Valuing Democracy in Practice

Abstract

This chapter presents a defense for the kind of democratic theory that the book deploys. This democratic theory begins with examining and interpreting the political practices that are widely thought to have democratic value in regimes that are widely considered to be democratic. The chapter offers an account of democracy as shared agency that can shed light on the murky ethics of democratic reform politics. It suggests that existing democratic institutions and practices can be thought of as shared plans for a collective activity. Thinking of democratic structures in this way does not magically resolve the dilemma of democratic reform, but it does render it in more familiar terms, and reveals that citizens may have more practical experience navigating analogous ethical problems than we realize. This model of democracy as shared agency, and of democratic practices as shared plans, also illuminates the role that normative political theory can play in deliberation about the ethics of citizenship.