Description
Book SynopsisThis book defends the value of democratic participation. It aims to improve citizens' democratic control and vindicate the value of citizens' participation against conceptions that threaten to undermine it.
Trade ReviewA brilliant book. The author offers a powerful reconstruction of the systematic content of a participatory conception of deliberative democracy, which she justifies with metacritical arguments that exhibit an equal measure of analytical acumen. * Jürgen Habermas, Journal of Deliberative Democracy *
Trenchantly argued, ambitious, and full of surprising insights, Democracy without Shortcuts is a major contribution to contemporary democratic theory by one of the best political philosophers in the world. * Fabio Wolkenstein, Perspectives on Politics *
It is hard to exaggerate the importance today of Lafont's identification and exploration of the central goal of dispelling alienation – helping citizens to own their own laws, identify with those laws, and endorse them... Her willingness to directly address the need for the justification of state coercion is what makes this book so important... Lafont's analysis is extremely valuable for today and for the future. It puts the citizen at the center and takes seriously the citizens' capacities for reflectively endorsing the laws that coerce them. * Jane Mansbridge, Journal of Deliberative Democracy *
A searching and thought-provoking philosophical work on the nature of deliberation in modern democracy. * Thomas Christiano, Jus Cogens 2 *
Cristina Lafont's powerful critique of deliberative minipublics strikes at the central strategy that has energized efforts to actually apply deliberative democracy to real public problems. Every effort to make deliberative democracy practical needs to take account of her critiques. * James Fishkin, Journal of Deliberative Democracy *
This book makes a significant contribution to the literature defending a broadly deliberative view of democracy ... In the course of her defense she shows that judicial review need not be opposed to participatory deliberative democracy. * H. Oberdiek, CHOICE *
