Henry S. Richardson

This was one of those that books that made me wonder why on Earth I bought it. Maybe it was the endorsement by Jeremy Waldron on the back cover, or its publication in the Oxford Political Theory series. Whatever the reason, since I bought it I had to read it, and the only thing it gave me was a stark reminder of my cardinal rule for studying political theory: never select books which take ”deliberation” as their starting point.

The basic tenets of deliberative democracy have some validity, but more often than not deliberative theories don't go anywhere. No interesting conclusions follow from the thesis that decisions can be improved through deliberation. This book is a good example. The author’s goal is to explain how democratic societies can avoid bureaucratic domination, but in the end he just spends many words on circling around completely trivial questions. His vocabulary relies heavily on various artificial ”-isms” which have no meaning outside of academic peer review. His conclusions about how bureaucratic decisions can be controlled by public deliberation are so unclear that it’s hard to even comment on them in any way. A touch of realism and some knowledge about how political institutions actually work would have been welcome additions to this discussion of bureaucratic reforms.

So save your time for meaningful books and just say no to deliberative theory.… (meer)