Rethinking Democracy

and how to educate for it.

The word democracy is often used as though it names something that no one could reasonably question. We are told that this leader is democratically elected and therefore good; that leader is not democratically elected and therefore bad. The implication behind the way in which the word ‘democratic’ is often used is that whatever most people choose must, by that very fact, be accepted as right.

In theory, democracy has many subtle and sophisticated definitions. In practice, however, it is usually reduced to something much simpler: a system of voting that confers legitimacy through numbers. If enough people choose something, it is taken to be democratically validated.

But this implies a moral assumption that is deeply problematic: that what the majority wants is morally better than what the majority does not want. Counting votes is not, in itself, a moral principle. It is a procedure. History gives us no reason to believe that this procedure reliably produces good outcomes. Some of the darkest political movements of the last century came to power through popular elections.

So if democracy as counting is so clearly inadequate, why do apparently reasonable people continue to use the word democracy as a flag of goodness?

I think it is because another, deeper idea has come to be wrapped up with it.

That idea is not really about counting votes.

It is about the opening of what we might call dialogic space.

Dialogic space is the kind of space in which different voices and perspectives can meet, genuinely listen to one another, examine evidence together, and allow something new to emerge that was not fully present in any individual position from the start. It is a space characterised not by the mere exchange of fixed opinions, but by genuine openness to being changed through encounter with difference.

We can see the power of dialogic space most clearly in science and technology — not in their distortions, but in their best moments, where their own norms are honoured. Scientific progress does not happen because scientists vote on what is true. It happens because scientific communities cultivate dialogic space: peer review, replication, open publication of methods and data, international collaboration, and a shared commitment to revising beliefs in the light of evidence. Scientists from different countries, cultures, and theoretical backgrounds can work together productively not because they already agree, but because they enter a shared space where claims must be tested, assumptions can be challenged, and the better argument, not merely the more popular one, is expected to prevail.

The extraordinary collective intelligence of science does not come from aggregating individual opinions. It comes from the quality of dialogue that scientific practice, at its best, makes possible.

And it is this deeper dialogic ethic, rather than the simple arithmetic of votes alone, that gives democracy whatever moral authority it truly has.

Yet the actual machinery of democracy treats individuals as the key agents: individuals who must choose, often privately, in isolation from one another. We all know, from direct experience, that we are not always wise as individuals. We are easily swayed, frequently biased, and limited by our own partial perspectives. Decades of psychological research confirm what everyday life already shows: good thinking does not reliably arise in isolated heads. It arises between us, in dialogic space.

For democracy to work at all, those who are empowered to participate in collective decision-making must be equipped to take this responsibility seriously. This means being able to participate in opening and sustaining dialogic space: to explore alternative perspectives with genuine curiosity, to seek out relevant knowledge, to examine likely consequences together, and to rise above narrow self-interest in the pursuit of a shared good.

Simply aggregating large numbers of individual preferences does not reliably produce good collective judgement. Adding together opinions is not the same thing as thinking well together. Good collective judgement requires the opening of dialogic space.

And dialogic space, in turn, requires what might be called civic dialogic virtues. These include intellectual humility; the capacity to listen seriously to alternative perspectives; the willingness to revise one’s own position in the light of better reasons; and the ability to attend not only to human voices, but also to interests that cannot speak for themselves such as future generations, nature, and the larger systems that we are part of.

These are not merely moral attitudes. They are civic virtues and capacities without which democratic societies cannot function.

None of these capacities emerge naturally or automatically. Indeed, some contemporary schooling practices almost seem designed to promote habits that go in the opposite direction: performance over inquiry, certainty over curiosity, individual success over collective understanding.

For democracy to succeed, indeed, for democracy to make sense at all, people must be educated into the civic dialogic virtues and competences that good collective thinking requires.

Dialogic education, by which I mean education that inducts people into the shared practice of opening, widening, and sustaining dialogic space, is therefore not an optional enrichment of democratic life. It is an essential foundation.

This does not require abstract idealism. It already exists in concrete forms: citizens’ assemblies, jury deliberation, deliberative polling, community inquiry forums, and structured public dialogue. There is some evidence that all of these can work to improve decision-making and include people who might otherwise feel excluded. Where these are taken seriously, we can see democracy functioning not as a counting machine, but as a shared practice of thinking together.

Democracy is not merely a voting system that needs dialogue. It is a dialogic system that has temporarily mistaken itself for a voting machine.

Without dialogic education, democracy is vulnerable to manipulation, polarisation, and moral drift. With it, democracy could become something genuinely worthy of our commitment: a collective practice of thinking and deciding together that can, like science at its best, generate wisdom that exceeds what any of us could achieve alone.