This book articulates a participatory conception of deliberative democracy that takes the democratic ideal of self-government seriously. It aims to improve citizens'' democratic control and vindicate the value of citizens'' participation against conceptions that threaten to undermine it. The book critically analyzes deep pluralist, epistocratic, and lottocratic conceptions of democracy. Their defenders propose various institutional ''''shortcuts'''' to help solve problems of democratic governance such as overcoming disagreements, citizens'' political ignorance, or poor-quality deliberation. However, all these shortcut proposals require citizens to blindly defer to actors over whose decisions they cannot exercise control. Implementing such proposals would therefore undermine democracy. Moreover, it seems naive to assume that a community can reach better outcomes ''faster'' if it bypasses the beliefs and attitudes of its citizens. Unfortunately, there are no ''shortcuts'' to make a commu
