Hybrid Book Workshop on Cristina Lafont, Democracy without Shortcuts (OUP 2019)

Hybrid Book Workshop with Cristina Lafont (Northwestern University)
Democracy without Shortcuts: A Participatory Conception of Deliberative Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2019)

Discussants (via Zoom): 
André Campos (Nova University of Lisbon), Maeve Cooke (University College Dublin), Palle Bech-Pedersen (University of Hamburg)

Monday, 2 May 2022 | 3:30 pm–6:30 pm (Lisbon Time)
Sala CEPS - ELACH, Universidade do Minho (Campus Gualtar) and on ZOOM

https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/89822580122?pwd=TFBENHJFMWpxNjlLR01ON0s1REVJZz09

Password: 056303


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.

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The Seminar Series in Ethics and Political Philosophy is a research oriented initiative hosted by the Centre for Ethics, Politics, and Society at the University of Minho, whose aim is to discuss works in progress of both established and younger scholars working in the fields of ethics, social and political philosophy, political and social theory. 

The seminars are open to everyone.

For inquiries, contact the organizers at [email protected] or [email protected]
 
Website CEPS: http://ceps.ilch.uminho.pt