[In the following review, Mansbridge argues that Barber “distorts opposing views” such as representative government and anarchism. Mansbridge claims that Barber “argues by destroying straw monsters—caricatures of ideas that their adherents would never recognize.”]

In Strong Democracy Benjamin Barber argues powerfully for a government in which “all of the people govern themselves in at least some public matters at least some of the time” (p. xiv). With verve, style, passion, and insight, Barber explains how this ideal is possible, why we have never practiced it, and what conceptual and practical innovations might make it work.

Rejecting the “liberal” idea of a natural, pre-political state whose inhabitants are endowed with liberty, equality, and rights, Barber insists, correctly, that we acquire these goods through the process of governing ourselves in common. Rejecting as well the static, aggregative liberal conception of citizenship, Barber insists that citizens become capable of common purpose through the process of common governance rather than through the simple coincidence of preexisting interests. Such a politics involves activity, energy, and work. It involves institutions that help people create “public ends where there were none before” (p. 152), and individual interests that will “change shape and direction when subjected to these participatory processes” (p. 152). It involves a concept of political knowledge that is provisional, evolutionary, and mutable, “produced by an ongoing process of democratic talk, deliberation, judgment, and action” (p. 170). It involves a political judgment that is neither “subjective” nor “objective,” but rather proceeds from the “kind of ‘we’ thinking that compels individuals to reformulate … ‘I want x’ … as ‘x would be good for the community to which I belong’—an operation in social algebra for which not every ‘x’ will be suitable” (p. 171).

“At the heart of strong democracy is talk,” Barber writes (p. 173). And the section on talk is the most persuasive in the book. Strong democratic talk, he tells us, “entails listening no less than speaking; … is affective as well as cognitive; and … its intentionalism draws it out of the domain of pure reflection into the world of action” (p. 174). Barber contends, correctly I believe, that representative democracy (which he sometimes calls “thin” democracy) diminishes this kind of talk, and, in doing so, dramatically reduces the meaning and effect of citizenship.

Barber concludes with a collection of imaginative suggestions for adding strong democracy to the primary representative institutions of large-scale modern societies. He argues for “common work and common doing”—collectively creating pocket parks, urban farms, storefront community-education centers, neighborhood skill teams, crime-watch units, and universal-citizen service. He proposes neighborhood assemblies, for populations of from 5 to 25 thousand citizens, which could deliberate, vent grievances, act as ombudsmen, and possibly form part of an initiative and referendum process. He suggests representative town meetings, office holding by lot, and handling decriminalized small offenses through new forms of lay justice. He proposes a national initiative and referendum process, which would include a mandatory tie-in with neighborhood assemblies and interactive-television town meetings for the purpose of civic education, a multichoice referendum format (in which citizens would have a choice among support strongly, support but with [a specified] objection, oppose strongly, oppose the proposal, but not the principle behind it, and so forth), and a two-stage voting process providing for two readings. He supports experimental electronic balloting, vouchers in schooling and housing (with some reservations), universal-citizen service, neighborhood-action programs, workplace democracy, and a program for redesigning public space. If we tried all these things at once, as Barber recommends, citizens would undoubtedly “fly to the assemblies”—at least until the novelty wore off. Even after ennui set in, the intellectual and emotional residue would be incalculable. Why could not a state like Oregon or a town or an innovative university adopt some of his agenda on a trial basis, building in, of course, the prudence and the ways to “institutionalize regret” (p. 308) that Barber suggests?

Barber's repudiation of static liberalism and his creative suggestions for an ever self-renewing “strong” democracy are the best parts of this book. The worst side emerges when, in order to establish a conceptual foundation for strong democracy, Barber distorts opposing views in a way that is woven so tightly into the analysis that it undoes much of the good I have described. For all Barber's preaching about “empathy” and “listening” in his sections on democratic talk, he does not himself seem to have learned to listen. He hears what he wants to hear, and when the reality is otherwise, he distorts to fit. In this respect, Strong Democracy sometimes reads like a series of polemics against some of Barber's favorite bugaboos, including representative government and anarchism. In this, as in his past works, he argues by destroying straw monsters—caricatures of ideas that their adherents would never recognize.

Twelve years ago Barber gave to a photograph of uniformed officers subduing a citizen the simple caption, “Representative Democracy” (The Death of Communal Liberty, 275). Nothing quite that blunt this time. Today he writes only that “the representative principle steals from individuals the ultimate responsibility for their values, beliefs, and actions” (p. 145), is “incompatible with freedom” (p. 146), “precludes the evolution of a participating public in which the idea of justice might take root” (p. 146), and produces “distrustful, passive” citizens (p. 219). That's it for representative democracy. Barber does not later qualify the words steals, incompatible, and precludes. He does not write an aside granting that every citizen wants and needs representation for some purposes at some times. He gives no hint, let alone discussion, of the kinds of public talk that representatives encourage and that their election inspires. This approach makes it hard to learn much about representative democracy from Barber's analysis.

Anarchism, another old enemy, receives similar treatment. Barber pulls one strand out of a complex (even inchoate and internally contradictory) set of ideas and concludes that “the anarchist perspective is the perspective of the radically isolated self for whom the world is only what it can see with its own eyes. … The anarchist reads the world as the realm of One [Self], where the existence of other Ones is scarcely perceived and never felt” (p. 37). And so on. Not a word on the communitarian anarchist tradition.

Although Barber deplores the present-day adversary tradition in political discourse, his own pen has been tempered in that forge. His style thus undercuts his own purpose. Rhetorical overstatement and denigrating the enemy may be required to infuse public debate with a new vision as important as this one. But the style is not compatible with the respect for others required by “strong democratic talk.”