About the author
French political theorist (b. 1976), professor of political science at Yale. A leading scholar of democratic theory and 'collective intelligence,' Landemore argues for the epistemic value of inclusive deliberation; Open Democracy is her influential case for reinventing democracy around citizen participation and sortition.
Synopsis
Landemore critiques 'electoral democracy' as only thinly democratic and proposes 'open democracy' built on principles of participation, deliberation, and equal access to power. Her central institution is the randomly selected, rotating citizens' assembly, which she argues harnesses cognitive diversity to produce better and more legitimate decisions than elected elites. She draws on the epistemic case for democracy and on real-world deliberative experiments to argue the model is both desirable and feasible.
Core passage idea
Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted workLandemore argues that democracy has been wrongly equated with elections, and that genuine self-rule requires 'open' institutions — above all citizens' assemblies chosen by lottery — that give ordinary people real and equal access to power.
By separating democracy from elections and centering sortition and deliberation, Landemore reopens the question of what popular rule could mean. The case rests on the 'wisdom of crowds': that the cognitive diversity of ordinary citizens can outperform elite decision-making.
To avoid a bubble
Pair with the democratic realists (Achen and Bartels, Schumpeter) who doubt ordinary citizens' competence, and with defenders of elections and representative institutions who argue that lottery-based bodies lack accountability and legitimacy.
Reading note
Read it as the leading contemporary case for democratic innovation and sortition, against the democratic realists and defenders of representative elections, and alongside Dahl on democratic theory.
Best paired with
Robert A. Dahl, On Democracy; Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, Democracy for Realists.