Illustration: The Globe and Mail. Source: Getty Images
Hélène Landemore is a professor of political science at Yale University whose latest book is Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule.
We live in a political age defined by anger. In the United States, that anger found its most theatrical expression in the persona of Donald Trump, who rode a wave of populist resentment into power and has governed through a language of grievance, fear and division. But the pathology extends far beyond one man or one country. Across democracies, anger is simmering, sometimes boiling over. Politics feels perpetually on the brink of civil war.
What is the remedy?
Perhaps, improbably, the answer was offered at the recent Super Bowl halftime show by Bad Bunny, a performer whose stage name evokes something soft and disarming. “The only thing more powerful than hate is love,” appeared in capital letters on the Jumbotron above the stadium.
It is the kind of line that invites eye-rolling. Love? In politics? It sounds naïve, even unserious. And yet, over the past few years, I have come to believe it is true – and that we have been overlooking one of democracy’s most powerful resources.
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That realization came from a political experiment born of crisis.
In the fall of 2019, I travelled to Paris to observe the Citizens’ Convention on Climate, a national citizens’ assembly composed of 150 randomly selected French citizens tasked with proposing legislative and regulatory measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a socially just way. The convention was French President Emmanuel Macron’s olive branch to the “Yellow Vest” movement. Protesters wearing neon safety jackets had taken to the streets in response to a fuel tax; demonstrations turned violent; trust in government plummeted. Inspired by experiments in Canada and Ireland, Mr. Macron handed the problem to an ordinary cross-section of the French people: You don’t like my carbon tax? Then propose something better.
French protesters call for a citizens’ assembly during a 2018 “Yellow Vest” demonstration against President Emmanuel Macron’s policies in Montpellier.PASCAL GUYOT/AFP/Getty Images
The premise of citizens’ assemblies is simple but radical. Instead of leaving polarizing questions to professional politicians locked in partisan combat, you select a large, demographically representative group of citizens by lot. Over several weekends or months, they hear from experts, deliberate in small groups and plenaries, and work toward collective recommendations. Think of them as large juries designed to mirror the diversity of the population.
As a scholar of democratic theory, I had long been interested in the problem-solving promise of such assemblies: their capacity to aggregate information, refine arguments, and produce what I have elsewhere called “democratic reason” – a form of collective intelligence that emerges from structured deliberation. I expected to witness arguments becoming clearer, positions more informed.
I did see that. The 149 proposals put forward by the French Climate Convention were smart and pertinent. But what struck me far more forcefully was something I had not theorized at all: love.
Super Bowl halftime show viewers could see a message on the power of love during Bad Bunny's performance on Feb. 8, 2026.JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images
When I arrived for the third session of the Climate Convention, the atmosphere had transformed. During the first meeting weeks earlier, participants had been cautious and skeptical. By the third session, the mood was entirely different. It felt – this is the comparison that came to mind – like a successful third date. People were visibly happy to see one another. They hugged. They greeted each other by name. There was laughter, warmth, a sense of shared purpose. The room felt electric. Later, former environment minister Nicolas Hulot contrasted the toxic atmosphere of the French National Assembly – “people hate each other over there” – with the positivity he saw in this randomly selected group. “It gives me hope,” he said.
In working groups, participants expressed open affection. An older woman declared, “I love you, you are amazing,” to her peers. When a former stutterer spoke hesitantly, someone encouraged her aloud: “You are speaking; you are growing.” A young participant described the group as having created a “fusional, passionate connection.”
One particularly revealing moment occurred over lunch with a participant I’ll call Omar, a pediatric surgeon who was often the most confrontational voice in the room. He challenged experts and bristled at condescension. Other members gently deflected his anger – “Be positive, Omar” – with surprising benevolence.
Over lunch he explained himself to me. He was worried about the pressure participants were under. He had seen people cry. As a doctor, he said, he could handle stress, but others were more fragile. His outbursts were protective. “I’m passionate,” he told me. “I care.”
Another participant joined us. When I asked the man what he thought of Omar, he replied without hesitation: “From the first session, I fell in love with him.” Omar’s eyes filled with tears. “That’s why I’m here,” he said, choking up. “For the human exchange, the connection.” He told us he had five children. “That’s why I’m here.”
It was one of the most profound moments of humanity I have witnessed in a political setting. Beneath visible anger ran something deeper: a longing for connection, usefulness, hope.
Skeptics might assume this was an anomaly. But I saw the same dynamic in the second French citizens’ assembly, the Citizens’ Convention on End-of-Life Issues, on assisted dying. This time, I served on the governance committee overseeing 184 citizens over eight weekends.
Convention members hold signs reading “Thank you” at the closing meeting of the Citizens’ Convention on the End of Life in Paris on April 2, 2023. That final session was a collective outpouring of love as much as a policy debrief.JULIEN DE ROSA
The topic was grave. Yet the process was strikingly life-affirming. An older woman asked a younger one, after a difficult exchange, “Can I give you a cuddle?” The young woman replied, “I was waiting for someone to offer.” When a widow confessed she lacked the courage to visit her husband’s grave alone, 10 fellow participants later accompanied her.
In the final session, citizens were invited to reflect on their experience. What followed was less a policy debrief than a collective outpouring. One man described it as “one of the most beautiful experiences of my life,” an “improbable family born out of chance and necessity.” A woman who had initially feared the process was “a scam” spoke of pride. Another, often in the minority, said she had felt genuine benevolence from those who disagreed with her. “I spoke about my faith with atheists,” she said. “They understood my love for my God.”
Again and again, participants used the language of love.
By “love” I mean an intense feeling of deep affection and regard – a family of emotions that includes empathy, solidarity, friendship, and mutual respect. In these assemblies, love was not sentimental decoration. It was the emotional infrastructure that made disagreement – and later conflict resolution – possible.
This realization unsettled me. For years, I had bracketed emotion in my work, focusing on information, argument, reasoning. Emotions were noise to be translated into reasons or overcome. But what I witnessed suggested something different. Without a foundation of mutual care – without civic love – deliberation cannot function. People will not listen. They will not revise their views. They will not stay at the table.
Civic love does not mean the absence of conflict. In the French assemblies, sharp disagreements emerged. Camps formed. Tempers flared. But the underlying bonds held. Participants ultimately voted by large margins on dozens of proposals, including many they disagreed with. Love did not eliminate politics; it made it sustainable.
A scene from Dublin’s Pride parade in 2023. In Ireland about 10 years earlier, a discussion on marriage equality during a citizens’ convention gave participants space to be vulnerable and recognize contrary perspectives.CLODAGH KILCOYNE/Reuters
The most powerful illustration of love overcoming hate, however, comes from Ireland’s Convention on the Constitution, which looked at a series of issues in 2013 and 2014, including marriage equality.
Among its members were two men who embodied the country’s divide. Finbarr O’Brien was solitary and distrustful of politics, carrying deep childhood trauma that had shaped his views of homosexuality. Chris Lyons was a young gay man who had endured bullying and homophobia for much of his life.
Their first encounter did not go well. When Mr. Lyons approached – with his rainbow-painted fingernails, eyeliner, and mohawk – Mr. O’Brien felt panic. “I will throw him out the window,” he later recalled thinking. Across the table, Mr. Lyons saw discomfort in the older man’s glance and felt his own defences rise.
If one were designing a recipe for deadlock, it would be hard to do better. Yet over the course of the assembly, something shifted. Toward the end of deliberations, Mr. O’Brien stood up. He disclosed that he had been abused as a child and that this had shaped his attitudes. Then he said plainly that he had no objection to same-sex marriage.
What changed was not that trauma vanished or disagreement evaporated. It was that the assembly created space for vulnerability, recognition, and moral courage. Two people who began as symbols of a polarized nation encountered one another as human beings.
How did the F-bomb take over politics?
Our representative institutions often seem designed to corrode affection. Politicians are rewarded for grandstanding and outrage. Social media amplifies contempt. Over time, we internalize the idea that politics is a zero-sum battle between enemies.
Citizens’ assemblies suggest another possibility. When ordinary people are placed in structured settings that encourage listening, when they are treated with respect and given real responsibility, something remarkable happens. They do not become saints. But they do become neighbours.
If we want democracies capable of healing rather than inflaming divides, we must build institutions that reliably generate concern, solidarity, and care for others – that is, civic love. In an age of resentment, this may sound idealistic. But the alternative is to keep feeding the machinery of anger and hate.
We know where that leads.