Michael K. MacKenzie
All Books By Michael K. MacKenzie
Future Publics
- By: Michael K. MacKenzie
- Length: 9 hours 38 minutes
- Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
- Publish date: September 28, 2021
- Language: English
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2.67(6 ratings)
Scholars have often claimed that democracies, whatever their virtues, are functionally short-sighted. The evidence is clear: we have been unable to manage many long-term issues, including climate change, nuclear waste disposal, natural disaster preparedness, infrastructure maintenance, and budget deficits. To solve long-term problems, do we need political systems that are less democratic, or even authoritarian?
This idea, which Michael K. MacKenzie calls the “democratic myopia thesis,” is a sort of conventional wisdom; it is an idea that scholars and pundits take for granted as a truth about democracy without subjecting it to adequate critical scrutiny. In Future Publics, MacKenzie challenges this conventional wisdom and articulates a deliberative, democratic theory of future-regarding collective action. MacKenzie argues that each part of the democratic myopia problem can be addressed through democratic-rather than authoritarian-means. At a more fundamental level, once we recognize that democratic practices are world-making activities that empower us to make our shared worlds together, they should also be understood as future-making activities. Despite the short-term dynamics associated with electoral democracy, MacKenzie asserts that we need more inclusive and deliberative democracies if we are going to make shared futures that will work for us all.