Can Deliberative Minipublics Address the Cognitive Challenges of Democratic Citizenship?
Can Deliberative Minipublics Address the Cognitive Challenges of Democratic Citizenship?
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DOI：
10.1086/680078
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发表时间：
2015-04-01
影响因子：
3.1
通讯作者：
Gastil, John
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Warren, Mark E.;Gastil, John
民主要求公民对集体事务做出明智的判断。然而，鉴于现代政治的规模和复杂性，即使是最细心的公民也无法明智地参与影响他们的大多数集体决策。出于这个原因，民主理论家越来越多地将民主制度概念化为需要认知劳动的分工，在这种分工中，公民信任他人代表他们做出决定。现代民主国家长期以来一直依赖这样的受托人，但公民做出良好信任决定的制度支持往往很薄弱或缺失。我们认为，审议minipublics可以作为可信的信息代理，帮助公民充分利用他们稀缺的认知资源。这类受托人无法弥合复杂社会的需求与公民知情判断能力之间的差距，但他们或许能够缩小这一差距。
Democracy asks its citizens to make informed judgments about collective matters. Given the scale and complexity of modern polities, however, even the most attentive citizens cannot engage knowledgeably with most of the collective decisions that affect them. For this reason, democratic theorists increasingly conceptualize democratic systems as requiring divisions of cognitive labor, in which citizens trust others to make decisions on their behalf. Modern democracies have long relied on such trustees, yet institutional supports for good trust decisions by citizens are often weak or missing. We argue that deliberative minipublics can serve as trusted information proxies that help citizens make the most of their scarce cognitive resources. These kinds of trustees cannot close the gap between the demands of complex societies and citizens' capacities for informed judgment, but they may be able to narrow it.