User:Michael.gary16/sandbox

Blog Entries:

Week 1 - Is this where we start our blog? I'm going to say yes because I don't know where else to do this. I was definitely skeptical when I heard about the Wikipedia assignments built into this course. Before college, I was taught to stay away from Wikipedia at all costs. However, now that I understand how Wikipedia works, I'm excited about this component of the course and more inclined to use Wikipedia in the future. I don't have much else to say because I only just got started.

Week 2 - This week we covered some fundamental democratic theorists: Manin, Schumpeter, and Dahl. Manin's account of representative democracy was particularly compelling in the way he analyzed the past to inform the present and prescribe for the future.

Week 3 - In week three, the two most discussion-inducing pieces were Brennan's "Against Democracy" and Van Reybrouk's "Against Elections". Brennan's work was thoroughly trashed during our class meeting. His argument seemed historically myopic and somewhat confusing. Why is the answer to democracy's problems less democracy? Van Reybrouk's piece made more sense to me. I don't think elections have a place in my ideal political system.

Week 4 -

Week 5 - Drafting Liquid Democracy Edits Below...

Furthermore, liquid democracy as a democratic form is susceptible to oligarchic tendencies. Similar to electoral political systems, the concept of "distinction" is of central importance. Rather than empowering the general public, liquid democracy could concentrate power into the hands of a socially prominent, politically strategic, and wealthy few. Helene Landemore describes this phenomenon as "star-voting" and argues individuals should have the right of permanent recall whereby voters who have delegated their vote to another individual may, at any time, retract their delegation and vote autonomously.

Finally, liquid democracy faces the issue of scale. In large nation states with millions of voting citizens, it is likely the body of "liquid representatives" (those who have been delegated other citizen votes) will be significant. Consequently, deliberation and representation become pertinent concerns. To achieve meaningful deliberation, the liquid representatives would have to be split into numerous groups to attain a somewhat manageable discussion group size. As for representation, liquid democracy suffers from a similar issue facing electoral representative democracies where a single individual embodies the will of millions. Liquid democracy has been argued as a remedy for many issues plaguing democratic systems world-wide, however, critics question the normative attractiveness of a delegative, proxy democracy.

Week 6 - This week I was particularly struck by Christina Lafont's rebuke of mini-publics and the resulting class discussion. She raised a number of compelling points - some of which I agreed with - but after the class discussion, I left with further faith in public assemblies. Her idea that citizens who participate in these mini-publics become experts thus diverging from the broader public sphere initially intrigued me, but now I feel she is merely describing the deliberative process. These supposedly "enlightened" individuals should not be considered experts and surely should not be considered distinct from the population. These people developed nuanced views due to deliberation and therefore represent the larger public sphere if all had this opportunity.

Week 7 - In class we focused on the Icelandic democratic experiment. Unfortunately, I read a different chapter from Professor Landemore's book which made participating rather difficult.

Week 8 - Break day!