Books by Helene Landemore
A core problem in deliberative democracy is the tension between two seemingly equally important c... more A core problem in deliberative democracy is the tension between two seemingly equally important conditions of democratic legitimacy: deliberation, on the one hand, and mass participation, on the other. Might artificial intelligence help bring quality deliberation to the masses? The answer is a qualified yes. The chapter first examines the conundrum in deliberative democracy around the trade-off between deliberation and mass participation by returning to the seminal debate between Joshua Cohen and Jürgen Habermas. It then turns to an analysis of the 2019 French Great National Debate, a low-tech attempt to involve millions of French citizens in a two-month-long structured exercise of collective deliberation. Building on the shortcomings of this process, the chapter then considers two different visions for an algorithm-powered form of mass deliberation-Mass Online Deliberation (MOD), on the one hand, and Many Rotating Mini-publics (MRMs), on the other-theorizing various ways artificial intelligence could play a role in them. To the extent that artificial intelligence makes the possibility of either vision more likely to come to fruition, it carries with it the promise of deliberation at the very large scale.
On Method 19 2 The Crisis of Representative Democracy 25 The Crisis of Representative Democracy: ... more On Method 19 2 The Crisis of Representative Democracy 25 The Crisis of Representative Democracy: Empirical 26 The Crisis of Representative Democracy: Conceptual 33 The Road Not Taken 40 The Realists' Objections 44 Con temporary Solutions and Their Limits 47 3 The Myth of Direct Democracy 53 Rousseau's Mistake 56 Repre sen ta tion, Modernity, and the Prob lem of Size 61 The Myth of Classical Athens as a Direct Democracy 66 Direct versus Open 74 4 Legitimacy and Repre sen ta tion beyond Elections (Part One) 79 The Prob lem with Consent Theory 83 Definitions 85 Lottocratic Repre sen ta tion 89 Self-Selected Repre sen ta tion 93 On the Accountability of Non-Elected Demo cratic Representatives 98 Conclusion 104
Papers by Helene Landemore
Political Psychology, 2012
Theoreticians of deliberative democracy have sometimes found it hard to relate to the seemingly c... more Theoreticians of deliberative democracy have sometimes found it hard to relate to the seemingly contradictory experimental results produced by psychologists and political scientists. We suggest that this problem may be alleviated by inserting a layer of psychological theory between the empirical results and the normative political theory. In particular, we expose the argumentative theory of reasoning that makes the observed pattern of findings more coherent. According to this theory, individual reasoning mechanisms work best when used to produce and evaluate arguments during a public deliberation. It predicts that when diverse opinions are discussed, group reasoning will outperform individual reasoning. It also predicts that individuals have a strong confirmation bias. When people reason either alone or with like‐minded peers, this confirmation bias leads them to reinforce their initial attitudes, explaining individual and group polarization. We suggest that the failures of reasonin...
by Keith Sutherland, Josine Blok, Irad Malkin, Daniela Cammack, Paul Cartledge, Ruth Chang, Barbara Goodwin, Nadia Urbinati, Helene Landemore, Laurence Morel, Joanna Podgórska-Rykała, Ben Saunders, Yves Sintomer, Graham Smith, Paolo Spada, and Peter Stone Journal of Sortition, 2025
Since ancient times sortition (random selection by lot) has been used both to distribute politica... more Since ancient times sortition (random selection by lot) has been used both to distribute political office and as a general prophylactic against factionalism and corruption in societies as diverse as classical-era Athens and the Most Serene Republic of Venice. Lotteries have also been employed for the allocation of scarce goods such as social housing and school places to eliminate bias and ensure just distribution, along with drawing lots in circumstances where unpopular tasks or tragic choices are involved (as some situations are beyond rational human decision-making). More recently, developments in public opinion polling using random sampling have led to the proliferation of citizens’ assemblies selected by lot. Some activists have even proposed such bodies as an alternative to elected representatives. The Journal of Sortition benefits from an editorial board with a wide range of expertise and perspectives in this area. In this introduction to the first issue, we have invited our editors (including James Fishkin, Graham Smith, Yves Sintomer, Helene Landemore, Josiah Ober, Paul Cartledge and others) to explain why they are interested in sortition, and to outline the benefits (and pitfalls) of the recent explosion of interest in the topic.
Synthese, 2012
This paper argues in favor of the epistemic properties of inclusiveness in the context of democra... more This paper argues in favor of the epistemic properties of inclusiveness in the context of democratic deliberative assemblies and derives the implications of this argument in terms of the epistemically superior mode of selection of representatives. The paper makes the general case that, all other things being equal and under some reasonable assumptions, more is smarter. When applied to deliberative assemblies of representatives, where there is an upper limit to the number of people that can be included in the group, the argument translates into a defense of a specific selection mode of participants: random selection.
ArXiv, 2014
We present theoretical and empirical results demonstrating the usefulness of voting rules for par... more We present theoretical and empirical results demonstrating the usefulness of voting rules for participatory democracies. We first give algorithms which efficiently elicit \epsilon-approximations to two prominent voting rules: the Borda rule and the Condorcet winner. This result circumvents previous prohibitive lower bounds and is surprisingly strong: even if the number of ideas is as large as the number of participants, each participant will only have to make a logarithmic number of comparisons, an exponential improvement over the linear number of comparisons previously needed. We demonstrate the approach in an experiment in Finland's recent off-road traffic law reform, observing that the total number of comparisons needed to achieve a fixed \epsilon approximation is linear in the number of ideas and that the constant is not large. Finally, we note a few other experimental observations which support the use of voting rules for aggregation. First, we observe that rating, one of t...
Análise Social, 2012
Talking it out with others vs. deliberation within and the law of group polarization: Some implic... more Talking it out with others vs. deliberation within and the law of group polarization: Some implications of the argumentative theory of reasoning for deliberative democracy. This paper argues that a new psychological theory—the argumentative theory of reasoning—provides theoretical support for the discursive, dialogical ideal of democratic deliberation. It converges, in particular, with deliberative democrats’ predictions about the positive epistemic properties of talking things out with others. The paper further considers two influential objections to democratic deliberation: first, that “deliberation within” rather than deliberation with others carries most of the burden in terms of changing people’s minds; and second, that the so-called “law of group polarization” casts serious doubts on the value of democratic deliberation and, more generally, the ideal of deliberative democracy.
This article reports a pioneering case study of a crowdsourced law-reform process in Finland. In ... more This article reports a pioneering case study of a crowdsourced law-reform process in Finland. In the crowdsourcing experiment, the public was invited to contribute to the law-reform process by sharing their knowledge and ideas for a better policy. This article introduces a normative design framework of five principles for crowdsourced policymaking: inclusiveness, accountability, transparency, modularity, and synthesis. Inclusiveness, accountability, and transparency are overarching principles for crowdsourced policymaking. Modularity and synthesis support these overarching principles and are instrumental in achieving the main goals of crowdsourced policymaking, namely, an efficient search for knowledge and democratic deliberation among the participants. These principles apply to both the design of the process and the medium that the process takes place in, i.e., the technology facilitating crowdsourcing. This article analyzes the design of the crowdsourced off-road traffic law exper...
Digital Technology and Democratic Theory
Digital Technology and Democratic Theory
Digital Technology and Democratic Theory
Critical Review, 2016
and I am Daniel Viehoff of the University of Sheffield. The decision we came to, in more or less ... more and I am Daniel Viehoff of the University of Sheffield. The decision we came to, in more or less democratic fashion, was that each of us would speak for about 12-15 minutes and then we'd open it up for questions, because we are all as interested in what you have to say as in what we have to say. And, for lack of any other arrangement, I think we'll just go in alphabetical order. Jack Knight: When I was asked to participate in this discussion about epistemic democracy and then told that I had to keep it to 10-12 minutes, I thought, I've never kept anything to 10-12 minutes but I will try. I'll try to do even better than that. I was trying to reflect upon these debates and a number of questions that emerged, it seems to me, are subject to disagreement. So what I wanted to do, to start my part of the discussion, was to focus on three of those and try to say what's at stake in the debate, what difference does it make what the answers to particular questions are. So the first question is, what are the actual effects that are attributed to democratic institutions in the epistemic democracy literature? What are the outcomes in the democratic decision-making process? This is a question that emerges from the advocates of epistemic democracy. The other two questions that I'm going to raise emerge more from the critics of
Talking It Out:" Why Group Deliberation Is Conducive to Intelligent Outcomes and Why the Aim of Individual Reasoning is Fundamentally Social
Elster, Jon (1940–)
Jon Elster is a Norwegian-born social scientist and political theorist, currently Robert K. Merto... more Jon Elster is a Norwegian-born social scientist and political theorist, currently Robert K. Merton Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Columbia in New York. From 2005 to 2011, he was also professeur titulaire at the College de France in Paris, where he held the chair “Rationality and Social Sciences” (formerly held by Pierre Bourdieu). He previously taught at the University of Oslo and the University of Chicago. Elster's work spans a vast array of topics, with a focus on human rationality. He has made important contributions to many fields, including political theory, political science, social science, and political psychology. His work is generally informed by a broad acquaintance with many more disciplines, such as economics, game theory, psychology, philosophy, and literature. This entry gives a sample of some of his main positions on different topics. Keywords: collective action; constitutionalism; democratic theory; functionalism; political science; social choice theory
Democratic Reason: The Mechanisms of Collective Intelligence in Politics
In the wake of the financial crisis which nearly bankrupted Iceland, the country began a process ... more In the wake of the financial crisis which nearly bankrupted Iceland, the country began a process to create a new constitution which could maintain the confidence of a public understandably disenchanted with their political elite. What followed was a 'crowd-sourced' project which ultimately fell at the final hurdle. However the experience did show that it is possible to create a kind of constitutional process which is not limited to elites, according to Hélène Landemore. Iceland was nearly home to the world's first "crowd sourced" constitution (Credit: Kris Williams, CC BY NC ND 2.0) Who should write the constitution of a democratic country and, indeed, any country? The answer seems obvious: its people. Yet the constitutions of existing states, including democratic ones, have usually been written by small, rather unrepresentative subsets of individuals. Solon is supposed to have single-handedly laid out the foundations of democratic Athens. The U.S. constitution was penned by a few dozen white men. More recent examples of constitutional processes involve the usual elites: professional politicians and state bureaucrats. But even elected or otherwise democratically authorized constitutional drafters are at best metaphorically "We, The People.
Schmooze ticket Hélène Landemore [My ticket aims to provide an additional argument in favor of lo... more Schmooze ticket Hélène Landemore [My ticket aims to provide an additional argument in favor of lotteries as an alternative selection method for representatives, as advocated by various "sortinitas" (including our very own Sandy Levinson).] Lotteries have recently been explored as an alternative to elections on many grounds: equality, fairness, representativeness, anti-corruption potential, protection against conflict and domination, avoidance of preference aggregation problems, and cost efficiency,
The Argumentative Turn Revisited: Public Policy as Communicative Practice. Edited by Fischer Frank and Gottweis Herbert. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012. 400p. $94.95 cloth, $26.95 paper
Perspectives on Politics, 2014
tracing the reception of elements of Weber’s oeuvre, not just by American sociologists-to-be but ... more tracing the reception of elements of Weber’s oeuvre, not just by American sociologists-to-be but also by various sectors of the German university world in the years following his death. It is here that Derman’s account of Weber’s Rezeptiongeschichte comes into its own and offers new, and often startling, information. Weber may not have been all things to all people, but there is a parade of surprises concerning his appropriation in his native land in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s. Soon-to-be Nazis like Otto Koellreutter bristled at Weber’s description of the state as a mere Betrieb, while more famous figures like Carl Schmitt deployed Weber in his own war against statutory positivism, even as he argued that the notion of the state as Betrieb precisely captured the depoliticalization of liberal-capitalist-technological society (pp. 106–9). While for the most part the Nazis had little use for Weber (whose political activities after the war aligned him securely with the struggle for parliamentary democracy), the occasional sympathetic Nazi reader—like Karl Wilhelm Rath at the University of Göttingen—could praise Weber’s clearing away of the old illusions—the “death of God”—as the prelude not to a world of subjective, existential decision making (which god should I follow?) but to the birth of a new order of “concrete” duties and community, one in which all talk of competing values and “warring gods” would look positively quaint and oh-so-nineteenth century (pp. 71–74). Derman is also exceedingly good at disentangling the various strands of Weber’s anti-utopianism, and the reasons why each of them has had a significant afterlife. First, there is the stoic, disillusioned Weber—the heroic individualist who so impressed Siegfried Kracauer, Ernst Troelsch, and Karl Mannheim. Second, there is the “temperate anti-utopianism” of the thinker who famously insisted (in “Science as a Vocation”) on the need for passion, a sense of proportion, and personal responsibility for consequences. This Weber was attractive to both Karl Löwith and Eric Voegelin, and seemed to provide a path forward in a world where the stage for meaningful individual political action had become extremely constricted. Finally, there is the “hot anti-utopianism” of Weber the proto-existentialist, the Weber who railed against intellectual and political opponents, and whose ultimate values were deeply personal ones, in extreme tension with all supposed “universal” values. This Weber, in Derman’s account, was most evident to those who knew him well— such as the philosopher Karl Jaspers, whose entire conception of Existenzphilosophie borrowed heavily from the model of personal authenticity provided by Weber. Derman concludes his study with the unlikely career of the notion of “charisma” (literally, “gift of grace”), a Greek term that Weber lifted from the New Testament in order to characterize rulers whose personal qualities inspire virtually unquestioning devotion in their followers. In his later writings, he offered charismatic leadership as an alternative to the suffocating “rule of officialdom” that he (increasingly) saw as the fate of the modern, administered world. But as Derman points out, the term did not immediately catch on in a German academic context still ruled by more “holistic” conceptions of state and society. It was only with the rise of fascism in Italy, and the contributions of people like Roberto Michels, that charisma made its way into political sociology for good, winding up, postwar, as part of the American political vernacular. The strange story of the sea change undergone by “charisma” is alone worth the price of admission to Derman’s study. Like the rest of the book, it leaves one with an enhanced understanding of the contingencies, misunderstandings, and institutional vagaries that Weber encountered on his posthumous road to canonization.
Crowdsourcing for Participatory Democracies: Efficient Elicitation of Social Choice Functions
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Books by Helene Landemore
Papers by Helene Landemore