Humility and delegative democracy
Recently there has been a surge of interest in a novel form of governance called “delegative” (or sometimes “liquid”) democracy (Blum and Zuber, 2016).The idea is that voters have the option of delegating their voting power to others.They can always vote themselves, or vote on some issues but not others, or revoke or change their delegated authority.
Some think of delegative democracy as a compromise between direct and representative democracy, but this view does not do justice to the potential flexibility of delegative democracy in that it could generate a variation on either of those pure theories, rather than standing as an alternative per se. For example, one could imagine a system of representative democracy in which votes for one's representatives were subject to delegation. Similarly, one could imagine a system of direct democracy in which some people voted directly, while others delegated, or people mixed the topics that they delegated or engaged directly on. Several experiments in delegative democracy have been undertaken; for example, in Argentina, with the Democracia en Red initiative.Delegative democracy is of special interest to those concerned about the role of humility in democracy because the entire system would seem to hinge on the virtuous exercise of both cognitive and conative humility. Knowing one's own strengths and limits vis-a-vis different issues, as well as whom to trust as a delegate would be essential for delegative democracy to function properly. Further theoretical and empirical research on humility in such democratic innovations is well warranted.
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