The crisis of democracy and the science of deliberation
Open accessAbstract
Citizens can avoid polarization and make sound decisions
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Citizens are in danger of losing the critical-reflective abilities required to exercise public self-governance in a democratic society.
“While democratic institutions and structures may still be present in the polis, the citizens populating it are in danger of losing the critical-reflective abilities required to exercise public self-governance in a democratic society (Cohen & Fung, 2021;Crouch, 2004;Dryzek et al., 2019).”
From Organized Immaturity in a Post-Kantian Perspective: Toward a critical theory of surveillance capitalism (2023) · cites this paper as Dryzek et al., 2019
The opening section reports that polarization makes citizens less likely to listen to arguments and more likely to follow partisan cues, which supports concern about reflective political judgment. But “What Research Finds” says ordinary people remain capable of high-quality deliberation, and “Implementation” calls the citizenry capable of sound deliberation. The paper does not establish that citizens are losing the abilities themselves. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredSuch systems can corrupt independent thinking.
“Beyond intruding on people's privacy and eroding their social and political autonomy, such systems can corrupt independent thinking.”
From Organized Immaturity in a Post-Kantian Perspective: Toward a critical theory of surveillance capitalism (2023) · cites this paper as Dryzek et al., 2019
The opening section says polarized political environments lead people to follow partisan cues rather than attend to messages, and the Implementation section says social media can amplify pathological communication. That supports a concern about less independent political judgment, but the paper does not establish that the unspecified systems corrupt individual thinking; it describes the crisis as one of communication, not individual reasoning. (LLM, conf=0.78)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredIdentifying erosive behaviors itself likely requires more engagement with normative theory.
“Finally, identifying erosive behaviors itself likely requires more engagement with normative theory (e.g., Dryzek et al., 2019).”
From How to study democratic backsliding (2024) · cites this paper as Dryzek et al., 2019
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Cites
Fighting misinformation on social media using crowdsourced judgments of news source quality
Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2019) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1806781116 · Cited by 947 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 15
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- H. Landemore, Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many (Princeton Univ. Press, 2013).
- S. Chambers, Crit. Rev. 30, 36 (2018).
- A. Bächtiger, J. S. Dryzek, J. Mansbridge, M. E. Warren, Eds., The Oxford Handbook of Deliberative Democracy (Oxford Univ. Press, 2018).
- M. A. Neblo, K. M. Esterling, D. M. J. Lazer, Politics with the People: Building a Directly Representative Democracy(Cambridge Univ. Press, 2018).
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
How to study democratic backsliding
Druckman, J. N. (2024) · Political Psychology · doi:10.1111/pops.12942 · Cited by 56 · see citing works
Self-citationEpistemic fragmentation poses a threat to the governance of online targeting
Milano, S., Mittelstadt, B., Wachter, S., & Russell, C. (2021) · Nature Machine Intelligence · doi:10.1038/s42256-021-00358-3 · Cited by 29 · see citing works
Scherer, A. G., & Neesham, C. (2023) · Organization Theory · doi:10.1177/26317877231204083 · Cited by 30 · see citing works
No Virtue Like Resilience: Machiavelli’s Realistic Justification of Democracy
Burelli, C. (2024) · Political Studies · doi:10.1177/00323217231191396 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
Ramos, F., Tavares, A. F., & da Cruz, N. F. (2026) · Children and Youth Services Review · doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2025.108738 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
- Authors
- Dryzek, J. S., Bächtiger, A., Chambers, S., Cohen, J., Druckman, J. N., Felicetti, A., Fishkin, J. S., Farrell, D. M., Fung, A., Gutmann, A., Landemore, H., Mansbridge, J., Marien, S., Neblo, M. A., Niemeyer, S., Setälä, M., Slothuus, R., Suiter, J., Thompson, D., & Warren, M. E.
- Affiliations
- University of Canberra (AU)
- University of Stuttgart (DE)
- University of California, Irvine (US)
- Apple (United States) (US)
- Northwestern University (US)
- KU Leuven (BE)
- Stanford University (US)
- University College Dublin (IE)
- Harvard University (US)
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
- KU-Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
- The Ohio State University (US)
- University of Turku (FI)
- Aarhus University (DK)
- Dublin City University (IE)
- University of British Columbia (CA)
- ORCID
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2019-03-15
- Volume
- 363
- Issue
- 6432
- Pages
- 1144-1146
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W2921815814
- Cited by
- 589
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 87 · 2025: 82 · 2024: 72 · 2023: 91 · 2022: 95 · 2021: 98 · 2020: 54 · 2019: 9
- FWCI
- 270.67
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- lirias.kuleuven.be
- Locations
- Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Lirias (KU Leuven) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Scopus (Elsevier) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Padua Research Archive (University of Padova) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- European Commission (HORIZON2020)
- Universität Stuttgart
- Australian Research Council (FL140100154)
- H2020 European Research Council (759736)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Theory and Democracy
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Keywords
- crisis of democracy, deliberation, citizen participation, political polarization, democratic decision-making, deliberative democracy
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