Democracy When the People Are Thinking: Deliberation and Democratic Renewal
All over the world democracy is in disarray. Approval ratings for key leaders and institutions are vanishingly low. The public distrusts the policy elites, and the elites fear the angry voices of populism. The very idea of democracy is under threat from supposedly benevolent forms of authoritarianism like the Singapore model or what is held to be the “China model” 2 and also by the stealth transformation of democracy via what’s called “competitive authoritarianism,” by which democratic forms are turned into non-democratic processes. Democracy appears to deliver deadlock, and these other systems appear to deliver efficient results.