Abstract
This essay discusses the practical limits to democratic participation in decision-making. While defending representative democracy, it looks at some experiments with deliberative, participatory, or direct democracy which reveal a number of problems. Among these are establishment of incentives for voters to become adequately informed on issues, including the many questions that require specialist knowledge and skilled judgement. Contemporary advocates of ‘maximum’ or extensive democracy have overlooked the evidence we have about the difficulties involved. There is danger that reckless extensions of democratic participation will fail and help to undermine democracy itself.
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Notes
- 1.
These wider issues are considered in Hodgson (2021, ch. 9), from which some material for this present essay is taken. The author thanks Christopher Achen, Larry Bartels, David Gindis and Gerhard Schnyder for discussions.
- 2.
- 3.
The reasons given here in favour of representative democracy modify and supplement the arguments of Achen and Bartels (2016, pp. 316–319).
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Hodgson, G.M. (2022). On the Limits of Democracy. In: Economou, E.M., Kyriazis, N.C., Platias, A. (eds) Democracy in Times of Crises. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97295-0_4
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