In May 2020, Max van Duijn completed his political science bachelor's thesis (pdf, in Dutch) at Leiden University, named 'Loting als democratisch instrument? Waarom loting werd ingewisseld voor verkiezingen' (Lottery as democratic instrument? Why lottery was exchanged for elections). Van Duijn was advised by Hans Oversloot. From the conclusion of the thesis (translated):
"In essence 'representative democracy' is not democratic. It's something fundamentally different. It would be more justified to label it 'elective aristocracy'. In that sense the contrast between classical and representative democracy is a false one. In fact what we're talking about is a contrast between democracy (sortition) and aristocracy (elections)."
Van Duijn is faction leader of the local political party DURF ('DARE') in the Katwijk municipal council. The DURF party advocates experiments with sortition-based district councils. In the March 2022 municipal elections DURF got 24.3 percent of the votes and became the biggest party in the council.
Recently Equalitybylot reported on G.J. Booij's master’s thesis (pdf, in English) at the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences of Tilburg University, titled 'Sortition as the Solution: How randomly sampled citizen assemblies can complement the Dutch democracy' (2021).
See also: