Podcast appearances and mentions of helene landemore

"How can you not be a populist in this day and age?" — Hélène LandemoreIn 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 GuestHélène 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).ReferencesThinkers discussed:●      G.K. Chesterton was the British essayist who defined democracy as an "attempt, like that of a jolly hostess, to bring the shy people out"—a vision Landemore finds more inspiring than technical definitions about elite selection.●      James Madison and the Federalists designed a republic meant to filter popular passions through elected representatives; Landemore has sympathy for their anti-Federalist opponents who wanted legislatures that looked like "a mini-portrait of the people."●      Alexis de Tocqueville warned about the dangers of trusting ordinary people—a caution Landemore pushes back against, arguing that voters respond to the limited choices they're given.●      Max Weber wrote "Politics as a Vocation" (1919), arguing that politics requires a special calling; Landemore questions whether it should be a profession at all.●      Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his concept of the general will has been blamed for totalitarian impulses; Landemore rejects the comparison, insisting her vision preserves liberal constitutional frameworks.●      Joseph Schumpeter defined democracy as "a method for elite selection"—precisely the technocratic framing Landemore wants to overturn.Citizen assembly experiments mentioned:●      The Irish Citizens' Assembly on abortion (2016-2017) is often cited as proof that randomly selected citizens can deliberate on divisive issues and reach workable conclusions.●      The French Citizens' Convention on End-of-Life (2022-2023) found common ground between pro- and anti-euthanasia factions by focusing on palliative care—a case Landemore observed firsthand.●      The French Citizens' Convention for Climate (2019-2020) brought 150 randomly selected citizens together to propose climate policy; participants were paid 84-95 Euros per day.●      The Connecticut citizen assembly on local public services, planned for summer 2026, will be the first state-level citizen assembly in the United States. Landemore is directing its design.Also mentioned:●      Zephyr Teachout is the left-wing populist who called Landemore a "reluctant populist."●      Oliver Hart (Harvard) and Luigi Zingales (Chicago) are economists working with Landemore to apply the citizen assembly model to corporate governance reform.●      The Council of 500 was the Athenian deliberative body whose members were selected by lottery, with a rotating chair appointed daily.●      John Stuart Mill is the liberal theorist whose emphasis on minority rights raises the question of whether Landemore's majoritarianism is illiberal. She says no.About Keen On AmericaNobody 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.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotifyChapters:(00:00) - Chapter 1 (00:00) - Six years from New Yorker profile to book (01:14) - Politics as amateur sport (02:08) - What the Greeks got right (04:03) - Citizen assemblies: jury duty on steroids (06:21) - The Yale professor who speaks for ordinary people (07:11) - Rousseau and the age of innocence (08:41) - The gerontocracy problem (09:33) - Do we need a communitarian impulse? (11:30) - Experts on tap, not on top (15:15) - The reluctant populist (17:01) - Can we trust ordinary people? (19:11) - How it works at scale (23:14) - Why professional politicians are failing (26:15) - Max Weber and politics as vocation (29:08) - Leaders who emerge organically (30:04) - Rejecting Madison and the Federalists (32:26) - Finding common intere...

What if we harnessed the collective wisdom of the crowds and delegated democratic leadership to the masses?In her book "Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the 21st Century", Yale political scientist Hélène Landemore proposes a radically new vision for "what genuine democratic representation means and how we could open up our narrow electoral institutions to ordinary citizens, including via [what she calls] open mini-publics." Drawing from ancient Athenian democracy of the past and the promise of harnessing digital technologies of the future, she joins Bethany and Luigi to talk through this vision of participatory democracy. They discuss how to best harness human nature for agency and impact, ensure transparency to provide accountability in the face of private vested interests, and ultimately its implications for market capitalism.

In this episode of “Keen On”, Andrew is joined by Rob Reich, the author of “System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot”, to expose how big tech's relentless focus on optimization is driving a future that reinforces discrimination, erodes privacy, displaces workers, and pollutes the information we get. Rob Reich is professor of political science and, by courtesy, professor of philosophy and at the Graduate School of Education, at Stanford University. He is the director of the Center for Ethics in Society and co-director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (publisher of the Stanford Social Innovation Review), and associate director of the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. His scholarship in political theory engages with the work of social scientists and engineers. His next book is Digital Technology and Democratic Theory (edited with Helene Landemore and Lucy Bernholz, University of Chicago Press). He is the author of Just Giving: Why Philanthropy is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better (Princeton University Press, 2018) and Philanthropy in Democratic Societies: History, Institutions, Values (edited with Chiara Cordelli and Lucy Bernholz, University of Chicago Press, 2016). He is also the author of several books on education: Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in American Education (University of Chicago Press, 2002) and Education, Justice, and Democracy (edited with Danielle Allen, University of Chicago Press, 2013). Reich is the recipient of multiple teaching awards, including the Walter J. Gores award, Stanford's highest honor for teaching. He was a sixth grade teacher at Rusk Elementary School in Houston, Texas before attending graduate school. He is a board member of the magazine Boston Review, of Giving Tuesday, and at the Spencer Foundation. Visit our website: https://lithub.com/story-type/keen-on/ Email Andrew: a.keen@me.com Watch the show live on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ajkeen Watch the show live on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankeen/ Watch the show live on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lithub Watch the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/LiteraryHub/videos Subscribe to Andrew's newsletter: https://andrew2ec.substack.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 9 brings us a conversation with Helene Landemore, political theorist and Professor of Political Science at Yale University. Among authoring several books, she acted as an advisor to the Parliaments of Finland and France on inclusive decision-making and is currently serving as expert consultant for the French government at the Convention Citoyenne, a policy making experimentation with randomly selected citizens. We discuss deliberative democracy, collective intelligence, open democracy and the vision of democratic societies of the future.   

A conversation with Helene Landemore about her recent book Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century (Princeton UP)

In this podcast you will learn - 1. How to choose a career in social sciences? 2. What might politics without politicians look like 3. Practical ways to make democracy more inclusiveHélène Landemore is Associate Professor of Political Science, with Tenure. Her research and teaching interests include democratic theory, political epistemology, theories of justice, the philosophy of social sciences (particularly economics), constitutional processes and theories, and workplace democracy.Her first book (in French) Hume. Probabilité et Choix Raisonnable (PUF: 2004) was a philosophical investigation of David Hume’s theory of decision-making. Her second book (in English) Democratic Reason won the Montreal Manuscript Workshop Award in 2011; the Elaine and David Spitz Prize in 2015; and the 2018 APSA “Ideas, Knowledge, and Politics” section book award. Hélène’s third book–Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the 21st Century (under contract with Princeton University Press)–develops a new paradigm of democracy in which the exercise of power is as little gated as possible, even as it depends on representative structures to make it possible. In this version of popular rule, power is equally open to all, as opposed to just those who happen to stand out in the eyes of others (as in electoral democracies). The book centrally defends the use of non-electoral yet democratic forms of representation, including “lottocratic,” “self-selected,” and “liquid” representation.Hélène is also co-editor with Jon Elster of Collective Wisdom: Principles and Mechanisms (Cambridge University Press 2012), and is currently working on a new edited volume project on Digital Technology and Democratic Theory, together with Rob Reich and Lucy Bernholz at Stanford.

Helene Landemore is Associate Professor in the Political Science Department at Yale University. She defends the idea that democracy succeeds at harnessing the collective wisdom of the citizenry. This view is spelled out in her 2013 book Democratic Reason (Princeton University Press 2013). Landemore is currently completing a new book about the institutional design of a smart democracy.  

Welcome to episode 18 in Season 2 of Real Democracy Now! a podcast. This episode is part 4 of the series where my guests share their views in response to the question: If you could change one thing about our system of democracy what would it be? And it is also the last episode in Season 2 about representative democracy. I’ll be taking a break to put together Season 3 looking at Elections, voting and alternatives.   First up let’s hear from Professor Nadia Urbinati’s response to this question. Nadia is is a Professor of Political Theory and Hellenic Studies at Columbia University. She is a political theorist who specialises in modern and contemporary political thought and the democratic and anti-democratic traditions. I spoke with Nadia about the development of representative democracy in episode 2 of Season 2.   Next is Dr Simon Longstaff is the Executive Director of the Ethics Centre here in Sydney Australia. Simon was my guest in episode 17 of Season 2 talking about the relationship between democracy and ethics.   Lewis Adams who was a juror on the Infrastructure Victoria Citizens’ Jury in 2015 and a guest on Episode 17 in Season 1.   Nancy Thomas is the Director of the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education in the Jonathan M Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts College. My interview with Nancy will be published in a later season of the podcast.    Helene Landemore is Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University. Her research interests encompass democratic theory, theories of justice, Enlightenment thinkers, and the philosophy of social sciences.   Jean-Paul Gagnon from the University of Canberra. Jean-Paul is a philosopher of democracy specialising in democratic theory. I spoke with Jean-Paul in Episode 6 in Season 2 about his work identifying the many adjectives associated with democracy.   Harm van Dijk is one of the founders of the G1000 in the Netherlands. I spoke with Harm in Episode 15 in Season 1 about the design of the G1000 there.   The next person to answer the question is Professor James Fishkin who holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University where he is Professor of Communication, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Deliberative Democracy. I spoke with Professor Fishkin about deliberative polling in episode 16 in Season 1.   Andy Holdup who was a member of the Citizens’ Assembly South in Southhampton in the UK in 2015 and also a guest on episode 17 in Season 1.   And finally, we hear from Benjamin Isakhan who is Associate Professor of Politics and Policy Studies and Founding Director of POLIS, a research network for Politics and International Relations in the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization at Deakin University, Australia. I spoke with Ben in episode 4 of Season 2 about non-Western democracy.    Thank you for joining me for Season 2 of Real Democracy Now! a podcast, looking at how representative democracy developed and how it operates. I’ll be back with Season 3 on Elections, voting and alternatives in September 2017. If you haven’t yet subscribed to the podcast, I’d suggest you do that now so that when Season 3 starts you’ll automatically have those episodes downloaded onto your podcast app. 

Helene Landemore is an A/Professor of Political Science at Yale University. Her research interests include democratic theory and theories of justice. Her book Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many, was based on her PhD research in which she demonstrated that decisions taken by the many are more likely to be right than decisions taken by the few. Helene is currently working on another book about post-representative democracy, a hopefully not too distant future, where democratic innovations are implemented and truly change the nature of the relationship between citizens and their representatives.  

We’re all familiar with the thought that democracy is merely the rule of the unwise mob. In the hands of Plato and a long line of philosophers since him, this thought has been developed into a formidable anti-democratic argument: Only truth or wisdom confer authority, and since democracy is the rule of the unwise, it has no authority.  This rough line of argument has proven so formidable, in fact, that many democratic theorists have tried to evade it by explicitly denying that politics has anything to do with wisdom.  But another strand of democratic theory takes the argument by the horns and tries to show that democracy is indeed epistemically sound.  Some of these views try to show that democracy, warts and all, is yet wiser than the alternatives.  But others have proposed a more ambitious reply according to which democracy has a positive epistemic value. In her new book, Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many (Princeton University Press, 2012), Helene Landemore pursues this more ambitious path.  She argues that empirical data pertaining to the epistemic significance of cognitive diversity shows that democracy is uniquely placed to supply distinctive epistemic goods.  Along the way, she explores a range of current findings regarding the “wisdom of crowds”  and also engages core issues at the heart of normative political theory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re all familiar with the thought that democracy is merely the rule of the unwise mob. In the hands of Plato and a long line of philosophers since him, this thought has been developed into a formidable anti-democratic argument: Only truth or wisdom confer authority, and since democracy is the rule of the unwise, it has no authority.  This rough line of argument has proven so formidable, in fact, that many democratic theorists have tried to evade it by explicitly denying that politics has anything to do with wisdom.  But another strand of democratic theory takes the argument by the horns and tries to show that democracy is indeed epistemically sound.  Some of these views try to show that democracy, warts and all, is yet wiser than the alternatives.  But others have proposed a more ambitious reply according to which democracy has a positive epistemic value. In her new book, Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many (Princeton University Press, 2012), Helene Landemore pursues this more ambitious path.  She argues that empirical data pertaining to the epistemic significance of cognitive diversity shows that democracy is uniquely placed to supply distinctive epistemic goods.  Along the way, she explores a range of current findings regarding the “wisdom of crowds”  and also engages core issues at the heart of normative political theory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re all familiar with the thought that democracy is merely the rule of the unwise mob. In the hands of Plato and a long line of philosophers since him, this thought has been developed into a formidable anti-democratic argument: Only truth or wisdom confer authority, and since democracy is the rule of the unwise, it has no authority.  This rough line of argument has proven so formidable, in fact, that many democratic theorists have tried to evade it by explicitly denying that politics has anything to do with wisdom.  But another strand of democratic theory takes the argument by the horns and tries to show that democracy is indeed epistemically sound.  Some of these views try to show that democracy, warts and all, is yet wiser than the alternatives.  But others have proposed a more ambitious reply according to which democracy has a positive epistemic value. In her new book, Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many (Princeton University Press, 2012), Helene Landemore pursues this more ambitious path.  She argues that empirical data pertaining to the epistemic significance of cognitive diversity shows that democracy is uniquely placed to supply distinctive epistemic goods.  Along the way, she explores a range of current findings regarding the “wisdom of crowds”  and also engages core issues at the heart of normative political theory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re all familiar with the thought that democracy is merely the rule of the unwise mob. In the hands of Plato and a long line of philosophers since him, this thought has been developed into a formidable anti-democratic argument: Only truth or wisdom confer authority, and since democracy is the...