Description: Democracy today faces deep and complex challenges, especially when it comes to political communication and the quality of public discourse. Dishonest and manipulative communication amplified by unscrupulous politicians and media pervades these diabolical times, enabling right-wing populism, extremism, truth denial, and authoritarianism to flourish. To tackle these issues, we need to encourage meaningful deliberative communication - creating spaces for reflective and constructive dialogue, repairing unhealthy public spheres while preserving healthier ones, and building discursive bridges across deep divides. Citizens who see through elite manipulations should be at the core of this response, especially if bad elite behavior is to be effectively constrained. Democratic activists and leaders, diverse interpersonal networks, resilient public spheres, deliberative innovations and clever communication strategies all have vital roles to play in both defending and renewing democracy. Healthy discursive infrastructures can make democracies work again.
Brief description: André Bächtiger is Professor and Chair of Political Theory and Empirical Democracy Research in the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Stuttgart. He is one of the pioneering researchers for combining theoretical and empirical research on deliberation and, together with John Dryzek, is co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Deliberative Democracy. He recently obtained an ERC Advanced Grant for 'Designing Democracy on Mars and Earth'.
Review Quotes: 'Two of our leading deliberative democrats ask what deliberative democracy can do to halt democratic erosion. Confronting the hard realities of democrat decline, Bächtiger and Dryzek sketch out how citizen centered communicative practices can help turn back the tide of that decline. Realistic and solution centered, this is a much-needed update to the deliberative democracy paradigm.' Simone Chambers, Professor and Chair of Political Science, University of California Irvine