Few would deny the importance of an active citizenry in a democracy. In 2014, for instance, the International Social Survey Programme asked around 50,000 citizens in 34 countries to rank on a scale of 1 to 7 how important it is for citizens to ‘always vote in elections’. About 80 per cent gave a ranking of 5 (11.2 per cent), 6 (16.4 per cent) or 7 (51.8 per cent) (ISSP 2016). Many of us, moreover, are deeply impressed by citizens active within the democratic process in other ways. Organising campaigns, attending demonstrations, petitioning government, knocking on doors and so on – such acts seem to exemplify the promise of democracy as ‘rule by the people’.

Presumably, such attitudes stem partly from the fact that democracies are nothing more or less than elaborate systems of norms governing the exercise and distribution of political power. Norms persist only where a sufficient proportion of the citizenry both (a) personally adhere to them and (b) have sufficient confidence that other citizens also do so (Bicchieri 2017). Those who seek to advance their political objectives through the demo-cratic process (rather than by circumventing it) thereby express allegiance to the norms constitutive of that process. This, in turn, plays a vital role in sustaining such norms and, as such, protects and promotes the democratic form of life most of us value highly.

Moreover, virtually every theoretical account of the nature of democracy emphasises the importance of participation.2 Carole Pateman (1970, 2012), for instance, holds that participation is nothing less than the fundamental purpose of democratic government. For her, it is only by positively engaging with matters of public significance that individuals may come to develop the virtues necessary for a desirable form of collective life. Only in a democracy of the right kind – one in which citizens not merely enjoy extensive rights of participation, but wherein such rights are exercised – will this be possible. Pateman’s, of course, is a particularly expansive view of democracy. But even so-called minimalists, who see democracy as merely a process through which elites acquire power ‘by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote’ (Schumpeter 1950, 269), nevertheless have reason to hold that broad participation is essential if democracies are to deliver desirable outcomes.