Paula Sabloff
Paula Sabloff, in a direct response to Jean-Paul Gagnon’s democracy challenge, argues that to understand what democracy means, we need to know what it is for. By exploring this, we arrive at a meaning that is about means, not ends. And it is not as complicated as we might think Read more
John Min
John Min accepts Jean-Paul Gagnon’s premise that democratic theorists should persist in studying the nature of democracy, and sees the goals of Gagnon’s project as admirable. But he argues that several methodological issues concerning the means of achieving those ends need to be explored Read more
Patricia Roberts-Miller
Responding to Jean-Paul Gagnon’s blog on the science of democracy, Patricia Roberts-Miller recalls 'Thucydides' trap' to explain the dangers of forcing one meaning of democracy over others, as happened during the Athenian Empire. Silencing other democracies harms people through wars overseas and suppression at home. And it can, in turn, ruin those very democracies that are doing the silencing Read more
Marcin Kaim
The merit of Jean-Paul Gagnon’s project is that it calls attention to the friction between singular and plural conception of democracy. While this is a well-known topic in democratic theory, it does not remain central. However, writes Marcin Kaim, a lexicon, and therefore a 'total texture' of democracy, could bring about a change Read more
Paolo Gerbaudo
The era of neoliberalism began with Thatcher and Reagan. Paolo Gerbaudo argues that it is crumbling before our eyes. Replacing it is a new era of ‘neo-statism’, the exact parameters of which are not yet fully shaped Read more
Tetsuki Tamura
Tetsuki Tamura argues we need a better and wider concept of democracy to capture democratic practices in unlikely places, such as the family Read more
Leonardo Morlino
Jean-Paul Gagnon's original blog in this series asked ‘what is democracy?’ Leonardo Morlino brings an empirical perspective to this question. Contextualising and unpacking it, he then develops an empirical strategy of research for democrats to follow Read more
Dannica Fleuß
Building a ‘dictionary of democracies’, as Jean-Paul Gagnon proposes, will not render a revolution of democratic theory. Yet the data mountain may be a valuable point of departure for a 'decentred' understanding of democracy and, in consequence, for several theoretical, empirical, and political innovations, writes Dannica Fleuß Read more
