Democracy without Shortcuts: A Participatory Conception of Deliberative Democracy,

Christina Lafont’s Democracy without Shortcuts intervenes in a vital and active area of research that seeks to guide how we, as scholars and citizens, should navigate the democratic deficit plaguing many parts of the globe. This book sets out to evaluate scholarly proposals to revitalize democracy, and concludes that the most promising avenue is participatory deliberative democracy: a macro-deliberative strategy with institutional mechanisms for citizens to seek justification for the laws to which they are subject. I was increasingly excited about the book as it proceeded from identifying deficiencies in alternative approaches to democracy towards fleshing out Lafont’s positive vision of what deliberative and participatory forms can offer. The section of the book that I found most compelling was the one in which Lafont evaluates the utility of deliberative minipublics (deliberation amongst a random, “representative” selection of the population), due to this section’s relevance to debates around using minipublics to intervene on pressing and existential issues like climate change. Climate change evokes the tensions between strengthening democracy and passing more stringent policy; scholars have debated the conditions under which democratic practice itself holds climate action back. However, deliberative processes like minipublics have demonstrated promise in producing stronger climate policy proposals than their governments had in place prior. After residents propose policies aligned with their priorities, minipublics often face barriers holding governmental bodies to account on implementation. Here, Lafont points to another critical shortcoming of minipublics: as deliberative participants increase their access to information and debate, their views shift farther away from those of the average citizen. One of the benefits of minipublics from a climate legislation perspective—the fact that they may cause people to change their minds often in favor