Cristina Lafont’s Challenge to Deliberative Minipublics

Abstract

This essay is a response to Cristina Lafont’s critique of deliberative minipublics. I consider the problem in these main steps: (1) The argument that such minipublics should not have any real ‘decisional-power’ and (2) that it is not democratically acceptable to rely on them as a ‘second best’ because they only engage a small portion of the population (138–139). Nothing but a ‘first best’ strategy will do in her view. (3) The challenge of achieving a ‘first best’ solution, which I have previously outlined in terms of what I call the ‘trilemma’ of democratic reform. (4) Why I believe Lafont’s solution, a ‘participatory conception of deliberative democracy’, does not actually offer a solution to the trilemma because it is insufficiently participatory (Lafont 2019: Part III). (5) My own approach to dealing with the trilemma, as outlined in my book Democracy When the People Are Thinking (Fishkin 2018), is, I will argue, both more participatory and more deliberative. I lay out an actual solution. While it is elaborate and expensive, there is no theoretical or practical impediment to realizing it, except for collective political will, except for a shared decision to move forward. The contrast between the two solutions is the focus of the last part of the essay.