Frank Fischer

In this book the author just doesn't have anything interesting to say. He constantly cites and presents other people's ideas as if this was a literature review, but he fails to construct an argument of his own. He's also far too enamored with awful pseudo-philosophical concepts (such as "constructivist-oriented postpositivism", "cultural rationality" or "epistemics") to be able to analyze anything clearly. I'm sympathetic to the basic ideas in this book, but a few isolated examples where local knowledge has successfully supplemented science do not amount to a justification for public participation across the board, as the author seems to believe. He does not make any distinction between questions that the public can help to resolve and questions which are better left to elected representatives and experts, which was pretty disappointing. Surely the public cannot and should not participate in all decisions. This book is a fairly good reference source on deliberative politics, but nothing more than that.… (meer)