Archive for February 23rd, 2006

Can People Handle the Power?

Posted February 23, 2006 By Dave Thomer

I’m taking a couple of political science seminars this semester, for various reasons too boring to go into here. Both focus on different dimensions of how the public makes its desires known and how government responds to those wishes. I’m probably going to do a set of posts musing about some of the things I read in the process, but for now I just want to pose a question that is the Achilles’ heel of my faith in democracy.

Does the average citizen have what it takes to make democracy work?

Do we know enough to make informed decisions? Do we have the temperament to make good decisions? Are we capable of expressing what we want? And if the answer to any of these questions is “no” right now, do we have a realistic chance of changing that?