Wellsangels

I liked Mutz’s approach, of tackling two distinct theories of democracy and citizenship and comparing them with one another. And the idea that different core democratic values may conflict is a powerful one worth investigating.

But for a book attempting to test major theories empirically, Mutz’s operationalization of deliberation as ‘cross-cutting’ talk oversimplified the concept too much. Her justification for using cross-cutting interactions as a proxy for deliberation was that most of deliberation’s many components are impossible to measure and that full deliberation rarely takes place in practice, so we are better off using a type of interpersonal conversation that does occur regularly. But she then performs something of a bait and switch.

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