Popular Government in Global Perspective: History, Principles, Institutions, and Experimentations

Representative government is characterized by the guarantee of basic political liberties, the centrality of elections, restricted avenues for citizen participation, and the relative independence enjoyed by representatives. It has become the dominant alternative to authoritarian government worldwide, to a point where it has eclipsed the diversity of ways to organize collective self-government. This is regrettable because representative government 1) relies on elitist premises that are increasingly being challenged; 2) obscures the diversity of forms that democratic representation can take and its compatibility with extensive citizen participation; and 3) suffers from unequal responsiveness to the political preferences of citizens contributing to social and political inequality. Considering this, POPGOV aims to expand our collective democratic imaginary by uncovering alternative ways of realizing the democratic ideals of autonomy and equality that empower ordinary citizens and not only elites (what we call “popular government”). Currently, theoretical discussions of alternative democratic models remain too often disconnected from empirical research, and empirical research from history. We seek to remedy this by combining in an unconventional and mutually supporting way historical, comparative and theoretical approaches to uncover the basic principles and institutions uniting and differentiating conceptions and practices of popular government across the world. We also seek to identify the main challenges that are likely to be faced in the realization of these principles and to learn from previous failures of their implementation. To compensate for the Western-centric bias of dominant research in these fields, we embrace a truly global approach. Doing so, we aim to break new ground in the scientific study of democracy by paying proper attention to alternative, defeated, less elitist and more globally decentered democratic visions that have hitherto been marginalized.