We outline a new voting procedure for representative democracies. This procedure should be used for important decisions only and consists of two voting rounds: a randomly-selected subset of the citizens is awarded a one-time voting right. The parliament also votes, and the two decisions are...

We study the feasibility and efficiency of policy reforms in polarized democracies. We develop a simple election model where (i) reforms are costly for voters and politicians and these costs increase with the extent of policy change, and (ii) politicians differ in their ability to carry out...