A review: Open Democracy by Landemore
Hélène Landemore's compelling case for a new way of thinking about democratic reforms.
Kevin Frazier edits The Oregon Way. Originally from Washington County, Kevin is nearing a return to Oregon when he wraps up grad school at the UC Berkeley School of Law next May.
“Open democracy,” as defined by Hélène Landemore in her book by the same name, “is the ideal of a regime in which actual exercise of power is accessible to ordinary citizens via novel forms of democratic representation.”
It’s distinct from direct democracy and, according to Landemore, an improvement on our current approach to democracy. The need for a new model is fairly obvious: the latter is practically impossible; the former based on an increasingly inaccurate assumption—that ”the decisions of elected elites [can be] equated with the people’s choice.” In the eyes of Landemore, the meaning of the concept of democracy has been lost over time. Her goal is to clarify that meaning and illustrate that there are superior alternatives to our current means of solving problems.
The call for open democracy comes from Landemore’s personal involvement in novel forms of democracy. She participated, for example, in Iceland’s innovative approach to writing a new constitution. She observed efforts in Finland to convene a random sample of citizens to develop new off-road vehicle regulations. And, she learned from France’s Great National Debate, which involved citizens in climate change planning and demonstrated that democratic innovation is not solely possible in small, demographically-homogeneous nations. For Landemore, these experiments serve as a necessary source of optimism at a time when many feel their democracy isn’t capable of solving problems.
Landemore acknowledges that doubts in democracy are understandable. Around the world (and around Oregon) citizens have expressed two key concerns: first, our antiquated democractic structures are falling short of modern, complex problems; and, second, more and more power seems to be consolidating in too few hands at the expense of people power. Importantly, Landemore reminds readers that the root of democracy—demokratia—means just that—people power.
The rest of the book examines how people power has been subverted and what’s required to restore it. In the introduction, Landemore dives into the origins of people power. She describes the Agora in Greece, the summer gathering of Vikings in Iceland, and the Swiss bringing together as many as 10,000 adult males for Landsgemeinde—a means for voting on important canon-wide issues. These were very “open” democracies, to the extent you were permitted to participate. In these contexts, “one person, one voice,” as expressed by Francis Fukuyama, was a reality.
Over time, one person could buy more voice and drown out the voices of others. The “closing” of democracy has significantly diminished people power. Despite the right to vote extending to more people and nearly everyone having the opportunity to run for office, Landemore reports that “many have the feeling in modern representative democracies that even among the legal demos ordinary citizens are left out of the most important sites of political power, while the political personnel form an elite separate from them.”
Troublingly, the very design of our representative system caters to rule by elites. Landemore specifically takes issue with our reliance on periodic elections as the primary means of participation as well as holding officials accountable to being responsive to the wants and needs of the electorate. Periodic elections depend on “parties to structure the public debate as competition between policy platforms backed up by partisan justifications.” These partisan “ideological shortcuts” don’t allow for the sort of deliberation that’s long been regarded as a core component of actually solving problems in a collaborative fashion. “Contrary to what we have historically been led to believe,” Landemore reminds the reader, “elections and referendums are not the be-all and end-all of democracy. Democracy also implies the possibility to shape, and deliberate about, the political agenda.”
That expanded notion of democracy is a reality in many places. In nations such as Iceland and France, both of which have experimented with forms of open democracy, there’s an increasing acceptance of the idea that “[u]nder certain conditions, cognitive diversity turns out to be more crucial to the problem-solving abilities of a group than does the average competence of its members,” as Landemore set forth, citing Hong and Page. In other words, these nations have realized that any democracy that leans too heavily on individual competence of specific elected officials is likely to fall short of its potential.
Open Democracy expresses Landemore’s refusal to “give up on democracy” despite a clear “crisis of democracy” around the world. Landemore’s optimism comes from her imagination—an ability to see new structures and new norms developing in democracies around the world. This review does not cover every reconception of democracy examined by Landemore—ranging from e-democracy to lottocracy. The most compelling portions of the book dare the reader to challenge the idea that our current system is the only system capable of realizing our democratic values and hopes.
The imagination expressed by Landemore is the same sort of imagination that Governor Tom McCall observed in Oregonians, stating, “We in Oregon do not wait for answers to be handed down to us . . . We assess the ever-changing situation and respond with our own action.” McCall called this “Citizen Initiative,” which likely was a synonym of Landemore’s “people power.” Whatever you call it, Oregonians have a history of upending outdated democratic norms and institutions to increase people power. Landemore provides a roadmap for this state, all states, and all democratic countries to make new history and ensure their democracy is responsive to their needs.
Change, according to Landemore, comes at the margins. The path she points out to a more deliberative democracy will not occur overnight. It’s implementation hinges on democratic innovators committed to restoring power to the people. Absent innovators taking action, it’s true that representative democracies “may be able to keep muddling through for a long time,” but should we accept such an unsatisfactory approach to problem solving? I think most folks would say no; Landemore certainly does.
So, are you an innovator? Do you have the initiative invoked by McCall? Are you ready for a more open democracy?