"Open Democracy envisions what true government by mass leadership
could look like."-Nathan Heller, New Yorker How a new model of
democracy that opens up power to ordinary citizens could strengthen
inclusiveness, responsiveness, and accountability in modern
societies To the ancient Greeks, democracy meant gathering in
public and debating laws set by a randomly selected assembly of
several hundred citizens. To the Icelandic Vikings, democracy meant
meeting every summer in a field to discuss issues until consensus
was reached. Our contemporary representative democracies are very
different. Modern parliaments are gated and guarded, and it seems
as if only certain people-with the right suit, accent, wealth, and
connections-are welcome. Diagnosing what is wrong with
representative government and aiming to recover some of the lost
openness of ancient democracies, Open Democracy presents a new
paradigm of democracy in which power is genuinely accessible to
ordinary citizens. Helene Landemore favors the ideal of
"representing and being represented in turn" over direct-democracy
approaches. Supporting a fresh nonelectoral understanding of
democratic representation, Landemore recommends centering political
institutions around the "open mini-public"-a large, jury-like body
of randomly selected citizens gathered to define laws and policies
for the polity, in connection with the larger public. She also
defends five institutional principles as the foundations of an open
democracy: participatory rights, deliberation, the majoritarian
principle, democratic representation, and transparency. Open
Democracy demonstrates that placing ordinary citizens, rather than
elites, at the heart of democratic power is not only the true
meaning of a government of, by, and for the people, but also
feasible and, today more than ever, urgently needed.
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