Democratic Decisions in a Critical Thinking Crisis

Democratic theory is the study of democratic institutions and their normative value. A wide range of democratic theorists are committed to the idea that public deliberation is valuable because deliberation followed by voting is more likely to promote the common good than voting alone. While at a theoretical level, deliberation might promote the common good by changing participants’ preferences, or by improving their knowledge or reasoning, the empirical literature on deliberation gives very inconsistent evidence on these points.

One response to this concern is to change the structure of deliberations so that public reasoning is more central. But even that type of change isn''t enough to solve the problem. Democratic Decisions argues that the real underlying issue is that political communities are in a crisis. There is a dire lack of critical thinking skills among the general population, and that skill defict will inhibit high-quality reasoning in public deliberation, even if the deliberative forum is well-constructed. Aidan Kestigian makes use of research in education and psychology how to fix the reasoning gap and to suggest how political and educational interventions can move us closer to more productive public deliberation.