Buddhism and Deliberative Democracy

Buddhism and Deliberative Democracy

https://WebToolTip.com

English | 2026 | ISBN-10: 3032206901 | 129 pages| Epub PDF (True) | 5 MB

In this open-access book, William J. Long argues that the Buddhist saṅgha—whose governance the Buddha modeled in part on the republican assemblies of his era—was not only a religious community, but a sophisticated experiment in deliberative cracy. Designed as a self-governing polity, the saṅgha served as an exemplar for society in the Buddha’s time and offers a strikingly relevant model for our own.
At a moment when cracies around the world face declining effectiveness, political theorists increasingly turn to deliberative cracy as a remedy. This approach holds that cratic decisions become more legitimate, more informed, and more stable through the public exchange of reasons among free and equal citizens. Ideally, deliberation aims at reasoned consensus oriented toward the common good, rather than outcomes driven solely by power or competing self-interests. Yet nearly all contemporary accounts of deliberative cracy are Western in origin and largely confined to late twentieth- and twenty-first-century thought.