Political Leaders: From Dynasties to Lotteries, with Brenda Van Coppenolle

Political dynasties belong neither to the past nor only to authoritarian regimes. Think about the Trudeau family in Canada, Le Pen in France, or Kirchner in Argentina. An explanatory factor: having lived in a political environment provides skills.  Can the evolution of society towards a better level of education and more transparency put an end to these dynasties? Especially since we find a growing desire to reject the established political elites by implementing lotteries. Why this desire? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this system? The research carried out indicates that lotteries can strengthen and improve our democratic systems.  Let’s see why.

Brenda Van Coppenolle is a Senior Research Fellow affiliated with the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics (CEE) at Sciences Po. She is the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant “Political Lotteries in European Democratisation”.

Additional resources

• Brenda Van Coppenolle - Political Dynasties and Bicameralism: Direct Elections and Democratisation in the Netherlands, Electoral Studies, 2022

• Brenda Van Coppenolle  -  How do Political Elites Persist? Political Selection, Political Inequality, and Empirical Historical Research, French Politics, 2020

• All publications

Recorded on 17th November 2023

Conversations with Sergei GURIEV  is a podcast by Sciences Po. Hélène NAUDET supervised the production of this series., with the help of Blanca GONZALEZ MARTINEZ, Sciences Po Master student in Political Science. The Sciences Po audio department produced and mixed it.

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