Mending Democracy: A response to our readers

Abstract

In this piece we respond to three commentators of our book, Mending Democracy, and emphasize the ways the book seeks to contribute to the theory and practice of democracy. We reflect on the possibilities and limits of democratic mending in societies characterised by economic inequality and asymmetric power relations, as well as in countries with less established institutions of liberal democracy. We draw attention to the agency and creativity of ordinary people in advancing meaningful democratic reform even under less favourable conditions, and in unlikely places.