Failing. Unsalvageable. Hopeless. <\/span><\/p>\n For Macaulay students reflecting on the state of American democracy, one thing is clear: the vibes surrounding democracy are decidedly grim. <\/span><\/p>\n Macaulay Honors College hosted its second round of Student Voice and Agency in Redesigning Democracy focus groups on November 12, in person at John Jay College, and November 13, virtually on Zoom. Hosted by John Jay’s Macaulay faculty director Dr. Raymond Patton and part of a study for the <\/span>Institute for Democracy & Higher Education (IDHE) initiative<\/span><\/a>, the focus groups solicited participants’ thoughts on not just the current state of democracy but also their visions of democracy as they would like to see it. Central to th<\/span>e <\/span>discussions was the notion of <\/span>(re)designing democracy<\/span><\/a>, improving and revamping—even radically changing—it to fit the needs and wants of our society.<\/span><\/p>\n Calls for such reflection are perceptive and timely: Democracy is seemingly careening off a cliff, inspiring less and less hope amongst the inhabitants of even so-called <\/span>liberal democracies<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>including the United States<\/span><\/a>. This dilemma of backsliding democracy has taken on a new prescience for Americans in light of the results of the 2024 presidential election in the U.S., which catapulted Donald Trump back to the White House. Trump’s re-election is not the only instance where political uncertainty has intensified; all across the world, from Hungary to Brazil to India, far-right populism has been on a steady <\/span>rise<\/span><\/a>. Across the Atlantic, Western Europe too has been faced with a spate of <\/span>resurging populist movements<\/span><\/a>, with parties like the AfD in Germany and the Rassemblement National in France taking on renewed popularity amongst voters. <\/span><\/p>\n In this fraught context, the prospect of democratic reform seems more than welcome. Though the notion of reshaping democracy has a vagueness to it, Macaulay’s focus groups attempted to hone in on feasible visions for the future with guiding questions: Is our current democracy just and accessible? Is it empowering, informed, compassionate? Can we trust it, reinvent it when it fails to deliver, and adapt it to ever-shifting societal headwinds? Most importantly, how can we reshape our current political system(s) to make our visions of an ideal, or at least better, democracy a functioning reality about which we feel not aggravation but satisfaction? <\/span><\/p>\n For many focus group participants, American democracy is in jeopardy. Yet reform is not a futile hope: clear-eyed visions for democracy as more participatory, more inclusive, more effective, and efficient all hinge on its malleability and on Americans’ (Macaulay students included) understanding that, put bluntly, something’s gotta give. Our current system is not representative of the citizens on whose behalf (and with whose consent) it purports to legislate and operate, and in its current state it is too beholden to special interests to fairly “represent” much of American society. Change is long overdue. <\/span><\/p>\n Reminiscent of this all-inclusive vision of democracy are models of <\/span>deliberative democracy<\/span><\/a>, where people discuss (deliberate!) before making decisions. Deliberative democracy has deep roots in democratic institutions of olde, the most obvious being Athenian direct democracy. Along with being discussion-oriented, ancient Greek city-states employed sortition, or random selection— a process which aims to establish representativeness. Through deliberation and sortition, citizens become directly involved in the decision-making that is so often left to elected officials in modern states. Certainly, this direct input works well on a small scale, but implementing this in a sprawling country like the U.S. poses clear hurdles.<\/span><\/p>\n That’s where deliberative democracy comes in: the point of deliberation is to enrich political consciousness through discussion with others. Political discussion comes before, and strengthens, political action. For social theorist Jürgen <\/span>Habermas<\/span><\/a>, citizens of “civil society” can deeply influence public opinion via deliberative discourse; for laws to be truly legitimate, they must be shaped through a “discursive process of legislation” that draws on public deliberation. <\/span><\/p>\n In a similar vein, American political theorist John Rawls articulated <\/span>three fundamental characteristics of deliberative democracy<\/span><\/a>: “public reason,” the basic political and moral values of a democratic society; truly “deliberative legislative bodies”; and citizens’ knowledge of, and desire to embody, the ideals of public reason. Rawls also acknowledges the overwhelming power that large corporations and moneyed interests have over elections— in a society where money so strongly sways politics, the political system’s “deliberative powers are paralyzed.” Surely this still rings true for voters today, even though Rawls wrote this evaluation of public reason and democracy in 1997. <\/span><\/p>\n Needless to say, critiques of deliberative democracy abound: What of the rampant misinformation on social media, which for many has become a primary source of news intake? (And is the zeitgeist of the 2020s, of our current political landscape, even amenable to deliberation?) Who’s to say that deliberative bodies will really deliberate and take public opinion into account— what of potential performativity? What if focusing disproportionately on developing deliberative bodies and events detracts from democratic procedures like voting? And who, or what, even has the power to encourage deliberation on such a widespread scale? <\/span><\/p>\n In that sense, a complicating factor of reform is the subjectivity of how democratic ideals should be implemented in society. Agree as folks might on the drastic overhaul that democracy is due, there are no two identical visions for a new and improved democratic model (to their credit, both Habermas and Rawls discussed the relevance of competing interests, religion, and differing secular values). Given the deep polarization of modern American politics, the thought of even a somewhat unified vision of reform of our political institutions for the sake of democracy may seem naively utopian. If we can’t agree on what democracy is and what it should be, then how can we re-envision and reform it? <\/span><\/p>\n Yet there are tried-and-true cases of <\/span>deliberative democracy in practice <\/span><\/a>worldwide, from <\/span>participatory budgeting<\/span><\/a> systems to<\/span> citizens’ councils<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>assemblies<\/span><\/a>. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an international body that speaks on a range of social and economic issues, also <\/span>reports regularly<\/span><\/a> on deliberative democracy initiatives, which have <\/span>grown in scope<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n As per the OECD’s <\/span>Deliberative Democracy Database<\/span><\/a>, over a hundred deliberative models—largely citizens’ juries, councils, and assemblies—have been formed <\/span>since 2021 alone<\/span><\/a>. And the promises of deliberative democracy continue to be covered in academia: in March 2024, Swiss political scientist André Bächtiger and Australian social scientist John Dryzek published a book on deliberation, fittingly titled <\/span>Deliberative Democracy for Diabolical Times<\/span><\/i><\/a>; and just last month, American political scientist Graham Wright published <\/span>Persuasion, Integration, and Deliberative Democracy<\/span><\/i><\/a>. Deliberative democracy undoubtedly has universal appeal, and rightly so. <\/span><\/p>\n Ultimately, the very ability to disagree and debate such issues is part of what makes the U.S. democratic, even if it is still very flawed. Discussing our problems and posing solutions, as heated and contentious as such discussion may be, is a cornerstone of any democratic society. A polarizing election cycle is just as good a reason as any to engage in discussion and debate, whether with peers or within larger communities. The discussion of democracy’s future can just as easily be held amongst friends, family, and fellow students on our home campuses. Participation and discussion are, after all, key mechanisms of keeping democracy alive— deliberation, geared toward open-minded and pluralistic engagement, allows for communication even between viewpoints at odds with each other. Deliberation may not yield total consensus, but it helps individuals to <\/span>identify, understand, and come to agreements<\/span><\/a>. Maybe the term “deliberative democracy” is redundant— after all, democracy at its best is surely deliberative. <\/span><\/p>\n All views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial board, the Macaulay Messenger, or CUNY Macaulay Honors College.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Eman Sadiq Failing. Unsalvageable. Hopeless. For Macaulay students reflecting on the state of American democracy, one thing is clear: the vibes surrounding democracy are decidedly grim. Macaulay Honors College hosted its second round of Student Voice and Agency in Redesigning Democracy focus groups on November 12, in person at John Jay College, and November…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":703,"featured_media":10425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mhc-central"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/703"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}