Athletic Democracy: On the Compatibility of Deliberation and Participation

• In Event: The Psychology of Political Engagement

Abstract

Many people worry that deliberative democracy saps the vitality of politics. Such critics argue, moreover, that such an approach to politics demobilizes average citizens – one cannot have both cross-cutting deliberation and robust participation. We argue, to the contrary, that democracies can and do have it both ways. We first reanalyze the main evidence against the compatibility of deliberative and participatory democracy and show that the results are quite fragile, and that they fail to replicate in subsequent elections. In addition we analyze a unique whole network data set and a field experiment of our own design, neither of which support the incompatibility hypothesis.

Authors

• Michael Neblo, Ohio State University

• William Minozzi, Ohio State University

• Lauren Ratliff Santoro, Ohio State University

• Anand Edward Sokhey, University of Colorado, Boulder

• David Lazer