Elliott Speaker Series | The Future of Democracy Is Participatory

Democracy is in crisis around the world, as autocratic regimes undermine elections and tear down government institutions. Democracy advocates are responding by defending elections and the concept of democracy, but these defensive strategies are falling short. As polling data shows, most people think the current system of electoral democracy needs complete reform or major changes. So how do we go beyond defending the status quo, to deliver the big changes to democracy that people want and need?

Join us for an Elliott Speaker Series talk with Josh Lerner, Co-Executive Director of People Powered, founder of the Participatory Budgeting Project, and author of and . In conversation with Vijayendra (Biju) Rao, Distinguished Practitioner and Scholar in Residence at the Roberta Buffett Institute, Lerner will share how movements around the world are shifting to new models of democracy that extend beyond elections, and how to accelerate this change. They will lay out a toolbox of new democratic practices that can help us solve our biggest challenges, along with concrete strategies for turning these practices into system change. Drawing on stories from Chicago to Paris and India to Brazil, they will offer a preview of the future of democracy.

About the Elliott Speaker Series

As part of our Elliott Scholars Program, the Roberta Buffett Institute invites scholars and practitioners working in areas related to international development to Northwestern University for short residencies. While on campus, these guests engage with our undergraduate Elliott Scholars and the wider Northwestern community.

About the Speakers

is Co-Executive Director of People Powered, a global hub for participatory democracy. He has over 20 years of experience developing, researching, and supporting community engagement programs around the world. He was previously co-founder and Co-Executive Director of the Participatory Budgeting Project, a nonprofit organization that empowers people to decide together how to spend public money. Josh completed a PhD in Politics at the New School for Social Research and a Masters in Planning from the University of Toronto. He is the author of Making Democracy Fun: How Game Design Can Empower Citizens and Transform Politics, Everyone Counts: Could Participatory Budgeting Change Democracy?, and dozens of articles exploring the future of democracy.

is a Lead Economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank and a scholar of development whose work bridges research and practice. In July 2026, after more than 25 years at the Bank, he will transition to a new phase of independent scholarship, with a continuing focus on interdisciplinary, people-centered approaches to development. In addition, in spring 2026, Rao has joined the Institute's Elliott Scholars course as a Distinguished Scholar-Practitioner in Residence.

Rao studies how social, cultural, and political contexts shape the lives of people living in poverty. Trained as an economist but deeply influenced by anthropology, sociology, and political science, he is known for integrating qualitative and quantitative methods to make economics more reflexive, contextual, and grounded in lived experience. His early work helped establish the economics of dowries, domestic violence, and sex work as fields of empirical inquiry. His 2004 edited volume with Michael Walton, , catalyzed influential interdisciplinary debates on aspirations, inequality traps, and cultural heritage.

A long-standing contributor to research on political economy and democratic decentralization in India, Rao has recently advanced new methods for analyzing large-scale qualitative data. His experimentation with AI and natural language processing has produced novel insights into aspirations, well-being, and narrative expressions of agency among people in low-income settings. He is the co-author, with Ghazala Mansuri, of , and with Paromita Sanyal, of . From 2010 to 2020, Rao led the World Bank’s Social Observatory, an initiative that embedded researchers within large-scale anti-poverty programs to strengthen their adaptive capacity and promote learning-oriented, context-sensitive development practice.

Please note that 720 University Place is not an ADA-accessible space. Increasing physical access to buildings and facilities is a goal of the University, but not all buildings and venues have been updated at this time.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs