Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century

"Where Sintomer’s The Government of Chance is dedicated to the history of sortition, Landemore’s Open Democracy is more about the philosophy of it all. Landemore is a professor of political science at Yale, and this is definitely an academic book. But, like other academics working in this field, she spends a great deal of time working with governments, NGOs, facilitating companies on how to make sortition perform well. She also serves on the oversight committees of citizens’ assemblies themselves, so her theoretical work is inspired by broad real-life experience. This included her attending an early citizens’ assembly on constitutional reform in Iceland in the early 2010s, which gets a good chapter. Reading this book gave me a strong sense not just of what Landemore thought but also what diverse currents in the field have said and are thinking too. It is also an important book because its intellectual rigor and being rooted in today’s academic literature means that critics cannot dismiss it as a polemical tract. Any reader will come away with a robust and refreshing new look at the meanings and functions of direct democracy, liquid democracy, legitimacy, representation, political parties and referendums. On top of that, Landemore lays out a proposal for a new “open democracy,” which draws on ancient roots – be they Greek, Viking or Indian – and which rests on five solid principles: participation, deliberation, majoritarian support, representation (ideally through sortition) and transparency. Landemore is careful not to alienate the pro-election establishment, but the book prepares the way for change by laying out the ground for new thinking that elections are not the only viable way to run countries, even large ones; that direct democracy (for instance, more referendums) should not be the main path forward; that people are wrong to think that citizens are unwilling to play their part in this; and that allowing groups of ordinary people to take decisions does not run the risk of mob rule."