POLITICS WITHOUT POLITICIANS

An intriguing thought experiment: What if they held an election and nobody came?

“While electoral representation may have made sense two centuries ago, in a vastly different context and for very different populations, it’s no longer up to the task, especially in modern societies of educated citizens with access to information.” So argues Yale University political scientist Landemore, who, in her native France and elsewhere, has studied referendums and other measures to increase citizen involvement in government and reduce the baneful effects of professional politicians—who, she remarks in passing, are mostly rich white men who seem to be in it for the power and not the service. Thus, elections won’t do the trick: The people who run for office are the problem. Building on William Buckley’s famously acerbic note that he’d rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the phone book than by the Harvard faculty (Buckley was a Yalie too, of course), Landemore suggests an alternate system in which citizens are drawn by national lottery to deliberate “for extended periods in a parliamentlike institution” on issues such as the housing shortage or assisted suicide. These citizens are to be served with information and expertise by a cadre of civil servants—the dreaded “deep state”—but are otherwise free to formulate their own solutions. Admitting that, as a “radical democrat,” she’s proposing something that’s never been wholly tried, Landemore goes further: If there’s a legislature by lottery, then does electing a president make sense? That said, Landemore recounts examples of citizen democracy in action, as when Icelandic civilians were drafted to write a new constitution. A bonus, she notes, is that while there is certainly disagreement in these processes, there’s nothing of the rancor and polarization that passes for government today.

A proposal for democratic revitalization that’s well presented—and worth considering.