In Kevin Elliott's own words, “this book champions the busy against the politically active” (206). Busy people need a champion wherever democrats—in academia and in organizations of all kinds—simply assume that dedicating more time and attention to politics “entitles one to greater political power” (13). Elliott's work reopens pivotal questions about the value of equal power to democracy that Jane J. Mansbridge first posed in Beyond Adversary Democracy, but he writes from the perspective of the busy rather than from that of Mansbridge's social service volunteers. Elliott prompts democrats to consider whether the “unequal division of political influence [that results] from unequal busyness” is democratically legitimate and calls proponents of democratic innovations to account for proposing “time-consuming forms of participation” that make it hard for busy “people to participate in democratic processes” (12). Elliott demands democratic institutions that “empower busy people, even if that means abandoning or diluting some of the more complex and participatory designs favored by reformers today” (9).

This book offers a robust defense of electoral politics and makes three novel contributions to democratic theory: (1) the argument that “busy people” ne