Getting Democracy Just Right

• In Event: Civic Counteraction: Listening, Speaking, and Deciding in Polarized Times

Abstract

Are ordinary people up to the task of democratic citizenship? And what does the average person want in terms of political life? Given relatively low voter turnout in the U.S., it might seem that the answer is “not much.” Moreover, those who do participate often do so in toxic ways, succumbing to and propagating affective polarization. Democratic politics risks devolving into an irrational us-versus-them competition where people don’t just disagree with their opponents, they deny their equal standing. Responding to these and other challenges, two prominent books in democratic theory now suggest that we are “overdoing” democracy in the United States. Robert Talisse (OUP 2019) demonstrates how democratic politics have seeped into parts of our lives where they do not belong, including where we buy coffee or shop for groceries. He argues that it’s time to put democracy “in its place.” In Democracy for Busy People (Columbia 2023), Kevin Elliot lays out the minimum level of participation we ought to expect of people and argues that anything more would have exclusionary and even undemocratic effects. Evaluating arguments about the excesses and inadequacies of U.S. democracy, this paper considers how we might get democracy “just right.” While I concede that the United States suffers from certain political excesses, I show that these originate from undemocratic forces rather than democratic ones. We aren’t overdoing democracy, but underdoing it in favor of something else. Appealing to deliberative democratic theory, I show that democracy is more than campaigns, elections, and party politics. While the deliberative vision of democracy that I present is more burdensome, it has been shown to also be more attractive to people. As such, the paper defends deliberative democracy’s emphasis on substantive debate against critics who claim that this more burdensome form of participation is exclusionary. Appealing to insights from political behavior research, I show that while making voting easier may be normatively required, its effects on voter turnout may be more modest than we would hope. On the other hand, the seemingly “burdensome” innovations proposed by deliberative democrats can empower and mobilize citizens by making policy differences more salient, thereby showing people the benefits of participating in the office of democratic citizenship.

Author

• Molly Scudder, Purdue University