Deferring Democracy

The democratic surge in the past twenty years has led many Americans to assume that all societies are, or should be, making progress toward becoming practicing democracies. Many in the United States approach countries such as China, Iran, and Vietnam with impatience and bewilderment. These seemingly intransigent holdouts are the subject of intense policy debates, not in the least because they also play important roles in U.S. security and economic policy. This book takes a fresh look at the prospects for political change in these countries and argues that immediate opportunities exist to advance political liberalization, with the possibility that democratization will follow in the mid to long term. But to encourage these trends, the United States must de-emphasize short-term human rights and democracy strategies to focus on more subtle attitudinal and institutional changes in both state and society, and develop new policy measures to enlarge political space.

The democratic surge in the past twenty years has led many Americans to assume that all societies are, or should be, making progress toward becoming practicing democracies. Many in the United States approach countries such as China, Iran, and Vietnam with impatience and bewilderment. These seemingly intransigent holdouts are the subject of intense policy debates, not in the least because they also play important roles in U.S. security and economic policy. This book takes a fresh look at the prospects for political change in these countries and argues that immediate opportunities exist to advance political liberalization, with the possibility that democratization will follow in the mid to long term. But to encourage these trends, the United States must de-emphasize short-term human rights and democracy strategies to focus on more subtle attitudinal and institutional changes in both state and society, and develop new policy measures to enlarge political space.

America's Discontent and the Search for a New Democratic Ideal. Convincingly demonstrates that democratic processes, however messy and confusing, ultimately yield the most intelligent and flexible responses to a complex world.

The day after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, civic leaders began to organize four coalitions that aimed to give ordinary citizens a chance to meet, to heal, and to be heard in rebuilding decisions. This book tells the inside story of the civic renewal movement they founded.

The day after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, civic leaders began to organize four coalitions that aimed to give ordinary citizens a chance to meet, to heal, and to be heard in rebuilding decisions. This book tells the inside story of the civic renewal movement they founded.

Considers the social requirements for a thriving democracy

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, all these shortcut proposals require citizens to blindly defer to actors over whose decisions they cannot exercise control. Implementing such proposals would therefore undermine democracy. Moreover, it seems naive 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 make 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 book 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.