This book articulates a participatory conception of deliberative democracy that aspires to improve the democratic control of citizenship and defends the importance of citizen participation against conceptions that underestimate its value. To do this, it offers a critical analysis of pluralist, epistemic and lotocratic conceptions of democracy. Its defenders propose various institutional "shortcuts" to solve problems that plague democratic societies, such as the need to overcome deep disagreements, political ignorance of citizens or the low quality of public deliberation. Unfortunately, all of these undemocratic shortcuts require citizens to blindly defer to the decisions of actors over whom they cannot exercise any control (electoral majorities, political experts, or randomly chosen citizens). Implementing such proposals would therefore undermine democracy.
Furthermore, such conceptions naively assume that a political community can move forward faster if it ignores the beliefs and attitudes of its citizens. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts to making a political community better than its members, nor can a community progress faster by leaving its citizens behind. The only way to improve political results is the long participatory way in which citizens mutually transform their opinions and attitudes to forge a collective political will.
In line with this conviction, the book defends a conception of democracy «without shortcuts». This conception offers new responses to old debates about the scope of public reason, the role of religion in politics, and the democratic legitimacy of judicial review of legislation. It also proposes new ways to use institutional innovations such as deliberative mini-publics to empower citizens.

"A Brilliant Book" (Jürgen Habermas)