The process permits the public to take thoughtful responsibility and the outcomes should be what the people decide they really want. This is the ideal. But there are many questions in an age of cynicism and mass disaffection about how this ideal can be realized.

Note that if such a system were possible it would mean solving the apparent trilemma—a dilemma with three corners—between political equality, deliberation, and participation.24 Can we get all three? It has long seemed that implementing any two would preclude the third.