GREPPI, ANDREA. On Pluralism and Sluices: Time for Appraisals. []. , spe55, pp.33-56.   08--2023. ISSN 0122-9893.  https://doi.org/10.18601/01229893.n55.04.

Among the many virtues of Democracy without Shortcuts by Cristina Lafont, is that of presenting a significant overview of the state of art of deliberative theories of democracy. The purpose of this comment is to identify some of the theoretical keystones in her participative approach that can be taken as landmarks for establishing continuities and discontinuities with the foundational contributions to this train of thought. In particular, I mean the Habermasian characterization of the political system according to the metaphor of a hydraulic system of sluices and the Rawlsian views on the duty of civility. My suggestion is that Lafont's revision of these elements, in her discussion with deep pluralism and the epistocratic and lotocratic proposals, is pushing us towards the reworking of our views on the distance travelled by the theory in the last decades in a profoundly transformed social, political and cultural environment. The note ends with a brief comment on the connection between deference and (political) representation: the latter of these two terms illustrates some of the ambiguities that Lafont encounters relying on the former.

: Deliberative theory of democracy; Pluralist theories of democracy; Jürgen Habermas; John Rawls.

        · |     · |     · ( pdf )