Cristina Lafont: Democracy without Shortcuts: The democratic ideal of self-government and the problem of blind deference (06.05.2019)

In reaction to growing discontent in democratic societies, many
conceptions of democracy offer reform proposals that are supposed
to be helpful “shortcuts” for solving difficult problems of
democratic governance such as overcoming disagreements, citizens’
political ignorance, or poor-quality deliberation within the public
sphere. I examine the institutional proposals offered by deep
pluralist, epistocratic and lottocratic conceptions of democracy. I
show that, for all their conceptual and political differences,
these conceptions promise to help us reach better political
outcomes ‘faster’ by relying on citizens’ blind deference to the
political decisions of others. However, an expectation of blind
deference is quintessentially incompatible with the democratic
ideal of self-government. In addition, these proposals naively
assume that a political community can reach better outcomes if it
bypasses the actual beliefs and attitudes of its own citizens.
Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts to make a political community
better than its members, nor can a community achieve progress
‘faster’ by leaving its citizens behind. Against these views, I
conclude that the only road to better political outcomes is the
long, participatory road that is taken when citizens forge a
collective political will by changing one another’s hearts and
minds.




Cristina Lafont ist Professorin für Philosophie und leitet das
Department of Philosophy an der Northwestern University in
Illinois, USA. Sie hat bei Jürgen Habermas promoviert.





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