What does it mean to listen well in democratic politics?

Listening is far from straightforward - it can be difficult to listen to others, whether because we struggle to understand what is being said, or because we do not want to hear it; and it is invariably almost impossible to force someone to listen to something, should they not want to do so. This has significant implications for democratic politics - ultimately in determining the way in which different interests and perspectives within a political community are taken up, understood and acted upon.

Through this project, I ask what it means to listen well in democratic politics, and offer an account of citizenly listening, which I show to respond to the challenges and opportunities of listening in democratic politics. I develop my account of citizenly listening through drawing firstly on a reading of Nietzschean ethics, from which I advance an account of emerging virtues of fallibility and faith, which I show to address both the challenges and opportunities I identify in listening well in democratic politics. I further develop my account of citizenly listening through engagement with the community organising tradition, as a political practice which gives particular weight to listening - and here show that listening can be used as a tool for building relational power across diverse, broad-based communities, and moreover that is possible to identify a motivating rationale for becoming a better listener.

Taken together, this project builds on an emerging literature on listening in democratic politics, offering a novel, virtue-centred account of what listening well in democratic politics might require, and why we might choose to seek to become better listeners.