Host Jun Wei Lee speaks with Hélène Landemore about her book, Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule (Penguin, 2026). An acclaimed political theorist, Professor Landemore has spent her career trying to understand the advantages of democracy, what makes it function, and how to make it work better. In her most recent book, Landemore puts forward a radical proposal. Democracy doesn’t need politicians: ordinary people can govern much better.
In this NBN episode, Landemore analyzes how a lottery system designed to select everyday people to govern—not as career politicians but as temporary stewards of the common good. Drawing from ancient Athenian practices of democracy and her firsthand experience in contemporary citizens’ assemblies, Landemore explains that when regular citizens come together to make important political decisions, they make better decisions, develop meaningful bonds of community, and even convince experts that self-governing assemblies are viable ways of doing politics.
This is not a book about what’s wrong—it’s a manifesto for what’s possible. If you’ve ever felt powerless, Politics Without Politicians will show you how “We the People” take back democracy.
Hélène Landemore is a political theorist and the Damon Wells '58 Professor of Political Science at Yale University.
Jun Wei Lee is a 4th-year undergraduate student of History and Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He works on the international legal regulation of migrant labor in the nineteenth-century British Empire.
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