Hélène Landemore

Hélène Landemore is Professor of Political Scientist at Yale University.[1] She has a PhD from Harvard University.[1] Her subfield is political theory and she is known for her works on democratic theory.[2][3][4][5]

Hélène Landemore
Born1976
NationalityFrench, American
EducationUniversity of Havard, PhD (1st september 2002 - 30 june 2008)
OccupationResearcher, political scientist
EmployerUniversity of Yale (since 2009)
Websitehttps://www.helenelandemore.com/

Biography

After spending her childhood in Normandy, she begins at the age 18 her higher studies in Paris.[5] She joins the École Normale and Sciences Po Paris. In 2008 she become Philosophiæ doctor at Harvard University, thanks to a these on the idea of collective intelligence, applied to the justification of democracy.[6]

Public Life

She observed the participatory constituent process in Iceland and the French’s Citizen Convention for Climate.[7][8] She regularly presents her ideas and proposals in French[7][9][10][11] and American newspapers.[5]

Theories

Hélène Landemore’s research focuses on deliberative democracy and collective intelligence.[5]

Criticism of electoral democracy

Like David Van Reybrouck and Brett Hennig, she observes that elections are rather aristocratic than democratic, as it empower a tiny social elite.[11] The elected parliament are never representative of the whole population. In particular, women, working-class people and social minorities are systematically underrepresented.

The money given by rich donator and spent in electoral campaign have an important impact, particularly in the United States of America.[12] As a result, the United States resemble more and more a plutocracy, in which the economic elite have more influence on politics than the vast majority of the population.[13]

Sortition and Citizen’s Assembly

Hélène Landemore sees a new institution as the « key » to a new form of democracy. She calls it the « open mini-public ». It is a citizen’s assembly of few hundreds of persons, chosen by lot.[11]

Cognitive Diversity

The diversity of the members of an assembly is a strength for deliberation.[14] The reflection will be more rich an nuanced if it implies different perspective, life experiences an knowledge. That is why an assembly chosen by lot is generally preferable to an assembly of experts. We can not predict in advance which knowledge and experiences will be useful to face a political problem. Reason commands then to choose the maximum diversity over the specialised ability.[14]

It is an epistemic and probabilist argument in favour of democratic inclusion and sortition.

The « Open Democracy »

Hélène Landemore proposes a new paradigm, the « Open Democracy » which rest on five principles:[15]

  1. Participation right’s : the right of expression and association, to which are added the rights of petition and citizen’s initiative. It shall enable the convocation of a referendum on a law voted by the Parliament.
  2. Deliberation : the decisions must come from rationals between equal citizens. The floor must not be monopolised by few gifted orators.
  3. Majoritarian principle : instead of super-majorities rules, which produce blocking minorities. The vote must integrate new and fairer method, such as the Majority Judgment.
  4. Democratic representation : thanks to sortition and, in a lesser extent, voluntary participation.
  5. Transparence : of the process and of the results of the deliberations, in live-time or afterwards. Transparence is a mean of control, which requires the readability and the publicity of the information destined to the citizens.

Works

Books in English

Hélène Landemore, Jon Elster et al. Edited volume: Collective Wisdom: Principles and Mechanisms, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Hélène Landemore, Democratic reason: Politics, collective intelligence, and the rule of the many, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2017.

Hélène Landemore, Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2020.

Books in French

Hélène Landemore, Hume. Probabilité et choix raisonnable, Paris, PUF, 2004.

References
  1. "About". Hélène Landemore. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  2. Hurst, Alexander (2020-02-18). "France Turns to Citizen-Legislators to Craft Climate Reforms". The American Prospect. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  3. Cohen, Patricia (2011-06-14). "Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth (Published 2011)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  4. "There Are Better Ways to Do Democracy". Bloomberg.com. 2019-04-11. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  5. Heller, Nathan. "Politics Without Politicians". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  6. "Hélène Landemore | Department of Political Science". politicalscience.yale.edu. Retrieved 2020-12-11.
  7. "" La Convention citoyenne pour le climat pourrait préfigurer une nouvelle forme de démocratie "". Le Monde.fr (in French). 2020-02-10. Retrieved 2020-12-11.
  8. Andéol Lê Quan Phong (2020-06-23). "Sauver le climat, renouveler la démocratie : l'épopée de la Convention citoyenne pour le climat". lvsl.fr - Tout reconstruire, tout réinventer (in French). Retrieved 2020-12-11.
  9. "Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat : peut-on réconcilier les citoyens avec leurs institutions ?". France Culture (in French). Retrieved 2020-12-11.
  10. "Hélène Landemore : " Être capable de définir les termes d'un débat, c'est la moitié du pouvoir "". L'Humanité (in French). 2017-01-06. Retrieved 2020-12-11.
  11. "Hélène Landemore : " Le vrai pouvoir démocratique va bien au-delà de la possibilité de choisir ses gouvernants "". L'Humanité (in French). 2019-02-24. Retrieved 2020-12-11.
  12. "Pas vraiment une démocratie, de moins en moins une république. La grande fatigue d'un système rongé par l'argent et trop verrouillé au niveau constitutionnel, par Hélène Landemore". tnova.fr. Retrieved 2020-12-11.
  13. Gilens, Martin; Page, Benjamin I. (September 2014). "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens". Perspectives on Politics. 12 (3): 564–581. doi:10.1017/S1537592714001595. ISSN 1537-5927.
  14. Landemore, Hélène (2013-05-01). "Deliberation, cognitive diversity, and democratic inclusiveness: an epistemic argument for the random selection of representatives". Synthese. 190 (7): 1209–1231. doi:10.1007/s11229-012-0062-6. ISSN 1573-0964.
  15. Landemore, Hélène (2020). Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691181998.
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