Reviving democracy: Creating pathways out of legitimacy crises
| Author | Terry Macdonald |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14748851211020625 |
| Published date | 01 January 2023 |
| Date | 01 January 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Review Articles |
Review Article EJPT
Reviving democracy:
Creating pathways out
of legitimacy crises
Terry Macdonald
University of Melbourne, Australia
Abstract
Over the last several years, democratic citizens and theorists have been grappling with
an upsurge in political commentary on the crisis and decline of democratic legitimacy
around the world. Increasingly, theoretical attention is turning from the philosophical
justification of ambitious moral ideals of democracy, to the interpretation of potentials
within existing political practice for democratic renewal and repair. This review article
examines three new books at the forefront of this theoretical turn towards engagement
with the real-world political dynamics of democratic crisis and revival: Open Democracy
by H
el
ene Landemore; Hope for Democracy by John Gastil and Katherine Knobloch; and
Mending Democracy by Carolyn Hendriks, Selen Ercan and John Boswell. It begins by
Corresponding author:
TerryMacdonald, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, AU-VIC Victoria
3010, Australia.
Email: terry.macdonald@unimelb.edu.au
European Journal of Political Theory
!The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14748851211020625
journals.sagepub.com/home/ept
2023, Vol. 22(1) 181–191
Hélène Landemore, Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century, Princeton
University Press: Princeton, NJ, 2020; 272 pp. ISBN: 9780691181998, $35/£28 (hbk)
John Gastil and Katherine Knobloch, Hope for Democracy: How Citizens Can Bring Reason Back into
Politics, Oxford University Press: New York, 2019; 240 pp. ISBN: 9780190084523, £71 (hbk)
Carolyn Hendriks, Selen Ercan and John Boswell, Mending Democracy: Democratic Repair in
Disconnected Times, Oxford University Press: New York, 2020; 208 pp. ISBN: 9780198843054,
£65.00 (hbk)
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