A Radical Proposal for True Democracy
About this episode
Yale political scientist Hélène Landemore argues that elections are a surprisingly weak form of democracy, and that real self-government might come from randomly selected citizens' assemblies instead. She describes experiments like Iceland's 2010 constitutional process, where 25 ordinary Icelanders drafted a new constitution through crowdsourced public input, and France's Citizens' Convention for Climate, where 150 randomly chosen citizens deliberated and proposed policies. Klein probes her ideas against American traditions like California's ballot propositions, which she views as democracy without deliberation. The episode explores whether citizens chosen by lot deliberate better than elected representatives, how such assemblies could sit alongside legislatures, and why ancient Athens used lotteries, making the case for what Landemore calls open democracy.