Welcome to Episode 13 of Season 2 of Real Democracy Now! a podcast. In today’s episode, we are talking at the democratic deficit again, this time focusing more on structural aspects of democracy.
I first spoke to Nadia in episode 2 of Season 2 of the podcast where she spoke about the origins and components of representative democracy. Today Nadia talks about the democracy deficit as well as her book
Democracy Disfigured, where she identifies three types of democratic disfigurement: the unpolitical, the populist and the plebiscitarian.
I came across Barry’s 2002 paper
Deficit by Design early in my PhD studies and it was my introduction to the idea that the structure of representative democracy was itself one of the key limitations for the system of democracy. Barry’s argument is "that the problem of democratic deficit is in fact the normal condition of the institutions of representative government… [concluding that] democratic deficit is an integral part of its design.” Barry is now retired so I am very grateful that he made the time to talk with me for this episode.
My third guest is
Professor Wolfgang Merkel, who is the Director of the Research Unit:
Democracy and Democratization at the WZB Social Science Research Centre Berlin, as well as heading up the Centre for Global Constitutionalism and a number of other projects. He has written widely on democracy, democratisation, social democracy and democracy & capitalism to name but a few in academic and non-academic publications. Professor Merkel is a co-project leader of the
Democracy Barometer. This project developed an instrument to assess the quality of democracy in 30 established democracies and was the focus of my discussion with Professor Merkel in episode 2. 3
My fourth guest is
Professor Leonardo Morlino who is a professor of political science and director of the
Research Center on Democracies and Democratizations at LUISS, Rome. Prof. Morlino is a leading specialist in comparative politics with expertise on Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, and the phenomenon of democratization. Professor Morlino has been part of a few other episodes - episode 2.3 explaining his analytical approach to evaluating democracy, episode 2.12 about trust and the democratic deficit and he will be on a future episode talking about the relationship between representative democracy and capitalism.
Roslyn was also my guest in episode 2.2 talking about her research on democracy in ancient Athens and how we might apply Athenian direct today. Like Nadia Urbinati, Roslyn is concerned about the impact of money on democracy.
Thanks for joining me today. In the next episode of Real Democracy Now! a podcast I will be talking to Quinton Mayne, an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University about his research on satisfaction with democracy. I hope you’ll join me then.