The State of Democratic Theory.

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Date: 22 December 2004
• Author: Somin, Ilya
• Published date: 22 December 2004
• Author: Somin, Ilya

The State of Democratic Theory Ian Shapiro Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003, 183 pp.

Ian Shapiro, a political science professor at Yale, is one of the leaders of an emerging literature that combines insights from political theory and empirical scholarship. In The State of Democratic Theory, he deploys both to good effect. The book also couples impressive analytical sophistication with clarity of exposition that makes it accessible to lay readers.

In the first part of the book, Shapiro criticizes the two most influential theories of democracy: deliberative democracy and what he calls "aggregative" democracy. As an alternative normative theory of democracy, Shapiro proposes "nondomination," defined as structuring political institutions to ensure that the "basic interests" of all members of the polity are protected from threat. In chapter 3, Shapiro reconsiders Joseph Schumpeter's theory of democracy, as competition for votes, from the standpoint of the principle of nondomination, and argues that Schumpeterian democracy is the best institutional framework for realizing that principle.

The last part of the book addresses empirical issues. Chapter 4 surveys the evidence on the difficulties involved in establishing and maintaining democracy. Shapiro concludes that democracy is most secure in wealthy states and that negotiated transitions from dictatorship to democracy may be less successful than those imposed by force.

In chapter 5, Shapiro addresses the important question--especially for scholars identified with the political left--of why democratic governments produce relatively little redistribution of income to the poor. Shapiro surveys a wide range of theories that purport to explain this outcome, and provides recommendations for reforming democratic institutions to make redistribution more feasible.

Shapiro's critique of deliberative democracy, the currently in-vogue theory that requires democratic institutions to demand a high level of sophisticated and disinterested discourse from citizens, is compelling. He points out that there is no evidence supporting the claim that more deliberation will lead to better public policy outcomes or to reductions in social conflict. Even more significant, requiring high standards of deliberation may actually exacerbate conflicts by bringing them more into the open and harm the interests of politically weak groups who are less able than others to participate in deliberation. The call for deliberation also ignores differences in political power that affect both political processes and policy outcomes far more than...