Abstract

KRISTAN, M. VICTORIA. Global Democracy with Shortcuts. Rev. Derecho Estado [online]. 2023, n.spe55, pp.105-123.  Epub May 09, 2023. ISSN 0122-9893.  https://doi.org/10.18601/01229893.n55.07.

In her book, Democracia sin atajos, Cristina Lafont starts from three seemingly contested conceptions of democracy, namely: purely epistemic, deeply pluralistic and lottocratic. All three alternative conceptions, according to Lafont, lead to blind deference, which is incompatible with the ideal of self-government, since under conditions of blind deference, society lacks the mechanisms to control and challenge political decisions that coerce it. In this paper, I will argue that while Lafont claims that mini-publics and other democratic innovations lead us from deference to blind deference and away from the democratic ideal of self-government, this is not the case, or rather, it depends on the context. In some contexts, mini-publics and other instruments of democratic innovation make deference less blind than it actually is. One such context is the context of decision-making in global affairs, since we do not have a global democratic system to make such decisions. To support my objection, I will explain that if we accept the traditional distinction between the ideal and non-ideal conceptions of democracy, and the distinction between end-state vs. transitional theory, we can also accept a series of shortcuts, the substitute shortcuts: those aimed at solving practical problems identified with the non-ideal conception of democracy, in our case practical global problems.

Keywords : Democratic participation; shortcuts; shortcuts as substitutes; blind deference.

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