Yale professor Hélène Landemore discusses migration issues in Europe, the 2024 US election, and how AI could help solve the Middle East conflict.

This interview by Fabienne Kinzelmann was originally published in German in Handelszeitung on 26.12.2023. Translated and edited for layout purposes by the UBS Center.

Professor Landemore, are we living in a good time for democracy – or a bad one?

It is not a good time, because inequality is very high. We are probably at the end of a globalization cycle that proceeded too fast, too far, and without sufficient democratic control.

That sounds depressing.

Democracies are able to ask themselves hard questions and change course in a way that authoritarian, monolithic forms of government do not. That is the greatest strength of democracy, and it only works because we allow dissent, because we have freedom of expression. In particular, we have groups that ask really hard questions and opposition parties. All these things are normally the immune system of democracy. But that’s broken. Right now, we’re at a crisis point, and right-wing forces are on the rise.

Would you not say that the removal of the right-wing conservative and populist PiS in Poland is a sign of hope?

Of course, this is an example of a countermovement. But these early signs of democratic innovation are in no way extensive enough to make a real difference.

In your book Debating Democracy, you advocate new forms of democracy such as randomly selected citizens’ assemblies as an antidote.

This is a way to involve more voices and to ensure that elected politicians can once again rally majorities behind them. I really like the way France is doing this.

You keep mentioning your own country as a positive example. France is a centralized state, and the right-wing politician Marine Le Pen enjoys strong support.

On the one hand, of course, there is Macron, who concentrates power in the executive, as laid down in the constitution, and thus, for example, is pushing through his pension reform with regulations rather than a parliamentary debate. At the same time, following the Yellow Vest demonstrations, he launched a major national dialogue and held two citizens’ assemblies on climate change and euthanasia. He is now calling for the introduction of plebiscites, such as those in Switzerland.

Is Switzerland an ideal role model?

No, but a fantastic model. There is almost everything – citizens’ initiatives, mechanisms of direct democracy, decentralization. I am quite sure that this is also the reason for Switzerland’s great economic success, its great stability, and its remarkable social peace, despite its different ethnic groups and religions.

But what’s the catch?

That the lotteries were abandoned as a means of selecting democratic representatives, which existed until the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is a pity that people at that time were more fascinated by the French model of constitutionalism than the lotteries. Today, therefore, we have an electoral system that has all the shortcomings of electoral systems: it is too elitist and does not adequately address the preferences of the majority. A recent study in the British Journal of Political Science showed that Switzerland does worse than, say, Denmark or Portugal.

Is that why, in your opinion, why a right-wing populist party, the Swiss People's Party SVP, is the strongest force in this country as well?

I think there is a real problem with immigration and the integration of groups that do not conform to the traditional Christian tradition. But it is also fueled by elitism. The fact that people support populists on a large scale is, in my opinion, a symptom of the fact that the selection mechanisms for democratic representatives are not working. The elements of direct democracy that Switzerland has help – but they do not suffice.

Let’s take a look at the US. Trump’s supporters were even willing to believe the lie of the “stolen election” and support the overthrow of democracy in 2020. Now we are one year away from the next US election. Has anything improved?

I don’t think so. At most, we’ve become a little more modest, because we’ve realized that we were on the verge of losing democracy altogether. Those who support the democratic system are now a little better prepared. But the problems are still the same: the constitution allows a tiny minority of extremists to decide.

Trump won the majority of the electors, but not the popular vote.

Yet he was the one to define a majority of the Supreme Court, creating a climate of paranoia and fear at every opportunity. Nothing can change without truly radical reforms.

What reforms are needed?

Ending the life term on the Supreme Court, putting an end to partisan gerrymandering and the filibuster, changing the number of senators per state so that Wyoming doesn’t have the same number of votes as California, and abolishing the electoral college. Personally, I still think it’s important that the election should not be the only way to get a vote. It would be good, for example, to have a chamber where ordinary citizens can enter by lottery, so that politics does not consist solely of a bunch of white, male millionaires.

How many more of these changes could the Democrats implement within the next year?

Not a single one. It is a very long-term project; the American constitution is rightly described as a golden cage. The two-thirds majority in both houses of congress needed to initiate amendments is in reality impossible to achieve.

What does this mean for the US?

I am not very optimistic about the country. Because it has such a great military power and such a powerful economy, it will probably be able to make its way for a long time to come. Any other country would, in my view, fall into authoritarianism under these circumstances.

According to new polls, Trump is currently ahead of Joe Biden in most of the key states. How bad would it be for democracy if Trump won again?

It would be terrible, because he’s learned, and because his game plan and his goals haven’t changed. He’s figured out that he needs better lawyers and completely ruthless people in the right place at the right time. He just needs to find a vice president who doesn’t turn on him like Mike Pence did at the crucial moment -- and then we’re done. Finished.

Really completely?

Democratic morale in the United States is still quite strong, so hopefully there would be some kind of resistance. But I’m very worried. The fact is that elites are losing faith in democracy. If you listen to all these powerful technocrats and CEOs from Silicon Valley, you see that they don’t believe in democracy at all.

Are you pinning your hopes on another Republican candidate, say Nikki Haley, who is doing better and better in the polls?

No, Trump has too much influence. He has the enormous advantage that he has already won an election. Moreover, for some reason, he can still run like a candidate from outside the political establishment. And the problems from his last term still remain.

The US has defied a recession so far, the job market is booming, and economic growth is expected to be around 2% next year. Doesn’t that matter most to voters in the end?

Yes, that should actually benefit the Democrats. At the same time, they are terrible at claiming responsibility for the economic performance. They may therefore not be able to capitalize on it.

Does the cultural struggle also play a role in this?

I don’t even feel like it’s a conflict of values anymore. It’s getting harder and harder to have a healthy conversation and agree on basic facts. But without the same reality, we can’t make progress, either. Instead, we’re increasingly retreating to tribal identification: I’m on the left, I’m on the right. This in turn hinders learning. And if there’s no learning and no confrontation with reality, I don’t know if we can make the right decisions about anything.

Recently, an AI-generated video of Biden purportedly declaring conscription to support Ukraine went viral. In a similar “deepfake,” Senator Elizabeth Warren reportedly insists on banning Republicans from voting next year. How will artificial intelligence affect elections?

It will help proceed more targetedly and more specifically and allow people to manipulate elections better than big data analytics were able to. I could imagine, for example, special bots talking to you in your own language, picking up all the things that you’ve expressed interest in online, and saying what you like. But it’s still very unpredictable.

Where do you see positive potential for the use of AI in democracies?

Taiwan is a leader in this regard. It has already had experience with online consultations, in which they ask a large number of people what they think about certain issues – be it regulation, Covid guidelines, or other themes. They can gather, analyze, and use this feedback to try to bring people closer together through interaction. Apparently, algorithms are now increasingly taking over these tasks. A bot can then talk to you and give you reasons why this or that position is being taken across the political spectrum. For example, a libertarian who doesn’t want to regulate Uber because he believes that Uber will increase competition and benefit consumers. The chatbot would represent this position, explain it to you and engage in a conversation with you.

Why do you find that so remarkable?

First of all, you can have this conversation from the comfort of your own home. Secondly, the bot may be a little more coherent and informed than a random person. It could thus be an interesting tool for educating people. I think the scale to which we need to consult people is enormous if we really want to achieve what I think is the right way forward: more inclusion, more voices. Algorithms help us aggregate, organize, and synthesize them.

Would this also work on a global scale?

It has to work when I think of the crisis in the Middle East, for example. The international organizations are completely dysfunctional in the face of this war. The UN Security Council, for example, is completely independent of the world’s majority preferences. And when it comes to resolving the Middle East conflict, there is not even a good representative of the Palestinian people sitting at the negotiating table, but either extreme terrorists or corrupt organizations such as Fatah. What do the Palestinians actually want? I do not think we really know, because they are under the thumb of terrorist organizations. There should be global institutions that are much more representative, giving voice to people who currently have none. If we better understand what each side wants, there is hope that a way forward can be found.

Hélène Landemore’s appearance was part of a three-part series of events organized by the UBS Center for Economics in Society under the theme Democracies under threat. The series was kicked-off with Wolfgang Schäuble's lecture on 24 October at Universität Zürich. He is a German CDU politician, former Finance Minister, and the longest-serving member of the German Bundestag. Steven Pinker’s lecture followed at Universität Zürich on 7 November. The psychologist and bestselling author talked about rationality and its significance for liberal democracy. The highlight of the series was the annual Forum for Economic Dialogue on 13 November at the Kongresshaus Zürich, where the topic 'Democracies under threat' was examined and discussed with Nobel Prize laureate Herta Müller, democracy experts Hélène Landemore and Daniel Ziblatt, and many other speakers.