Theory in the social sciences is not written in stone and undergoes change as it is continuously being tested in new research. This allows for an appreciation of the dynamic but also volatile nature of our subject matter, politics. While physicists have plenty of time to solve puzzles within a single and common theoretical frame, political scientists keep encountering anomalies that challenge their dominant theory. This tension between constancy and renewal has been and still is a prominent feature of Comparative Politics. Its challenges become especially evident in an Africanist perspective. Theory is generated in already “developed” or “democratic” societies, making Africa a poor fit. The main issue there is not the backsliding experience of countries with a democratic tradition. Instead, it is how to build democracy in a context where its benefits were denied the local population by the colonial administrators. This chapter is devoted to reviewing the theoretical constructs that political scientists have used to advance the comparative analysis of politics. It points to three main breakthroughs that have shaped Comparative Politics since its inception sixty years ago: structural functionalism, rational choice theory, and, in recent decades, democratic theory.

Chapter 11 turns to a discussion of the competing arguments concerning the new public nuisance law advanced by practicing attorneys, interest group allies, judges, scholars, and law-and-economics professors. Almost all criticisms of the new public nuisance law have been negative, characterizing expansion of public nuisance law as illegitimate and dysfunctional. These critiques are examined through the lens of various categories of criticism: (1) traditional, (2) formal, (3) institutional, (4) rule of law, (5) democratic theory, and (5) law and economics. The critics all draw on negative examples from the mass tort public nuisance cases in the 21st century (lead paint, firearms, opioids, vaping, climate change). At least one commentator, however, has offered tempered praise for the new public nuisance law as the second best solution to community-wide harms. She believes that the development of the new public nuisance law is in the finest traditon of a flexible, developing common law to meet changed circumsatnces. This commentator would permit continued development of the new public nuisance law, enhanced with several guardrails and transparency in proceedings.

The third chapter draws upon the procedures of ordinary language philosophy discussed in Chapter 2 to offer a critique of contemporary democratic theory. A significant point of contention between deliberative and agonistic democratic theorists is over the purpose of political argumentation. While deliberative democrats maintain that the goal of political debate is to reach agreement, many agonistic democratic theorists claim that arguments can foster relations of adversarial respect. This chapter demonstrates how the deliberative versus agonistic democracy debate is operating at cross-purposes. Behind this debate is the skeptical concern that if political argumentation cannot come to an agreement, then the enterprise is either irrational or prone to relativism. Drawing upon Cavell’s insight that human understanding rests upon agreement in forms of life, I examine how democratic discourse involves agreements at two levels: at the level of opinions and at the level of the discourse itself. This chapter clarifies what is at stake in the deliberative-agonistic democratic theory debate. Cavell helps us reimagine democracy by fostering a culture in which minority communities do not have to phrase their grievances within the language of hegemonic cultures.

One of the most fundamental challenges to democratic education is the “epistocratic” challenge. According to proponents of epistocracy, the ordinary citizenry is too stupid, irrational, and demotivated to vote intelligently and better-quality government would result if the franchise were restricted to a small elite of the best informed, most rational, and best-motivated citizens. If correct, epistocracy would imply that many of the ideals of democratic education are misplaced and that the educational practice of preparing all citizens to vote would be pointless. In this chapter, I review the theory of epistocracy as it is presented in the work of historical and contemporary philosophers from Plato and John Stuart Mill to Bryan Caplan and – most notably – Jason Brennan. I also discuss the implications of epistocracy for democratic education. I hold that, even if Brennan is right that the franchise should be restricted to a small cognitive elite, the question of how one should educate that elite becomes even more important. In the final analysis, I hold that Brennan’s scheme for ensuring that the cognitive elite is representative of society will require a broadening of political education opportunities that will result in a reintroduction of a democratic form of education through the epistocratic back door.

Politics in Nigeria teaches us that power must be socially embedded for it to be accountable. Previous chapters drew on in-depth qualitative fieldwork in southwest Nigeria to theorise alternative conceptions of the constituent parts of the good governance agenda, namely, accountability, transparency, and the public–private divide. If we are to take the social dimension of these “ethnographically derived political concepts” seriously, then we need to rethink the neo-classical economic ontology of the dominant approach to good governance, which relies on principal–agent models. Thus, the book’s empirical analysis gives rise to normative political prescriptions which entail a methodological critique. The second part of the chapter argues that by neglecting the social dimension of governance, technocracy is vulnerable to populist challengers who leverage unmet demands for closeness and connection. Socially embedded governance intersects with three key debates of interest to theorists of democratic politics, concerning scale, inequality and conflict. By rethinking the contours of politics, we discover that the struggles of Nigeria’s fourth republic are not marginal to democratic theory – the struggles of a democracy yet to really get started – rather, they lie at the crux of what it means to wield power responsibly.

The Conclusion summarizes the main theoretical propositions of the book, reviews the empirical results, and offers a critical reflection on the methodological approach. It also identifies several avenues that future research might want to consider. Based on the experience of this book, macro-theorizing has proven to be a fruitful complement to micro-approaches. Equally important, the interplay of factors and the idea of “chemical causation” (Mill) deserve more scholarly attention. The polysemic and multidimensional nature of the concepts has been a critical issue throughout the book. This holds particularly true for the role of ordinary citizens and the key concept of legitimation. Lastly, the chapter argues that future research might want to tackle the enormous task of systematizing autocratic political thought. While we have consolidated and almost canonical knowledge about the different theories of democratic rule, the autocratic pole is less explored. The conclusion contends that future projects that bring order into the rich reservoir of autocratic political thought will be a promising endeavor.

The book concludes by drawing out the implications of the overarching theory and findings for the future of democracy. The chapter argues that laissez-faire extremism and genuine democracy cannot coexist indefinitely. The lack of security and stability of the former will continually generate cultural and democratic discontent, intensifying social conflict and creating ideal conditions for charismatic leaders to emerge. We discuss various alternatives to neoliberalism, including the internationalization of tax and social welfare policy and economic democratization. This leads to our second argument: that democracy can best save itself by making itself worth saving. Democracies should answer the challenges of populism and other forms of discontent by ignoring calls for greater democratic elitism (which would only validate discontented narratives). Instead, democratic institutions and actors, especially political parties, should reform and recommit themselves to their role as channels for citizens’ voices.

The introduction starts with a factual element showing the exponential development of randomly selected minipublics, which seem to remember the Athenian democracy. It describes the growing interest about sortition in the literature, both in history and in political science. It defends the strategy of the book, which couples historical sociology and political theory. It defends four claims. The first criticizes the idea that sortition in politics has preserved a transhistorical democratic logic, as political sortition has played a number of varied functions throughout history. The second claim explains the disappearance of sortition in the nineteeth century by a combination of factors: Without the notion of the representative sample, the use of chance appeared blind, irrational, incompatible with popular sovereignty, difficult to couple with an elective aristocracy or with an increasing division of labor in big nation states. The third claim is that sortition’s recent return to politics is explained by the coupling of representative sampling, which make possible the constitution of a “minipublic” or microcosm of the people, with deliberation. The fourth claim proposes a normatively convincing and politically realistic case for empowered minipublics and the democratization of democracy. The introduction concludes by presenting the outline of the book.

Why connect state violence with representation? The book proposes a rethinking of democratic theory based on the Arab Uprisings of 2011, also known as the Arab spring. The introduction provides definitions of the key concepts of representation, democracy, participation and civil society, and describes the sources and methods. The book argues that cultural representation and political representation come together through the theme of violence. Historically the means of coercion have been turned against Arab citizens; in 2011 these citizens proposed that democratic accountability be added to the management of legitimate violence and state coercion.

We live in a period of hope and fear for democracy. The fears are top of mind, with surges of authoritarian populism in most countries in Europe as well as most developed democracies, and a series of high-profile setbacks for the project of the European Union (Chapters 2 and 13). In contrast to earlier challenges, the threats to the democratic project are not so much other forms of government, but rather mismatches between the problems that peoples and societies face, and the capacities of representative democracies to address them. Where the mismatch becomes a gulf, mechanisms long associated with democratic government, particularly competitive elections, have become a vehicle for authoritarian populists to undermine other, equally necessary institutions, including those associated with the rule of law and the rights that define and empower democratic citizenship (Galston 2018; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018; Mounk 2018; Diamond 2020). Although the patterns vary by country, in places where representative democracy has been long established we are seeing elected leaders with autocratic tendencies, using the very tools central to the democratic project to erode democratic institutions. Democracies, we fear, may be eroding precisely through the electoral institutions that have come to define them (Chapter 13).

Elected representatives do not faithfully deliver policies desired by majorities of their constituents. While many blame special interests or failures by voters for frustrated majorities, I suggest these explanations incomplete. Voters can cause candidates for office to frustrate majorities because of differences in issue intensity. This chapter presents the controversy, the basic argument, connections to single-issue voters and issue publics, the main results, and the scope and outline of the book.