Refurbishing Democracy: More Direct, More Deliberative, and Younger

Abstract

AbstractWhat would it mean to (better) integrate children into democratic life? This essay attempts to dispel some potential reservations and explore the grounds for including children in deliberative and/or electoral processes. Across the world, public satisfaction with democracy is at historic lows, with young people particularly dissatisfied, both in absolute terms and relative to older cohorts at the same age. The situation is not terminal; the overall number of democracies has declined slightly over the past two decades, but the world’s most established democracies have stayed largely intact and are relatively stable. That said, to be successful in the long term, a political system must be seen to be working, and if people’s dissatisfaction with democracy is allowed to fester, their belief and trust in it will drain away. To ensure this does not happen, (representative) democracy—which, in institutional terms, has remained largely unchanged for the past 50–100 years—will need to renew itself. This could take various forms. But one option—and the focus of this essay—is to bring young people or children into the democratic arena, and deliberative democratic processes, in particular.