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The Crisis of Representative Democracy

This chapter discusses the crisis of democracy. While this crisis can be attributed in part to specific empirical corruptions, which are themselves likely the result of contingent external shocks, the crisis of democracy can also be traced, more fundamentally, to an original design flaw: the restriction of democratic representation to “electoral” representation. The main problem is that representative democracy was designed on the basis of electoral premises that prevent even its best, most democratized contemporary versions from reaching the full potential of genuine “popular rule,” that is, a rule that empowers all equally. The chapter then looks at the internal problems to a core principle of representative government: the principle of elections. It also addresses the “realists'” objections that there is no crisis of democracy since representative democracy is working as intended.