Integrative Models of DD: Representing and Arguing for the Common Good

Since the deliberative turn, a growing number of political analysts and practitioners have been committed to supplying conceptual innovations which could help redress the crisis of legitimacy affecting liberal democratic regimes worldwide. This chapter discusses a set of conceptual innovations, the main goal of which is to integrate (as opposed to overcoming; see Chap. 5 ) liberal democratic institutions, so as to boost their declining legitimacy. A remarkable ensemble of first-class political theorists, scientists and entrepreneurs is committed to this task (despite their variegated scientific interests and world views), making this quadrant of our Cartesian space the most densely populated. The chapter aims to (i) systematise the wealth of conceptual innovations and institutional solutions proposed to date, (ii) assess the innovations’ and solutions’ intellectual cogency and practical effectivity, and (iii) show their limitations and shortcomings. First, it focuses on those approaches which view sortition as a tool to improve both citizens’ participation and the quality of deliberation within civic bodies (Boricius, Journal of Public Deliberation, 9(1), article 11. https://www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol9/iss1/art11 , 2013; Coccoma, The case for abolishing elections. Boston Review. https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-case-for-abolishing-elections/ , 2022; Delannoi and Dowlen, Sortition. Imprint Academic, 2016; Dowlen, The political potential of sortition. Imprint Academic; Guerrero, Forget voting—It’s time to start choosing our leaders by lottery. Aeon Essays. https://aeon.co/essays/forget-voting-it-s-time-to-start-choosing-our-leaders-by-lottery , 2014; Sintomer, Politics & Society, 46(3), 337–357, 2018, The government of chance: Sortition and democracy from Athens to the present. Cambridge University Press, 2023; P. Stone, The luck of the draw. Oxford University Press, 2011, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 19(3), 339–356, 2016; Van Reybrouck, Against elections: The case for democracy. The Bodley Head, 2016). Second, it investigates the ability of minipublics to affect public opinion, and to make the official sphere more responsive to the citizenry. While appreciating the cogency of those conceptual innovations, and the practical benefits that could be brought about by the institutional solutions they have inspired, the chapter questions some of the reasons used to justify them, and stress the inherent limitations of the piecemeal approach that characterises integrative models of DD (IDDs). The discussion starts with the work of James Fishkin (Democracy when the people are thinking. Oxford University Press, 2018a), the author who exemplifies the aspirations of IDD theorists better than anyone else. To a large degree, Fishkin has also been pivotal in the development of many practices at the centre of the democratic experimentation that is taking place at present. Based on this bird’s-eye view of the quadrant under investigation, the conceptual building blocks of the ideal-typical IDD will then be identified and analysed. To this end, a number of theoretical contributions, the aim of which is to refine, complement and expand on Fishkin’s integrative approach, are also brought into consideration and evaluated.