Hannah Arendt's democracy: Action, the social, and democratic participation today

The goal of this project is to examine what Hannah Arendt’s insights on the nature of democratic participation reveal about contemporary participatory innovations. The analysis is centered on Arendt’s conception of Action, and the unique ontological arrangement of society she sees as a necessary precondition to it. I will examine four of the most prominent participatory mechanisms being discussed today: accountable autonomy, mini-publics, participatory budgeting, and popular assemblies. My hope is to illustrate that Arendt’s unique views bring a different perspective to the radical democratic tradition. Directly channelling Arendt’s principal insights on participation, I develop a set of criteria to examine and evaluate these mechanisms. On this basis I argue that Arendt’s insights provide a unique and valuable perspective on contemporary democratic innovations. The emphasis on the opportunity for Action in Arendt’s framework leads to strikingly different insights than the traditional concerns of contemporary democratic theorists.