Discipline(s): Political Science
Biography
Oliver Dowlen originally trained as a visual artist. He received a degree in English and Fine Art from the University of Exeter in 1976. For the next 15 years and beyond, he held a number of part-time art teaching posts while pursuing his creative practice.
During this time, he became involved in practical politics. He was a member of the National Council and National Executive of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and campaigned for political prisoners’ rights and for the democratic accountability of the secret services.
In the 1990s, while teaching art history at a secondary school, he undertook a part-time MPhil at the University of Hertfordshire. The subject of his thesis was: “Marx’s Concept of Alienation: Origins and Implications”. He graduated in 1999.
In 2002, he was accepted to study for a DPhil at New College, Oxford. The subject of his research was the random selection of citizens for public office. The Oxford doctorate was undertaken full-time and completed in late 2006. His thesis was the joint winner of the 2006–2007 PSA Ernest Barker Prize for the best doctoral thesis in the United Kingdom.
Between 2011 and 2013, he was co-organiser of the CEVIPOF seminar series on the political use of sortition, funded by Sciences Po, Paris. In September 2012, he took up a one-year ISRF Early Career Fellowship at Queen Mary University of London to study the benefits of using randomly selected citizens in democratic transitions. In early 2015, he joined CEVIPOF at Sciences Po, Paris, as a chercheur associé. In September 2015, he was awarded a grant from the Australian newDemocracy Foundation to complete a feasibility study on a scheme involving randomly selected citizens at constituency level within the constitutional contexts of the United Kingdom and Australia.
publications
Forthcoming: “Voting and Sortition”, in De Gruyter Handbook of Democratic Theory. Cristina Lafont, Nadia Urbinati and David Ragazzoni (eds).
June 2025: “A Framework for the Consolidation and Defence of Citizens’ Democracy”, Journal of Sortition, Vol. 1, No. 1.
April 2025: “Sociotechnical Design for Citizen Participation and Democracy”, special issue of Interacting with Computers (OUP), Vol. 37, Issue 4. Joint author of the introduction with José Abdelnour Nocea, Juan José Gómez Gutiérrez and María Estela Peralta Alvarez.
January 2025: Marx’s Concept of Alienation: Origins and Implications. With a preface by the author and a prologue by Gil Delannoi. DobleJ.
2024: “The Necessity of a Design-Based Discourse in the Evaluation of Random Political Recruitment”, in Against Sortition? The Problem with Citizens’ Assemblies, Grandjean, G. (ed.). Imprint Academic, Exeter.
May 2023: Commissioned book review of Zeynep Pamuk, Politics and Expertise: How to Use Science in a Democratic Society. Political Studies Review. Sage Journals.
May 2023: “Introduction: Telling the Untold Story of Random Political Recruitment”, Common Knowledge, 29(2), 173–186. Duke University Press.
2022: “Random Recruitment, Civil Society and the State”, in Gutierrez, Igatua and Abelnour-Nocera (eds.), Democratic Institutions and Practices: A Debate on Governments, Parties, Theories and Movements in Today’s World. Springer Nature, Cham, Switzerland.
2020: “Random Recruitment as an Element in Constitutional and Institutional Design: A Dialogue Between Means and Desired Outcomes”, in Liliane Lopez-Rabatel and Yves Sintomer (eds.), Sortition and Democracy: History, Tools, Theories. Imprint Academic, Exeter.
2019: Ένα πλαίσιο για την εδραίωση και την υπεράσπιση της δημοκρατίας των πολιτών (A Framework for the Consolidation and Defence of Citizens’ Democracy). Translated by Aristotle Kosmadaki. Doble J, Efialtes Series.
2018: Delannoi, Gil; Dowlen, Oliver. “Sortition, Direct Democracy and Indirect Democracy”, in Routledge Compendium of Direct Democracy. Routledge.
March 2017: Citizens’ Parliamentary Groups. A Proposal for Democratic Participation at Constituency Level. https://www.newdemocracy.com.au/2017/04/13/citizens-parliamentary-groups/
September 2016: Oliver Dowlen, Jorge Costa Delgado. El sorteo en política: cómo pensarlo y cómo ponerlo en práctica. Translation and notes by José Luis Bellón Aguilera. Doble J, Efialtes, Cádiz.
2013: Gil Delannoi, Oliver Dowlen and Peter Stone. “The Lottery as a Democratic Institution.” Studies in Public Policy, 28. Dublin: Policy Institute.
November 2011: “Sanitizing Justice”. Review of Peter Stone’s The Luck of the Draw. Res Publica (23 November 2011), pp. 1–5.
August 2011: “Le tirage au sort en politique : la méthode et ses raisons profondes.” Esprit, 8–9 (2011).
August 2010: “Sortition and Liberal Democracy”, in Delannoi, G. and Dowlen, O. (eds.), Sortition: Theory and Practice. Imprint Academic.
July 2009: “Sorting Out Sortition: A Perspective on the Random Selection of Political Officers.” Political Studies, Vol. 57, No. 2.
September 2008: Sorted: Civic Lotteries and the Future of Public Participation. Pamphlet produced for MASSLBP (Canada). Available at: http://www.masslbp.com/journal.php.
August 2008: The Political Potential of Sortition: A Study of the Random Selection of Citizens for Public Office. Imprint Academic, Exeter.
Edited Publications
August 2010: Sortition: Theory and Practice. Edited by Gil Delannoi and Oliver Dowlen. Imprint Academic, Exeter.