Book Symposium

Jeff rey Green’s The Eyes of the People (EOP) poses the question of what popular empowerment might mean in twenty-fi rst-century liberal democracies. It diagnoses and takes critical aim at the widespread assumption that popular power must relate to the legislative capacity to determine the laws and norms shaping political life. Whereas leading paradigms of democracy—deliberative, aggregationist, and pluralist models—all equate popular sovereignty with self-legislation, Green argues that it is both possible and desirable to conceive of popular sovereignty in nonrepresentational terms. Specifi cally, EOP argues that popular empowerment might involve the conditions under which leaders appear on the public stage and not just familiar, representational aspirations that the government’s laws and policies accord with the underlying preferences of an electorate. That is, rather than worry only about the content of what leaders do and say, Green’s theory calls for greater attention to the form in which political communication is disseminated. Specifi cally, Green defends the ideal of candor, which he defi nes as the norm that leaders not be in control of the conditions under which they appear on the public stage. According to this defi nition, press conferences in which leaders extemporaneously fi eld questions are more candid than monologic public relations events, leadership debates where candidates are cross-examined are more candid than prerehearsed stump speeches, and interviews where journalists have the opportunity to aggressively challenge the assertions of leaders are more candid than those in which follow-up questions are not allowed. Although candor overlaps to some degree with more traditional democratic values like publicity and transparency, it is diff erent in at least one key respect: candor is committed fi rst and foremost to regulating the person of the leader, not the information that the leader produces. While one might expect that, ceteris paribus, more candor will lead to more plentiful and more accurate information, there are cases when this is not necessarily the case. For example, a contentious leadership debate, where leaders aggressively challenge each other, might be less informative than a more sober and dispassionate questioning from moderators, but it is