Abstract

The phrase ‘Democratize Finance’ has proliferated recently in scholarship and in popular discourse. There are financial companies like Robin Hood, of GameStop fame, which explicitly describes itself as ‘on a mission to democratize finance for all’. The ‘Democratizing Finance’ volume in the Real Utopias collection was published in 2022. Some have argued that democratization requires assembling citizens juries to direct investment, others have suggested that ‘to democratize finance we must make it structurally sound’. What is striking about the phrase ‘democratizing finance’ is its powerful resonance despite its lack of meaning. What exactly is required to democratize finance? In this paper we begin to address this question by sorting through the many current uses of the phrase and suggesting which are justifiable by appeal to democratic theory and which are merely counterfeit uses of the term.