Hélène Landemore, the newly named Damon Wells ’58 Professor of Political Science, believes ordinary citizens can help fix what’s wrong with electoral politics. In her studies and practice, she has shown how citizens’ assemblies—groups of randomly selected citizens brought together to discuss issues and make policy recommendations—can sometimes represent the will of the people more directly than elected officials.

“Citizens’ assemblies are a good way to tap into collective wisdom and aggregate it into an agenda that makes sense and into policy recommendations that are likely to actually solve problems,” Landemore says. She points to examples in Ireland and France where such assemblies have helped politicians revisit thorny issues, “bridging a gap between a cautious political class and a public whose views had evolved,” she says. She reports instances of citizens’ assemblies in over thirty other countries.

Landemore recently published a book, Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule, which lays out her reasoning behind the power of citizens’ assemblies and other such ways to get the broader public more directly involved in governing. In particular, she says, it’s important to get those she calls “the shy” involved in politics: those who don’t seek or want the spotlight.

“The goal is to generate bonds among people who don’t know each other and would often not have access to a place of power otherwise,” she says. “This can help them rediscover themselves as valuable members of a community, measuring up to a potential they often did not know they had, and in turn make citizens care more about politics.”

A History of Academic Philanthropy

The Wells chair in political science is the first professorship arising from the bequest of Damon Wells ’58, who died in 2021. His planned gift will fund multiple chairs in the social sciences, spanning history, political science, economics, and sociology.

Wells was born in Texas in 1937. After studying history at Yale, he went on to earn an MA from Pembroke College at Oxford, where he maintained deep ties, and then a PhD from Rice University. Wells founded Damon Wells Interests in 1968, which specialized in mining in the United States, Australia, and South Africa. In 1993, he created the Damon Wells Foundation to support numerous endeavors in the fields of medicine, education, and history.

Wells also made several past gifts to Yale, naming two professorships in geology and international relations, along with the Damon Wells ’58 Scholarship Fund; part of his bequest will add to the scholarship.

“This bequest from Damon Wells will help our university recruit and retain visionary faculty members engaged in innovative research and rigorous teaching,” says President McInnis. “Yale so shaped his life that he wanted to pay that forward to future generations. I am deeply grateful for his generosity.”

Proof of Concept

Professor Landemore was recording the audiobook of Politics Without Politicians when she got the call from Steven Wilkinson, the dean of Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, naming her to the professorship. “I thought he was calling to talk about something else, so I was taken aback, but I was very happy,” she says.

Currently, Landemore is helping design and oversee a citizens’ assembly in Connecticut. A group of one hundred Connecticut residents will, over the course of seven weekends, discuss how to fund and improve public services. The aim of this project, she says, is both modest and ambitious: a proof of concept, but one that will take place at the state level for only the second time in the United States and will hopefully help inform the gubernatorial debates this fall and the legislative processes down the line.

“We’re a long way from anything legally binding,” Landemore says. “But we want to show that there’s value there, that it’s worth the time, money, and energy.”