Reconsidering the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform Phenomena: Castoriadis and Radical Citizen Democracy

Abstract

The British Columbia and Ontario Citizens' Assemblies on Electoral Reform have justifiably generated much discussion on the part of political theorists, who see in these phenomena the actualization of certain deliberative democratic principles that have traditionally not been able to be affirmed within increasingly corporatized political orders. These phenomena, it is argued, give a form to a relatively new model of representation which emphasizes not the reproduction of an already existent popular will, but rather the critical construction of a potential political will under institutional conditions allowing for adequate knowledge acquisition. It will be argued, however, that such readings are in the final instance limited from a democratic standpoint to the degree that politics is still primarily considered in terms of political competency and rationality. Rather than interpret Citizens' Assemblies (CAs) as manifestations of a new mode of representation, the article will attempt to read them through the radical democratic prism articulated by Cornelius Castoriadis, emphasizing the CAs' possible deployment in a germinal project of autonomy which gives an expression to the non-determinate drives of social-historical individuals and communities. The possibility of the CAs contributing to a rejuvenation of the democratic experience is to be located in their shifting of the terms of democracy away from issues of representation and rationality, and toward those of creativity and imagination.