Introduction

Jane Mansbridge's intellectual career is marked by field-shifting contributions to democratic theory, feminist scholarship, political science methodology, and the empirical study of social movements and direct democracy. The creative tension between scholarship and activism has intensified the challenges of Mansbridge's research while also stimulating its deepest insights. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book reflects Mansbridge's early focus on participatory democracy, which generated a key insight that has informed all of her subsequent work: the kind of equality we need to legitimate decisions under circumstances of common interests is different from the kind of equality we need when interests conflict. It exemplifies Mansbridge's innovation in deliberative theory-building. The book underscores and develops the central claim Mansbridge advanced in "Using Power/Fighting Power": democracies need coercive power in order to serve common interests.