ABSTRACT
The cornerstone of existing “democracies” is supposed to be “free and fair elections”. The actual ruling or governing is done by elected partisans and their appointees. This hierarchical specialization, in which an elite few govern, effectively excludes the public from any meaningful process of deliberation or policy decision-making. The role of the general public is, by and large, limited to the fleeting participation of voting for, or against, those who will govern them. The Enlightenment philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau famously said the English people who got to elect members of parliament mistakenly believed themselves to be free, yet “as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved, it is nothing” (Rousseau [1762] 1997, 114).
