Buddhism and Deliberative Democracy (Palgrave Studies in Religion, Politics, and Policy)

In this open-access book, William J. Long argues that the Buddhist sa?gha-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 democracy.Designed as a self-governing polity, the sa?gha served as an exemplar for society in the Buddha’s time and offers a strikingly relevant model for our own.At a moment when democracies around the world face declining effectiveness, political theorists increasingly turn to deliberative democracy as a remedy.This approach holds that democratic 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 democracy are Western in origin and largely confined to late twent