View article

more broadly empowered, especially in the institutions that most directly affect their everyday lives, their experiences would have transformative effects. Individuals would become more public spirited, more tolerant, more knowledgeable, more attentive to the interests of others, and more probing of their own interests. Transformations such as these would improve the workings of higher-level representative institutions, as well as mitigate threats that democracy is often held to pose to rights, pluralism, and gov-ernability." And institutions that make collective decisions in radically demo-cratic ways will tend to generate new forms of solidarity, cooperation, and civic attachment.

One version of radical democracy that has been gaining currencyincreasingly referred to as “deliberative democracy”–holds that, of the variety of possible democratic experiences, deliberation is most central to these generative and transformative …