Sublime

The more general lesson is that self-selected participation is virtually certain to be unrepresentative and hence offer a distorted form of inclusion.

In our long journey of bringing power to the people—through mass primaries, referenda, recall elections, direct election of senators in the US, public opinion polls, and other forms of public consultation—we have empowered a public that generally lacks the information and attention that would be required for applying the value of deliberation in ma

As we will see, self-selected intense groups can achieve mass participation and even deliberation, but such strategies will violate political equality because they will be unrepresentative.

aspirations for deliberative democracy look at how and whether our views of what should be done can be developed under conditions where evidence-based reasons and arguments can be more consequential.

Freedom of expression can be used to distort and manipulate public opinion as easily as it can be used to inform.

Perhaps the teams also send contestants to beauty contests. Or speaking contests trading insults.

The idea is to equally count everyone’s views under conditions where they can really think in order to give expression to a meaningful public will. Hence, we will draw on work that combines random sampling to help achieve political equality with conditions facilitating in-depth, thoughtful discussion. Such consultations can be done in contexts that

On this view, democracy is not about collective will formation but just a “competitive struggle for the people’s vote,”

How much more powerful and consistent could we expect the influence of public opinion to become if it were built on really solid foundations—if it were the product of the entire society thinking about the issues and coming to a considered judgment?