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A Judgment-Based Model of Democratic Institutions: Re-Evaluating Direct Legislation

The standard long-used to evaluate contemporary democratic institutions – congruence between the people’s preferences and policy outcomes – has been challenged by both empirical and normative scholarship. Appealing to contemporary democratic theory and the institutional “case” of direct legislation, this paper develops an alternative standard for the evaluation of contemporary democratic institutions: how institutions enable and structure the construction of citizen judgment. Citizen judgment, public opinion work shows, is formed in the context of an inter-institutional agenda. This paper argues we should worry when institutions narrow the inter-institutional agenda to a single issue, and seek out institutional designs that contribute to a diverse inter-institutional agenda. Applying this judgment-based standard to direct legislation reveals an institution less democratic than the congruence standard indicates, but more democratic than normative theorists assume.