What does the ideal of democracy suggest about the role and actions of citizens? Are they expected to shape policies directly, choose representatives to carry out their collective will, or are there other expectations?

There are many different models of democracy. Those that give a prominent role to the preferences of ordinary people are called “populist.” (This is different from the use of the word to describe recent “populist” political candidates.) In the populist ideal of representative democracy, for example, the voters have policy [...]