As I wind my way through the books on political theory and democracy I find it pretty depressing. Especially now that I'm reading Judge Posner's Pragmatism book. I picked it up specifically for his critique of deliberative democracy, but his broader points are more depressing. Particularly, his acceptance of people's non-engagement in civic discourse as a component of 'a pragmatic vision of democracy'-- his revision of Schumpeter's 'elite democracy' where elites compete for the public's attention and votes. I don't disagree that this is somewhat descriptive of what we have today in the US. I vehemently disagree that we should re-describe democracy to match the current status, or that this legitimizes critiques of aspirational theorists trying to redesign institutions to develop a modern polity.
The disagreements I have with Fishkin pale compared to my thoughts on Judge Posner. Fishkin's deliberative democracy asks if there is a way to reintroduce deliberation into political institutions when the preference for direct democracy is becoming entrenched. I question whether the engagements he proposes are too structured to adequately empower people to participate in deliberation outside those engagements-- thus their utility is limited. I've read interesting work by Jane Schacter who is visiting at Stanford who critiques deliberative democracy from the other side-- because it is incapable of structuring engagements to eliminate the bias', discrimination, and other societal disadvantages that disempowered people from participating in civic discourse in their "normal environment."
But Judge Posner basically thinks that efforts to engage the unengaged are futile or otherwise not worth it, and a view of democracy that accepts that 50% of the population doesn't vote is preferred to one that asks how can we get more people to engage to effect decisions made by others that impact on their lives. He prefers pragmatism-- A disposition to base action on facts and consequences.
I think this view is so depressing I can't envision how he wrote 400 pages describing it. The project I'm working on may be aspirational, which never before did I think was a negative, but hopefully it can offer an insight into how we can improve our system by engaging some more people in the conversation about it.