💡 A golden age of democracy

On the power of citizens, with Professor Hélène Landemore

Democracy is having a hard time. Trust in government in the U.S. is at its lowest, and about 40% of Americans believe that the 2020 election was rigged. These are all signs of deep-rooted problems, and democracies around the world are affected.

On top of this, there is the challenge of exponential technologies — a whirlwind of change that threatens to create a small number of winners, and a large number of losers.

In the latest episode of my series Exponentially, I propose that we are at the beginning of a new, golden age of democracy. To dig deeper, I travelled to New York to meet Professor Hélène Landemore, professor of political science at Yale University, and author of Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century.

We discuss some of the innovations that can bring back a sense of dignity, respect, and capacity to the individual citizen that we somehow lost in representative democracies. Hélène introduced the concept of open mini-publics,

a miniature version of the larger public randomly chosen in civic lottery to deliberate about issues of interest — immigration, healthcare, economic policy, etc. […] In parliaments people grandstand, fight and debate in an adversarial manner. In citizen assemblies, people deliberate, they engage in a respectful exchange of arguments and views with people who disagree with them, but they listen to one another.

There is an increasing amount of evidence that deliberative systems work — they can reduce polarisation, and help find commonalities and solutions to difficult problems. But they threaten the players in the current political system — the politicians, parties, and supporters, who won’t give up their power easily. So, what will it take to unjam our politics and transform democracies?

In my conversation with Hélène, we cover…

• How mini-publics work in practice,

• How we could apply mini-publics to decide on the role of AI and other exponential technologies in our societies, and

• What is needed for democratic systems to enter this new golden age.

All conversations I host on Exponentially are available as podcasts — if video is not your jam, you can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or other platform of choice.