Taking politicians out of politics with Hélène Landemore

Summary

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Podcast Summary: ReThinking with Adam Grant

Episode: Taking politicians out of politics with Hélène Landemore
Date: February 10, 2026
Host: Adam Grant
Guest: Hélène Landemore, Political Scientist, Yale University

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Episode Overview

In this thought-provoking episode, Adam Grant sits down with Hélène Landemore to explore her radical vision for the future of democracy: removing career politicians from legislatures and replacing them with randomly selected citizens. Drawing from her book, "Politics Without Politicians," Landemore lays out the case for what she calls “lot-based democracy” and citizen assemblies, arguing that while electoral politics may be broken, the core ideals of democracy are not. Together, Grant and Landemore discuss the philosophical roots, practical mechanics, psychological assumptions, and real-world experiments around this bold idea.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Case for Citizen Assemblies Over Elected Politicians

• Landemore’s Thesis: Electoral politics selects for a narrow class of people, often law-trained and power-seeking, while randomly selected citizen assemblies can represent a fuller, truer cross-section of society.
  • “In my ideal vision, yes, we are replacing elected officials with ordinary citizens for the purpose of legislation. And I understand it’s a leap, but that’s a leap the Greeks did first.” — Hélène Landemore [01:08]
• Real-world Experiments: Iceland’s constitutional process (2010), French Climate Convention (2019–20), and Ireland’s citizens’ assemblies show that large groups of ordinary citizens can responsibly propose and deliberate on laws.
  • “We can actually rewrite the constitution of a country involving nonprofessional politicians …and they did that on the basis of 950 randomly selected citizens.” — Landemore [02:54]
• Host Skepticism: Grant highlights the tension between professional expertise and lay participation, questioning if legal training is necessary for drafting laws.
  • Landemore rebuts: Elected officials themselves outsource much of the technical writing to experts and staff.

2. Human Nature, Trust, and Competence

• Skepticism about Ordinary Citizens: Many people fear that assemblies could be overtaken by “the extreme people in the population.”
  • “Ordinary people are statistically quite average and reasonable. They are engineers, nurses, Uber drivers, craftsmen, workers, students.” — Landemore [02:17]
• On Competence Requirements:
  • Grant suggests a basic civics test; Landemore responds that it’s important for democracy to trust people as they are, drawing parallels to historical exclusion via literacy tests.
  • “It’s at least as much about emotions, bonding, [and] creation of a common identity …for that you really don’t need any competence. You just need to show up as you are.” — Landemore [07:20]
• Power of Lived Experience: Including marginalized members (the homeless, elderly, etc.) changes the nature of deliberations for the better.

3. Democracy’s Core Assumptions and Debates

• Trust Dilemma: Grant and Landemore debate whether trust in ordinary citizens is essential to democracy or a risky gamble.
  • “Either we are committed to democracy …and we trust ordinary citizens, or …we are supporters of oligarchy ruled by the few and presumably the best.” — Landemore [11:11]
• Dangers of Electoral Selection: Grant discusses research suggesting elections attract individuals high in the “dark triad”—narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy
  • “We have an adverse selection problem …the narcissists, Machiavellians, and psychopaths are actually more likely to get elected…” — Grant [14:17]
  • Landemore: “The selection mechanism of elections …over samples for power-hungry people, narcissistic types, [and] corruptible people.” [14:49]

4. Leadership, Humility, and Group Dynamics

• Random Selection’s Psychological Benefits: Randomly selected groups exhibit more humility and collective responsibility; leadership becomes an act of service, not self-aggrandizement.
  • “Knowing that you are randomly assigned to make laws and to set policy, I think is a tremendous protective mechanism against selfishness.” — Grant [15:29]
  • Landemore describes real assembly dynamics: “People in these assemblies feel an enormous sense of duty and humility …there’s a sort of self-regulation to maintain the cohesion.” [16:29]

5. Resistance and Public Perceptions

• Landemore and Grant have both encountered polarized reactions, with many fearing 'mob rule,' lack of competence, or undemocratic outcomes.
  • “I had people leave the room when I talked about stuff like that…‘You’re trying to empower the ignorant masses. It’s dangerous.’” — Landemore [18:24]
• Grant distinguishes between executive (president) and legislative roles—random selection is best suited for large assemblies, not single positions.

6. Statistical Properties and the Jury Analogy

• Lotteries in Practice: For legitimacy, lottery processes need to be transparent and public—much like jury selection.
  • “If we are willing to let randomly selected jurors …determine the innocence or guilt of a person, why would we not extend that to …the work of politicians?” — Grant [22:45]
  • Landemore: “The jury as an institution is a core sort of democratic process. …It assumes you don’t need a particular kind of expertise to pass a moral judgment.” [23:01]

7. Practical Implementation and Challenges

• Logistical Hurdles: How can we ensure the legitimacy of lotteries?
  • Landemore suggests public, transparent procedures, even using simple paper draws for maximal openness [26:48].
  • “We need to have a lottery to choose the people who oversee the integrity of the lottery.” — Grant [27:28]

8. The Urgency of Reform

• Consequences of Inaction:
  • “If you don’t open democracy consciously, structurally, the mob will break it open for you.” — Landemore, quoting her January 6, 2021 tweet [27:39]
  • Citing the French yellow vest movement, Landemore advocates for structural opening of democracy to prevent destructive upheaval.

9. Conditions for Effective Deliberative Democracy

• What Makes an Assembly Work?
  • Diverse and representative sample
  • Sufficient time for deep discussion
  • Ongoing expert support—but support that’s advisory, not authoritative
  • Learning curve for both citizens and experts, involving humility and adaptation
  • “You need time…a sample that’s diverse and representative…expert support.” — Landemore [29:46]

10. Rapid-Fire (Lightning Round)

• Worst current idea about fixing democracy?
  • “That we need less of it…books about 10% less democracy…introduce literacy tests.” — Landemore [34:08]
• Best advice for US Congress?
  • “Support the exploration of lot-based democracy…Follow the example of Irish politicians.” [34:49]
• Dinner party guests for a democracy discussion:
  • Hume, Condorcet, Tocqueville, Manon, maybe Jefferson. “No American Founding Fathers…too elitist.” [36:03, 36:28]
• Changed mind recently:
  • Landemore now sees more merit in considering the challenge of scale in applying citizen assemblies to large, diverse countries. [38:36]

11. Implementing Change

• How to Persuade Politicians to Relinquish Power:
  • Gradual, bottom-up multiplication of citizens’ assemblies showing tangible benefits, until politicians see legitimacy gains outweigh power losses.
  • “You’re going to lose power, but you’re going to gain in legitimacy. And that’s the deal.” — Landemore quoting Belgian politician Magaly Plovie [41:45]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On ‘trusting the people’:
  • “You have to trust people first. You have to empower them with the capacity of choosing their own fate. And then they will measure up and then they will educate themselves.” — Hélène Landemore [11:11]
• On why random selection is not ‘mob rule’:
  • “Democracy by lot is not a form of mob rule. …It’s deliberative.” — Landemore [20:10]
• On adverse selection in electoral politics:
  • “…The narcissists, Machiavellians, and psychopaths are actually more likely to get elected in a system where we vote than if we draw a random sample via lottery.” — Adam Grant [14:17]
• On the humility conferred by random selection:
  • “They feel like, well, I didn’t come here because I deserved it or because I’m special, so I’d better measure up.” — Landemore [16:29]
• On US constitutional stagnation:
  • “We’re so constrained by the gilded cage of the American Constitution that it’s hard to meet the needs and desires of the current population.” — Landemore [36:28]
• On the urgency of opening democracy:
  • “If you don’t open democracy consciously, structurally, the mob will break it open for you.” — Landemore [27:39]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:08] — Landemore outlines her vision for replacing elected officials with randomly selected citizens.
• [02:54] — The Icelandic constitutional process inspires Landemore's thinking.
• [04:34] — Why don't we need mostly lawyers in Congress? Questioning expertise requirements.
• [07:20] — On the role of emotions and social fabric in citizen assemblies.
• [11:11] — The philosophical divide: Trust in people versus technocracy/oligarchy.
• [14:17] — Adverse selection problem in elections: evidence from psychology.
• [16:29] — Effects of random assignment on humility and duty.
• [18:24] — Backlash: Fears of ‘empowering the ignorant masses’.
• [22:45] — Grant draws an analogy to jury service.
• [26:48] — How to ensure lottery legitimacy.
• [27:39] — Quoting Landemore’s tweet on opening democracy or facing mob backlash.
• [29:46] — Landemore’s list of what makes citizen assemblies work.
• [34:08] — Lightning round: Worst and best current ideas about democracy.
• [36:28] — Landemore on the challenges created by the US Constitution.
• [41:45] — Belgian politician on losing power vs. gaining legitimacy.

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Conclusion

This conversation spotlights a bold vision for repairing democracy that is grounded in deep philosophical reflection, rigorous social science, and practical experimentation. Landemore and Grant tackle common objections with empathy and evidence, making a compelling case for continued experimentation with citizen assemblies. They acknowledge the inertia and resistance such change faces, but end on a note of cautious optimism, challenging listeners to rethink their own faith in ordinary people—and the structures that best give expression to democracy’s promise.

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Transcript

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[Alain]

In my ideal vision, yes, we are replacing elected officials with ordinary citizens for the purpose of legislation. And I understand it's a leap, but that's a leap that the Greeks did first. So that's the real test of your faith in ordinary citizens.

[Adam Grant]

Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to Rethinking My Podcast with Ted on the science of what makes us tick. I'm an organizational psychologist and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking. Ellen Landmore is a political scientist at Yale who studies democracy. She's written at length about the role everyday people can play in the politics that shape their lives and and she has a bold idea for fixing politics. In her new book, Politics Without Politicians, Allan argues that electoral politics is broken, but democracy is not. And she asked the question, what would it look like if we replaced career politicians with citizen assemblies filled with people chosen by lot or lottery? It seems like a radical idea, but some countries and at least one US state have already started experimenting with it.

[Alain]

I think what's scary for people is that when they think ordinary citizens, for some reason, they immediately go to, like, the most extreme people in the population. The trolls on the Internet, the disgruntled voters, the mass protesters who break things. But that's not the reality of a random Sample of ordinary citizens. Ordinary people are statistically quite average and reasonable. They are engineers, nurses, uber drivers, craftsmen, workers, staff, stay at home, moms, students.

[Adam Grant]

How did you first come to this idea?

[Alain]

Ah, how did I first come to this idea? I think it started in the 1990s when I read Bernard Manon, the Principles of Representative Government. It was kind of a revelation, but it didn't quite turn me to this more radical vision of politics right away until I would say, I think the second shock was the Icelandic constitutional process. So in2020, when I went to a conference in Reykjavik and was exposed to this, really, to me, a radical way of rethinking the involvement of ordinary citizens in a fundamental thing, which was the writing of the constitution of a country, I was like, wow, so we can actually rewrite the constitution of a country involving non professional politicians. Not only that, but they're actually putting their drafts online for the rest of the public to contribute and chip in their ideas and thoughts. And they did that on the basis of the first sort of brainstorming of a group of 950 randomly selected citizens. Amazing. And at the end they put the final document to a referendum. So all of that seemed to me quite novel. And I think at that point I was like, you know what, let me go back to that book. Let me go back to, I mean I had been researching these ideas for my PhD, so it was not completely like new, but I think it clicked as a viable alternative. It was not just something, oh, we can do this as a supplement to the system, we can actually do this as an entirely different system.

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[Adam Grant]

I have so many questions about how this might work, but I'm struck by the fact that you use the phrase non professional politicians. Some would say professional politician is an oxymoron.

[Alain]

Well, yes, I, I, I think the, the Greeks thought that politics was for amateurs, politics was for ordinary people who didn't make it a job. But we have convinced ourselves that it's a specific type of job, that only certain types of people can do it, especially lawyers. You know, Congress is made up of like something like between 35 and 40% lawyers. Why, why do we really need to go to law school to have something to say about the opioid crisis or, or you know, housing inflation, stuff like that? I, I'm less and less certain.

[Adam Grant]

Well, I, I'm with you there. But just to play devil's advocate, they are legislators, they make laws. Don't you need legal training to do that?

[Alain]

Yes, I would have thought that too. But it turns out when you look closely at what they do in Congress, in parliaments around the world, they actually outsource quite a lot of the actual writing to lobbyists, experts. They come up with the main ideas, they write drafts, and then it's sort of taken up by experts. Well, we can do that too. It's not that difficult. And in fact, I saw it done in the Citizens Convention for Climate in France in 2019 20, and believe me, it was such a shock. It took me, I think it took me about five years for this reality to sort of percolate and become real. Because for a while I was like, well, they're writing these things, they're making proposals, they're setting an agenda. But no, they were actually doing more than that. They were literally proposing legislative measures. And how did they do it? Well, they identified the problems, they listened to experts, they came up with ideas, they considered the trade offs, they put that to paper with the help of facilitators and of course a team of people who support citizen assemblies. And at the end they had an expert team of legal experts who helped them translate these visions and these ideas and these proposals into the legalese required for parliament then to process that and turn it into a bill and a law. But I mean, it's actually doable by ordinary citizens. It turns out.

[Adam Grant]

One of the accountability mechanisms that I've been thinking a lot about is the question of how do we make sure that people do have some competence to do these jobs. I do find it troubling that elected office in America is probably the only complex job that requires no expertise, no skill, no training even. And I wonder if in order to opt into the lottery, you should have to demonstrate some basic civics knowledge, even just pass the test that immigrants have to take to become citizens of the U.S.

[Alain]

Okay, so citizens assemblies, the way they're conducted right now, require zero competence tests or even proof of citizenship, which could be an issue. I think it's open for discussion. The assumption is that you come in as you are with your existing skills and your cognitive competencies, and then you're introduced to difficult topics like urban planning, abortion, end of life, climate, justice. And you spend weeks reading, talking, watching videos, exchanging with your peers, asking questions, bringing in experts of your own choosing, and you basically educate yourself and you educate your peers. That's the idea. And so that means you come in as you are, you have people who are neurodivergent, you have people who are homeless and extremely live under conditions of chronic stress. Right. So they obviously won't be able to contribute as much or in the same quality of knowledge, maybe. But the point is that, and it's a mistake I made early on, I focused too much on these assemblies as sort of tools for the production of collective intelligence, if you want. That was my angle into this world of citizens assemblies and Lord based democracy. Empirically, what I found out is that it's at least as much about emotions, bonding, creation of a common identity, identification of common goals. And for that you really don't need any competence. Again, you just need to show up as you are because you're part of that social fabric and people need to to know and understand that social fabric. So for example, I have colleagues who ask me, why do we need to have homeless people in these assemblies? Again, they're chronically stressed, they have very tough lives, they don't show up on time, they have to be accompanied by special organizations. It's a lot of work. Well, the thing is, it changes the nature of the conversation. It reminds people of the consequences of certain housing policies, of cost of evicting people, and elected assemblies over represent homeowners. Right? So the conversation is not the same. And then when you've met someone who's been living under the threat of eviction or has been evicted, and you realize, you know what? It doesn't stop them from having dreams and being full persons with plans and desires, it really changes the way you even talk about them. They're no longer like homeless people or in the extreme, something like what President Hollande said, which really shocked me to this day. The teethless people. You wouldn't dream of calling them that. So it policies, the conversation, it reminds everybody of the stakes. Okay, well, that's the most extreme case. But you could also think of like, you know, you have a lot of retired people in the French assemblies because we are an aging population. Some of them may not be contributing to the technical aspects of a conversation that much, but they care. They bring sweets, they give massages to the stressed participants, they reconcile people, they talk to their youth and share wisdom. And all of that is extremely good to heal the political body. Because we are in pain right now. People are enraged, people are alone, they are disaffected. And I think these assemblies sort of take on that therapeutic function as well.

[Adam Grant]

Okay, so if we're going to have ordinary citizens lead democracy, don't we have to put a lot of trust in people? The assumptions that you're making about human nature are not assumptions that everyone is comfortable with. They happen to be assumptions I share as an organizational psychologist, but I'd love to hear you unpack them philosophically.

[Alain]

Well, the trust in ordinary people, it's something that you would think is a given in an authentic democracy. But the revelation I've had over the last 20 years, I would say, including in myself, is that we don't have it, we don't cultivate it, we don't believe in it. Actually we are very distrustful of other people. But I think we have to choose. Either we are committed to democracy, rule of the people, by the people, for the people, and we trust ordinary citizens, or we don't trust ordinary citizens. And in that case we have to admit that we are supporters of oligarchy ruled by the few and presumably the best. So a form of aristocracy or maybe a form of technocracy. If we think politics is a matter of expertise and knowledge and competence, then we should look to, I don't know, the China model, which is based on a meritocratic selection of rulers. Now you might ask, okay, but where does this faith in the ordinary people come from? Do we need evidence? Do we need empirical evidence for it? I think the minute you start asking for empirical evidence, in a way you are in trouble. Because every time we've asked questions about, well, does this category of people know enough to be allowed to have a say about the common good? Right. Well, we create all kinds of literacy tests and obstacles and we find all kinds of excuses to say, well, they don't know enough yet. Let's wait. You know women, it's too soon. They will vote like their husbands. Black people, you know, not quite there yet. Let's wait, let's wait. So, you know, there's a civil rights activist, W.E.B. du Bois, also a political theorist, who said political rights always precede education. It's never the other way around. You have to trust people first. You have to empower them with the capacity of choosing their own fate. And then they will measure up and then they will educate themselves. The Greeks did it without any empirical evidence. They went from an aristocracy of sorts to a plutocracy of sorts. So that sort of democratized access to power if you are rich enough. And then they decided to make the final leap, which is, you know what, we're going to remove property qualifications and empower the poorest of the poor. In fact, we're going to enable them to participate by paying them for participation.

[Adam Grant]

So if we wanted to have a citizen led government and get rid of politicians, what would this look like? I'm thinking of the line from William F. Buckley and I'm paraphrasing here, but I'd rather be governed by the first 535 people in the phone book than the current members of Congress. So are we just literally replacing elected officials with a lottery?

[Alain]

Yes, that's the model in politics without politicians. That's a vision that the law of the land is in the hands of ordinary citizens. Ordinary people are, on average, quite reasonable. And then you have these extreme outliers who create a lot of problems and suck up all the oxygen and give this really bad reputation to ordinary people, if you want.

[Adam Grant]

Well, I would take that a step further even and say you worry about the extremes and the trolls. We've already elected some of those people.

[Alain]

Oh, my goodness, yes.

[Adam Grant]

And in fact, I think we have an adverse selection problem where empirically, there's a growing body of evidence, and in my field, that the dark triad personality traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy both draw people to want power and also make them better at getting it because they excel at superficial charm and being manipulative. And so the narcissist, Machiavellians and psychopaths are actually more likely to get elected in a system where we vote than if we draw a random sample via lottery.

[Alain]

Absolutely. And in fact, see, it's so interesting that the prejudice against ordinary people is so deeply ingrained, including in myself, that I always feel the need to defend ordinary citizens, as if the elected guys, often they are guys, were not pathological to begin with. So I think, yes, the selection mechanism of elections over samples for power hungry people, narcissistic types, corruptible people. I mean, and don't get me wrong, there are a lot of very good people in politics. I've met them, I work with them, I try to bring about change through them. But unfortunately, there's also an overrepresentation of very, very dangerous types.

[Adam Grant]

Actually, yes. And I would make the case, and I'm so curious to hear your reaction to this. I think there's a strong empirical case now that not only do we get better qualities in randomly selected people, but we actually, by virtue of random selection, cultivate better leadership. I'm thinking of two papers. Please stop me if you're familiar with either of these. There's one by Haslam and colleagues and another by Berger and colleagues where they show that when groups randomly elect a leader, as opposed to choosing a leader, the leader shows less hubris, it's less likely to go to their head, they're less likely to think, well, I'm the chosen One, I know what's best for everyone and more likely to take on a servant leadership kind of role. And, and I think the biggest danger we have right now in politics is not ignorance, it's selfishness. And knowing that you are randomly assigned to make laws and to set policy, I think is a tremendous protective mechanism against selfishness.

[Alain]

Absolutely. I wasn't aware of that paper, although you wrote something for the New York Times some time ago where you mentioned those results. I should have gotten back to them. But anyway, the thing is that for me, what I observed empirically is that the people in these assemblies feel an enormous sense of duty and humility and they feel like, well, I didn't come here because I deserved it or because I'm special, so I'd better measure up. And they do. And they also discover the power of like what I call collective intelligence in earlier books, the fact that your contributions is enhanced through the collective process of deliberation and working through problems together. So it's not even clear who is responsible for what. It's truly a collective output in a way. And so they can all claim a part in it, but they can't causally figure out who's more responsible for what. And so that really maintains a sense of equality and the sense that we are all in it together. And yes, there are some natural leaders that emerge and these speak better in the plenaries and they maybe work a little bit harder than others, et cetera, but it doesn't really translate into superiority or a right to control the proceedings or a right to assert themselves. On the contrary, when some people do that, because inevitably you still have politician types in the sample, that happens, they get sort of ostracized actually, or people get quiet and they just don't pick up on what they say and they move on. And so there's a sort of self regulation to maintain the cohesion of the group, the equality, and to preserve the conditions for this collective intelligence to emerge.

[Adam Grant]

Actually, I find this vision so compelling and okay, you mentioned the New York Times piece I wrote a few years ago. I have to say I've never gotten such a polarizing reaction to anything that I've written.

[Alain]

Yeah, I'm not surprised.

[Adam Grant]

In my whole career. You're not surprised? Why not?

[Alain]

No. Oh, because I get the same reactions. I'm sort of mild mannered and not antagonistic and I had people leave the room when I talked about stuff like that. In Chile, there's a guy who stood up and said to me, you're trying to empower the ignorant masses. It's dangerous. And he just left. I mean, and we had the president of the French national assembly on the first day of the citizens Convention, stand up in front of the 184 members of this assembly and tell them it's out of the question, that, you know, random selection replaces election. You have no legitimacy but the one we gave you. I mean, the anger and the fear is palpable in some people.

[Adam Grant]

I find this so surprising because when I look at the comments on that article or slew of emails I got, basically half the people I heard from have said, of course this is the way we should do things. It's the most democratic possible system. To let you know, a truly random selection of people run the show for a temporary period of time. And about half came back and said, this is completely undemocratic. I can't believe you would ever argue for this. And I thought, I don't think it would be a good idea, for example, to randomly select a president in the United States. Giving one person randomly that much power seems like a risky endeavor, but for a group like Congress, as big as it is, I've become increasingly open to the possibility that this would be better than our alternative. So sounds like you've been on board with that for a long time. You've been writing about this for a long time. How do you think about getting people from the resistance that they feel to where you and I are?

[Alain]

I think two things. I think you have to understand a little bit of maybe statistics or probability theory to understand that indeed, no one's proposing to choose the president by lot because for the law of large numbers to work its magic, you need numbers. And so you need to choose an assembly that's large enough. Right? So for an executive function like that, you'd probably want a different mechanism. A president of the United States is not just coordinating. An assembly is actually, you know, capable of bombing countries. So you don't want that. So it's essentially for assemblies, legislative assemblies. Although what I find fascinating is that within The Council of 500 in ancient Greece, for example, the chair himself was chosen by lot. So it's not that they thought that even for that one person, that one function, which was to sort of coordinate the 500 randomly selected members, they didn't think, oh, we need somebody very competent. And, no, they just thought, you know what? Coordination is not that hard. Let's just pick at random. My experience with people being so worried about the undemocratic nature of lot is that they're usually Worried about individual rights and minority oppression and things like that. And they have a, you know, understandable fear of what happened in the 20th century when populist ideas and movements brought to power, you know, like Hitler or just dangerous fascists. And they think that random selection is too close to so called direct democracy. I think it's very different. In my view. It's actually not direct at all because you have a selection process and it's deliberative. But so it's trying to complicate the picture for them of what that really means to have a democracy by lot. Yeah. So I think these are the two things. Understanding a little bit that selection by lot has statistical properties that are actually quite good when applied properly, and understanding that democracy by lot is not a form of mob rule.

[Adam Grant]

Okay, so on the first one, maybe we can make a little progress by replacing high school trigonometry with a basic statistics class, which would be much more useful.

[Alain]

That's possible. Yeah. But that said, statistics is a discipline that was basically formalized, developed, invented in the 19th century. The Greeks didn't have any of those concepts of like a random sample or demographic representativeness. It's just there's a much more fundamental intuition which is, you know, what? If it's going to be a democracy, it's got to be one person, and we can't all participate in politics all the time, then it's got to be one person, one lottery ticket.

[Adam Grant]

In some ways, we already have the proof of concept here, which is our jury system works this way.

[Alain]

Yes, absolutely. Yep.

[Adam Grant]

And so if we are willing to let randomly selected jurors do the work of judges and determine the innocence or guilt of a person, why would we not extend that to saying random citizens can do the work of politicians?

[Alain]

I'm with you. I think the jury as an institution is a core sort of democratic process. I mean, Tocqueville recognized it as a form of the people's sovereignty, actually. And a democratic school of education, its judgment by peers. It assumes that you don't need a particular kind of expertise to pass a moral judgment. So there is a limited but very real core of democratic political power in there.

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[Adam Grant]

I guess one of the trade offs that we have to deal with here is on the one hand I think you're saving a tremendous amount of money and also energy around campaigns. And I think like all the discussions about campaign finance reform and who can actually afford to run for office, that just flies out the window if you go to a lottery. On the other hand, I think about how many questions there already are about voting legitimacy and now I start to think about, wait a minute, we're gonna ask people to trust that a lottery was fair. We can't even get people to believe that the National Basketball association is doing a legitimate lottery. People think it's rigged. How do you think about solving that problem?

[Alain]

Some of my colleagues suggest that we give up on stratification, meaning having quotas for certain categories of people we want to make sure are represented. Given that our samples are usually small, in the range of a few hundreds only. And what you could do is go for a very, very large sample, at least a thousand people maybe, and pick literally on the basis of one person won lottery ticket, and you have little papers in a hat or bowls in an urn, and you do it publicly and you get everybody to go and check and poke in the machine, which is very simple and transparent, kind of like the way we do for counting paper ballots. So it's minimally riggable. If you want, why not? That's another solution.

[Adam Grant]

I'd be willing to try that. It seems like then we need to have a lottery to choose the people who oversee the integrity of the lottery.

[Alain]

Yes, I think lotteries are a solution to a lot of problems.

[Adam Grant]

Okay, so I'm curious about what you think is at stake if we don't go this route. And I want to read you something. You tweeted on January 6, 2021. You wrote, if you don't open democracy, consciously, structurally, the mob will break it open for you.

[Alain]

I think there's a fear of the people in all existing electoral governments. People in power are afraid. And I think the solution is actually to resist that instinct and to open up more. Open up not to the self selected few who are very vocal and angry, but open up to ordinary people. So you can do that through citizens assemblies, you can do that through something like the great national debate that we had in France for two months after the yellow vest movement. So you had the violent demonstrations of protesters, the yellow vests we call them in France. They're people who rejected a fuel tax and decided to don this neon yellow jackets to show themselves and also be safe on the roundabouts where they were protesting on highways and places like that. And these two months of deliberation, conversation, opening up, processing the anger, venting about politics, figuring out solutions. They were very important. And that's not conceding, that's not weakness. I think it's being smart. It's realizing you cannot govern against your own people. If you do that, you're inviting a revolution.

[Adam Grant]

All right, so I'm Just thinking about the sort of the mechanics and complications of how you might make this happen. You had a great piece a few years ago about what an effective deliberative process looks like, and I thought it built so beautifully on your earlier work on collective intelligence and. And did such a nice job summarizing the body of evidence on how we can actually help a group become smarter than the individuals in the room, as opposed to dumber, which is too often the case when groups gather. Walk me through what you see as the key conditions for effective deliberation.

[Alain]

So you need time, that's one thing. You need a sample that's diverse and representative. You need expert support. So it's a common misconception that these assemblies are just like, you know, a random sample that figures out things on their own? Absolutely not. Just like elected officials, they have to be supported by staff, by experts who come to testify and share their knowledge, learn from the citizens as well, because sometimes it changes our perspectives. So there's a back and forth and the proper relationship between the ordinary citizens and the experts. For me, it has to be that the experts are not on top. And it's very hard for both parts to get to that point, because even the education system instills in us that experts know best. So you need to defer to them. And all of a sudden you're placed in this environment where you're no longer deferring, you're learning, but you're also deciding and orienting the use of their knowledge. It's hard. You have to learn to trust yourself and to trust that you're the one in charge on the side of experts. It's also hard because they're used to difference and they come in sometimes with certain expectations about the response to the knowledge they are imparting. But what happens? Because, of course, experts often are very smart people. They quickly get it. They realize, oh, it's not that kind of environment here. I'm at the service of citizens. And so I have to engage differently. I have to stop using complicated words. I have to simplify my PowerPoint. I have to use other techniques to convey knowledge. I have to listen, I have to respond to questions as opposed to imposing a certain vision. So it's a learning curve for everyone.

[Adam Grant]

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[Adam Grant]

Okay, let us go to a lightning round. I have a few questions I want to run by you for rapid fire answers. The first one is what do you think is the worst idea that people circulate right now about fixing democracy?

[Alain]

That we need less of it? Oh my goodness. I've seen so many books about, you know, what, 10% less democracy? Or how about we reintroduce literacy tests to make sure that, you know, people don't vote the wrong way? I think it's a typical example of politicians that are scared, elites that are scared, and they do not see that the populist sort of uprising is a direct Result of the elitism of our institutions. So for me, it starts with making the first overture and saying, look, we are going to open up, we're going to listen, we're going to learn. Trust people and they will trust you.

[Adam Grant]

What is the best advice you would offer to Congress in the US Support.

[Alain]

The exploration of blood based democracy. You know, follow the example of the Irish politicians who were not necessarily completely convinced initially, but in 2012 they said, okay, okay, we heard you, we're going to try. And they did this hybrid citizens assembly with a third politician, two third randomly selected citizens, and that led to a proposal to allow same sex marriage that then was put to a referendum and approved. And it sort of reconciled politicians and the public. In fact, today, Ireland is the place where I think the prospects for politics without politicians are the least likely because now the citizens trust our politicians again. It's quite, quite remarkable.

[Adam Grant]

Wow. Well, that's an ironic effect.

[Alain]

It is an ironic effect. But you know, remember my book? I mean, I push the more ambitious utopian interpretation of politics without politicians, but I'd be very happy if we went the reformist route and just secured spaces for politics without politicians in a larger electoral system. That's probably here to stay anyway. That's, that's also a goal.

[Adam Grant]

Okay. You get to organize a dinner party with anyone from history on rethinking democracy. Who are you inviting?

[Alain]

Hume? Condorcet? I'm going to skip Rousseau. I like him, but I think too controversial. Tocqueville, Manon, I think he conservative in his views, but so learned and visionary. Okay, that's it for now.

[Adam Grant]

Wow. No American Founding Fathers made it.

[Alain]

No, actually you're right. They didn't come to mind. Two elitists. Okay. Actually, Jefferson, maybe because he had this view that you should redesign your constitution every 20 years to fit the morals of the living right. And he thought that a Constitution that's not amended or changed or made to fit a given society is basically the tyranny of the dead. And I worry that that's a little bit what's going on in the US at the moment, that we're so constrained by the gilded cage of the American Constitution that it's hard to meet the needs and desires of the current population.

[Adam Grant]

I'm struck by the fact that it's been more than three decades since we had a constitutional amendment in the US and when I talk to members of Congress about this, they say it's basically impossible at this point. And I was in Slovenia recently. Slovenia's constitution was only written in the 90s and about two years ago they had an amendment stating that every Slovenian has the right to clean water. And what I thought was ingenious about this is no one would object to that. And it made me wonder if in the US an amendment. If someone would put forth an amendment in Congress that was such an obvious yes, would that open us up to the possibility of other amendments?

[Alain]

I love your optimism. I see only dysfunction in the current system. I think they would turn down obvious things like that. I don't know, it's unintelligible to me. But they can't get behind universal background checks on guns or things like that. So I don't know, maybe this is true.

[Adam Grant]

I'm just thinking even less politically controversial than that could be a starting point. But I don't want to be overly optimistic, but I do believe that one of the foundations of healthy optimism is refusing to see remote possibilities as impossibilities.

[Alain]

Yes, I agree with that.

[Adam Grant]

So let's see, what is something you've changed your mind about lately with respect to democracy?

[Alain]

One thing I've been thinking about is the scale issue. Because for years when I brought up the Icelandic example or the Irish example, people told me, yes, but you see, this only works at the small scale. And that was true of the ancient Athenian city state. Right. And I never understood that argument. I thought what they meant is that you're not talking about multiculturally diverse countries. And then when France came along in 2020 with the great national debate and the Citizens assembly on climate, I thought, here you go. This is a large country with very multicultural population and it works there as well. But what I didn't fully integrate is the fact that maybe scale does change things.

[Adam Grant]

Well, things to look forward to in your future books.

[Alain]

Yes.

[Adam Grant]

Okay, what's the question you have for me?

[Alain]

Oh, so I've, you know, obviously listened to some of your thinking about economic organizations, but you don't talk about the political structures within these organizations and how they incentivize the wrong kind of behavior. So it's great to say, look, you need to have your team of critics, people who will tell it to you like it is. Well, I don't know that the way corporate governance is structured, there are real incentives for that truth to be told. And I wonder about how you think about that and whether you've given some thought to actually. To the politics of economic organizations. Right. The corporate governance structure, the economic incentives, the legal incentives, the fiduciary duty governing all the decision and trickling down all the way to the lower level of the organization. Because if you, if you don't think about that, I worry that personal initiative and good intentions are not going to be enough.

[Adam Grant]

I wholeheartedly agree with you. I've probably underattended to the incentives and political issues that arise, especially at the higher levels of organizations around the kinds of structures and practices that you're talking about. Some exceptions that come to mind. When I studied Bridgewater, I thought one of the most interesting things they did was as part of their performance review, they evaluated you on whether you constructively challenge the people above you. So in order to succeed at your job, you actually have to criticize your boss's boss. And it's the opposite of what I see in most workplaces. And you know, Bridgewater is far from perfect. But I thought that was a really interesting example of an experiment that more companies ought to run.

[Alain]

Interesting.

[Adam Grant]

So I think there's a lot more that could be done on this front. And I think you're right.

[Alain]

Yes. I think there's so many synergies there.

[Adam Grant]

That are possible, as do I. Okay, and then last question, which is. So after I wrote my Times piece, I had some members of Congress reach out and say, I get it in principle, but in practice it's gonna require all my colleagues to vote themselves out of a job. And if there's anything that people in Congress value, you know, even more than money, it's holding onto their power. So what do we do about that? Are you hoping that, that some populists will run on a platform of getting rid of politicians altogether?

[Alain]

No, because the populists tend to then set up their own power and that's not better. I think the path is more likely very bottom up and through the multiplication of citizens assemblies up to the point where they're shown to be so useful both in proposing solutions that can work and in reconciling people with the system that politicians at the higher levels will say, you know what, actually, we should do this. It's actually good for us. I think that's the only way. Talking about incentives, they have to see that it's actually good for them even as they lose power. And for me, the most far sighted politician I've met is Magaly Plovie in Belgium. She said, we're going to lose power, but we're going to gain in legitimacy. And that's the deal. You're going to lose power, but you're going to be able to stay with the power you have. Maybe less of it, but more secure. And at the end of the day. Why are you in it for like you're here to serve. That's the other thing I would like politicians to remember is that this is not a position that's odd to them. They're there to serve. They're public servants. So you get the power you get and you don't get upset.

[Adam Grant]

That is so elegantly articulated. This has been so much fun. Thank you again, Alain.

[Alain]

Thank you so much. It was really fun indeed.

[Adam Grant]

Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is produced by Ted with Cosmic Standard. Our producer is Jessica Glaser. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar, our engineer is Asia Pilar Simpson. Our technical director is Jacob Winick, and our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Roxanne Hyl, Ban Bang Chang, Julia Dickerson, Tansika Sung Manivong and Whitney Pennington Rogers. Original music by Hans Dale Su and Alison Layton Brown. What is the country that you think is most receptive to your more radical proposal?

[Alain]

If I were to choose one, I think Switzerland might be because they are, in my mind, the most democratic to date. It's, I think, the only democracy that I know of where there's no one above the people at the constitutional level, they don't have a Supreme Court. The the people's vote in a referendum at the at the national level is the final say.

[Adam Grant]

That is refreshing and also surprising. I would not have guessed that Swiss neutrality would supersede Scandinavian egalitarian.

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