How to Have Politics Without Politicians

Foreign Policy Live

Foreign Policy

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.1 • 622 Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2026

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s no secret that democracy is in trouble. Studies show that a growing number of countries are less free, and polls suggest ordinary citizens are losing faith in their governments. What can be done to fix this? Hélène Landemore has a radical solution: to get rid of politicians and electoral politics and instead create assemblies of ordinary citizens. She explores this concept in her new book, Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule, and joins FP Live to interrogate the idea. Hélène Landemore: The Problem With Representative Democracy Nicholas Bequelin: The Age of Defensive Democracy Hélène Landemore: More Power to More People Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	All right, we've got Simon on the line. Simon, young people, they're just all a bit, a bit lazy, aren't they?
0:09.0	What are you for?
0:10.0	Good night.
0:11.0	Welcome to McDonald's.
0:12.0	Have you to get the six minutes, please?
0:13.0	Some say young people are work shy, but at McDonald's, we hired 47,000 of them last year.
0:19.0	How's your night?
0:20.0	Like George here, who keeps things running during a Friday rush.
0:23.6	Resilience, making it happen at McDonald's.
0:28.6	Now are all the traitors present?
0:32.6	Let's get started, shall we?
0:34.6	From rags to riches.
0:35.6	I'm so sick of this.
0:36.6	Working like a dog and being treated worse.
0:39.3	Yorkshire to New York.
0:40.3	Or climbers, you and me.
0:42.3	A life dedicated to revenge.
0:44.3	Let's make this an occasion to remember.
0:46.3	A Woman of Substance on Channel 4.
0:49.3	Stream now.
0:50.3	Hi, I'm Ravi Agrawal, Foreign Policies Editor-in-Chief.
0:56.0	This is FP Live.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Foreign Policy, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Foreign Policy and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.