by Eva Sørensen & Mark E. Warren
Contemporary liberal democracies suffer from a legitimacy crisis. The visible signs are rising levels of political polarisation and growing distrust in politicians and democratic political institutions. In a new article in Policy & Politics entitled Developing a Theory of Democratic Robustness, we argue that the crisis is at least in part due to a certain rigidity in the institutions of representative democracy that hampers their ability to change when society changes. This rigidity renders it difficult for them to continue to serve three core functions that categorise them as ‘democratic’: (1) empowered inclusion of those affected by collective decisions; (2) collective will formation and agenda setting that builds on inclusion; and (3) the capacity to make collective decisions that are broadly perceived as legitimate and binding. The current democratic crisis accentuates the question of how to build more robust democracies.
Over the last few decades, many researchers have stressed the need for democratic reforms, but few have discussed the capacities of democratic political systems to carry out such reforms in response to social chances—capacities that generate political system robustness. By robust democracies we mean democracies that possess a capacity to adapt and innovate the way they operate when changing societal conditions call for it. To be robust, a democracy must be ready and able to rearticulate the meaning of its core functions so that they are relevant to emerging challenges, adjust its modus operandi to shifting levels of politicisation, creatively combine the available channels for political participation, experiment when existing ways of tackling political contestations become ineffective or illegitimate, and flexibly relocate decisions to a level that is conducive to responding to specific political demands.
For illustrative purposes, our article identifies three disruptive developments that call for democratic adaptions and innovations that increase robustness: (i) the surge of an assertive political culture of self-confident, capable and critical citizens that expect more empowered inclusion than democracies give them; (ii) the digitalisation of political communication that opens the door for everyone to take part in collective will formation and agenda setting; and (iii) the mushrooming of political issues such as climate change, migration and border crossing crime that can only be tackled through political decision making at transnational levels of governance.
Responding robustly to these developments, liberal democracies must develop more inclusive political processes, design digital political conversations in a way that accommodates collective rather than fragmented will formation and agenda setting, and build institutions and processes that accommodate the making of binding decisions beyond the nation state level. We propose paying specific attention to the need for engaging citizens in collective will formation and agenda setting and in the making of binding decisions, given that an isolated focus on securing empowered inclusion in some societies can prove to be dangerous if the inclusion comes without broad buy-in to collective agendas, or if it undermines capacities for governing the collective.
You can read the original research in Policy & Politics at:
Sørensen, E., & Warren, M. E. (2024). Developing a theory of robust democracy. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2024) from https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000050
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Lewallen, J. (2024). The influence of conflict on agenda setting in the US Congress. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2024) from https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000047
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Parry, L. J., Curato, N., & Dryzek, J. S. (2024). Governance of deliberative mini-publics: emerging consensus and divergent views. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2024) from https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000043
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