IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/jgu/wpaper/2309.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The promise of representative democracy: deliberative responsiveness

Author

Listed:
  • Claudia Landwehr

    (Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany)

  • Armin Schäfer

    (Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany)

Abstract

In the eyes of its citizens, liberal democracy is connected to at least three promises – the promises of autonomy, equality and rationality. To what extent citizens can view these promises as being fulfilled will affect political trust and support for democracy. The rise of populism and trends towards technocratic government have rightly been interpreted as arising from a gap between normative aspirations and institutional and practical realities. Does this mean that we should adjust our ideals to reality, or that we should strive to bring realities closer to the ideal? Self-proclaimed “realists” argue that democratic ideals are unattainable and that we should therefore settle for a second-best alternative, such as a competitive oligarchy. Against this position, we point out that deliberative democracy offers an attractive ideal for successful representation that can inform democratic innovation. However, deliberative democracy also remains institutionally underdetermined and needs to develop better criteria that enable us to determine if, how and under what conditions the attempt to fulfil democracy’s promises succeeds in practice. In this paper, we suggest a criterion of deliberative responsiveness as a measure for representative democracy’s success in fulfilling promises of autonomy, equality, and rationality. We go on to show in what respects these promises tend to be broken in contemporary representative democracies and discuss strategies for institutional reform that have potential to counteract these problems.

Suggested Citation

  • Claudia Landwehr & Armin Schäfer, 2023. "The promise of representative democracy: deliberative responsiveness," Working Papers 2309, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    • Handle: RePEc:jgu:wpaper:2309
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://download.uni-mainz.de/RePEc/pdf/Discussion_Paper_2309.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2023
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lever, Annabelle, 2010. "Compulsory Voting: A Critical Perspective," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 40(4), pages 897-915, October.
    2. Claudia Landwehr, 2015. "Democratic Meta-Deliberation: Towards Reflective Institutional Design," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 63, pages 38-54, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ognjen Arandjelović, 2023. "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Votes of People with Short Life Expectancy from Being a Long-Term Burden to Their Country," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-8, March.
    2. Claudia Landwehr & Thorsten Faas, 2017. "Who Wants Democratic Innovations, and Why?," Working Papers 1705, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    3. Schäfer, Andreas & Merkel, Wolfgang, 2020. "Emanzipation oder Reaktion: Wie konservativ ist die deliberative Demokratie? [Emancipation or Reaction: How Conservative is Deliberative Democracy?]," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 61(3), pages 449-472.
    4. Gersbach, Hans & Mamageishvili, Akaki & Tejada, Oriol, 2021. "The effect of handicaps on turnout for large electorates with an application to assessment voting," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 195(C).
    5. Arandjelović, Ognjen, 2023. "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Votes of People with Short Life Expectancy From Being a Long-Term Burden to Their Country," SocArXiv qkg4f, Center for Open Science.
    6. Gersbach, Hans & Mamageishvili, Akaki & Tejada, Oriol, 2019. "The Effect of Handicaps on Turnout for Large Electorates: An Application to Assessment Voting," CEPR Discussion Papers 13921, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Karel Kouba & Stanislav Mysicka, 2019. "Should and Does Compulsory Voting Reduce Inequality?," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(1), pages 21582440188, March.
    8. Dryzek, John S. & Pickering, Jonathan, 2017. "Deliberation as a catalyst for reflexive environmental governance," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 353-360.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jgu:wpaper:2309. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Research Unit IPP (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vlmaide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.