2.5 If you could change one thing about democracy what would it be?

Real Democracy Now! a podcast

I ask all of my guests two questions:

1. what for them is the essence of a real democracy? and
2. if they could change one thing about our system of democracy what would it be?

In episode 1.9 we heard from a number of the guests I interviewed in Season 1 (about deliberative mini-publics) on their view of the essence of a real democracy. Today we hear from guests from Season 1 and 2 on the one change they would make to our system of democracy. I’ve found the answers people have given to this question fascinating. Sometimes people want changes that directly relate to their area of interest and other things they identify an important change in a completely different part of our democratic system. In this episode, we hear from

• Adam Cronkright from Democracy in Practice. I interviewed Adam in episode 1.12 about the work of Democracy in Practice in schools in Bolivia.
• Associate Professor Caroline Lee. Caroline was part of episode 1.19 where we considered different critiques of deliberative mini-publics.
• Associate Professor Daniel Pemstein was part of episode 2.3 about his work on the Varieties of Democracy Project and the Unified Democracy Scores.
• Professor Carson was my first guest in episode 1.1 where she explained the basics about deliberative mini-publics.
• Professor Graham Smith who has been part of a couple of episodes now - episode 1.8 where he talked about the UK Citizens’ Assemblies and episode1.18 where he outlined his approach to evaluating deliberative mini-publics.
• Professor Cristina La Font was also part of episode 1.19 where she explained her critique about some uses of deliberative mini-publics.
• Professor Paul Cartledge was our first guest in Season 2 where he took us through a potted history of Ancient Greek democracy. and
• Associate Professor Genevieve Fuji Johnson was one of the guests on episode 1.19 critiquing deliberative mini-publics.

In next week’s episode, I speak with Jean-Paul Gagnon about his work on ‘democracy with adjectives’. So far Jean-Paul has identified over 1400 adjectives used to describe democracy. He also tells us about a virtual ‘city of democracy’ he is developing based on this work. I hope you’ll join me then.