“Democracy is under siege.” So begins the Summer 2017 issue of Dædalus on “The Prospects & Limits of Deliberative Democracy.” In their introduction to the issue, editors James S. Fishkin (Director of the Center for Deliberative Democracy and Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University) and Jane Mansbridge (Charles F. Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values at the Harvard Kennedy School) consider the crisis of confidence in the ideal of democracy as rule by the people.