{"id":351,"date":"2026-06-29T05:05:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T05:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/housingnewsamerica.com\/?p=351"},"modified":"2026-06-29T05:05:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T05:05:16","slug":"a-democracy-safe-for-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housingnewsamerica.com\/?p=351","title":{"rendered":"A Democracy Safe for the World"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Over the past decade or two, concerns about democracy\u2019s future have moved to the center of political debate. In many long-established democracies once thought stable and secure, polarization has risen, trust in political institutions has fallen, and governments appear unable to respond effectively to the challenges their countries face. In the United States, internal divisions, political dissatisfaction, and institutional dysfunction have become so severe over the past year that the country is backsliding \u201cmuch faster\u201d than \u201cany other democracy in modern times,\u201d according to the think tank Varieties of Democracy.<\/p>\n

Read more Europe Goes Its Own Way<\/a><\/p>\n

Scholars, activists, philanthropies, and nonprofits across the United States and Europe\u2014and across the ideological spectrum\u2014have responded by turning their attention and resources to fixing what is wrong with democracy. Most assume that the basic structure of representative democracy is sound and that its problems can be addressed by improving the institutions and procedures through which it operates. But not everyone shares that view. To some, the crisis of democracy goes deeper\u2014it derives from a system that is so rotten, corrupt, unrepresentative, and incompetent that it is beyond reform.<\/p>\n

Today, this critique is commonly associated with the populist right and the far right. In the United States and elsewhere, some right-wing intellectuals and activists argue that liberal democracies should give way to illiberal regimes that still hold elections but restrict rights and that will promote the \u201ccommon good,\u201d traditional values, and nationalist projects that emphasize ethnic and religioushomogeneity. Some argue that democracy must be discarded altogether in favor of strongman rule or some form of monarchy.<\/p>\n

Outside those right-wing circles, other thinkers begin from the same premise\u2014that contemporary democracy is fundamentally unworkable\u2014but arrive at very different conclusions about what should replace the existing system. One such proposal comes from H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Landemore, a professor of political science at Yale. Landemore is hardly opposed to democracy; indeed, she is a defender of democracy, albeit an increasingly critical one. Her first book, Democratic Reason<\/em>, celebrated the system\u2019s advantages over other forms of government. Her second, Open Democracy<\/em>, argued that democracy could be improved if it allowed citizens more direct influence and participation. Her latest book, Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule, <\/em>goes a step further. In it, Landemore argues that representative democracy is fundamentally flawed and that what is needed is nothing less than a revolution. \u201cIt gives me no pleasure to see myself converging on a conclusion associated with the populists,\u201d she writes on the first page. Yet they \u201chave a point.\u201d The current system \u201cis no longer\u2014if it ever was\u2014capable of delivering either democratic or good governance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Landemore\u2019s solution is a reimagining of democracy from the ground up, replacing representative institutions with direct citizen rule. But just as transitions to illiberalism or authoritarianism are not the answer to democratic malaise, neither is discarding elections and other features of representative democracy that create vital links between citizens and their government. The current system requires repair, not revolution. Making governments more representative and responsive will require a wide variety of reforms, potentially including the kinds of citizens\u2019 assemblies Landemore champions. But such assemblies are one promising improvement among many, not a substitute for representative democracy itself. Contemporary democracy needs all the innovative reforms it can get.<\/p>\n

ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE<\/h3>\n

All modern democracies are representative: rather than governing themselves directly, citizens elect politicians to govern on their behalf. Many definitions of democracy therefore focus on elections. Perhaps the most famous was offered by the early-twentieth-century Austrian political economist Joseph Schumpeter, who defined democracy as an \u201cinstitutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people\u2019s vote.\u201d Adam Przeworski, Schumpeter\u2019s most influential contemporary successor, describes democracy as a system in which rulers are selected through contested elections and incumbents relinquish power when they lose.<\/p>\n

For Landemore, however, this electoral core is precisely the problem. She argues that any attempt to repair democracy while leaving elections at its center is bound to fail because elections create a professional political class that is unsuited to genuinedemocratic rule. As she puts it, members of this group, \u201cwhatever their personal, individual qualities,\u201d cannot create \u201cassemblies capable of either fully democratic representation or smart, optimally beneficial legislation.\u201d One reason is that elections select for a particular type: those who seek power and are prone to be corrupted by it. These are, as Landemore writes, \u201calpha types, the charismatic, the daring, the entitled, the arrogant, even those with no shame whatsoever, and sometimes even the downright psychopathic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elections thus deny meaningful influence to ordinary citizens, especially those she calls the \u201cshy\u201d\u2014\u201cthe unambitious, the selfless, and the accommodating.\u201d The process filters out many of the citizens least attracted to power and, in Landemore\u2019s view, best disposed to exercise it responsibly. And in many countries, elections produce representatives who are disproportionately white, wealthy, and highly educated rather than a cohort that resembles the citizenry at large. Landemore argues that the inevitable result is distorted political outcomes, with electoral systems generating laws and policies that are often \u201cmisaligned with and sometimes even contrary to the political interests of citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n

For many citizens, the good life simply does not entail politics as a vocation.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ultimately, Landemore concludes, democracy should not be understood merely as a method whereby citizens choose representatives and governments at periodic intervals. Instead, democracy should be a \u201cway of life,\u201d with continual public participation. She reimagines the structures of democracy accordingly, proposing that elections, professional politicians, and parties all be eliminated and replaced with a national parliament and local assemblies whose members would be selected by lottery. Members might be called on to serve for extended periods and be compensated for their time and for the expenses associated with attending. Citizens would then vote on the proposals these bodies produce in frequent referendums.<\/p>\n

According to Landemore, this system would have practical and civic advantages. Without professional politicians bending to the wishes of campaign donors and lobbyists, avenues for corruption would disappear. Because they are chosen at random, citizens\u2019 assemblies would more closely approximate the diversity of society than a class of elected officials, enabling them to draw on the \u201ccollective intelligence\u201d of that society and therefore produce better policy outcomes. Most important, she argues, would be the assemblies\u2019 realization of the French Revolution\u2019s promise of \u201cliberty, equality, and fraternity.\u201d (Landemore is French.) Citizens\u2019 assemblies would tap into a classical, positive conception of liberty in which citizens would be devoted \u201cfull-time\u201d to \u201cthe public good and political life.\u201d The assemblies would better embody political equality by opening governance to all citizens. And they could generate solidarity or even what Landemore calls \u201clove,\u201d as citizens governed through assemblies come to see one another as fellows rather than as competitors or strangers.<\/p>\n

To help make her case, Landemore cites recent experiments with citizens\u2019 assemblies. In Iceland, citizens\u2019 assemblies emerged in response to a political crisis in 2008. Tasked with setting the agenda for a revision of the constitution, a randomly selected group of more than 900 citizens produced recommendations, including one\u2014the nationalization of natural resources not already in private hands\u2014that won overwhelming support when put to voters in a 2021 referendum.In Ireland, assemblies have worked alongside existing political institutions to address contentious issues such as same-sex marriage and health-care policy, on several occasions issuing recommendations that were later put before the public. Most famously, an assembly convened in 2016 recommended removing the country\u2019s constitutional ban on abortion, a proposal approved by voters in 2018. Landemore devotes particular attention to French assemblies in which she participated as a researcher and observer. In one of them, set up in 2019 by the French government in response to the \u201cyellow vest\u201d movement, a nationwide wave of protests over fuel taxes and economic inequality that began the previous year, a group of 150 citizens was tasked with proposing climate policies. The group produced scores of recommendations, some of which were later adopted by the government.<\/p>\n

THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER<\/h3>\n

Landemore\u2019s enthusiasm is infectious, and she identifies many real problems with modern democracy. But her suggestion that citizens\u2019 assemblies and referendums can effectively replace existing institutions is overly optimistic. The proposal raises practical concerns: participating in assemblies would require considerable time, and many citizens might be unable or unwilling to serve. Landemore favors compulsory participation, similar to jury duty in the United States. Yet avoidance of jury duty is common, and many Americans receive hardship exemptions, raising doubts about whether a mandatory lottery system could secure the kind of sustained and socially diverse participation she hopes for.<\/p>\n

Holding referendums in which the public ratifies or rejects assembly proposals adds further complications. Historically, referendums have often been plagued by low turnout, and blunt yes-or-no choices can oversimplify complex issues and leave outcomes vulnerable to media and pressure campaigns. The 2016 Brexit referendum illustrates these dangers well: many British voters had limited information about their country\u2019s membership in the European Union, the campaign was rife with misleading claims, and participation was uneven, making it difficult to conclude that the narrow result in favor of leaving the EU truly reflected the will of the people. Similar issues emerged in 2022 in Chile, where a constitution drafted by a convention not unlike Landemore\u2019s citizens\u2019 assemblies was rejected by voters who thought it too radical and complicated.<\/p>\n

Read more The Afghanistan Reckoning<\/a><\/p>\n

Beyond the practical problems lie broader political concerns that bear directly on the outcomes Landemore wants to realize: participation, liberty, equality, solidarity, and citizen rule itself. Citizens\u2019 assemblies would likely involve fewer citizens in meaningful political activity than representative democracy does today. By design, only a tiny fraction of the population would participate at any given time while the rest looked on. As for whether citizens\u2019 assemblies would cultivate civic values and solidarity among those who participate, look again to the example of jury duty. Although many people find jury duty worthwhile, there is little evidence that it leaves them with a sustained interest in law or politics, much less a desire to make politics \u201ca way of life.\u201d For many citizens, the good life simply does not entail politics as a full- or even part-time vocation.And although participants in assemblies might form strong bonds, it is far from clear whether those bonds would endure or generate solidarity among the wider public.<\/p>\n

In addition to being overly optimistic about the benefits of a system composed of citizens\u2019 assemblies, Landemore does not fully grapple with the crucial democratic functions that elections, political parties, and campaigns perform. These institutions do not merely select leaders. They bring politics to the public. It is through electoral competition that politicians are incentivized to seek out, articulate, and respond to public concerns. It is through parties that policy agendas are developed and disseminated and citizens are mobilized and organized. It is through campaigns that citizens receive most of their political information.<\/p>\n

Elections are not everything, but the competitive struggle for votes is one of the main mechanisms through which citizens are engaged, and parties serve as the connective tissue between governments and citizens. Landemore\u2019s system would eliminate this mechanism and sever that connective tissue but offers no way to replace their democratic functions.<\/p>\n

This is the paradox of her proposal. A system designed to increase participation and civic engagement could instead do the opposite. If most citizens knew that they were unlikely ever to serve in an assembly, and if there were no parties, campaigns, or electoral contests to focus their attention in ways referendums cannot, why would they remain informed, organized, or engaged? Why would they follow policy disputes or even know what the central issues are? Rather than democratizing politics, turning the deliberative work over to citizens\u2019 assemblies may depoliticize it.<\/p>\n

NO SILVER BULLET<\/h3>\n

There is no doubt that representative democracy is functioning poorly. But it is one thing to compare an existing system with an ideal and quite another to compare it with realistic alternatives.Politics Without Politicians<\/em> is strongest when it lays out the advantages of citizens\u2019 assemblies and shows how they might improve contemporary democracy; it is weakest when it argues that they should replace representative institutions altogether. To use Landemore\u2019s own terminology, her book is better at making the \u201creformist\u201d case she rejects than the \u201cradical\u201d case she advocates.<\/p>\n

The greater use of citizens\u2019 assemblies in representative democracy could provide real benefits. Informed deliberation among citizens with different backgrounds and perspectives is valuable. As the Icelandic, Irish, and French examples show, assemblies might help established institutions break deadlocks on contentious issues or act as agenda-setting mechanisms, generating proposals that politicians and legislatures could then be obliged to consider, refine, and implement. Yet in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, the path toward stronger democracy lies in combining such innovations with more conventional reforms designed to address deficiencies in representative systems and make them more responsive, representative, and effective.<\/p>\n

In the United States, the party primary system is an obvious source of dysfunction. Turnout in primary elections\u2014when parties choose their candidates for a general election\u2014is extremely low, sometimes only 20 percent of eligible voters, and those who participate tend to be more ideologically extreme than the public as a whole. This system gives politicians powerful incentives to appeal to partisan minorities rather than broad coalitions of voters. Reforms to make legislative seats more competitive could include open primaries, which allow all voters, not just party members, to participate, and ranked-choice voting, which forces candidates to compete for second- and third-choice support beyond their base. Fusion voting, which allows multiple parties to nominate the same candidate, can similarly make the democratic system more responsive. This practice was widespread in the nineteenth century and exists today in some U.S. states, including New York. It gives citizens dissatisfied with the major parties an opportunity to express their preferences, allows small parties to exert influence over big ones, and encourages candidates to widen their appeal.<\/p>\n

Institutional reforms can also reduce the pernicious influence of gerrymandering. The practice has occurred in many democracies; former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, for example, redrew legislative districts to cement his hold on power. In the United States, years of gerrymandering have helped ensure that at least 80 percent of seats in the House of Representatives are firmly in the hands of one party, encouraging politicians to cater to intense partisan minorities. One far-reaching response would be to adopt a proportional representation system in which each U.S. state would function as a single district, and legislative seats would be allocated according to each party\u2019s share of the statewide vote. Such a system, used in many European democracies, would eliminate the opportunity for gerrymandering and encourage the formation of multiple parties, which could improve minority representation, foster coalition building, and potentially reduce toxic partisanship. More modest reforms could also help. States could transfer the authority to draw electoral maps to bipartisan, nonpartisan, or even citizen-led commissions or delegate the task to computer programs that use neutral criteria such as population equality and geographic compactness to draw districts. Such changes would help ensure that voters choose their politicians rather than allowing politicians to choose their voters.<\/p>\n

Elections, parties, and campaigns perform crucial democratic functions.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Campaign financing reform can strengthen democracy, too. In the United States, a series of court cases and legislative changes in recent decades have enabled a dramatic expansion of the role that wealthy Americans play in how campaigns are funded and, by extension, who runs for and wins office. One recent New York Times <\/em>investigation found that billionaires, who account for a tiny fraction of one percent of American society, made 19 percent of all reported federal campaign contributions in 2024; this class contributed an even larger share to some local campaign funds. Politicians who rely on small donors can be pushed toward extreme positions, too, because donors tend to be more partisan than average voters. Regulations to limit the role of money in politics or, better yet, a move to publicly fund campaigns could make politicians more responsive to ordinary citizens and broaden the pool of people able to run for office.<\/p>\n

Yet institutional fixes alone will not be enough to reinvigorate democracy. Civic education will be equally crucial. Decades of disinvestment in the United States and other democracies have contributed to low levels of knowledge about how democracy works and how citizens can shape it. Expanding and improving civic education in schools and elsewhere could help people make more informed political choices, become more active participants in public life, and be better prepared to navigate misinformation, disinformation, and efforts by foreign and domestic actors to manipulate political preferences.<\/p>\n

Democracy, as Landemore correctly notes, also depends on certain habits: mutual respect, a sense of shared community and solidarity, the ability to compromise and cooperate. But as observers of democracy from Alexis de Tocqueville to Robert Putnam have argued, such habits are learned primarily in civil society through everyday interactions in neighborhoods, workplaces, religious communities, parent-teacher associations, running clubs, bowling leagues, and similar settings. In recent decades, Americans\u2019 participation in such associations has declined, making efforts to reverse the trend necessary. Initiatives such as the U.S.-based nonprofit Braver Angels bring together citizens from diverse backgrounds to develop the skills necessary for constructive communication across differences. Expanding student exchange programs that encourage young people to spend time in regions or on campuses very different from their own and public service programs such as AmeriCorps and Service Year Alliance that place participants in communities far from home could help rebuild the crosscutting ties democracy needs. In Europe, meanwhile, some have begun advocating for the revival of mandatory military or public service programs that have declined in recent decades,arguingthat doing so would foster not only military preparedness but also social solidarity by requiring young people to spend extended periods living and working alongside citizens from different backgrounds.<\/p>\n

Democracy is in trouble. There is no silver bullet, and the solutions must be wide-ranging and realistic. The reform agenda should include institutional innovations such as citizens\u2019 assemblies; changes to clearly dysfunctional political, electoral, and campaign finance systems; and bottom-up efforts to rebuild the social and cultural foundations of democratic life. Landemore\u2019s book is valuable not because it persuades readers that representative democracy should be abolished but because it dramatizes how much better the current system could be\u2014and offers one of the many reforms that will be necessary if democracy is to live up to its potential.<\/p>\n

Read more The United States\u2019 Missed Opportunity in Latin America<\/a><\/p>\n

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