Verkürzte Politik: Warum Demokratie nicht nur deliberativ verteidigt werden kann

Democracy without Shortcuts is written in the shadow of Habermas' long-standing idea that democracy should be reconstructed with the help of an ideal discourse. Not to accept 'shortcuts' just means that democrats' central normative claim, expressing and defending one's opinion on public matters against co-citizen as a form of 'autonomy' should be realized extensively within the institutional structure of the political society. The book struggles to shed the constraints of this idealistic approach towards democracy by involving it with 'minipublics' and the constitutional law. Nevertheless, if democratic societies are seen a bit more realistically, even an ideal theory (as the one by Lafont and Habermas) is in need of a richer basic vocabulary. The article tries to make these alternatives visible, by help of pointing to the conceptual simplifications in Lafont's scenario.

Cristina Lafont, Unverkürzte Demokratie. Eine Theorie deliberativer Bürgerbeteiligung, Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2021. 447 S.