Democracy for Busy People

by Kevin J. Elliott

Advances an alternative approach to democratic reform that focuses on building institutions that empower people who have little time for politics.

How do we make democracy more equal? Although in theory, all citizens in a democracy have the right to participate in politics, time-consuming forms of participation often advantage some groups over others. Where some citizens may have time to wait in long lines to vote, to volunteer for a campaign, to attend community board meetings, or to stay up to date on national, state, and local news, other citizens struggle to do the same. Since not all people have the time or inclination to devote substantial energy to politics, certain forms of participation exacerbate existing inequalities.

Democracy for Busy People takes up the very real challenge of how to build a democracy that empowers people with limited time for politics. While many plans for democratic renewal emphasize demanding forms of political participation and daunting ideals of democratic citizenship, political theorist Kevin J. Elliott proposes a fundamentally different approach. He focuses instead on making democratic citizenship undemanding so that even busy people can be politically included. This approach emphasizes the core institutions of electoral democracy, such as political parties, against deliberative reforms and sortition. Timely and action-focused, Democracy for Busy People is necessary reading.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Political Science

243 pages, Paperback

Published May 9, 2023

Reviews

[Ethan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only one regression table and no graphs!😢

Was a lot more theoretical than I was expecting, but good to try something new and the author was very clear and straightforward. Totally agree with a lot of the points but again would’ve liked a bit more empirical justification (sure annual elections worked once in 1776, but lots of reasons why could’ve been a fluke). The part abt ppl developing unrealistic expectations when they participate infrequently was certainly prescient.

[Alec L · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I do not have a background in political theory, I am largely forced to take the author's framing at its word. Given that though, this book comes across as a solid piece of early-career political work; the amount of time it spends very actively doing literature review and reiterating well-known ideas leaves it with relatively little core content of its own, but it does seem to make some contribution. In particular, the crux of the book is the idea of "stand-by citizenship" presented in chapter 4, a concrete, attainable minimum threshold for democratic participation for everyone to meet, with recognition that participation above the threshold will be unequal. In particular, building a review of the theoretical landscape in earlier chapters, he defines stand-by citizenship as being a combination of critical attention to politics, basic civic skills required to participate, and then the upward flexibility to engage more, before going on to suggest the mix of correlated statistics of political interest, political knowledge (used to measure attention to politics), and voter turnout as 3 imperfect but useful metrics for capturing the extent of stand-by citizenship. From my vantage point, it seems as though he attempts to make a major theoretical point when he declares inclusion and equality of political participation as "contrasting ideals" (85) on the way to define stand-by citizenship, but it doesn't feel like he really commits to this theoretical perspective---for example, he spends time later trying to argue that elections don't "give disproportionate power to political busybodies" (125). Fortunately, a later chapter does give the book a bit more heft by showing that stand-by citizenship provides a useful perspective shift in some ways, leading him to the work of John Gastil on how "jurors who don't usually vote and who engage in jury deliberations are 4 to 7 percent more likely to vote afterward" (183), showing how one could spend time evaluating whether or not certain interventions would help people reach the minimum bar of stand-by citizenship. However, the book as a whole does not come across as very insightful, even if it is a productive marginal contribution to the literature.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story is a sort of companion to "10% Less Democracy" in that both argue that most people just don't have the time to get into the nuances of all these political ideas and that it leads to bad outcomes. However, I found the author's prescriptions here are all sort of middling. Their biggest change would be mandatory voting, but are also quite enamored in defending the system of two political parties as a way to distill policies into something tangible.

The author does consider multiparty systems are useful too, but overall they believe voters should make their opinions heard even if they lack the time or focus to form developed opinions.