Could All Government Decisions Be Made Through an App? (Your Radical Questions with Hélène Landemore)

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1:47Amol Rajan:Hello and welcome to Your Radical Questions. This is where, on a Monday, I put your questions to one of our magnificent radical guests. This is your chance to engage very directly with them, with the super smart, interesting people that we have on this podcast and ask them about their ideas, radical and otherwise, for the future. And we had some super radical ideas on Thursday's episode with the very, very distinguished Yale professor, political scientist and author Hélène Lonnmore. She's been making the case for Politics Without Politicians on our main episode. And she's now going to answer your questions.

2:20Amol Rajan:I should say it's called Politics Without Politicians, The Case for Citizen Rule. That's the name of her latest book, which is just out. And my very strong impression from our radical listeners, from you listening right now, is that your citizens who would quite like wielding power are given half the chance. Hélène, are you feeling ready for some radical questions? I'm ready, Amol. Here we go. Right, here's the first question. And this, I believe, is from... Oh, it's from Gareth. Hello, my name is Gareth Morgan. I'm an electrician from south-west Wales with a question for Helen. Is it possible to see a future where every decision at government level is made via public referendum, perhaps through the form of some sort of app?

3:01Amol Rajan:If so, what positives and negatives could this entail? Joachim Baur, many thanks. Thank you very much, Gareth. I'm not going to try and speak Welsh back at you. Helen's very, very welcome to answer in French for a little bit if she wants to. But is it possible to see a future, Helen, where every decision at government level is made by referendum through an app? You've thought about this, haven't you? It's in the book. Yeah, I love the Welsh accent, by the way. I think that you have a version of that in Switzerland where a lot of decisions are handed over to the people, not through an app, but, you know, it's frequent.

3:36They have like about four referenda a year. So it's a form of direct democracy that has advantages. Certainly, I think it leads to a much more educated citizenry. people have to follow the news in order to be able to decide. I think that multiplying that beyond four times a year is probably too much to ask. I don't know. That's my intuition, at least, given the, you know, current constraints of a capitalist economy that demands a lot of energy and time spent on the pursuit of, you know, making money and making a living. So So I don't know that I would want to make every legislative decision through a direct vote, through an app.

4:25The app is kind of immaterial. I think, yes, we could do it through an app. But the multiplication of votes I don't think is a good idea. My preference is for delegating power to this citizen jury, citizens assemblies that have the time to think about the question in depth. Because the problem with referenda is that you're basically yes and no on questions you haven't formulated yourself. And oftentimes the key is in the question. Even Brexit, you might say, you know, yes, it was a sort of expression of democratic sovereignty. That's the left case for it. But maybe the options were not formulated properly and they were not fleshed out enough.

5:06And so I think that it's not just that I want to involve ordinary citizens in politics. is that I want to make politics more deliberative. And so it's important to have the time to think about issues, educate yourself about issues, talk to others, to talk to your peers about issues with the support of experts until you can reach an enlightened decision or else hesitating between two potentially good options that you've really thought hard about but you can't decide and then you put it to a referendum.

5:37Amol Rajan:Do you know, Gareth, I'm so grateful for your fantastic question. Thank you for sending it in. It's always nice to hear from southwest Wales. You make me think, Gareth, and Hélène's fascinating answer makes me think about the kind of sacred power of deliberation and the act of voting. Bear with me on this. There's a very interesting guy in British politics. He's actually, he now lives in America, from the past decade or so, called Douglas Carswell. He was a Conservative Party politician who then defected to UKIP, who are the precursors to reform. Many years ago, I think now he's in Minnesota or some American state.

6:13Amol Rajan:He wrote a book, I think I'm going to misrepresent him, but called iDemocracy. And it was about this idea that as we're moving to a world where everything is done on your iPhone, where you can order something on, I mean, this was before Deliveroo or Amazon or other big online retailers, where people have grown up in a thumb led smartphone first world. and they expect things immediately with that very direct thing. You open an app, you press something, it comes to your door. What should politics learn from that? How should politics kind of respond to this smartphone-led world? And I remember when his book came out, I don't want to misrepresent him, I don't think he was advocating voting through apps, but I remember a lot of people in response were saying, but there's something cool about every few years.

6:57Amol Rajan:You go to this school hall or town hall or church hall, wherever it might be, and you go and say your name and give your number. And then you go to this little booth and there's a little pencil. And we don't use pencils enough these days. And there's a little pencil and you put an X in a box. And that sound of the scratch is your moment to participate in the life of your nation. And there's something beautiful about that. And that might be lost if we vote through apps on phones. Am I being an old-fashioned romantic? Yeah, I'm not that romantic about the specific ritual. I'll tell you that. Just a hardcore pragmatist about reviving democracy.

7:31I think there's not one way to do it. Sorry, Gareth, that's right, man. Estonia is voting routinely online, and it's working quite well. So I think it depends on the culture, but I think people should have a choice. Not everybody can, you know, it's a drug. You have to find parking, go there. It's beautiful. Well, I don't know. It's beautiful. But I just think that people should have a choice. I think not everyone, you know, gets the romantic satisfaction you get. So if they just want to vote, they should be able to do it.

8:00Amol Rajan:But just going to Gareth's question. Is something precious lost in the Estonian model where you can vote? Do they do it in general elections in Estonia through their phone? I'm not sure, but they vote a lot. I don't know the Estonian case enough, but I know they materialize a lot of things. Is there something precious lost if you can vote through an app? Some of my colleagues argue that there is. There is something about, for example, the fact that you're aware that you're doing it at the same time as others. The fact that even if it's a secret ballot, there's a public dimension to you going there, being seen by your neighbours, you know, being able to say to your colleagues because you've actually done it physically that, you know, you went to vote and complaining about having a hard time finding parking.

8:44Yeah, yeah. It becomes a social thing as well. So, yeah, I'm off two minds actually.

8:50Amol Rajan:The eccentric ritual. Thank you very much indeed, Gareth. This next question is from someone who didn't want us to use their name. So we're going to call them, what should we call them? Let's call them Harvey. Here we go. This is from Harvey. Harvey says, the UK government announced on March the 10th, a people's panel of 100 citizens to consider its proposals for digital ID and immediately face criticisms from MPs who claim that it's Parliament that is the citizens assembly. This is actually a point I made to Hélène in our main podcast, which you can go back and listen to last Thursday. As someone who has commissioned deliberative events for Parliament, what are the most effective arguments to deploy to convince MPs that such things can complement their work rather than replace them.

9:30Amol Rajan:Politics without politicians is a hard sell to politicians. Some still see citizens' assemblies as a threat to parliamentary democracy rather than an evolution of it. What a fantastic question from Harvey. I would say to them what a politician told me, that yes, they're going to lose power under that scheme or under that, you know, even the reformist vision of politics without politicians, but they're going to gain legitimacy, which they are crucially losing right now. So if they want to be able to deliver good policies and good laws, I think they need these mechanisms of citizen deliberation and participation because they cannot, from their vantage point, fully understand the needs of their constituents, fully understand what needs to be done.

10:19I think it's a problem across all advanced democracies. So they should see this as a way to improve their decision process.

10:27Amol Rajan:And just to repeat the argument from last Thursday's episode, to the common refrain, I mentioned to you when we recorded that episode, it is a common refrain in this country to say, we already have a citizens assembly, it's called the House of Commons. And that argument doesn't wash because? Because they are not sufficiently like the citizens they claim to represent and it's really harming again the quality of the outcomes they they produce and if they were truly a citizens assembly in the sense of you know acting and thinking like them i think they would produce different different outcomes and so act like you are a citizens assembly instead of a chamber that is you know overly responsive to the affluent harvey thank you very much indeed we know that's not your real name but um thank you very much indeed for that question.

11:14Amol Rajan:Right, here's another question for Helen from Richard in Leicestershire. Hello Helen, what do you think of the idea of splitting an electoral process into three? One part would be regular referendums on all sorts of issues. Promoting particular policies would be what politicians freed from their parties would be good at. A second would be that the responsibility for implementing the winning policy would not be with politicians but with civil servants. And the third would be that each politician who led a campaign for a winning policy would automatically be elected as the people's representative to ensure the civil service does its job.

11:50Amol Rajan:And that would be the politician's only responsibility. Wow. Yeah, it's very original. I like the idea of focusing on the issues and elevating people on the basis of the issues that has been selected. My only concern is that it's too itemized in a way. We need someone to come up with a global agenda that bundles issues together and faces the trade-offs. So this is too much almost like a menu or shopping list? Yes, it's too individualized. the choice is to individualize. So you're going to choose, say, fewer taxes. You get a referendum and then people say fewer taxes. But then you're going to have another referendum on something else that actually requires more money.

12:46And then there's no coherence there. So that's the worry about splitting the decision process in this way. So classically, we ask parties to do the bundling. They package things together and they make the trade-offs. They say, well, we're going to have to cut costs in education or, you know, get rid of jury trials so we can spend the money on the army or something else. These are the packages that some parties want. And then on the left, you would have a different sort of trade-off. But if you make the decisions per issue, I think we're going to have a problem.

13:26Amol Rajan:It's really interesting. And Richard's first point where he says promoting particular policies would be what politicians freed from their parties would be good at. It's really interesting because, A, that is a kind of unbundling of the kind that's in the way maybe happened to newspapers. But also I'm struck by the amount of people in British politics who spend their political careers shouting at each other across the House of Commons when really they disagree with about 5%. 95%, whether it's a nuclear weapons or what council tax should be or the size of the state or whether or not there should be a triple lock on pensions, they agree on 95%.

14:00Amol Rajan:They're arguing, they disagree on 5%. And yet they spend their parliamentary careers trying to kill each other over that 5%. And I just wonder whether or not sometimes they'd be better off if they came together in some way and said, actually, let's focus on things where we do agree. But that's not how our parliamentary system is construed. Well, so I think the great unbundling, I think it's true across society. I think people are getting more individualistic in their tastes. Which is consumer society, isn't it? But projects and it is a bit of a problem. I think in a way what I'm proposing with randomly selected assemblies is a way to reconvene people, create common ground and face together the trade-offs.

14:45We can't have it all, so something has to give. So what are we going to agree on that makes sense? So we're cutting funding for certain things in order to fund other things. What are the priorities? And that would be the goal of a Citizens' Assembly of the kind that I envision, like the center of a new legislative system, really. The problem I have to admit with the mini publics, the Citizens' Assembly that have been run, is that they tend to be single issue. So it's kind of similar to what your listener was suggesting, but not for referendum, but for Citizens' Assembly. So instead of having a referendum on abortion, it's a referendum, it's a Citizens' Assembly on abortion.

15:28Right. And I don't think that's, I mean, I think there's something right about the intuition, but we can't lose sight of the need to focus, the need to formulate bundles and to face trade-offs. Because otherwise it's too easy. You just say, I want more of everything. Right. And it's not possible. So parties are not completely wrong in, you know, in choosing a set of trade-offs and then opposing people who want a different adjudication.

15:57Amol Rajan:I think we should be more honest about trade-offs. Richard, thank you very much indeed for that question. Really, really, really fascinating. And it's an equally fascinating answer, if I may say. Let's have a final question. This is from Mark in London. In the UK, we are currently undergoing a great deal of anguish working out how we're going to renovate our antiquated Houses of Parliament. And my radical idea is that we should redesign and rebuild an entirely new government structure, which incorporates a third chamber for Citizens Assembly. so there would be a triumvirate of democratic chambers starting with an advisory citizens assembly going on to the elected MPs to legislate and then the upper revising chamber so my question is are there any examples of this within modern democracies are buildings being designed specifically to incorporate a people in the everyday working of government mark thank you so much for a brilliant, brilliant question.

17:00Amol Rajan:You sound like something, if I may say, of a specialist in this domain. Mark's question to you, Hélène, is, are there examples of this within modern duroxies, i.e. that triumvirate structure? And he says, are buildings being designed specifically to incorporate people in the everyday working of government? Well, so first of all, I love this question and I love the thinking behind it. It's really what I'm interested in doing too, right? Only the best listeners on Radical, I tell you. So several people have already come up with, you know, yeah, some kind of like bicameral or tricameral system like that, where you would have a mostly advisory lot based chamber that would make proposals that are then taken up by the elected legislature and then, you know, further refined by the upper chamber.

17:50and we can discuss the pros and cons. I think the danger is to marginalize the advisory chamber. So I think I would want it to have more power than just advisory personally. So an agenda setting that is then refined by the elected assembly, maybe something like that. But regardless of the exact mechanics, I love the question about the architecture and whether we should redesign around the ideas rather than around the existing parliament, which is kind of beautiful, of course, and historic and admirable in many ways, but also very constraining. And so I think that, you know, I ask my students every year, like, how would you design the building for a lot-based assembly?

18:31And they came up with ideas that are very cool and inspiring. They said, well, it should be, you know, totally circular.

18:39Amol Rajan:Yeah, circular. And Jeremy Bentham's panopticon almost. Yeah, kind of, but like in a positive way, right? Like, so you could, you would have like, it would be like a flower, actually. A flower is petals. So the center is for plenaries. And then you have these petals around it for like breakout groups where people could reconvene. And they would make it totally transparent as a symbol of like, you know, openness and access and all that. And they would put it in a big garden. So to reconnect us with nature and there would be animals walking around. And they would maybe even like make it a rotating, but like a moving architecture that would go from place to place around the country.

19:16Amol Rajan:I love this idea that people get their dreams come true. They get accepted for a place at Yale University to study with the great professor L.N. Landmore. And then what they end up doing is designing this kind of rotating piece of flowery architecture, thinking about what a building would look like. But why not? Why not? I mean, lots of people say you just turn the House of Parliament, the Palace of Westminster into a museum. You know, why not be ambitious? And also, if you're going to spend... I think we need political imagination. You need imagination. You need imagination and you need, yeah.

19:49Amol Rajan:And, you know, if you're going to spend a couple of billion as a country, you know, not that I've got a couple of spare billion, but if you were going to spend a couple, what better to spend it on than the democracy? But also look at the skills of investment elsewhere. How much money are we spending on, again, AI data center in the US, right? Why aren't we investing a fraction of that money into renovating our democracies? I just don't get it. Thank you very, very much indeed for that question, Mark. I love the idea and love your imagination. thank you very much indeed for all of your questions hugely hugely grateful I think you can infer or deduce from these brilliant questions that we have people listening to this podcast a large number of people who are fired up by the idea of reviving democracy and those people would love your book Helen it's called Politics Without Politicians The Case for Citizen Rule is by Hélène Landemore thank you so much Hélène for your time and thank you to everyone else who's been listening

20:49Amol Rajan:It's 2009 and we're in the German mountains. A man straps himself into a car on the world's most dangerous racetrack. He whispers to himself, It's time to put my balls on the dashboard. As he starts the engine. In 15 minutes, he's in an ambulance, unconscious. In 15 years, he's a billionaire. This is Total Wolf, Formula One's most powerful team boss and the breakout star of Drive to Survive. This week on Good, Bad, Billionaire, how Toto Wolff made his billions. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts.