3.3 Citizenship in Action Copy
Democracy is supposed to produce better social, economic, cultural and environmental outcomes than its alternatives. Democracy has the advantage of being capable of being inclusive of a wide range of values in the decision-making and it is supposed to be more responsive, with built-in accountability and sensitivity to legitimacy. However, reality shown us that representative democratic systems often fail to adequately realize and translate demand for action for several social issues into working policy.
Emerging around 1990, deliberative democracy is unified by a central belief that democracy ought to involve more than voting and decision making by elected representatives. While there is considerable variation among deliberative scholars on the specifics, deliberative capacity of a democratic polity can be captured by the conditions ‘deliberativeness’, ‘inclusiveness’ and ‘consequentiality’ (Dryzek, 1990, 2009)
Within the framework of these challenges, deliberative and participatory practices and institutions have arisen in order to tackle it (Schmitter, 2001):