Deliberative Democracy as Open, Not (Just) Representative Democracy

Daedalus ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 146 (3) ◽  
pp. 51-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hélène Landemore
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
The People ◽  
Tight Connection ◽  
Historically Situated ◽  
Popular Rule ◽  
Ordinary Citizens

Deliberative democracy is at risk of becoming collateral damage of the current crisis of representative democracy. If deliberative democracy is necessarily representative and if representation betrays the true meaning of democracy as rule of, by, and for the people, then how can deliberative democracy retain any validity as a theory of political legitimacy? Any tight connection between deliberative democracy and representative democracy thus risks making deliberative democracy obsolete: a dated paradigm fit for a precrisis order, but maladjusted to the world of Occupy, the Pirate Party, the Zapatistas, and other antirepresentative movements. This essay argues that the problem comes from a particular and historically situated understanding of representative democracy as rule by elected elites. I argue that in order to retain its normative appeal and political relevance, deliberative democracy should dissociate itself from representative democracy thus understood and reinvent itself as the core of a more truly democratic paradigm, which I call “open democracy.” In open democracy, popular rule means the mediated but real exercise of power by ordinary citizens. This new paradigm privileges nonelectoral forms of representation and in it, power is meant to remain constantly inclusive of and accessible–in other words open–to ordinary citizens.

Open Democracy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hélène Landemore
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Democratic Representation ◽  
The People ◽  
Laws And Policies ◽  
The Right ◽  
Turn Over ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Ordinary Citizens

To the ancient Greeks, democracy meant gathering in public and debating laws set by a randomly selected assembly of several hundred citizens. To the Icelandic Vikings, democracy meant meeting every summer in a field to discuss issues until consensus was reached. Our contemporary representative democracies are very different. Modern parliaments are gated and guarded, and it seems as if only certain people — with the right suit, accent, wealth, and connections — are welcome. Diagnosing what is wrong with representative government and aiming to recover some of the lost openness of ancient democracies, this book presents a new paradigm of democracy in which power is genuinely accessible to ordinary citizens. This book favors the ideal of “representing and being represented in turn” over direct-democracy approaches. Supporting a fresh nonelectoral understanding of democratic representation, the book recommends centering political institutions around the “open mini-public” — a large, jury-like body of randomly selected citizens gathered to define laws and policies for the polity, in connection with the larger public. It also defends five institutional principles as the foundations of an open democracy: participatory rights, deliberation, the majoritarian principle, democratic representation, and transparency. The book demonstrates that placing ordinary citizens, rather than elites, at the heart of democratic power is not only the true meaning of a government of, by, and for the people, but also feasible and, today more than ever, urgently needed.

scholarly journals Popular Rule in Schumpeter’s Democracy

2015 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 1071-1087 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Ingham
Keyword(s):  
The People ◽  
Popular Rule ◽  
Ordinary Citizens

In this article, it is argued that existing democracies might establish popular rule even if Joseph Schumpeter’s notoriously unflattering picture of ordinary citizens is accurate. Some degree of popular rule is in principle compatible with apathetic, ignorant and suggestible citizens, contrary to what Schumpeter and others have maintained. The people may have control over policy, and their control may constitute popular rule, even if citizens lack definite policy opinions and even if their opinions result in part from elites’ efforts to manipulate these opinions. Thus, even a purely descriptive, ‘realist’ account of democracy of the kind that Schumpeter professed to offer may need to concede that there is no democracy without some degree of popular rule.

Natural Law Republicanism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Hawley
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
John Adams ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The People ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

By any metric, Cicero’s works are some of the most widely read in the history of Western thought. This book suggests that perhaps Cicero’s most lasting and significant contribution to philosophy lies in helping to inspire the development of liberalism. Individual rights, the protection of private property, and political legitimacy based on the consent of the governed are often taken to be among early modern liberalism’s unique innovations and part of its rebellion against classical thought. However, this book demonstrates that Cicero’s thought played a central role in shaping and inspiring the liberal republican project. Cicero argued that liberty for individuals could arise only in a res publica in which the claims of the people to be sovereign were somehow united with a commitment to universal moral law, which limits what the people can rightfully do. Figures such as Hugo Grotius, John Locke, and John Adams sought to work through the tensions in Cicero’s vision, laying the groundwork for a theory of politics in which the freedom of the individual and the people’s collective right to rule were mediated by natural law. This book traces the development of this intellectual tradition from Cicero’s original articulation through the American founding. It concludes by exploring how modern political ideas remain dependent on the conception of just politics first elaborated by Rome’s great philosopher-statesman.

Deliberation in Protests and Social Movements

2018 ◽  
pp. 391-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatella della Porta ◽  
Nicole Doerr
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Deliberative Politics ◽  
Global Diffusion

The chapter addresses the relations between social movements and deliberative democracy, pointing at opportunities but also at tensions in theorization and practices of democracy. While social movements are important for deliberative democracy, and vice versa, activists and deliberative democrats alike have addressed a number of tensions between deliberative democracy and protest. The global diffusion of deliberative norms, practices, and experiences of democracy in social movements is discussed in the light of the growing literature on deliberative democracy. In particular, faced with challenges to the legitimacy and efficacy of representative democracy, social movements’ democratic innovations, such as the Forum and the Camp, represent important experiments in cooperation in settings of deep diversity and inequality. In addition, the reflections on social movements’ conceptions and practices help in specifying some conceptualization of deliberative politics.

scholarly journals The Politics of Peoplehood

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 439-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan White ◽  
Lea Ypi
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
The People ◽  
Definition Of

Contemporary political theory has made the question of the “people” a topic of sustained analysis. This article identifies two broad approaches taken—norm-based and contestation-based—and, noting some problems left outstanding, goes on to advance a complementary account centred on partisan practice. It suggests the definition of “the people” is closely bound up in the analysis of political conflict, and that partisans engaged in such conflict play an essential role in constructing and contesting different principled conceptions. The article goes on to show how such an account does not lead to a normatively hollow, purely historical conception of “the people,” but rather highlights the normative importance of practices that, at the minimum, de-naturalise undesirable conceptions of the people and, at their best, give political legitimacy and a representative basis to those one might wish to see prosper.

scholarly journals Construction of Identity in Globalized Milieu: A New Paradigm

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 191-204
Author(s):  
Manju Sharma
Keyword(s):  
External Pressure ◽  
Cultural Patterns ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Anthropological Perspective ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Construction Of Identity ◽  
Physical Mobility ◽  
The People ◽  
Norms And Values ◽  
Cultural Homogenization

In anthropological perspective, identity is taken from the two opposite angles; uniqueness and sameness. Uniqueness keeps the properties, which make a person distinct from the others. Sameness keeps the qualities that a person is associated with others, with groups or categories on the basis of some salient common features. This article analyzes how individual or group identity is created, reshaped and molded after physical mobility of the people, what plays roles in creating identity, what values for that, and how it can be institutionalized. The paper concludes that immigrants’ identity is constructed through the interaction among the rapidly increasing global inflows of knowledge; their own previous worldviews; the new social cultural patterns of host country; norms and values of other surrounding immigrants, and the perception of external pressure. In the process of cultural mixing, there is possibility of cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization. Similar worldviews make the people nearer to each other which broaden the circle of ‘us’ and hence can lead toward homogenization of culture. On the other hand, dissimilarities in worldviews increase the level of ‘them’ therefore leads towards heterogenization.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/dsaj.v5i0.6363 Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology and Anthropology Vol. 5, 2011: 191-204 

scholarly journals Keeping an Eye on the People: Who Has Access to MPs on Twitter?

2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niels Spierings ◽  
Kristof Jacobs ◽  
Nik Linders
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
The Public ◽  
Organized Interests ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
The People ◽  
Ordinary Citizens

Twitter is credited for allowing ordinary citizens to communicate with politicians directly. Yet few studies show who has access to politicians and whom politicians engage with, particularly outside campaign times. Here, we analyze the connection between the public and members of parliament (MPs) on Twitter in the Netherlands in-between elections in 2016. We examine over 60,000 accounts that MPs themselves befriended or that @-mentioned MPs. This shows that many lay citizens contact MPs via Twitter, yet MPs respond more to elite accounts (media, other politicians, organized interests,…), populist MPs are @-mentioned most but seem least interested in connecting and engaging with “the” people, and top MPs draw more attention but hardly engage—backbenchers are less contacted but engage more.

Democracy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ludvig Beckman
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Instrumental Value ◽  
The People ◽  
Collective Decisions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Egalitarian Attitude ◽  
Self Rule ◽  
Normative Issues

Democracy is a term that is used to denote a variety of distinct objects and ideas. Democracy describes either a set of political institutions or an ideal of collective self-rule. Democracy can also be short for a normative principle of either legitimacy or justice. Finally, democracy might be used to denote an egalitarian attitude. These four uses of the term should be kept distinct and raises separate conceptual and normative issues. The value of democracy, whether democratic political institutions or democratic self-rule, is either instrumental, non-instrumental, or both. The non-instrumental value of democracy derives either from the alleged fairness of majority rule or from the value of the social relationships enabled by participation in democratic procedures. The instrumental value of democracy lends support from a growing body of empirical research. Yet, the claim that democracy has a positive causal effect on public goods is inconclusive with respect to the moral justification of democratic institutions. Normative reasons for democracy’s instrumental value must instead appeal to the fact that it contributes to equality, liberty, truth, or the realization of popular will. Democracy as a principle of either political legitimacy or justice is a normative view that evades concerns with the definition and value of democracy. Normative democracy is a claim about the conditions either for legitimacy or justice of either public authority or coercion. Debates in normative democracy are largely divorced from the conceptual and empirical concerns that inform studies of democracy elsewhere. The boundaries of the people entitled to participate in collective decisions is a question that applies to all four uses of democracy. The boundary question raises three distinct issues. The first is the extent of inclusion required among the members of the unit. The second is if membership in the unit is necessary for inclusion or if people that are not recognized as members are on certain conditions also entitled to participate. The third and final issue concerns the boundaries of the unit itself.

Confucianism on Political Legitimacy

2019 ◽  
pp. 32-51
Author(s):  
Tongdong Bai
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
The State ◽  
Basic Fact ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Basic Goods ◽  
The People ◽  
Xun Zi ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Political Decisions

This chapter discusses political legitimacy within the Confucian context. It attempts reconcile the early Confucians’ embrace of equality with their defense of hierarchy. The chapter also considers how to reconcile their idea that the legitimacy of the state lies in service to the people, with the idea that it is not the people alone who make the final political decisions. It shows that the lack of capacities of making sound political decisions by the masses cannot result from the failure of the state to secure basic goods, education, and other necessary conditions for people to make sound political decisions, and it has to be the result of a basic fact of human life. That is, in spite of all these governmental efforts that are demanded by them, and in spite of their beliefs that human beings are all potentially equal (Mencius and Xun Zi) or close to being equal (Confucius), early Confucians also took it as a fact of life that the majority of the people cannot actually obtain the capacity necessary to make sound political decisions and participate fully in politics.

Must Egalitarians Condemn Representative Democracy?

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-198
Author(s):  
Adam Lovett ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Ordinary Citizens ◽  
Popular Control

Many contemporary democratic theorists are democratic egalitarians. They think that the distinctive value of democracy lies in equality. Yet this position faces a serious problem. All contemporary democracies are representative democracies. Such democracies are highly unequal: representatives have much more power than do ordinary citizens. So, it seems that democratic egalitarians must condemn representative democracies. In this paper, I present a solution to this problem. My solution invokes popular control. If representatives are under popular control, then their extra power is not objectionable. Unfortunately, so I argue, in the United States representatives are under loose popular control.

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