Reflective Realism: Does Unwillingness to Participate Legitimize Non-Participatory Democracy?

Abstract

In this article, we argue that reflective realism offers a plausible methodology that takes nonparticipatory attitudes and beliefs seriously as candidates for legitimacy while simultaneously offering tools through which a critical distance on these attitudes and beliefs can be obtained. Against unmediated realism, according to which non-participatory attitudes warrant the conclusion that democracy ought to be non-participatory, we emphasize that they cannot serve as inputs for bottom-up legitimacy reconstructions when they are conditional upon detrimental features of the political system. In this context, we distinguish between two types of conditionality, unknown and known, and show how they necessitate two forms of critical engagement: ideology critique and a method of elicitation. Finally, we argue that Landemore’s open democracy paradigm, with some important modifications, offers a solution to the ambiguity (some citizens want to participate, some will be reluctant) that realists may encounter in their bottom-up legitimacy reconstructions since it accommodates participatory and nonparticipatory attitudes alike.