Democratic Theory

PROJECTS

Democracy: A Systems Approach

with Brigitte Geissel and Jonathan Rinne

The notion that democracy is a system is ever present in democratic theory – from Aristotle’s Politics (Bk II.6 16) to seminal texts by Robert Dahl (1956, 1989). It is also prevalent in applied democratic theory for classifying existing political regimes or measuring democratic quality. Yet what it means to think systemically about democracy (as opposed to what it means for a political system to be democratic) is under-theorized. This project takes up that question.

Our first publication on this topic proposed a framework of seven conceptual building blocks for thinking systemically about democracy – norms, functions, practices, arenas, levels and interactions – that enables us to compare alternative conceptions of democratic systems. We are currently working on further developing the theory and exploring its potential to rethink approaches to questions of empirical political science, such as democracy measurement and process preferences.

COVID-19 and Democracy

with Afsoun Afsahi, Emily Beausoleil, Selen Ercan and Jean-Paul Gagnon

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed an unprecedented challenge for contemporary democracies around the globe. It has led to the closure and transformation of parliaments and enabled governments to rule by decree. It has curtailed citizens’ fundamental democratic rights to assemble and protest. It has generated an unparalleled multinational policy debate and stimulated myriad digital innovations in democratic practice. It has reshaped economies, welfare systems, and the informal networks by which we exchange with and support each other. Making sense of these immediate developments and asking what they mean for the theory and practice of democracy, and how they may reshape longer-term democratic horizons is now an urgent task for democracy scholarship.

As countries around the world went into their first lockdown, we turned to 32 leading scholars working on different aspects of democracy and asked them what they think about how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted democracy. The result was a special issue of Democratic Theory. In our editorial, we synthesize the reflections of these scholars and present five key insights about the prospects and challenges of enacting democracy both during and after the pandemic: (1) COVID-19 has had corrosive effects on already endangered democratic institutions, (2) COVID-19 has revealed alternative possibilities for democratic politics in the state of emergency, (3) COVID-19 has amplified the inequalities and injustices within democracies, (4) COVID-19 has demonstrated the need for institutional infrastructure for prolonged solidarity, and (5) COVID-19 has highlighted the predominance of the nation-state and its limitations. This work was also featured in Public Seminar .

What is Democratic Theory?

with Jean-Paul Gagnon and Hans Asenbaum

The question “What is Democratic Theory?” is surprisingly infrequently posed. This is an odd discursive silence not observable in other closely aligned fields of thought such as political theory, political science, social theory, philosophy, economic theory, and public policy/administration – each of which have asked the “what is” question of themselves on regular occasion. Jean-Paul Gagnon, Hans Asenbaum and I therefore put together a special issue to pose the question anew and collect a range of answers from scholars working in different traditions of democratic theory. Our editorial draws from their contributions and beyond to explore the what, where, who, when and why of the question.