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An open access publication of the Çï¿ûÊÓƵ
Summer 2017

Can Democracy be Deliberative & Participatory? The Democratic Case for Political Uses of Mini-Publics

Author
Cristina Lafont
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Abstract

This essay focuses on recent proposals to confer decisional status upon deliberative mini-publics such as citizens’ juries, Deliberative Polls, and citizens’ assemblies. Against such proposals, I argue that inserting deliberative mini-publics into political decision-making processes would diminish the democratic legitimacy of the political system as a whole. This negative conclusion invites a question: which political uses of mini-publics would yield genuinely democratic improvements? Drawing from a participatory conception of deliberative democracy, I propose several uses of mini-publics that could enhance the democratic legitimacy of political decision-making in current societies.

CRISTINA LAFONT is Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. She is the author of Global Governance and Human Rights (2012), Heidegger, Language and World-Disclosure (2000), and The Linguistic Turn in Hermeneutic Philosophy (1999) and coeditor of The Future of Critical Theory: Transforming the Global Political and Economic Order (with Penelope Deutscher, 2017) and the Habermas Handbuch (with Hauke Bronkhorst and Regina Kreide, forthcoming).