As authoritarianism and political violence threaten democracies throughout the world at levels not seen since the 1930s, attacks on free and fair elections are rife. Democracy is about choice, and achieving a legitimate democratic system of government relies on making representative social choices. Join us to find out about VoteDemocracy, which is a new global education initiative featuring a comprehensive course on the central role of voting in democracy.

In support of the new project, Nobel Laureates Amartya Sen and Eric Maskin address core democratic principles. Professor Sen revisits the foundational ‘rule by the people’ with his talk, Democracy—Why, and Why Not? Professor Maskin offers an electoral prescription in response to his topic, How Should Members of Parliament (and Congress) be Elected? 

Meet our speakers and chair

Eric Maskin is the Adams University Professor and Professor of Economics and Mathematics at Harvard University. He has made contributions to game theory, contract theory, social choice theory, political economy, and other areas of economics. In 2007, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (with L. Hurwicz and R. Myerson) for laying the foundations of mechanism design theory.

Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard University and was previously the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He is also Senior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. His research has ranged over social choice theory, economic theory, ethics and political philosophy and welfare economics. In 1998, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in welfare economics. Amartya is an Honorary Fellow of LSE.

Suzanne Bloks is a postdoctoral researcher on the Cohesion and Deliberative Decision-Making project at LSE. She received her PhD in Philosophy from Hamburg University. Her research focusses on democracy, political representation, deliberation and voting, electoral systems design and identity politics.

Richard Bradley is Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy Logic and Scientific Method at LSE, Project Leader of the Choice Group at CPNSS, and a fellow of the British Academy. He works broadly on decision theory, and related fields such as formal epistemology and semantics. Much of his work is on individual decision making under uncertainty and the role of hypothetical reasoning in reaching judgements about what to do.

Rudolf Fara is co-founder and Project Leader of Voting Power and Procedures, and Director of its VoteDemocracy project in CPNSS at LSE. He is co-editor of the VoteDemocracy course-book by Springer (forthcoming) and director of the accompanying video course, a ground-breaking production ‘by students, for students’. Fara created the Video Library of Philosophy archive, and co-founded the world’s first publisher of academic media on computing.

Larry Kramer has been President and Vice Chancellor of LSE since April 2024. A constitutional scholar, university administrator, and philanthropic leader, he was previously the President of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Dean of Stanford Law School.

More about this event

This event will be available to watch on LSE Live. LSE Live is the new home for our live streams, allowing you to tune in and join the global debate at LSE, wherever you are in the world. If you can't attend live, a video will be made available shortly afterwards on LSE's YouTube channel.

The Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (@lsephilosophy) promotes research into philosophical, methodological and foundational questions arising in the natural and the social sciences.

The Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method (@LSEPhilosophy) was founded by Karl Popper in 1946 and is renowned for a type of philosophy that is both continuous with the sciences and socially relevant.

The VoteDemocracy project grows from a decade of Leverhulme Trust funded research activities of the Voting Power and Procedures (VPP) project at CPNSS during which it produced more than 120 published papers, and two books edited by the directors. The VoteDemocarcy video project will combine the Philosophy Department’s expertise—particularly with respect to the PPE degree programme and the activities of the Choice Group—with VPP’s extensive research in social choice, and its extensive experience in pedagogical video production.

Erica Yu, a final-year PhD candidate at the Erasmus Institute of Philosophy and Economics (EIPE) Rotterdam and CPNSS research visitor, has written and presents the first by students, for students production for the VoteDemocracy video series, and its trailer featured at the lecture. Erica works on deliberation and decision-making on complex and divisive policy issues. 

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