See Lamport's "Cheap Paxos" and "Vertical Paxos" papers for a treatment of what seems like very similar ideas. Vertical Paxos describes using a 'configuration m

See Lamport's "Cheap Paxos" and "Vertical Paxos" papers for a treatment of what seems like very similar ideas. Vertical Paxos describes using a 'configuration master' (or, possibly, a larger quorum on a larger jury) to make changes to a smaller jury. The details are a bit subtle, but the PlusCal code in the paper lays things out very clearly. Also check out Check out Peleg and Wool, "The Availability of Quorum Systems" (it's a bit old-fashioned, but still very interesting) for a thorough discussion of the availability argument (separate from Paxos, but in context of Quorum systems in general).