Online Book Workshop with Cristina Lafont (Northwestern University) Democracy without Shortcuts: A Participatory Conception of Deliberative Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2020)

September 26, 2022
Centre for Ethics, Politics, and Society, University of Minho

Braga
Portugal

Speakers:

Universidade do Minho
University College Dublin
Northwestern University
Universidade do Minho

Organisers:

Universidade do Minho
Universidade do Minho

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Link and password:  

https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/93476363326?pwd=TjJUZnBHRWhDc05pa2E5Vit6UTBVQT09   Password: 829206

This book articulates a participatory conception of deliberative democracy that takes the democratic ideal of self-government seriously. It aims to improve citizens’ democratic control and vindicate the value of citizens’ participation against conceptions that threaten to undermine it. The book critically analyzes deep pluralist, epistocratic, and lottocratic conceptions of democracy. Their defenders propose various institutional “shortcuts” to help solve problems of democratic governance such as overcoming disagreements, citizens’ political ignorance, or poor-quality deliberation. However, it turns out that these shortcut proposals all require citizens to blindly defer to actors over whose decisions they cannot exercise control. Implementing such proposals would therefore undermine democracy. Moreover, it seems naïve to assume that a community can reach better outcomes “faster” if it bypasses the beliefs and attitudes of its citizens. Unfortunately, there are no “shortcuts” to making a community better than its members. The only road to better outcomes is the long, participatory road that is taken when citizens forge a collective will by changing one another’s hearts and minds. However difficult the process of justifying political decisions to one another may be, skipping it cannot get us any closer to the democratic ideal. Starting from this conviction, the author defends a conception of democracy “without shortcuts.” This conception sheds new light on long-standing debates about the proper scope of public reason, the role of religion in politics, and the democratic legitimacy of judicial review. It also proposes new ways to unleash the democratic potential of institutional innovations such as deliberative minipublics.


Program


4:00-4:10 pm – Workshop Presentation by Daniele Santoro and Giuseppe Ballacci (CEPS, UMinho)  

4:10-4:30 pm – Introduction to Democracy without Shortcuts by Cristina Lafont (Northwestern University)

4:30-4:55 pm – Book overview by Maeve Cooke (University College Dublin)

4:55-5:20 pm – Ch. 3: Purely Epistemic Conceptions of Democracy, commentary by Nadia Urbinati (Columbia University)

5:20-5:35 pm –  Short Break

5:35-6:00 pm – Ch. 4: Lottocratic Conceptions of Deliberative Democracy, commentary by Palle Bech-Pedersen (University of Hamburg)


6:00-6:25 pm – Ch. 8: Citizens in Robes, commentary by André Santos Campos (Nova University of Lisbon)

6:25-6:50 pm – Cristina Lafont’s response

6:50-7:30 pm – Q&A
For inquiries, contact the organizers at [email protected] or [email protected]

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University of Northern Iowa

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