Tanned, Exquisitely Coiffed Bernie Sanders Tells Supporters Corporations Actually Have A Lot To Offer,” blared an especially funny Onion headline from 2015. In the fictional story that followed, a post-makeover Sanders is described as making a dramatic about-face, voicing his support for the oil and gas sectors and flying on a private jet to a fundraiser with Sheldon Adelson.

It’s a well-done Onion story because it’s so implausible. Love him or hate him, it’s simply impossible to imagine Sanders behaving like this. He’s had more or less the same principles since he was the mayor of Burlington. He’s always been an outspoken opponent of corporate America with no patience for any large industrial sector, let alone oil and gas. His hair has always been the opposite of coiffed. It’s impossible, in other words, to imagine Bernie Sanders behaving like any other politician.

In a deeply divided nation, Bernie Sanders is an extraordinarily popular politician. By one recent estimate, excluding Barack Obama, he is the most popular living politician in America. He has the highest approval rating from his in-state citizens of any sitting senator.

Most politicians, from both sides of the aisle, are loathed figures. As of this writing, neither Donald Trump nor JD Vance, nor any congressional leader from either party, is nearly so well-liked as Sanders. People don’t like the “tanned, exquisitely coiffed” politicians that the Onion so mercilessly mocked. And who can blame them? Politicians lie; they cheat; they betray the public trust. They cower to big business and they kneel before authoritarians. (And those are just the Democrats!) Would American democracy be better off if we got rid of them?

Hélène Landemore thinks the answer is yes. In her bracingly provocative new book, Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule, Landemore argues that democracy would be best served if, instead of relying on elected officials to guide our political decision-making, we turned over power to a random selection of everyday people. Drawing inspiration from various attempts at citizen rule in Iceland, France, and elsewhere, Landemore argues that not only can citizens–instead of elected officials–be put in charge of political decisions, but that they should be.

Her basis for this claim comes in part from the sprawling academic literature studying something called “collective intelligence.” The basic idea of collective intelligence is that, when they come together, large groups of people can make very good decisions. It helps if these groups are diverse along basic lines, but it’s not a requirement. What matters is that groups together are often better at making decisions than individuals. In perhaps the most famous example, Sir Francis Galton, the early twentieth century statistician, described the guesses people made at a local county fair. Asked to guess the weight of an ox, many of the hundreds of responses submitted were incorrect. But when taken together, the median response nearly nailed the exact weight. Since Galton, empirical evidence has found collective intelligence operating in domains as disparate as medicine, economics, and yes, politics.

Landemore summarized the implications of collective intelligence for democracy in an earlier book, Democratic Reason. Her current book is about fleshing out these implications into a full-blown policy proposal. While the notion of citizen rule (or “lottocracy’’ or “sortition’’) has generated some debate, it has largely been an academic one. Politics Without Politicians intends to inject the idea firmly into the mainstream.

If taken entirely literally, this idea is startling. Surely, one thinks, we need politicians to make decisions about complex matters of governance. It’s one thing to have vague notions, as many people do, about taxes and government spending, the environment and the economy; it’s another to actually have to think through the sort of complicated trade-offs, often on uncertain time horizons, that policymaking demands. Governance and policymaking require expertise that everyday people don’t have. In addition, we can’t just throw away the vote; elections and votes matter. They bestow upon people their most fundamental democratic right—to choose their leaders—and they tell us something important about what people want and who they want to represent them. Landemore concedes that her idea is partially a “provocation.” But she is committed to it, and she offers many persuasive reasons why the rest of us should be, too.

Some of the reasons she offers are not particularly controversial. Empirical evidence makes clear that, when they are responsive to the preferences of those they ostensibly represent, elected officials respond most to the preferences of the wealthy. Other times, they aren’t responsive at all. Landemore’s diagnosis, in short, is that modern democracy is broken. Again: Not controversial. But her solution, to turn over decisions to random citizens at the expense of politicians who gain power through elections, is quite radical, and will invite any number of obvious potential objections.

Landemore works hard to assuage many of the most obvious ones. In addition to being a political theorist at Yale, she’s worked alongside several initiatives designed to provide randomly selected citizens with political power. The citizens randomly selected to participate are provided with financial support, akin to the support one receives for jury duty, as well as lodging, travel, and even child care. They take each other seriously, even when they have sharp disagreements, and they listen to experts but do not defer to them (expertise is not “on top,” but instead “on tap”). On the whole, her descriptions of these efforts are largely—but not entirely–encouraging.

Perhaps most impressive is her description of her time in her native France, helping guide a group of citizens charged with devising policy about end-of-life care. As policy issues go, it’s a thorny one, insofar as it implicates questions of medical expertise that seem beyond the reach of most people, and normative questions about right and wrong for which there is no one correct answer. And yet, according to Landemore, the 185 French citizens randomly chosen for this task went to great lengths to learn relevant details from experts and respectfully engage with one another, even when they disagreed about the moral matters at stake. Her description of this effort is nothing less than inspiring and will convert more than a few skeptics.

Some citizen assemblies have done remarkably important work. In Ireland, a group of citizens deliberated and decided to recommend that abortion restrictions be weakened. The government put their recommendations to a referendum, and the resulting vote effectively legalized abortion in Ireland. Important, but circuitous—the assemblies made recommendations, but it was the government that chose to act. This pattern crops up again and again. In France, a citizens assembly issued more than a hundred recommendations meant to mitigate climate change, almost all of which were passed into law. The recommendations were technically impressive, covering topics as opaque as building codes, reflective of a group that had engaged at length with experts. But by the end of the process, the assembly members reported being extremely dissatisfied, believing that the politicians had taken control away from them. The end-of-life care assembly functioned similarly, with an inspiring process resulting in a textbook of policy proposals that elected officials could choose to act upon (or not). Of course, citizen assemblies do not inherently need to subordinate themselves to government. But before we adopt Landemore’s wholesale renovation of democracy, it would be helpful if there were evidence of an unambiguously successful citizen assembly that had exercised final-say power over issues of pressing national concern.

Landemore is especially concerned about making sure the citizen assemblies allow room for “the shy.” By her accounting, ordinary democratic politics penalizes the shy. People typically elected to office are extroverted and not especially self-effacing. And when everyday people talk and debate politics, louder voices in the room tend to dominate. This, in turn, helps transform electoral politics into something “oligarchic” (Landemore’s description), wherein the people loud and overconfident enough to seek out and win office actually represent a very narrow slice of the broader population.

But as a lived practice involving deliberation, democracy demands that the views of everyone—not just the aggressively loud—are allowed to be heard. Landemore details how various citizen assemblies have tried to bring the shy in. Professional facilitators seek out their contributions; opportunities are made for people to connect in smaller groups; and of course, the financial incentives help people participate who otherwise wouldn’t be interested in doing so.

One doesn’t have to accept the full weight of her prescription to believe that Landemore has identified a major problem. Democratic politics does penalize the shy. Similarly, one doesn’t have to endorse Landemore’s vision to grant that collective intelligence research shows that everyday people, representing a broader population, can make superior decisions to individuals. Taken together, this tells us that, setting aside other reforms, democracies should strive to include the shy in deliberations and decision-making. Landemore’s insight on this precise point should not be missed.

That having been said, while reading her accounts of these citizen assemblies, I couldn’t help but think about how exhausting they must be. Landemore is up front about this; she describes the many Zoom meetings they can entail, and the challenges to coordinating many people’s calendars across many different times. Much of the actual work of the assemblies is done in-person, seemingly on weekends. The organizers go to great lengths to cover costs, provide honoraria, and even explain absences to employers. After all, they want representativeness. But if implemented widely, even if the shy were included, I would worry about how included the fatigued would be. Still, I have faith that Landemore and her colleagues would do their best to include those who, if forced to choose between deliberating over matters of public concern and napping, would always choose the latter.

There is one broader objection that I’m afraid Landemore doesn’t really rebut. And it’s that some degree of political leadership is inevitable. Even if most people don’t like most politicians, some politicians are beloved. If most politicians are the reviled kind parodied by The Onion, with slicked-back hair and questionable morals, there are still some who inspire profound devotion. These people are not merely politicians. They are leaders. Bernie Sanders isn’t a mere politician; he’s stuck to a set of principles and he’s helped change American politics. People love him and they follow him. You can’t get rid of politicians without getting rid of Sanders.

Even in a country that hates politicians, political leaders emerge. So, too, do they emerge in the most unlikely settings, where conventional politicians have been removed from the equation. By my reading, they emerge in the citizen assemblies that Landemore describes.

When recounting her time with one of the citizen assemblies in France (this one about climate change), Landemore describes one especially memorable participant she refers to as Omar. Omar lambasts experts who present to the group (“stop treating us like children!” he yells at one) and, Landemore writes, he has an “aggressive and unpleasant character.” Omar has a very impressive resume: He’s a pediatric surgeon from a small town, a second-generation immigrant with African roots, who recalls dealing with discrimination all his life. He’s been divorced, he’s gotten remarried, and he has strongly held opinions about a wide variety of topics.

Landemore is “puzzled” by the reaction that other citizens have to Omar. She reports that, despite his outbursts and his supposed personality defects, Omar is “very much respected and liked within the group.” I wasn’t puzzled. He’s passionate; he’s knowledgeable; he has the kind of life story that makes him simultaneously accessible and distant. He is, in short, a budding political leader. This might not make him someone we want to be friends with. He doesn’t sound pleasant. He’s certainly not shy. But, at least as judged by Landemore’s description, he has all the makings of not a conventional politician, but one who could inspire others to follow.

The emergence of political leadership is mostly unpredictable. It doesn’t follow simple timetables or assumptions. Harry Truman was a haberdasher without a college degree. Barack Obama was a pothead with a penchant for poetry. But, with time, they became not just elected officials, but leaders.

Both the unpredictability and inevitability of political leadership are conveyed, quite vividly, by Donald Trump. For decades, he wasn’t a politician, not in any conventional sense. But through reality television and Home Alone 2 and the constant churn of the tabloids, he burrowed his way into our consciousness. And when he announced himself as a politician, he did spectacularly well. In the most unexpected places, among the most unexpected people, political leadership emerges. It can’t just be abolished away.

For a moment, let us set aside concerns about practicality and imagine that we could snap our fingers and implement Landemore’s vision. Ordinary people, recast as citizen legislators, would debate and decide upon matters of great public concern. Everything would be going swimmingly. Then, let us imagine that a long-time celebrity of popular culture started speaking loudly. Let us imagine that he would use his charisma, his persuasive power, and the accumulated decades of fame to advance his agenda. How would he do? He wouldn’t be a politician, of course. Not in any conventional sense. But even in Landemore’s imaginary community, I fear he’d do quite well.

What would happen next? It seems likely that the electoral oligarchies she decries would re-emerge. The most committed and passionate would demonstrate their passion and commitment. The shy, the ambivalent, and the fatigued would, slowly but surely, happily defer to their more energetic and outspoken counterparts. With time, the former might even want the latter to stand in for them. And if they really trusted the energetic and outspoken, the shy and tired would allow the energetic and outspoken to represent them. They might even want to vote for them.