Plurality in the French-speaking world

In the French-speaking world, the French translation of the book *Plurality* stopped at a partial draft in 2023. Meanwhile, Audrey Tang has been introduced in Paris since 2016, has worked with the French organization Make.org and has testified before the National Assembly. Her approach has been discussed alongside France's "Great National Debate" and its citizens' conventions.

France is a country that has repeatedly held, at national scale, "citizens' conventions", in which citizens chosen by lot discuss policy. How was an idea from Taiwan about widening democracy with digital tools received in a country like that? This article traces the state of the French translation of the book Plurality and the ties between Audrey Tang and people in the French-speaking world.

In short

In the French-speaking world, the French translation of Plurality has stopped at a partial draft begun in 2023 by people from the Paris chapter of RadicalxChange [1]. As of October 2026, the catalog of the National Library of France (BnF) lists no French edition either [2].

On the other hand, Tang has been introduced in Paris since 2016, long before the book came out [3][4]. She has worked with the French civic participation organization Make.org [5][6], and she testified before a committee of inquiry of the National Assembly [7]. In conversations with French-speaking audiences, Tang's way of doing things has been discussed alongside France's "Great National Debate" and its citizens' conventions [8][9].

For example

A French translation that stopped partway (December 2023). Under "French", the book's guide page lists a folder named "Plurality, le livre - G Weil" inside a copy (fork) of the RadicalxChange Paris website. The work records (commits) cover only two days, December 15 and 16, 2023. Only part of the first half of the introductory chapter in the chapter layout of the time has been translated; the other two files are still in English [1]. That introductory chapter corresponds to chapter 2-0, "Information Technology and Democracy: A Widening Gulf", in the current version [1]. → Chapter 2-0

A vTaiwan meeting taken over by the Great Debate (January 2019). The Great National Debate (Grand débat national) was a nationwide discussion that the French government held in 2019 to gather citizens' opinions. In a conversation with the French philosopher Cynthia Fleury, Tang said that the vTaiwan meeting two days earlier (vTaiwan is a forum where citizens and the government of Taiwan discuss bills) had been almost entirely about the Great Debate. Tang also said that the Great Debate's website had been built by Cap Collectif, and that they trusted its execution of the online part but did not really know about the social configuration [9].

In more detail

The actors: RadicalxChange France and Make.org

RadicalxChange France describes itself as an independent French chapter of the RadicalxChange Foundation, with its focus on European and French-speaking initiatives [10]. In May 2024, a keynote at the Paris technology show VivaTech and an event at Sciences Po were announced as planned parts of a European tour by Tang and E. Glen Weyl [11].

Make.org is a French organization whose stated aim is to widen citizen participation and to change society through proposals that many people can agree on [12]. In 2018 the television channel France 24 reported that Tang would join Make.org's work [5]. At the "AI Action Summit" held in Paris in February 2025, Tang attended on behalf of Make.org and others, according to the French-language service of Rti, Taiwan's international broadcaster [6].

In 2024 Make.org, together with Sciences Po, Sorbonne University and the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), launched "Communs Démocratiques" (Democratic Commons), a research program on generative AI for democracy. According to the announcement, it is supported by the national investment plan "France 2030", with 6 million euros from the public investment bank Bpifrance [12]. In a 2026 interview, Tang said she is a scientific advisor to that effort, adding "I believe" [8]. → Civic AI

How she was introduced

In January 2016 the radio station France Culture introduced Tang as someone who calls herself a "hackeuse civique" (civic hacker) [4]. In March of the same year, at a talk at SuperPublic in Paris, the organizer introduced Tang by saying that she had pretty much become a star in France over the past few days [3].

In April 2023 Tang was heard by the National Assembly's committee of inquiry into "foreign interference". The committee's report quotes Tang in the context of arguing for greater transparency and for relying on civil society. The rapporteur then wrote that Taiwan's experience seemed well worth thinking about seriously [7].

The piece that introduced the book itself head-on was a 2024 article in the magazine L'ADN. The article presented it as a collaboratively written book to which anyone can propose changes. It also reported that Tang defines Plurality as « Une philosophie qui encourage la collaboration là où il y a de la diversité » (a philosophy that encourages collaboration where there is diversity), and gave as examples the discussion of Uber using Polis and Community Notes [13].

On a 2023 France Culture page, Tang says that in Taiwan digitalization and democracy are written with the same characters [14]. In the English record of the same program, she says that "數位" also means plural, so "I'm also the plural minister" [15]. → Shuwei and ⿻

Alongside France's citizens' conventions

In April 2019, at the press conference closing the Great Debate, President Macron announced a convention of 150 citizens chosen by lot. Macron promised that what came out of it would be put "sans filtre" (without filter) to a vote in parliament, to a referendum or into regulation [16]. The official website of this "Citizens' Convention for Climate" explains that the convention grew out of the conclusions of the Great Debate, proposals from citizens' groups, and the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE) [17].

In a May 2019 interview, Tang described the Great Debate as a social innovation in which people have the power to set the agenda. She also said that voting every two or four years is, in information-science terms, an upload of just two bits of information, which is not enough to tell the government what it should do [18]. At a 2020 event with Tang, the moderator introduced Yves Mathieu of the French organization Missions Publiques as having recently co-organized a French climate convention with randomly selected citizens. Mathieu said that the citizens' convention on climate had been a great experience, and that when people chosen by lot are brought together in one room, wise solutions and trust emerge [19].

Polis itself has also been used in France. In 2023 the think tank Terra Nova gathered opinions with Pol.is on relations between the police and residents. Two clearly opposed groups emerged. Even so, there were proposals that both groups supported: strengthening police training and bringing back community policing [20].

On the other hand, citizens' conventions chosen by lot and online opinion gathering do not connect automatically. According to a paper by researchers, the Citizens' Convention for Climate's public website received about 3,400 contributions, but most of them were not used. The main reason given was that the citizens were already overloaded with other information [21]. In a 2026 interview, Tang said that what she is talking about is not a platform but a protocol (a set of agreed procedures), which can run not only in national dialogues but also in everyday conversations on social media [8].

What is debated

The situation of civic tech (technology for citizens) in France. In a 2018 conversation with Tang, the researcher Clément Mabi asked whether it is hard for spaces for civic hackers to grow in France, because the administration works with startups through public procurement. Tang replied that in Taiwan this is not much of a problem, and that civil society has greater legitimacy than the government [22].
A review of Radical Markets (2019). About the earlier book Weyl wrote with Eric Posner, a review in the magazine Le Grand Continent wrote that it cannot be ruled out that the partial common ownership it proposes might instead lead to concentration of wealth. The review also points out that the book ignores values that cannot be turned into money. It then suggested reading the book as a contribution to political philosophy rather than as a guide to legislation [23]. The philosopher Gaspard Koenig lists Weyl's "radical markets" as one of the proposals for remaking liberalism [24]. → Radical Markets
Taiwan's unkept promise. In 2024 the Swiss outlet swissinfo wrote that bringing citizens into the fight against disinformation had been a success. At the same time, it reported the assessment of Yen-Tu Su, a legal scholar at Taiwan's Academia Sinica: that the long-proclaimed digital political participation of citizens has so far produced little of substance [25]. → Criticisms of Plurality
Is consensus truth? In 2025 the magazine Usbek & Rica reported, regarding Community Notes, the point made by Florent Lefebvre, a consultant in social data science, that « consensus ne veut pas forcément dire vérité » (consensus does not necessarily mean truth). It also quoted a researcher at the Brookings Institution as saying that moderation based on agreement between different points of view is very difficult to achieve on polarized topics [26].
Questions about Polis, and the answers. According to Terra Nova's report, at a session discussing the results, the question was raised whether searching for consensus would lift up weak proposals that are merely easy to agree on. The report's authors answer that the risk is small and that Polis also makes disagreements visible. They also acknowledge, however, that it was an experimental consultation whose participants were probably not a representative cross-section of society, and that many of the proposals remain at the level of broad directions [20].
The citizens' convention's promise. In a 2026 interview, the host Julien Devaureix said that in the citizens' convention on climate the president had promised to accept the proposals, yet nothing happened, which damaged trust. This is the host's assessment, not Tang's words [8].

Where it fits in Plurality

As a mechanism that has actually run in the French-speaking world, there is Polis, used by Terra Nova [20]. The collaboration with Make.org belongs to the line of civic AI, which builds AI for citizens [12][8].

Reading this together with how the book has spread in other language areas brings out the differences.

The Plurality movement in Japan — a case where a volunteer translation was completed and a Japanese edition was published
Plurality in the German-speaking world — another region with a tradition of citizens' assemblies
Plurality in the Spanish-speaking world · Plurality in Italy
RadicalxChange — the parent organization of the Paris chapter
Audrey Tang — the person at the center of how all this was introduced in the French-speaking world

Sources

Draft French translation "Plurality, le livre - G Weil" (RadicalxChange Paris, 2023-12) — https://github.com/xitobal/radicalxchangeparis.github.io/tree/main/public/Plurality%2C%20le%20livre%20-%20G%20Weil ［CC0］
National Library of France, general catalog (SRU, queried 2026-10-02) — https://catalogue.bnf.fr/api/SRU
Conference at SuperPublic (2016-03-02) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2016-03-02-Conference-at-SuperPublic.md ［CC0］
France Culture, "Audrey Tang : Portrait d'une hackeuse" (2016-01-27, in French) — https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/les-nouvelles-vagues/audrey-tang-portrait-d-une-hackeuse-4959278
France 24, "Audrey Tang, la hackeuse taïwanaise devenue ministre" (2018-11-16, in French) — https://www.france24.com/fr/20181116-audrey-tang-taiwan-tournesols-makeorg-civictech-smartphones-futurapolis-postgenre
Rti, "Audrey Tang participe au Sommet pour l'action sur l'IA de Paris" (2025-02-11, in French) — https://www.rti.org.tw/fr/news?uid=3&pid=135948
National Assembly, report of the committee of inquiry into foreign interference (Tang's hearing 2023-04-12, in French) — https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/16/rapports/ceingeren/l16b1311-t2_rapport-enquete
Interview with Julien Devaureix (2026-02-25) — https://archive.tw/2026-02-25-interview-with-julien-devaureix ［CC0］
Conversation with Cynthia Fleury-Perkins (2019-01-18) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2019-01-18-Conversation-with-Cynthia-Fleury-Perkins.md ［CC0］
RadicalxChange France website — https://github.com/RadicalXChangeParis/radicalxchangeparis.github.io ［MIT］
RadicalxChange, "2024 Plurality European Tour" — https://www.radicalxchange.org/events/2024-plurality-european-tour/
Sciences Po, "Lancement des « Communs Démocratiques »" (2024-05-24, in French) — https://newsroom.sciencespo.fr/lancement-des-communs-democratiques-une-initiative-de-recherche-francaise-prend-le-lead-mondial-pour-construire-une-ia-ethique-au-service-de-la-democratie/
L'ADN, "Le meilleur livre pour inventer la démocratie dans un monde numérique" (2024, in French) — https://www.ladn.eu/nouveaux-usages/le-meilleur-livre-pour-inventer-la-democratie-dans-un-monde-numerique/
France Culture, "Taïwan : contre la Chine, une démocratie numérique radicale" (2023-06-09, in French) — https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/l-invite-e-des-matins/tawian-contre-la-chine-une-democratie-numerique-radicale-4610629
Interview with French Public Radio (2023-06-08) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2023-06-08-Interview-with-French-Public-Radio.md ［CC0］
Élysée, "Conférence de presse grand débat national" (2019-04-25, in French) — https://www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-macron/2019/04/25/conference-de-presse-grand-debat-national
Official website of the Convention citoyenne pour le climat (in French) — https://www.conventioncitoyennepourleclimat.fr/
Interview with Marjorie Paillon (2019-05-08) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2019-05-08-Interview-with-Marjorie-Paillon.md ［CC0］
Digital Democracy – What Europe can learn from Taiwan (2020-09-07) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2020-09-07-Digital-Democracy-%E2%80%93-What-Europe-can-learn-from-Taiwan.md ［CC0］
Thierry Pech and Foulques Renard, "Pol.is sur la Police, bilan d'une expérimentation" (Terra Nova, 2023-10-16, in French) — https://www.lagrandeconversation.com/societe/pol-is-sur-la-police/
Giraudet and others, ""Co-construction" in deliberative democracy: lessons from the French Citizens' Convention for Climate" (2022) — https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01212-6 ［CC BY 4.0］
Conversation with Clément Mabi (2018-10-04) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2018-10-04-Conversation-with-Cl%C3%A9ment-Mabi.md ［CC0］
Le Grand Continent, "Radical Markets : abolir la propriété pour libérer le capitalisme" (2019-12-25, in French) — https://legrandcontinent.eu/fr/2019/12/25/radical-markets-abolir-la-propriete-pour-liberer-le-capitalisme/
Gaspard Koenig, "Quel libéralisme pour demain ?" (Les Echos, 2019-12-18, in French) — https://www.lesechos.fr/idees-debats/cercle/quel-liberalisme-pour-demain-1157297
swissinfo, "Le combat de Taïwan contre la désinformation numérique" (2024-05-19, in French) — https://www.swissinfo.ch/fre/democratie/le-combat-de-taiwan-contre-la-desinformation-numerique/77077031
Usbek & Rica, "Les « notes communautaires » sont-elles le futur des réseaux sociaux ?" (2025-01-11, in French) — https://usbeketrica.com/fr/article/les-notes-communautaires-sont-elles-le-futur-des-reseaux-sociaux

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