Sheri Berman
Foreign Affairs
 |
| Cinta Fosch |
Nas últimas duas décadas, as preocupações com o futuro da democracia passaram a ocupar o centro do debate político. Em muitas democracias consolidadas, antes consideradas estáveis e seguras, a polarização aumentou, a confiança nas instituições políticas diminuiu e os governos parecem incapazes de responder de forma eficaz aos desafios enfrentados por seus países. Nos Estados Unidos, as divisões internas, a insatisfação política e a disfunção institucional tornaram-se tão graves no último ano que o país está sofrendo um retrocesso democrático "muito mais rápido" do que "qualquer outra democracia nos tempos modernos", segundo o think tank Varieties of Democracy.
Acadêmicos, ativistas, organizações filantrópicas e entidades sem fins lucrativos de todos os Estados Unidos e da Europa — e de todo o espectro ideológico — reagiram voltando sua atenção e seus recursos para corrigir as falhas da democracia. A maioria parte do princípio de que a estrutura básica da democracia representativa é sólida e de que seus problemas podem ser resolvidos mediante o aperfeiçoamento das instituições e dos procedimentos pelos quais ela opera. No entanto, nem todos compartilham essa visão. Para alguns, a crise da democracia é mais profunda: ela decorre de um sistema tão deteriorado, corrupto, pouco representativo e incompetente que se tornou irrecuperável.
Hoje, essa crítica é comumente associada à direita populista e à extrema-direita. Nos Estados Unidos e em outros lugares, alguns intelectuais e ativistas de direita defendem que as democracias liberais deveriam dar lugar a regimes iliberais — que mantêm eleições, mas restringem direitos — capazes de promover o "bem comum", valores tradicionais e projetos nacionalistas que enfatizam a homogeneidade étnica e religiosa. Há quem defenda que a democracia deve ser totalmente descartada em favor de um governo liderado por um líder autoritário ou de alguma forma de monarquia.
Fora desses círculos de direita, outros pensadores partem da mesma premissa — a de que a democracia contemporânea é fundamentalmente inviável —, mas chegam a conclusões muito diferentes sobre o que deveria substituir o sistema atual. Uma dessas propostas vem de Hélène Landemore, professora de ciência política em Yale. Landemore não se opõe à democracia; pelo contrário, ela é uma defensora do sistema, embora cada vez mais crítica em relação a ele. Seu primeiro livro, Democratic Reason, exaltava as vantagens da democracia sobre outras formas de governo. O segundo, Open Democracy, argumentava que a democracia poderia ser aprimorada se permitisse aos cidadãos maior influência e participação direta. Sua obra mais recente, Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule, vai além. Nela, Landemore sustenta que a democracia representativa é fundamentalmente falha e que o necessário é nada menos que uma revolução. "Não sinto prazer algum em constatar que estou chegando a uma conclusão associada aos populistas", escreve ela na primeira página. Ainda assim, eles "têm razão". O sistema atual "já não é — se é que algum dia foi — capaz de proporcionar uma governança que seja, ao mesmo tempo, democrática e eficiente".
A solução de Landemore consiste em reimaginar a democracia desde a base, substituindo instituições representativas pelo governo direto dos cidadãos. No entanto, assim como a transição para o iliberalismo ou o autoritarismo não é a resposta para o mal-estar democrático, também não o é o descarte de eleições e de outros elementos da democracia representativa que criam vínculos vitais entre os cidadãos e o governo. O sistema atual precisa de reparos, não de uma revolução. Tornar os governos mais representativos e responsivos exigirá uma ampla gama de reformas, podendo incluir os tipos de assembleias de cidadãos defendidos por Landemore. Contudo, tais assembleias representam apenas uma melhoria promissora entre muitas, e não um substituto para a própria democracia representativa. A democracia contemporânea precisa de todas as reformas inovadoras que puder adotar.
ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE
All modern democracies are representative: rather than governing themselves directly, citizens elect politicians to govern on their behalf. Many definitions of democracy therefore focus on elections. Perhaps the most famous was offered by the early-twentieth-century Austrian political economist Joseph Schumpeter, who defined democracy as an “institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote.” Adam Przeworski, Schumpeter’s most influential contemporary successor, describes democracy as a system in which rulers are selected through contested elections and incumbents relinquish power when they lose.
For Landemore, however, this electoral core is precisely the problem. She argues that any attempt to repair democracy while leaving elections at its center is bound to fail because elections create a professional political class that is unsuited to genuine democratic rule. As she puts it, members of this group, “whatever their personal, individual qualities,” cannot create “assemblies capable of either fully democratic representation or smart, optimally beneficial legislation.” One reason is that elections select for a particular type: those who seek power and are prone to be corrupted by it. These are, as Landemore writes, “alpha types, the charismatic, the daring, the entitled, the arrogant, even those with no shame whatsoever, and sometimes even the downright psychopathic.”
Elections thus deny meaningful influence to ordinary citizens, especially those she calls the “shy”—“the unambitious, the selfless, and the accommodating.” The process filters out many of the citizens least attracted to power and, in Landemore’s view, best disposed to exercise it responsibly. And in many countries, elections produce representatives who are disproportionately white, wealthy, and highly educated rather than a cohort that resembles the citizenry at large. Landemore argues that the inevitable result is distorted political outcomes, with electoral systems generating laws and policies that are often “misaligned with and sometimes even contrary to the political interests of citizens.”
Para muitos cidadãos, a boa vida simplesmente não envolve a política como vocação.
Ultimately, Landemore concludes, democracy should not be understood merely as a method whereby citizens choose representatives and governments at periodic intervals. Instead, democracy should be a “way of life,” with continual public participation. She reimagines the structures of democracy accordingly, proposing that elections, professional politicians, and parties all be eliminated and replaced with a national parliament and local assemblies whose members would be selected by lottery. Members might be called on to serve for extended periods and be compensated for their time and for the expenses associated with attending. Citizens would then vote on the proposals these bodies produce in frequent referendums.
According to Landemore, this system would have practical and civic advantages. Without professional politicians bending to the wishes of campaign donors and lobbyists, avenues for corruption would disappear. Because they are chosen at random, citizens’ assemblies would more closely approximate the diversity of society than a class of elected officials, enabling them to draw on the “collective intelligence” of that society and therefore produce better policy outcomes. Most important, she argues, would be the assemblies’ realization of the French Revolution’s promise of “liberty, equality, and fraternity.” (Landemore is French.) Citizens’ assemblies would tap into a classical, positive conception of liberty in which citizens would be devoted “full-time” to “the public good and political life.” The assemblies would better embody political equality by opening governance to all citizens. And they could generate solidarity or even what Landemore calls “love,” as citizens governed through assemblies come to see one another as fellows rather than as competitors or strangers.
To help make her case, Landemore cites recent experiments with citizens’ assemblies. In Iceland, citizens’ assemblies emerged in response to a political crisis in 2008. Tasked with setting the agenda for a revision of the constitution, a randomly selected group of more than 900 citizens produced recommendations, including one—the nationalization of natural resources not already in private hands—that won overwhelming support when put to voters in a 2021 referendum. In Ireland, assemblies have worked alongside existing political institutions to address contentious issues such as same-sex marriage and health-care policy, on several occasions issuing recommendations that were later put before the public. Most famously, an assembly convened in 2016 recommended removing the country’s constitutional ban on abortion, a proposal approved by voters in 2018. Landemore devotes particular attention to French assemblies in which she participated as a researcher and observer. In one of them, set up in 2019 by the French government in response to the “yellow vest” movement, a nationwide wave of protests over fuel taxes and economic inequality that began the previous year, a group of 150 citizens was tasked with proposing climate policies. The group produced scores of recommendations, some of which were later adopted by the government.
THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER
For Landemore, however, this electoral core is precisely the problem. She argues that any attempt to repair democracy while leaving elections at its center is bound to fail because elections create a professional political class that is unsuited to genuine democratic rule. As she puts it, members of this group, “whatever their personal, individual qualities,” cannot create “assemblies capable of either fully democratic representation or smart, optimally beneficial legislation.” One reason is that elections select for a particular type: those who seek power and are prone to be corrupted by it. These are, as Landemore writes, “alpha types, the charismatic, the daring, the entitled, the arrogant, even those with no shame whatsoever, and sometimes even the downright psychopathic.”
Elections thus deny meaningful influence to ordinary citizens, especially those she calls the “shy”—“the unambitious, the selfless, and the accommodating.” The process filters out many of the citizens least attracted to power and, in Landemore’s view, best disposed to exercise it responsibly. And in many countries, elections produce representatives who are disproportionately white, wealthy, and highly educated rather than a cohort that resembles the citizenry at large. Landemore argues that the inevitable result is distorted political outcomes, with electoral systems generating laws and policies that are often “misaligned with and sometimes even contrary to the political interests of citizens.”
Para muitos cidadãos, a boa vida simplesmente não envolve a política como vocação.
Ultimately, Landemore concludes, democracy should not be understood merely as a method whereby citizens choose representatives and governments at periodic intervals. Instead, democracy should be a “way of life,” with continual public participation. She reimagines the structures of democracy accordingly, proposing that elections, professional politicians, and parties all be eliminated and replaced with a national parliament and local assemblies whose members would be selected by lottery. Members might be called on to serve for extended periods and be compensated for their time and for the expenses associated with attending. Citizens would then vote on the proposals these bodies produce in frequent referendums.
According to Landemore, this system would have practical and civic advantages. Without professional politicians bending to the wishes of campaign donors and lobbyists, avenues for corruption would disappear. Because they are chosen at random, citizens’ assemblies would more closely approximate the diversity of society than a class of elected officials, enabling them to draw on the “collective intelligence” of that society and therefore produce better policy outcomes. Most important, she argues, would be the assemblies’ realization of the French Revolution’s promise of “liberty, equality, and fraternity.” (Landemore is French.) Citizens’ assemblies would tap into a classical, positive conception of liberty in which citizens would be devoted “full-time” to “the public good and political life.” The assemblies would better embody political equality by opening governance to all citizens. And they could generate solidarity or even what Landemore calls “love,” as citizens governed through assemblies come to see one another as fellows rather than as competitors or strangers.
To help make her case, Landemore cites recent experiments with citizens’ assemblies. In Iceland, citizens’ assemblies emerged in response to a political crisis in 2008. Tasked with setting the agenda for a revision of the constitution, a randomly selected group of more than 900 citizens produced recommendations, including one—the nationalization of natural resources not already in private hands—that won overwhelming support when put to voters in a 2021 referendum. In Ireland, assemblies have worked alongside existing political institutions to address contentious issues such as same-sex marriage and health-care policy, on several occasions issuing recommendations that were later put before the public. Most famously, an assembly convened in 2016 recommended removing the country’s constitutional ban on abortion, a proposal approved by voters in 2018. Landemore devotes particular attention to French assemblies in which she participated as a researcher and observer. In one of them, set up in 2019 by the French government in response to the “yellow vest” movement, a nationwide wave of protests over fuel taxes and economic inequality that began the previous year, a group of 150 citizens was tasked with proposing climate policies. The group produced scores of recommendations, some of which were later adopted by the government.
THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER
Landemore’s enthusiasm is infectious, and she identifies many real problems with modern democracy. But her suggestion that citizens’ assemblies and referendums can effectively replace existing institutions is overly optimistic. The proposal raises practical concerns: participating in assemblies would require considerable time, and many citizens might be unable or unwilling to serve. Landemore favors compulsory participation, similar to jury duty in the United States. Yet avoidance of jury duty is common, and many Americans receive hardship exemptions, raising doubts about whether a mandatory lottery system could secure the kind of sustained and socially diverse participation she hopes for.
Holding referendums in which the public ratifies or rejects assembly proposals adds further complications. Historically, referendums have often been plagued by low turnout, and blunt yes-or-no choices can oversimplify complex issues and leave outcomes vulnerable to media and pressure campaigns. The 2016 Brexit referendum illustrates these dangers well: many British voters had limited information about their country’s membership in the European Union, the campaign was rife with misleading claims, and participation was uneven, making it difficult to conclude that the narrow result in favor of leaving the EU truly reflected the will of the people. Similar issues emerged in 2022 in Chile, where a constitution drafted by a convention not unlike Landemore’s citizens’ assemblies was rejected by voters who thought it too radical and complicated.
Beyond the practical problems lie broader political concerns that bear directly on the outcomes Landemore wants to realize: participation, liberty, equality, solidarity, and citizen rule itself. Citizens’ assemblies would likely involve fewer citizens in meaningful political activity than representative democracy does today. By design, only a tiny fraction of the population would participate at any given time while the rest looked on. As for whether citizens’ assemblies would cultivate civic values and solidarity among those who participate, look again to the example of jury duty. Although many people find jury duty worthwhile, there is little evidence that it leaves them with a sustained interest in law or politics, much less a desire to make politics “a way of life.” For many citizens, the good life simply does not entail politics as a full- or even part-time vocation. And although participants in assemblies might form strong bonds, it is far from clear whether those bonds would endure or generate solidarity among the wider public.
Em um local de votação em Atlanta, Geórgia, maio de 2026
Alyssa Pointer / Reuters
In addition to being overly optimistic about the benefits of a system composed of citizens’ assemblies, Landemore does not fully grapple with the crucial democratic functions that elections, political parties, and campaigns perform. These institutions do not merely select leaders. They bring politics to the public. It is through electoral competition that politicians are incentivized to seek out, articulate, and respond to public concerns. It is through parties that policy agendas are developed and disseminated and citizens are mobilized and organized. It is through campaigns that citizens receive most of their political information.
Elections are not everything, but the competitive struggle for votes is one of the main mechanisms through which citizens are engaged, and parties serve as the connective tissue between governments and citizens. Landemore’s system would eliminate this mechanism and sever that connective tissue but offers no way to replace their democratic functions.
This is the paradox of her proposal. A system designed to increase participation and civic engagement could instead do the opposite. If most citizens knew that they were unlikely ever to serve in an assembly, and if there were no parties, campaigns, or electoral contests to focus their attention in ways referendums cannot, why would they remain informed, organized, or engaged? Why would they follow policy disputes or even know what the central issues are? Rather than democratizing politics, turning the deliberative work over to citizens’ assemblies may depoliticize it.
NO SILVER BULLET
Holding referendums in which the public ratifies or rejects assembly proposals adds further complications. Historically, referendums have often been plagued by low turnout, and blunt yes-or-no choices can oversimplify complex issues and leave outcomes vulnerable to media and pressure campaigns. The 2016 Brexit referendum illustrates these dangers well: many British voters had limited information about their country’s membership in the European Union, the campaign was rife with misleading claims, and participation was uneven, making it difficult to conclude that the narrow result in favor of leaving the EU truly reflected the will of the people. Similar issues emerged in 2022 in Chile, where a constitution drafted by a convention not unlike Landemore’s citizens’ assemblies was rejected by voters who thought it too radical and complicated.
Beyond the practical problems lie broader political concerns that bear directly on the outcomes Landemore wants to realize: participation, liberty, equality, solidarity, and citizen rule itself. Citizens’ assemblies would likely involve fewer citizens in meaningful political activity than representative democracy does today. By design, only a tiny fraction of the population would participate at any given time while the rest looked on. As for whether citizens’ assemblies would cultivate civic values and solidarity among those who participate, look again to the example of jury duty. Although many people find jury duty worthwhile, there is little evidence that it leaves them with a sustained interest in law or politics, much less a desire to make politics “a way of life.” For many citizens, the good life simply does not entail politics as a full- or even part-time vocation. And although participants in assemblies might form strong bonds, it is far from clear whether those bonds would endure or generate solidarity among the wider public.
Em um local de votação em Atlanta, Geórgia, maio de 2026
Alyssa Pointer / Reuters
In addition to being overly optimistic about the benefits of a system composed of citizens’ assemblies, Landemore does not fully grapple with the crucial democratic functions that elections, political parties, and campaigns perform. These institutions do not merely select leaders. They bring politics to the public. It is through electoral competition that politicians are incentivized to seek out, articulate, and respond to public concerns. It is through parties that policy agendas are developed and disseminated and citizens are mobilized and organized. It is through campaigns that citizens receive most of their political information.
Elections are not everything, but the competitive struggle for votes is one of the main mechanisms through which citizens are engaged, and parties serve as the connective tissue between governments and citizens. Landemore’s system would eliminate this mechanism and sever that connective tissue but offers no way to replace their democratic functions.
This is the paradox of her proposal. A system designed to increase participation and civic engagement could instead do the opposite. If most citizens knew that they were unlikely ever to serve in an assembly, and if there were no parties, campaigns, or electoral contests to focus their attention in ways referendums cannot, why would they remain informed, organized, or engaged? Why would they follow policy disputes or even know what the central issues are? Rather than democratizing politics, turning the deliberative work over to citizens’ assemblies may depoliticize it.
NO SILVER BULLET
There is no doubt that representative democracy is functioning poorly. But it is one thing to compare an existing system with an ideal and quite another to compare it with realistic alternatives. Politics Without Politicians is strongest when it lays out the advantages of citizens’ assemblies and shows how they might improve contemporary democracy; it is weakest when it argues that they should replace representative institutions altogether. To use Landemore’s own terminology, her book is better at making the “reformist” case she rejects than the “radical” case she advocates.
The greater use of citizens’ assemblies in representative democracy could provide real benefits. Informed deliberation among citizens with different backgrounds and perspectives is valuable. As the Icelandic, Irish, and French examples show, assemblies might help established institutions break deadlocks on contentious issues or act as agenda-setting mechanisms, generating proposals that politicians and legislatures could then be obliged to consider, refine, and implement. Yet in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, the path toward stronger democracy lies in combining such innovations with more conventional reforms designed to address deficiencies in representative systems and make them more responsive, representative, and effective.
In the United States, the party primary system is an obvious source of dysfunction. Turnout in primary elections—when parties choose their candidates for a general election—is extremely low, sometimes only 20 percent of eligible voters, and those who participate tend to be more ideologically extreme than the public as a whole. This system gives politicians powerful incentives to appeal to partisan minorities rather than broad coalitions of voters. Reforms to make legislative seats more competitive could include open primaries, which allow all voters, not just party members, to participate, and ranked-choice voting, which forces candidates to compete for second- and third-choice support beyond their base. Fusion voting, which allows multiple parties to nominate the same candidate, can similarly make the democratic system more responsive. This practice was widespread in the nineteenth century and exists today in some U.S. states, including New York. It gives citizens dissatisfied with the major parties an opportunity to express their preferences, allows small parties to exert influence over big ones, and encourages candidates to widen their appeal.
Institutional reforms can also reduce the pernicious influence of gerrymandering. The practice has occurred in many democracies; former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, for example, redrew legislative districts to cement his hold on power. In the United States, years of gerrymandering have helped ensure that at least 80 percent of seats in the House of Representatives are firmly in the hands of one party, encouraging politicians to cater to intense partisan minorities. One far-reaching response would be to adopt a proportional representation system in which each U.S. state would function as a single district, and legislative seats would be allocated according to each party’s share of the statewide vote. Such a system, used in many European democracies, would eliminate the opportunity for gerrymandering and encourage the formation of multiple parties, which could improve minority representation, foster coalition building, and potentially reduce toxic partisanship. More modest reforms could also help. States could transfer the authority to draw electoral maps to bipartisan, nonpartisan, or even citizen-led commissions or delegate the task to computer programs that use neutral criteria such as population equality and geographic compactness to draw districts. Such changes would help ensure that voters choose their politicians rather than allowing politicians to choose their voters.
Eleições, partidos e campanhas desempenham funções democráticas cruciais.
A reforma do financiamento de campanhas também pode fortalecer a democracia. Nos Estados Unidos, uma série de decisões judiciais e mudanças legislativas nas últimas décadas permitiu uma expansão drástica do papel que americanos ricos desempenham no financiamento de campanhas e, consequentemente, em quem concorre e vence eleições. Uma investigação recente do New York Times revelou que bilionários — que representam uma fração ínfima (menos de 1%) da sociedade americana — foram responsáveis por 19% de todas as contribuições declaradas para campanhas federais em 2024; essa classe contribuiu com uma parcela ainda maior para alguns fundos de campanha locais. Políticos que dependem de pequenos doadores também podem ser levados a adotar posições extremas, uma vez que esses doadores tendem a ser mais partidários do que o eleitor médio. Regulamentações para limitar a influência do dinheiro na política ou, melhor ainda, a adoção do financiamento público de campanhas poderiam tornar os políticos mais atentos aos cidadãos comuns e ampliar o leque de pessoas aptas a concorrer a cargos públicos.
No entanto, apenas reformas institucionais não bastarão para revitalizar a democracia. A educação cívica será igualmente crucial. Décadas de desinvestimento nos Estados Unidos e em outras democracias contribuíram para um baixo nível de conhecimento sobre o funcionamento da democracia e sobre como os cidadãos podem moldá-la. Ampliar e melhorar a educação cívica nas escolas e em outros ambientes poderia ajudar as pessoas a fazer escolhas políticas mais informadas, a participar mais ativamente da vida pública e a estar mais bem preparadas para lidar com a desinformação e com as tentativas de atores nacionais e estrangeiros de manipular preferências políticas.
A democracia, como observa corretamente Landemore, também depende de certos hábitos: respeito mútuo, senso de comunidade e solidariedade, e a capacidade de chegar a consensos e cooperar. Contudo, como argumentaram observadores da democracia desde Alexis de Tocqueville até Robert Putnam, tais hábitos são adquiridos principalmente na sociedade civil, por meio de interações cotidianas em bairros, locais de trabalho, comunidades religiosas, associações de pais e mestres, grupos de corrida, ligas de boliche e contextos semelhantes. Nas últimas décadas, a participação dos americanos nessas associações diminuiu, tornando necessários esforços para reverter essa tendência. Iniciativas como a organização sem fins lucrativos Braver Angels, sediada nos EUA, reúnem cidadãos de diferentes origens para desenvolver as habilidades necessárias a uma comunicação construtiva, apesar das divergências. A expansão de programas de intercâmbio estudantil — que incentivam jovens a passar um tempo em regiões ou campi muito diferentes dos seus — e de programas de serviço público como o AmeriCorps e a Service Year Alliance — que alocam participantes em comunidades distantes de suas casas — poderia ajudar a reconstruir os laços transversais de que a democracia necessita. Na Europa, por sua vez, alguns começaram a defender a retomada de programas de serviço militar ou civil obrigatório — práticas que haviam perdido força nas últimas décadas —, argumentando que tal medida promoveria não apenas a prontidão militar, mas também a solidariedade social, ao exigir que os jovens passassem longos períodos vivendo e trabalhando ao lado de cidadãos de diferentes origens.
A democracia enfrenta dificuldades. Não existe uma solução mágica, e as respostas precisam ser abrangentes e realistas. A agenda de reformas deve incluir inovações institucionais, como as assembleias de cidadãos; mudanças em sistemas políticos, eleitorais e de financiamento de campanhas claramente disfuncionais; e iniciativas que partam da base para reconstruir os fundamentos sociais e culturais da vida democrática. O livro de Landemore é valioso não por convencer os leitores de que a democracia representativa deva ser abolida, mas por evidenciar o quanto o sistema atual poderia ser melhor — e por apresentar uma das muitas reformas necessárias para que a democracia realize todo o seu potencial.
The greater use of citizens’ assemblies in representative democracy could provide real benefits. Informed deliberation among citizens with different backgrounds and perspectives is valuable. As the Icelandic, Irish, and French examples show, assemblies might help established institutions break deadlocks on contentious issues or act as agenda-setting mechanisms, generating proposals that politicians and legislatures could then be obliged to consider, refine, and implement. Yet in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, the path toward stronger democracy lies in combining such innovations with more conventional reforms designed to address deficiencies in representative systems and make them more responsive, representative, and effective.
In the United States, the party primary system is an obvious source of dysfunction. Turnout in primary elections—when parties choose their candidates for a general election—is extremely low, sometimes only 20 percent of eligible voters, and those who participate tend to be more ideologically extreme than the public as a whole. This system gives politicians powerful incentives to appeal to partisan minorities rather than broad coalitions of voters. Reforms to make legislative seats more competitive could include open primaries, which allow all voters, not just party members, to participate, and ranked-choice voting, which forces candidates to compete for second- and third-choice support beyond their base. Fusion voting, which allows multiple parties to nominate the same candidate, can similarly make the democratic system more responsive. This practice was widespread in the nineteenth century and exists today in some U.S. states, including New York. It gives citizens dissatisfied with the major parties an opportunity to express their preferences, allows small parties to exert influence over big ones, and encourages candidates to widen their appeal.
Institutional reforms can also reduce the pernicious influence of gerrymandering. The practice has occurred in many democracies; former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, for example, redrew legislative districts to cement his hold on power. In the United States, years of gerrymandering have helped ensure that at least 80 percent of seats in the House of Representatives are firmly in the hands of one party, encouraging politicians to cater to intense partisan minorities. One far-reaching response would be to adopt a proportional representation system in which each U.S. state would function as a single district, and legislative seats would be allocated according to each party’s share of the statewide vote. Such a system, used in many European democracies, would eliminate the opportunity for gerrymandering and encourage the formation of multiple parties, which could improve minority representation, foster coalition building, and potentially reduce toxic partisanship. More modest reforms could also help. States could transfer the authority to draw electoral maps to bipartisan, nonpartisan, or even citizen-led commissions or delegate the task to computer programs that use neutral criteria such as population equality and geographic compactness to draw districts. Such changes would help ensure that voters choose their politicians rather than allowing politicians to choose their voters.
Eleições, partidos e campanhas desempenham funções democráticas cruciais.
A reforma do financiamento de campanhas também pode fortalecer a democracia. Nos Estados Unidos, uma série de decisões judiciais e mudanças legislativas nas últimas décadas permitiu uma expansão drástica do papel que americanos ricos desempenham no financiamento de campanhas e, consequentemente, em quem concorre e vence eleições. Uma investigação recente do New York Times revelou que bilionários — que representam uma fração ínfima (menos de 1%) da sociedade americana — foram responsáveis por 19% de todas as contribuições declaradas para campanhas federais em 2024; essa classe contribuiu com uma parcela ainda maior para alguns fundos de campanha locais. Políticos que dependem de pequenos doadores também podem ser levados a adotar posições extremas, uma vez que esses doadores tendem a ser mais partidários do que o eleitor médio. Regulamentações para limitar a influência do dinheiro na política ou, melhor ainda, a adoção do financiamento público de campanhas poderiam tornar os políticos mais atentos aos cidadãos comuns e ampliar o leque de pessoas aptas a concorrer a cargos públicos.
No entanto, apenas reformas institucionais não bastarão para revitalizar a democracia. A educação cívica será igualmente crucial. Décadas de desinvestimento nos Estados Unidos e em outras democracias contribuíram para um baixo nível de conhecimento sobre o funcionamento da democracia e sobre como os cidadãos podem moldá-la. Ampliar e melhorar a educação cívica nas escolas e em outros ambientes poderia ajudar as pessoas a fazer escolhas políticas mais informadas, a participar mais ativamente da vida pública e a estar mais bem preparadas para lidar com a desinformação e com as tentativas de atores nacionais e estrangeiros de manipular preferências políticas.
A democracia, como observa corretamente Landemore, também depende de certos hábitos: respeito mútuo, senso de comunidade e solidariedade, e a capacidade de chegar a consensos e cooperar. Contudo, como argumentaram observadores da democracia desde Alexis de Tocqueville até Robert Putnam, tais hábitos são adquiridos principalmente na sociedade civil, por meio de interações cotidianas em bairros, locais de trabalho, comunidades religiosas, associações de pais e mestres, grupos de corrida, ligas de boliche e contextos semelhantes. Nas últimas décadas, a participação dos americanos nessas associações diminuiu, tornando necessários esforços para reverter essa tendência. Iniciativas como a organização sem fins lucrativos Braver Angels, sediada nos EUA, reúnem cidadãos de diferentes origens para desenvolver as habilidades necessárias a uma comunicação construtiva, apesar das divergências. A expansão de programas de intercâmbio estudantil — que incentivam jovens a passar um tempo em regiões ou campi muito diferentes dos seus — e de programas de serviço público como o AmeriCorps e a Service Year Alliance — que alocam participantes em comunidades distantes de suas casas — poderia ajudar a reconstruir os laços transversais de que a democracia necessita. Na Europa, por sua vez, alguns começaram a defender a retomada de programas de serviço militar ou civil obrigatório — práticas que haviam perdido força nas últimas décadas —, argumentando que tal medida promoveria não apenas a prontidão militar, mas também a solidariedade social, ao exigir que os jovens passassem longos períodos vivendo e trabalhando ao lado de cidadãos de diferentes origens.
A democracia enfrenta dificuldades. Não existe uma solução mágica, e as respostas precisam ser abrangentes e realistas. A agenda de reformas deve incluir inovações institucionais, como as assembleias de cidadãos; mudanças em sistemas políticos, eleitorais e de financiamento de campanhas claramente disfuncionais; e iniciativas que partam da base para reconstruir os fundamentos sociais e culturais da vida democrática. O livro de Landemore é valioso não por convencer os leitores de que a democracia representativa deva ser abolida, mas por evidenciar o quanto o sistema atual poderia ser melhor — e por apresentar uma das muitas reformas necessárias para que a democracia realize todo o seu potencial.
Sheri Berman é professora de Ciência Política no Barnard College, da Universidade de Columbia, e autora do livro The Political Consequences of Economic Ideas: Neoliberalism, the Left, and the Fate of Democracy, a ser lançado em breve.
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