 There is another version of the global democratic project, however, that involves an individualist conception of democratic political agency. Here citizens can engage in significant political activities that do not require high levels of interaction and cooperation between them. This is a position developed by Andrew Kuper (2004). It involves, first, that we abandon the conception of democratic legitimacy implicit in deliberative, participatory and republican conceptions of democracy, which all attempt to maintain a broadly Rousseauian understanding of legitimacy: laws are legitimate only if citizens can see themselves, somehow, as their coauthors. Kuper suggests that we discard this vision of democratic legitimacy in favour of one focusing on the responsiveness of the political system as a whole. The central issue becomes whether this system is made to act “in the best interests of the public, in a manner responsive to them” (Kuper 2004, 75 quoting Pitkin 1967). On this view, the vertical, rather than horizontal, dimension of communication is of overarching importance: individual citizens must have access to relevant information about what various authorities are doing, there must exist institutional channels through which they can pressure authorities and let them know their views on proposed policies. Doing so does not require that they “act together with high levels of mutual awareness” (Kuper 2004, 127); they can exercise these capacities individually, via specific agencies. Responsiveness is also a dimension of democratic legitimacy favoured by some empirical scientists, referring to the responsiveness of representatives to the opinions, preferences and concerns of citizens communicated via various agencies. It is measured, however, through statistical correlation in which public opinion is the dependent variable and policy output is the independent variable (for an overview see Page (1994)). 