Paul Gunn - Democratic Deliberation in the Modern World

Democratic Deliberation in the Modern World

Would ordinary citizens benefit if public decisions were increasingly based on an inclusive and fair exchange of reasons rather than mere voting or choices in the market? Debates amongst deliberative democrats often proceed as though this process of public reasoning is precisely what the democratic ideals of freedom and equality require. Less attention has been paid to whether an inclusive and fair exchange of reasons is possible in any realistic modern setting, and what the effects would be of trying to move democratic institutions in a deliberative direction. To examine these effects, the contributors to this collection of essays bring together a number of analyses of the practical implications of expanding deliberative processes. Some consider the prevailing epistemic conditions in modern societies and their likely effects on deliberative reasoning. Others discuss the politics of these societies, and especially the likely effects of existing political divisions on democratic deliberation. Lastly, the question of what we might hope to seeand what we might hope to avoidfrom political argument is addressed. Considered together, these three foci should equip readers to decide whether deliberative democracy is feasible and, if so, if it is desirable. This book was published as a special issue of Critical Review.

Paul Gunn is Lecturer in Political Economy at Goldsmiths, University of London. He holds a PhD from Queen Mary, University of London, and his research interests concern the implications of social complexity on institutional choice and performance.

Democratic Deliberation in the Modern World

Edited by
Paul Gunn

First published 2014

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Contents

Paul Gunn

Russell Muirhead

Mark Pennington

Manfred Prisching

David Schkade, Cass R. Sunstein, and Reid Hastie

Ilya Somin

Robert B. Talisse

Geoffrey M. Vaughan

The chapters in this book were originally published in Critical Review, volume 22, issue 23 (October 2010). When citing this material, please use the original page numbering for each article, as follows:

Chapter 2

Can Deliberative Democracy Be Partisan?

Russell Muirhead

Critical Review, volume 22, issue 23 (October 2010) pp. 129158

Chapter 3

Democracy and the Deliberative Conceit

Mark Pennington

Critical Review, volume 22, issue 23 (October 2010) pp. 159184

Chapter 4

Rational Democracy, Deliberation, and Reality

Manfred Prisching

Critical Review, volume 22, issue 23 (October 2010) pp. 185226

Chapter 5

When Deliberation Produces Extremism

David Schkade, Cass R. Sunstein, and Reid Hastie

Critical Review, volume 22, issue 23 (October 2010) pp. 227252

Chapter 6

Deliberative Democracy and Political Ignorance

Ilya Somin

Critical Review, volume 22, issue 23 (October 2010) pp. 253280

Chapter 7

An Epistemological Defense of Democracy

Robert B. Talisse

Critical Review, volume 22, issue 23 (October 2010) pp. 281292

Chapter 8

Incommunicative Action: An Esoteric Warning about

Deliberative Democracy

Geoffrey M. Vaughan

Critical Review, volume 22, issue 23 (October 2010) pp. 293309

Please direct any queries you may have about the citations to clsuk.permissions@cengage.com

Paul Gunn

Deliberative democracy is a difficult concept to define. In one way or another, deliberation and its close cousins communication and contemplation have been central to the practice of democracy since its emergence in ancient Athens. How much we emphasise deliberation, and the implications we draw from it, therefore depend upon how we, as theorists, position ourselves in relation to different historical ideals. To take but one example, Philip Pettits (1997) neo-republican approach to democracy, which emphasises deliberation and participation as bulwarks against domination, stands in sharp contrast to Benjamin Barbers ([1984] 2003, passim) strong conception of democracy, which conceives of such participation as a means to the reinvigoration of a Jeffersonian idea of self-government.

This historical contextualisation suggests that one way of imposing order on the unruly definitions of deliberative democracy is to focus on contemporary democratic government, since this has provided the contextual backdrop against which modern democratic theories have developed. Early democratic accounts, such as Aristotles (fourth century BC) identification of the disciplinary effects of deliberation or T. H. Greens (nineteenth century) focus on its emancipatory promise, tend to conceive of deliberation simply in relation to individual behavior and autonomy. Regardless of whether the state was a large part of life (as it was for Aristotle) or small (as for Green), its comparative scope was limited, so there was little need to theorize anything other than a direct connection between political processes and individual outcomes. In contrast, the world for which modern deliberative accounts are offered is defined by a mixture of dynamic and often remote institutions which, together, contour our choices and opportunities in complicated and obscure ways. In the latter half of the twentieth century in particular, governments have grown in scope and complexity in response to these wider developments to such an extent that even the proto-deliberative theories of progressives such as L. T. Hobhouse and John Dewey are now of questionable relevance in their raw form. Modern deliberative democrats accordingly seek to avoid treating the state as the embodied will of the people. Instead, they confront it as a set of more or less opaque institutions which stands apart from the people and which consequently needs direction and legitimation.