"How can you not be a populist in this day and age?" — Hélène Landemore

In February 2020, The New Yorker profiled a Yale professor making the case for citizen rule. Six years later, that political scientist, Hélène Landemore, has a new book entitled Politics Without Politicians arguing that politics should be "an amateur sport instead of an expert's job" and that randomly selected citizen assemblies should replace representative democracy. Landemore calls it "jury duty on steroids."

Landemore draws on her experience observing France's Citizens' Conventions on both climate and end-of-life issues to now direct Connecticut's first state-level citizen assembly. We discuss why the Greeks used lotteries instead of elections, what G.K. Chesterton meant by imagining democracy as a "jolly hostess," and why she has sympathy for the anti-Federalists who lost the argument about the best form of American government to Madison. When I ask if she's comfortable being called a populist, she doesn't flinch: "If the choice is between populist and elitist, I don't know how you can not be a populist." From the Damon Wells'58 Professor of Political Science at Yale, this might sound a tad suicidal. At least professionally. But Landemore's jolly argument for a politics without politicians is the type of message that will win elections in our populist age.

About the Guest
Hélène Landemore is the Damon Wells'58 Professor of Political Science at Yale University. She is the author of Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule (2026) and Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century (2020).
References

Thinkers discussed:
G.K. Chesterton defined democracy as bringing "the shy people out": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton
James Madison and the Federalists designed a republic to filter popular passions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Madison
Alexis de Tocqueville warned about trusting ordinary people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville
Max Weber wrote "Politics as a Vocation" (1919): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the general will: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau

Citizen assembly experiments:
Irish Citizens' Assembly on abortion (2016-2017): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Assembly_(Ireland)
French Citizens' Convention on End-of-Life (2022-2023): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Convention_on_End_of_Life
French Citizens' Convention for Climate (2019-2020): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Convention_for_Climate
Also mentioned:
Zephyr Teachout called Landemore a "reluctant populist": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zephyr_Teachout
Oliver Hart and Luigi Zingales are working with Landemore on corporate governance reform: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Hart_(economist)
The Athenian Council of 500 selected members by lottery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boule_(ancient_Greece)

About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/keen-on-america/id1448694012 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4MvPXVxAI8u5LtMJIr4S1b

Chapters:
00:00:00 Six years from New Yorker profile to book
00:01:14 Politics as amateur sport
00:02:08 What the Greeks got right
00:04:03 Citizen assemblies: jury duty on steroids
00:06:21 The Yale professor who speaks for ordinary people
00:07:11 Rousseau and the age of innocence
00:08:41 The gerontocracy problem
00:09:33 Do we need a communitarian impulse?
00:11:30 Experts on tap, not on top
00:15:15 The reluctant populist
00:17:01 Can we trust ordinary people?
00:19:11 How it works at scale
00:23:14 Why professional politicians are failing
00:26:15 Max Weber and politics as vocation
00:29:08 Leaders who emerge organically
00:30:04 Rejecting Madison and the Federalists
00:32:26 Finding common interest through deliberation
00:36:31 Is this illiberalism?
00:40:17 Connecticut's citizen assembly experiment
00:44:03 We can all become jolly hostesses