Politics Without Politicians: Hélène Landemore's Case for Citizen Rule

Andrew Keen: Hello. My name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen on America, the daily interview show about the United States.

Hello, everybody. Six years is indeed a very long time in global history. Six years ago, almost exactly, the New Yorker wrote an interesting feature on a Yale political scientist called Hélène Landemore, entitled "Politics Without Politicians," which imagined a democracy where you didn’t have professional politicians. Citizens governed themselves, or at least they governed. Six years later, Hélène Landemore has a book out. It’s called Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule, and Hélène is joining us from New Haven, Connecticut, where she teaches at Yale.

The Concept of Citizen Rule
Andrew Keen: Hélène, I’m guessing that over the last six years, your case for a politics without politicians has become increasingly strong. Is that fair?

Hélène Landemore: I think that’s fair. I think I’ve become more radical and, at the same time, more practical. So, I think that’s been the trajectory in the last six years.

Andrew Keen: So very briefly, Hélène, what is the case for citizen rule? How does politics work without politicians? It seems in a sense logical and in a sense extremely weird and foreign.

Hélène Landemore: Yeah, it’s true. Well, the case is basically that politics should be an amateur sport instead of an expert's, you know, job. And I just want us to return to that fundamental intuition that the Greeks shared, that I think we still share in some ways through our use of the jury, you know, as an institution in many democracies. But I think it still runs against our cultural assumptions about what democracy means. It’s true, but yeah, that’s the hope that we can return the common good to ordinary citizens.

Andrew Keen: Return the common good to ordinary citizens. You mentioned the Greeks, although of course, not all ordinary citizens in antiquity had political power. What is it about what the Greeks did that you think we can replicate today in the 2020s?

Hélène Landemore: Well, of course, it was one of the first attempts to distribute power equally, and so they did it in flawed ways, for example, by defining the demos in what we would now consider unduly restrictive ways, by excluding slaves and women and foreigners and all of that. But to the extent that you take the demos as a given, they distributed power among that demos as equally as you can imagine. It was basically anyone can show up to the assembly, the people's assembly, and have a say about whether to go to war with Sicily, whether to raise taxes, whether to spend the money on a new fleet or on celebrations for Athena.

And the other dimension of that early democracy is that for tasks that required that a small subset or a manageable group deliberate on issues or put things on the agenda, they delegated that task on the basis of one person, one lottery ticket. So, there was, for example, the concept behind the Council of 500, but also the popular juries. So, basically, once you were in, once you counted as a citizen—a free man—nothing stopped you from accessing the center of power. Not poverty, not lack of charisma, not lack of education. So, this was remarkably inclusive for the times. And of course, it’s not the perfect model. I mean, we can definitely improve and iterate and do better.

Citizen Assemblies and Democracy
Andrew Keen: You’ve become one of the most articulate and open voices for what people now call citizen assemblies. In fact, I made a movie a few years ago called How to Fix Democracy, in which we interviewed you for. What are, Hélène, citizen assemblies? And are they the core argument of a politics without politicians? Is that what’s replacing politicians in your new politics: citizen assemblies?

Hélène Landemore: Yes, they’re like jury duty on steroids, basically. And I do think they have to be a core institution in an authentic democracy. That said, I do want to say I’m not so much hung up on the technical solution, you know, like the special format of a citizen's assembly. It could be called something else. It could be a different format, a different size, a different length, a different deliberative process. I mean, we’re still experimenting a lot in that space.

What I was trying to explain in that book and put forward in that new book is a more core set of commitments and a core ideal of democracy as an inviting hostess. So, it’s a vision of politics I borrow from a British essayist called G.K. Chesterton, where he says democracy is an attempt, like that of a jolly hostess, to bring the shy people out. And it’s always struck me as such a foreign and strange and fun and interesting definition of democracy. It goes against all our existing definitions, which are about, you know, either it’s very lofty and vague like "rule of, by the people," or it’s extremely technical like a method for elite selection that competes for the popular vote. And those are not super inspiring, and they occasionally even have a technical bias, you might say. Or, in the Schumpeterian definition I just gave of a method for elite selection, they seem to shift the focus from ordinary citizens to elites actually. So, for me, the vision that G.K. Chesterton puts forward is very attractive. It’s de-centering our focus from elites and moving it toward people we don’t pay attention to, who are actually most of us—the people who don’t shout, who are not on TV, who are...

Andrew Keen: You’re a professor at Yale. You’re part of the elite, and you teach the elite. In fact, that’s what the school is there for: to teach an elite who may be failing in governing.

Hélène Landemore: Yes, it’s true. But I started as a very ordinary little girl, you might say. So, I remember the feeling of being invisible and having to be deferential to authorities. And I slowly climbed my way to this Ivy League position. And I guess just having that memory makes me want to speak for the people who maybe I don’t belong to anymore. It’s possible that I’m no longer an ordinary citizen in that sense, but I do feel a strong duty to speak for them.

Maturity and Youth in Politics
Andrew Keen: There’s a Rousseauian element there, Hélène, in your longing at least personally to go back to an age of innocence, to go back to being a little girl.

Hélène Landemore: No, because that age was actually not that great. I felt like I didn’t have a voice. I felt invisible. I felt misunderstood. So no, on the contrary, I would like to take us to an age of maturity where we pay attention to each other, where we’re not infantilizing people, not even children, to be honest. I think we speak for them way too much. We keep them in an... we keep young people in an infantile state for way too long.

I mean, if anything, I was just speaking to Sam Moyn, my colleague at the law school here, who is writing a book about the gerontocracy in America. And I mean, I couldn’t be more aligned. I think that’s part of the oligarchy that I’m also denouncing, except he’s emphasizing the age dimension of that domination. And so, I think we need to take seriously young people. We need to bring them into the conversation. We need to pay attention to the wallflowers who are told "you’re too young," "you’re too female," "you’re too this," "you’re too that," and just try to change our attitude and our cultural expectations around what it is that politics is about.

The Practicality of Participation
Andrew Keen: You refer to G.K. Chesterton, this idea of politics as a kind of jolly hostess—I'm not entirely sure what that means—and you also suggest that politics without politicians is jury duty on steroids. But talking to you from the West Coast, I know most of the people who are called for jury duty are not exactly thrilled. Most people don’t actually want to appear or waste their time, at least in their minds, on juries. Does your argument in Politics Without Politicians... does it rest on a kind of communitarian reading of human nature or of humanity? Does it suggest that ultimately we all really want to be on duty and that we have some sort of communitarian impulse even if it’s been lost in a sense with professional politics and professional politicians?

Hélène Landemore: Not consciously. I would say that I’m not assuming that we are sort of driven by a communitarian ethos. I don’t have a theory of human nature, sort of, as a prerequisite for the conclusions I reach. I just assume that we’re, you know, people who respond to incentives. And I think that the incentives we give people to engage in this kind of jury duty on steroids are sufficiently good that they will show up. And right now, I’m not considering mandatory participation. I think it’s too soon. But eventually, like jury duty, it should probably be mandatory if we want this to be truly representative of all members of the community.

I would also say that I observed and got converted to the idea through empirical observation, really, that people can discover in themselves a love of the community, a love of their fellow citizens, which they don’t even need to bring to the table when they first go through the door. And that happened to many of the citizens I observed. They came in skeptical, disgruntled, really disappointed in politics. And you wonder even why some even showed up. Maybe they showed up for the money. It was 84 euros a day during the first citizen's convention in France, 95 euros a day during the second one. By the end of the process, the second time, I think it was around 2,500 euros for a month of work, all in all. So, they came for the money, but they stayed for the community. So, you know, I don’t think you need to assume a communitarian impulse or orientation, but you can actually create a commitment to the group through that deliberative process of working together through problems, getting to know people little by little, and discovering that you have actually a lot in common, including across partisan lines and, you know, all kinds of differences that currently keep us apart.

The Role of Experts
Andrew Keen: Is there a role for experts in this world of politics without politicians? For the movie I made, How to Fix Democracy, we went to Ireland and I interviewed a number of the people who were involved in the citizen assembly around abortion, which is often cited as an example of a citizen assembly that worked. But that citizen assembly—and I think some of the experiments in Europe, in Belgium and perhaps in France—also involved experts. It’s not just citizens who are called out of a lottery who show up and talk about abortion or taxes or other issues. It’s experts who are leading them in the discussion. Is there a role for experts, for elite, Hélène, in a politics without politicians? Is the problem politicians rather than elites?

Hélène Landemore: So, there is absolutely a place for experts as long as they are, as I always say, on tap, not on top. We need their knowledge. We need their expertise. We need their wisdom. But that doesn’t entitle them to making the decision for us. I think politics is for everyone. That’s basically the idea. And so, yes, they need to be invited to testify and give the pros and cons of certain policy, you know, options, like they did during the French convention or the Irish conventions. But ultimately, it’s citizens themselves who have to make the final call. And they can ask questions, they can contest the opinion of experts, they can ask for other experts to be brought in if they are not convinced.

And so, you of course sort of bring in the expertise to support the work of citizens, but you don’t subordinate the judgment of citizens to the judgment of experts. So, when you say they come and lead citizens, I think that’s not the idea. They shouldn’t be leading. They should be informing. And of course, there’s a different kind of expertise currently involved in the organization of these conventions with which I have some problems myself, which is the organizers themselves. So, of course, they’re experts like me, who come in and say, "Well, this needs to be done this way, structured a certain way." And it is a problem because it is shaping, to a certain degree, the process and therefore, potentially, the outcome.

So, my view is that we should evolve toward self-governed assemblies through and through where, again, even people like me who have to sort of create the scaffolding for the actual deliberative process before the citizens are even selected by lot are ultimately surrendering their voting rights and their power on day one of every assembly. And I think that’s what the Greeks did. Do you think they had an army of organizers to help them coordinate their actions? No. They did it themselves. They appointed a rotating chair every day to this group of 500 people who formed the Council of 500. And then, of course, of course, they had an army of slaves who were engineers, accountants, all kinds of experts who didn’t have the status of free people, who were supporting their work, informing it, giving them the expertise they needed, but with a legal status that made it impossible for them to be on top. And I think that’s the idea translated to the modern world. You want your experts to be at your service. You want them to be civil servants of sorts, public servants. And I think too often we’ve forgotten that this is the proper position in a democracy for experts.

Defining Populism
Andrew Keen: You’ve often been described, Hélène, as a "reluctant populist," but there doesn’t seem to be much reluctance in this argument. Why have people described you as a reluctant populist? Are you comfortable with being described as a populist? Is this a form of populism?

Hélène Landemore: That’s where maybe I’ve become a bit more assertive over the last six years, because I used to think, "No, no, this is a different... I’m a democrat, right?" That’s how I see myself primarily. But at the same time, Zephyr Teachout called me a reluctant populist, and you’ll have to ask her what she meant by it. But I think she meant something...

Andrew Keen: Sorry, who called you a reluctant populist?

Hélène Landemore: Zephyr Teachout.

Andrew Keen: Ah, yes, who’s been on the show before, who’s a left-wing populist.

Hélène Landemore: Well, okay. Well, then from populist to populist maybe. But I think for me, it’s how can you not be a populist in this day and age? I mean, if the choice is between populist and elitist—assuming that’s the only choice, and we’re on a continuum always, you know—I think right now at this critical historical juncture, I don’t know how you can not be a populist, someone who’s trying to swing the pendulum in the direction of ordinary people. I look forward to the day when I can be an elitist and say, "Look, no, actually, you know what? The working class has too much power. Academics like me are not listened to enough." At that point, I will be a populist... or say, the elected elites are too responsive... are too responsive to majorities, etc. Maybe I could see the point of being an elitist. But right now, I actually think on this continuum, I would see myself as made to be a populist by the circumstances.

Ordinary People and Leadership
Andrew Keen: What about the argument by many theorists of representative democracy, Hélène—including your own countryman, Alexis de Tocqueville—that we can’t quite trust the ordinary people? After all, the ordinary people—that’s your term—have elected Donald Trump, they’ve elected Orbán in Hungary, right-wing anti-immigrant populist parties in much of Western Europe. Are "the ordinary people," are they as smart as you’re suggesting, or as responsible, or as moral?

Hélène Landemore: Again, I think they’re responding to incentives. They’re given choices, and they’re not necessarily shaping the agenda and the slate of candidates they’re given. So, when they have more control on that, I would say I... you know, we can start criticizing. But right now, the system is such that we’re empowering very powerful minorities in primaries. As someone actually was just telling me, it’s mostly 65-year-olds who show up to primaries, wealthy people, homeowners, who are pushing for certain types of people. So, I don’t know that the people are to be responsible for the fact that a candidate like Trump rose to the top. He was pushed by a certain minority that is very, very powerful.

And then there’s a whole media apparatus and economic super PACs, etc., behind that candidacy that then lift him up, and then we’re given a seeming choice between a candidate on the right, a candidate on the left. For many people, it’s not a real choice. You already have 25% of people who don’t vote. So, I think again, instead of always blaming people for voting poorly, not voting enough, I would like to reconfigure the set of incentives, the way we set the agenda. And then we’ll see. I mean, then I think this would be a real test. The current results to me are not a test of people's wisdom necessarily. I think they’re trapped. They’re given the wrong choices to a large extent.

Implementing Citizen Assemblies
Andrew Keen: How could it work in a large country like the United States? Ireland is a relatively small country, and it seems to have worked in part. But let’s say there was a citizen assembly in the United States today to discuss the rights and wrongs of immigration, or the rights and wrongs of taking over Greenland, or the rights and wrongs of Silicon Valley and AI. How would it actually work? Would it be just a few hundred people chosen by lot? Wouldn’t all the conspiracy theorists argue that the lot is corrupt and that one group or another is behind who gets chosen for these groups? I don’t really understand how the logistics could work in the United States. Or would it be by definition local? And then, of course, if it was local, then how do you address federal issues?

Hélène Landemore: It’s a great question. So, you know what? At this point, I... that’s where I’ve become more practical as well as more radical. I’m actually directing the design for a citizen's assembly in Connecticut, which will be the first state-level citizen's assembly in the United States. It’s going to take place this summer, if all goes well. We’re working with the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. We have the support of Sean Scanlon, who is the Connecticut Comptroller. We’re also working with the University of Connecticut and, of course, the support of Yale.

And we want to basically randomly select 150 Connecticut residents to deliberate about a very important issue in this state, which is local public services and how to fund them properly. Because right now, it’s only funded by property taxes, and it’s creating a lot of issues in terms of unevenness between local towns. Some have a lot of resources, some don’t. It’s both inefficient and unjust. So, the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities thought it would be a great topic to debate because elected politicians have no incentive to run a campaign on raising taxes. They can’t do it. It’s also very hard for them to say, "Hey, why don’t we share our tax revenue with the next town over?" It’s not going to fly with their voters.

But we know from experiments that have actually been run in this state in 2002—deliberative polls that were conducted in the Greater New Haven area—that when they get a chance to deliberate, samples of ordinary citizens have actually converged on the idea that maybe we could share some of the tax revenue across town lines. And if that’s... for example, was a recommendation that came out of a citizen's assembly, then elected officials could take on board that idea and say, "Well, look, you know, we have a representative sample of you who said that you’d be in favor of that." And I think that would be most likely reflected in polls if we could run them at the same time. And then that could have a political... there could be a viable political path to implementation once you have all this evidence and this legitimacy behind the proposal.

So now, I didn’t address your question at the federal level. I think that’s another layer of complexity for sure. But my view is that we have to do it the American way, you know: the states are the laboratories for democracy. So let’s start doing it at the state level. I hear there are ambitions to run a citizen's assembly on tax reform in the state of Washington. Once we have two, three, four state-level examples, this might catch on at the federal level as well.

The Crisis of Professional Politicians
Andrew Keen: It’ll be interesting to see whether it would be replicated in more conservative states. What has happened with professional politicians, Hélène? We do too many shows on Trump and Orbán and Putin, but it seems to me that an equally interesting story over the last 10 years has been the crisis of democratic progressive politicians, everyone from Joe Biden in the U.S. to Starmer in the U.K.—who’s perhaps on his way out—to Macron in France. Why have professional politicians struggled so much, especially progressive politicians, in the 2020s and 2010s? After all, there was a golden period for elected politicians, perhaps in the 60s and 70s. What’s changed? Is it the public? Is it socioeconomic architecture? Is it media? Can we blame it on social media? What’s changed?

Hélène Landemore: It’s a very good question. So, I only have conjectures, but I think part of it is the extreme professionalism. So, in the 60s, you see... you still had what some political scientists called "citizen legislators," actually. And that’s a phrase I use for randomly selected citizens, but this scientist that I’m thinking of used that phrase to talk about elected politicians in the 60s and 70s who typically had another job. They were, you know, shopkeeper or maybe a farmer or maybe... and somehow they managed to do part-time politics. That disappeared sometimes in the 80s.

And then I think it’s connected to neoliberal politics, the kind that took off in the 80s as well, where you had an explosion of deregulation and growing inequalities and more and more of a role for lobbying became its own profession. So, money became extremely prevalent, and I do think that politicians became detached even more from their constituents. They became more dependent on high-net-worth donors and super PACs and things like that. And they live in their bubble, and they repeat the same mantras, and I think they’re just not connecting with the base anymore.

And parties have become eviscerated—hollowed out, rather. They used to be truly conduits for the interests of the working class or... they had a mass appeal, they had a lot of people who had membership. And now they're just emptied out. It’s just a path to some sort of sinecure at the top. I don’t think people recognize themselves in these modern parties as much as they did in the 60s and 70s. And so, I have colleagues who think that the solution is to go back to that golden age. I tend to think that not sure the conditions can be recreated, and the situation is so dire that I actually think it’s time to try something a bit more radical and new.

Andrew Keen: The father, one of the fathers of sociology, Max Weber, after the First World War, wrote a very famous essay, "Politics as a Vocation." Is politics by definition, at least in your mind, not a vocation? Is that the problem: that until we return politics to the people and away from these professional politicians, nothing’s going to get better?

Hélène Landemore: I guess... I guess yes. In a sense, I do think again that politics for me is about the common good, and it should belong to everyone, not just the politicians. And you might say, "Yes, but we still need leaders." And it’s true that that’s a question I don’t fully address in the book. I’m focused on the question of representation more than leadership. I’m focused on trying to get in the legislative assemblies that formulate laws that constrain our behavior that would look more like us. And random selection is a good way for that.

But then there’s a question of leadership, and surely we need statesmen and people who have vision and courage and virtue and can carve a path that maybe assemblies or ordinary people might not even be able to foresee or something like that. But even that now I’m questioning: does the way to select leaders have to be through elections? Does it have to become a profession? Can we not have leaders that lead from behind, that emerge more organically, including from within these assemblies where, you know, there are types like that that naturally emerge, organically emerge, in this context? And that do not make money and a career out of offering their services.

Andrew Keen: So when you say "organically emerge," you think of someone like Zohran Mamdani in New York?

Hélène Landemore: Ah, no. I’m sorry, but Zohran Mamdani to me is not that organic. He too was part of a very elite family.

Andrew Keen: So what would be an example of an organic figure emerging? What are you thinking of?

Hélène Landemore: Well, the one that emerged in the context of the citizen's assemblies. There was the local architect from Nantes who spoke well in simple ways, did the work in small groups, was very well respected and beloved. And so, he became a figure in the assembly, but not in a charismatic "look at me" way that politicians seem to cultivate or need to cultivate, actually, because that’s how the game works. And that’s the kind of politician that I would like to see emerge in modern politics. But I’m not sure you can through the electoral landscape, because it’s a different kind of access to visibility in that context. It’s less organic and much more manufactured.

Defining the Common Interest
Andrew Keen: Are you, in your argument in Politics Without Politicians, in this case for citizen rule, are you rejecting the fundamental Madisonian foundations of American democracy? You talk about something called the "common interest." For Madison, of course, we all pursue our own particular interest. He famously said if men were angels, we wouldn’t need politics, and that we necessarily form into factions. The Madisonian argument, I think, goes against the idea of a common interest. So, are you rejecting those foundations, going back to the great debate after the American Revolution between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists? Are you really making an anti-Federalist case?

Hélène Landemore: I have a lot of sympathy for the anti-Federalist case, I must say. I think they were wrong on many issues and they were parochial on many issues, and they didn’t address the slavery issue and just all of that is true. But I think they had in mind a republic that was at least a lot more in the hands of the middle class than the Federalists who really envisioned rule by a natural aristocracy and made sure that, you know, mostly wealthy, older people, landowners, would make it to the top. And whether it was fully intentional or just a byproduct of their education and sort of elitism is beyond the point in a way.

But I do have some sympathy for the anti-Federalists. Their big mistake in my mind is that they said that they wanted the legislature to look like a mini-portrait of the people, to feel and think like the people, to understand the shortcomings of policies and laws in their own lived experience of those laws, etc. So, they wanted to have like small-scale merchants and peasants and people represented in these assemblies. But they didn’t think of sortition—random selection—as a way to achieve that end. And so they went for elections, and they lost the argument to the Federalists because there was less of a match between their ideal outcome and the means they supported. Whereas the Federalists said, "No, we want a natural aristocracy at the top, and look, elections will get us that." So, they were very coherent in their own vision in a way that the anti-Federalists were not.

Andrew Keen: But where does this idea of a common interest... where does it come from? Who’s to determine? Is it the average? Is it the mean? Is it some algorithmic or arithmetic way of determining things? I know you’ve written about AI, suggesting that we need to democratize AI. Maybe technology will help. What exactly is the common interest? For one person, the common interest is for somebody else a disaster.

Hélène Landemore: Well, so the common interest is not something that necessarily is easily identifiable, but you can move toward it through deliberation, exchange of views, and figuring out where exactly there’s a win-win situation. A lot of seemingly negative-sum game or even zero-sum game situations can often be turned into a positive-sum game if you look at all the elements and all the way to recombine policies and losses. So, I think that’s the hope, right: that we can figure out some kind of outcome that works for everyone.

So, I saw it firsthand in the case of the citizen's convention on end-of-life in France. Very divisive issue where you have a large majority of people in France who think that we should liberalize the law on end-of-life so as to allow for forms of assisted dying and even some form of euthanasia. Where assisted dying is when people inject themselves with a lethal substance to end their suffering, and euthanasia is when doctors are actually doing it because the person is so incapacitated that they can’t do it themselves. And of course, in France, you have about 80% of the population who are ready to open up the law to some form of either of these protocols. But you also have a very strong minority against it, for religious reasons, for ethical reasons, for all kinds of reasons.

So, you bring together a sample of the populations. Of course, you have about 80% who are very much in favor and 20% who are radically opposed to it. Where is the common interest here? Well, they found some common ground in the idea, for example, of palliative care. So, a lot of problems come from the fact that there are no good palliative care in France so that people have to think of the worst option because it’s too painful, you’re too scared, and no one is taking care of you at the end of your life. So, the minority convinced the majority to make the report that they produced half about palliative care. And once they got that in, they said, "Okay, we still don’t agree with the idea of allowing people to end their own lives, but at the same time, we recognize that’s what the majority thinks is the right path. And so, we’re going to vote for this report, which recommends opening up some options. And we think it’s that compromise we’ve reached, and it’s a form of common interest for the country at this particular juncture, given the constraints, given what we’ve heard from experts, given what we know of the balance of power in this assembly and the fact that we’ve been treated really well. We’ve been listened to."

And at the very end, I remember we let the citizens express their impression of the process, and one of the minority leaders—very vocal anti-assisted dying woman—stood up and she said, "I want to thank the majority for giving us the minority 50% of the speaking time in this assembly and 50% of the final report." And to me, that shows that you know what: even on fundamental issues like end-of-life, but also like abortion in Ireland, people can find a common ground—you can call it a common interest—but it’s possible to solve some problems, to address some issues in a way that reconciles people somewhat, even if temporarily, for the sake of moving forward and addressing pressing issues.

Democracy vs. Illiberalism
Andrew Keen: I think some people might be listening to this and wondering whether your politics without politicians is a kind of illiberalism. This... books have been written, as you know, on Rousseau and the general will, and Rousseau being influential in the birth of totalitarianism or authoritarianism. The foundations of liberalism, particularly in theorists like John Stuart Mill, rest on the importance of the minority rather than the majority—a fear of majoritarian rule. Is your vision, this case for citizen rule, this politics without politicians... is it a form of illiberalism?

Hélène Landemore: No. No, no. Oh my god, no. It’s really interesting to me the minute you start saying we should democratize something, the suspicion is immediately, "Oh my god, this is going to lead to Stalinism or god knows what." But okay, I’ve heard that objection many times. I would say that in this book, I take for granted a number of parameters, including a constitutional framework that entrenches individual rights. I’m not questioning that framework of liberalism.

What I would say, though, is that at the margin, I think our fear of the tyranny of the majority I think has led us to empower powerful minorities in a way that is profoundly undemocratic. And so, I do think that I would want to question certain counter-majoritarian thresholds or institutions like the extreme power of the Senate to block things coming out of the legislature. Maybe even question some dogma around the independence of certain agencies like the Fed. I’m not in favor of doing what Trump wants, which is to completely control the Federal Reserve. But I do think that maybe the Federal Reserve should be accountable to some form of body that would be representative of the interests of the larger public—for example, a citizen jury of some sort.

Because it always struck me that the Fed has so much power over interest rates that basically they can slow down the economy when wages are growing. But on the other... so basically, they have the capacity to punish workers for being in a good situation. But on the other hand of that, another source of inflation's not just wages, it’s markups in corporate prices, in the corporations' prices and the benefits they take. And on that end, there’s no mechanism to stop that. So, there’s an imbalance in the way the system is run that to me signals that we’ve given too much power to corporate interests, economic interests, powerful minorities again. And we know political science tells us that our systems—and it’s true not just in the U.S., it’s true across all advanced democracies—that our democracies are, on net, overall responsive to the preferences and interests of the affluent. So, I don’t think it’s illiberal to say, "Hey, could we just redress the imbalance here? Could we do something to include more voices in the places where decisions are taken? Could we do something to relax maybe the things that constrain the influence of majorities?" I don’t think that’s illiberal at all. I think it’s just democratic.

Conclusion
Andrew Keen: So much interesting to think about. This new book, Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule, is out this week. Everyone—particularly interested in citizen assemblies and this democratization of 21st-century politics—needs to read it. Hélène, finally, where else should people look? You mentioned your Connecticut issue, your Connecticut initiative. I know there are citizen assembly initiatives all around the world—Belgium, France, Ireland, mentioned already. What should people do if they’re intrigued beyond reading your book? Should they form their own citizen assembly initiative?

Hélène Landemore: They should try it at home. There are some guidelines now that are available for free. There are various groups that can give some help in putting this together. I think the more people experiment themselves, the more they’ll be convinced that the wisdom and common sense of their neighbors can actually be turned into something positive. And we need to channel the civic capacities of our fellow citizens because right now, I think we’re too alienated, too isolated, doomscrolling all day in despair, and this is not going to end well. So, having something to do, like organizing a citizen's assembly or rethinking even the governance structure of the business you’re running, I think that could be a way to invest your civic energy somewhere useful.

I should also mention—I really want to mention that what’s giving me hope and also explains why I think I’m more both radical and practical than six years ago—is that I’m now working with economists as well who think that the model of citizen's assemblies could be used to reform corporate structures who are not doing justice to the preferences of shareholders. So, it’s not radical in the sense of we’re not touching the structure of capitalism. We’re respecting the fact that it’s shareholder primacy and all of that. But we’re just trying to make the will of the shareholders meaningful, which it isn’t currently.

There are things like pass-through voting that, in fact, are transferring only the will of a tiny fraction and it’s not very deliberative or informed and there’s so much rational apathy that in fact, it’s just not working. So if you had a random sample of investors deliberating about, "Okay, is it ethical to continue investing in fossil fuel energy? Or is it ethical to... are we ready to pay the price of treating animals more humanely in our meat industry?" Stuff like that. And they would be weighing the pros and cons and the tradeoffs between being ethical and having a nice return on their investment. I think it would do a lot of good already if we could improve that. So, that’s the work I’m doing currently with two economists: Oliver Hart at Harvard and Luigi Zingales at the University of Chicago. And you know, who knows? I think we’re waiting to implement that and see how it goes, but there’s a lot going on at the moment. I think people are ready for new things.

Andrew Keen: In other words, we can all become jolly hostesses. Is that...

Hélène Landemore: Yes.

Andrew Keen: Yes. Hélène Landemore, thank you so much. Always such a pleasure to talk to you. And good luck with this book, which I think is going to spark a lot of interest.

Hélène Landemore: Thank you, Andrew.

Andrew Keen: Hi, this is Andrew again. Thank you so much for listening to or watching the show. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe. We’re on Substack, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, all the platforms. And I’d be very curious as to your comments as well on what you think of the show, how it can be improved, and the kind of guests that you would enjoy hearing or listening to in future. Thank you again.