Defending Democratic Participation Against Shortcuts: a Few Replies to Thomas Christiano

In this essay, I address some questions and challenges brought about by Thomas Christiano in his inspiring review of my book Democracy without Shortcuts. First, I defend the democratic credentials of the conception of self-government that I articulate in the book against conceptions of self-determination that are allegedly compatible with non-democratic government. To do so, I clarify some aspects of the notion of “blind deference” that I use in the book as a contrast concept to identify a minimal, necessary condition for democratic self-government. In a second step, I clarify my criticism of deep pluralist conceptions of democracy and argue that Christiano’s own criticism does not seem to address the main challenge to which pure proceduralism is supposed to provide an answer. Lastly, I address Christiano’s contention that my criticism of lottocracy does not address the worries that lottocrats are responding to. I distinguish between populist and epistocratic worries and argue that both of them have anti-democratic roots and thus should be criticized rather than “responded to” in their own terms.