Abstract
The idea of liquid democracy is increasingly being discussed in the academic literature as an innovation that could complement or even replace certain existing democratic practices. A liquid assembly is an innovative legislature through which liquid democracy could be implemented. The present article asks why it would be desirable to inject liquid-democratic principles into existing democratic systems in the form of a liquid assembly. All other things being equal, which normative problems can a liquid assembly help us solve in place of a traditional, election-based legislature? Building on the thought experiment of LiquidDemocrita, this article argues that a liquid assembly may provide benefits in at least six areas: (1) positive political freedom, (2) participatory equality, (3) selective participation, (4) selection-oriented, proportional representation, (5) deliberative accountability and area-specific deliberation, and (6) expertise and collective intelligence. For the sake of developing a comprehensive theory of liquid democracy, future studies could test the external validity of these normative claims and flesh out more negative arguments as well.
