Dissertation Project


The Future of Democracy: Participative and Deliberative Innovations for the Preservation and Restoration of Political Legitimacy Allowing for the Normative Imperative of Political Equality

As the nature of democracy is bound to popular government and the sovereignty of the people, which embraces complete political equality and inclusion, contemporary representative democracies are confronted with a serious gap between the democratic ideal of equality and its implementation. Accordingly, my PhD project will be about the question of which participative and/or deliberative innovations are required—and can at the same time be implemented—to correct this deficit. With respect to methodology, the work of James Fishkin on so-called deliberative opinion polls seems to be a good point of departure, since he deals with a similar problem. My thesis will be based on a secondary analysis of two original deliberative opinion polls with regard to the question whether deliberation and political equality can be harmonised.