Research Project
Democracy Against Itself? Representation and Deliberative Innovation
Representative democracies across established democracies are increasingly marked by signs of erosion: declining trust in institutions, weakening accountability mechanisms, and the spread of disinformation that undermines informed public deliberation. The project investigates these dynamics by identifying and analysing three distinct vulnerabilities underlying this erosion — epistemic, related to the public’s capacity to access and process reliable information; accountability-related, concerning the mechanisms through which power-holders can be held responsible; and constitutional, involving the erosion of institutional checks that safeguard democratic processes.
A central aim of the project is to clarify the relationship between representative and deliberative democracy. Rather than treating deliberative innovations — such as citizens’ assemblies and other participatory mechanisms — as alternatives to representative institutions, the project examines how they can complement and strengthen representative government and public agencies advancing the three core values of democratic governance: effectiveness, legitimacy, and social justice. The project’s diagnostic focus is thus paired with a constructive ambition: to clarify under what conditions deliberative democracy can meaningfully address the vulnerabilities of representative institutions, without displacing or substituting for them.
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Biografische Angaben
Jacopo Morelli received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in 2025, under the supervision of Carla Bagnoli, with a thesis entitled "Moral and Political Constructivism in the Human Rights Debate." During his PhD, he spent six months as a visiting student at Goethe University Frankfurt and five months at Sciences Po and Université Paris Cité on a scholarship. He specializes in moral and political philosophy, with particular expertise in human rights. His current project diagnoses the epistemic, accountability, and constitutional vulnerabilities underlying the erosion of representative democracy. He has co-written a book with two other colleagues (and friends) on moral, political, and legal issues connected with Artificial Intelligence, published by Taylor & Francis under the title "Moral and Political Worries in Artificial Intelligence". -
Publikationen
Morelli, J. (Forthcoming 2027). Democracy against itself? Strengthening representative democracy through deliberative innovations. Constitutional Studies (Special Issue: Open Constitutional Democracies), 14. Morelli, J. (Forthcoming 2026). Three possible Kantian strategies for animal rights. Journal of Animal Ethics, (2). Morelli, J. (2026). Opacity, normativity and accountability: Toward a right to explanation or justification? Ethics & Politics (Special Issue: CEPE), 28(1). https://doi.org/10.13137/1825-5167/38755 Morelli, J., & Rodriguez, D. P. (2025). From compliance to justification: Addressing digital marginalization in constitutional democracies. Síntese: Revista de Filosofia, 52(164), 675. https://doi.org/10.20911/21769389v52n164p675/2025 Morelli, J. (2025). Two distinct Kantian perspectives on the foundation of human rights. Studia Kantiana, 22(3), 85–94. https://doi.org/10.5380/sk.v22i3.97428