Democratic Theory in Uncertain Times: Challenges and Opportunities

Democratic theory may seem removed from the cut and thrust of daily politics, especially in today’s uncertain times. After all, a great deal of work in this area is focused on the clarification of basic concepts such as political authority, rights, and the justification of democracy itself. Democratic theorists disagree on all these matters. There is, for example, no single definition of democracy, and no consensus on which values ought to underpin it. This debate can give the impression that democratic theory is not well placed to deal with contemporary political challenges such as political disaffection, polarization or populism, the limits of free speech or contemporary global problems such as climate change or immigration. Granted, some democratic theorists are of the view that democratic theory should be highly abstract – that actual political challenges need hardly trouble us (Estlund 2020). But in the main, democratic theorists have sought to engage with those challenges. As part of that, they have sought to identify meaningful – that is, politically feasible but also normatively attractive – solutions. They have, for example, sought to show how deliberative norms and principles might guide the reform of parliamentary institutions, including electoral systems (James 2004) as well as the internal workings of political parties (Wolkenstein 2016). They have engaged in wider debates about the rights and wrongs of partisanship (White and Ypi 2016) and the nature of representative democracy more generally (Mansbridge 2020). They have advanced our understanding of the public sphere and have had a great deal to say about the prospects for citizen inclusion (Setälä and Smith 2018), including feminist political representation (Childs 2021). They continue to explore the relationship between democracy and rights, including rights to privacy (Lever 2014) and free speech (Bonotti and Seglow 2021), complicity with injustice (Beerbohm 2012), and have even begun to consider the ethics of AI (Tasioulas 2022). Democratic theorists have also engaged seriously with questions of global democratic governance (Held 2016). They have proposed, for example, methods for diagnosing global democratic deficits (Koenig-Archibugi 2017), for supporting transnational public spheres (Smith 2018), for instituting global citizens’ assemblies (Goodin 2010), and for dealing with the challenges of climate change and future generations (Dryzek 2021). Yet while the field of democratic theory is extremely vibrant, major challenges persist. The degree to which democratic theory needs to be constrained by existing political conditions continues to unsettle (cf. McTernan 2019; Sangiovanni 2016). More broadly, tensions between (and indeed within) different theories of democracy – liberal, deliberative and republican, but also direct, representative, participatory and cosmopolitan – continue to hamper efforts to respond to contemporary challenges and opportunities. The field is vibrant; but it is also riven by family disputes. There is, therefore, a real need for a Workshop designed to deal with these ongoing tensions, not least to assess how democratic design can address current political problems. More generally, there is a need to break down barriers between different approaches and traditions to democratic theory in order facilitate genuine critical engagement and learning.