The central contention of theories of deliberative democracy is that deliberative arrangements should encourage the support of interests that are general to all. Democratic theorists have also suggested that the natural environment will be a likely beneficiary following public deliberation, given the inherent rationality in supporting interests that will lead to the long-term survival of the planet. This paper addresses the question of general environmental interests through two case studies in Australian local government and argues there are at least three (...) factors that affect the ability of notionally deliberative arrangements to deliver outcomes that appear favourable to the natural environment. (shrink)

This paper elaborates on the deliberative democracy argument for freedom of expression in terms of its relationship to different dimensions of autonomy. It engages the objection that Enlightenment theories pose a threat to cultures that reject autonomy and argues that autonomy-based democracy is not only compatible with but necessary for respect for cultural diversity. On the basis of an intersubjective epistemology, it argues that people cannot know how to live on mutually respectful terms without engaging in public deliberation and developing (...) some degree of personal autonomy. While freedom of expression is indispensable for deliberation and autonomy, this does not mean that people have no obligations regarding how they speak to each other. The moral insights provided by deliberation depend on the participants in the process treating one another with respect. The argument is related to the Danish cartoon controversy. (shrink)

Democracy is usually justified either on intrinsic or instrumental, particularly epistemic, grounds. Intrinsic justifications stress the values inherent in the democratic process itself, whereas epistemic ones stress that it results in good outcomes. This article examines whether epistemic justifications for deliberative democracy are superior to intrinsic ones. The Condorcet jury theorem is the most common epistemic justification of democracy. I argue that it is not appropriate for deliberative democracy. Yet deliberative democrats often explicitly state that the process will favour the (...) best argument. This can only be the case if deliberation improves the overall competence of the group and of the individuals that constitute it. I analyse when deliberation will increase competences and when it will not do so and find that individual competences will not reliably increase as a result of deliberation. In order for deliberative democracy to be epistemically more effective than representative democracy, strong procedural assumptions need to be made and deliberative democracy needs to be justified based on a combination of epistemic and intrinsic elements. (shrink)

In 2010, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research started a series of citizens’ dialogues on future technologies. In the context of the German history of public participation in technology-oriented policy making, these dialogues are unique for at least two reasons: The Federal Ministry retains the responsibility for the entire process and is heavily involved in its planning, organization and communication, and the number of participants and process elements is significantly higher than in most other participative events. The paper (...) presents insights into the political background of the citizens’ dialogues, its general concept as well as first observations from the dialogue rounds on energy and high-tech medicine. In addition, it discusses reactions of other political actors and expectations regarding legitimacy and representativeness of the dialogue results. (shrink)

What I refer to here as the dilemma of authority arises when one ought to defer to authority; one ought to act as the more weighty reason demands; one can do either; one cannot do both. For those who reject the possibility of legitimate authority, the dilemma does not arise. Among those who accept legitimate authority, some, including Joseph Raz, presume the conflict can be resolved without remainder. In this paper, I argue that, in a moral conflict of this kind, (...) when one of the reasons for action is defeated but not cancelled, it is rational to feel regret for failing to do what one ought to do. (shrink)

Cet article examine la place du concept d’impartialité dans les théories délibératives de la démocratie. C’est à partir de certaines critiques féministes que sont discutés deux défis lancés à la théorie délibérative et qui sont étroitement liés : le premier porte essentiellement sur le critère du raisonnable et l’idée d’offre de raisons ; le second concerne les circonstances sociales et politiques contingentes dans lesquelles les perspectives des groupes marginalisés peuvent influencer le jugement des autres citoyens. Certains des changements qui devraient (...) être apportés à la théorie délibérative afin qu’elle puisse tenir compte de ces préoccupations sont ensuite proposés. Finalement, les implications de tels changements pour nos notions plus générales de vertu et de responsabilité de la citoyenneté sont examinées.This article examines the place of the concept of impartiality in theories of deliberative democracy. Drawing on and extending recent feminist critiques of deliberative democracy, it explores two interrelated challenges to deliberative theory, one focused on the standard of reasonableness and the idea of reason-giving and the other on the contingent social and political circumstances under which marginalized-groups perspectives may sway the judgment of other citizens. Finally, some of the changes required of deliberative theory to address these concerns are discussed, and the implications of these changes for our more general notions of the virtues and responsibilities of citizenship are explored. (shrink)

After the parliamentary elections in Germany in September 2017, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Christian Social Union (CSU), The Greens (Bündnis90/Die Grünen) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) started to negotiate about forming a coalition government. But, surprising to many, the FDP decided to let these coalition talks collapse, and many commentators in Germany found it highly problematic for a political party to refuse to take responsibility in government. Interestingly, the question whether (or: when) democratic parties may legitimately refuse (...) to govern has so far been neglected in political theory and political philosophy. The article develops a general answer by discussing several possible reasons for thinking that it is sometimes wrong to refuse to govern and thereby engages both democratic theory and the recent literature on compromise. The resulting view is that parties have an ‘integrity prerogative’ that allows them to refuse to govern, except when there is no reasonable and stable alternative government coalition available. (shrink)

Swedish hunters sometimes appeal to an inviolate ‘right to exist’ for wolves, apparently rejecting NIMBY. Nevertheless, the conditions existence hunters impose on wolves in practice fundamentally contradict their use of right to exist language. Hunters appeal to this language hoping to gain uptake in a conservation and management discourse demanding appropriately objective ecological language. However, their contradictory use of ‘right to exist' opens them up to the charge that they are being deceptive – indeed, right to exist is a 'disguised (...) NIMBY!' We address this situation by distinguishing hunters’ criticisms of wolves from the procedures for reaching objective policy decisions. (shrink)

Contemporary liberal democracy employs a conception of legitimacy according to which political decisions and institutions must be at least in principle justifiable to all citizens. This conception of legitimacy is difficult to satisfy when citizens are deeply divided at the level of fundamental moral, religious, and philosophical commitments. Many have followed the later Rawls in holding that where a reasonable pluralism of such commitments persists, political justification must eschew appeal to any controversial moral, religious, or philosophical premises. In this way, (...) the Rawlsian account of public political justification involves a politics of omission, where citizens are expected to bracket off their most fundamental commitments and seek justifications that draw only from uncontroversial premises. This politics of omission is necessary, Rawls argues, for political stability. But there is good social epistemic evidence for the view that the politics of omission encourages insularity among like-minded groups, and that this insularity in turn generates extremism. So omission is likely to lead to instability, not stability. (shrink)

In a recent article, Iris Marion Young raises several challenges to deliberative democracy on behalf of political activists. In this paper, the author defends a version of deliberative democracy against the activist challenges raised by Young and devises challenges to activism on behalf of the deliberative democrat. Key Words: activism • deliberative democracy • Discourse • Ideology • public sphere • I. M. Young.

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Political theories in general and deliberative democracy in particular have become quite popular in business ethics over the past few years. However, the model of deliberative democracy as generally referred to in business ethics is only appropriate for conceptualizing interaction between business and society which occurs within a context which is more or less institutionalized. The model cannot account for “unregulated” interaction between business and civil society. The authors argue that scholars need to resort to the so called “critical strand” (...) of deliberative democracy if we want to conceptualize interaction that happens without the involvement of decision-making institutions as political action in a deliberative sense. Adopting this approach allows us to identify cases in which unregulated interaction between business and civil society is preferable over institutionalization. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

This article provides two empirical evaluations of deliberation. Given that scholars of deliberation often argue for its importance without empirical support, we first examine whether there is a "deliberative difference"; if actors engaging in deliberation arrive at different decisions than those who think on their own or "just talk." As we find a general convergence within deliberation scholarship around reasons and inclusion, the second test examines whether these two specific mechanisms are central to deliberation. The first evaluation looks at outcomes (...) within a laboratory setting; the second at videotapes of decision-making processes within this setting. Our results show two things. First, in terms of outcomes, deliberation differs from other forms of interaction. Second, reasons and inclusion are central to the deliberative process. The more reasons provided within each group, the more likely participants were to change their position; similarly, the more inclusive groups were, the more likely participants were to change their position. We conclude by arguing that more work needs to be done, both in evaluating the deliberative difference and in disaggregating deliberation and examining its central explanatory mechanisms. (shrink)

Public satisfaction with policy process influences the legitimacy and acceptance of policies, and conditions the future political process, especially when contending ethical value judgments are involved. On the other hand, public involvement is required if effective policy is to be developed and accepted.

El objetivo de este trabajo es proponer un concepto de agente crítico que dialogue con una práctica democrática deliberativa, considerando qué significa el acto de dar razones. Para tal efecto, en este trabajo se discute, primero, qué significaría ser crítico o tender hacia la criticidad tanto autorreferente como hacia terceros. Esta sección está apoyada principalmente con ideas provenientes de la teoría de la argumentación y de la lógica informal. En segundo término, se aborda el concepto de democracia deliberativa a la (...) luz de la sinergia conceptual que habría entre la participación -potencial- de un agente crítico en tal contexto sociopolítico. En esta sección se pasa revista a algunas de las ideas centrales de la teoría de la democracia deliberativa. Y en la tercera y última parte, se aborda el problema de dar y recibir razones discutiendo la propuesta semántica inferencialista de Brandom (2002, 2005) para observar de qué manera este acercamiento puede aportar a una teoría de la deliberación y a un concepto -y educación- de agente crítico. En las conclusiones se sintetizan las ideas principales y, además, se hace un contrapunto entre la noción de agencia, concepto que es importante en mi propuesta, y la noción de persona, concepto de especial valor en la teoría de la democracia deliberativa. (shrink)

An analysis of the epistemological structure of democratic deliberation as a procedure in which legal norms are constructed reveals that deliberation combines procedural and substantive aspects in a unique and inextricable manner. The co-original recognition of the private and public autonomy of all citizens provides the substantive critical standard against which the justice of norms is measured. At the same time, such recognition requires that the particular needs and values of all people concerned be taken into account. Given the privileged (...) epistemic access people have to their own particular perspective, this requirement implies the ineliminability of actual deliberative procedures. The open-ended nature of these constructive procedures is partly due to the fact that the rules of the procedure are counterfactual and themselves subject to interpretation. More importantly, it also reflects the historical nature of our human world and the freedom of moral persons to shape and reshape their preferences. (shrink)

This paper asks how the intensity of individual local eParticipation affects users’ perception of democratically valuable effects. Drawing on participatory and deliberative theory literature we extract four participatory effects- internal political efficacy, common good orientation, tolerance, and legitimacy. Furthermore, the paper examines which cognitive factors may moderate the relationship between intensity of participation and perception of participatory effects. Drawing on online survey data from 670 citizens engaged in public budgeting online consultations on the local level, the conducted path analysis shows (...) that intensity of participation seems to foster the perception of common good orientation and tolerance. The other perceptions of participatory effects were not influenced by participation intensity. Findings on moderating factors indicate that the beneficial effects of online participation were not distributed unequally among participants. In conclusion, the research presents evidence for an optimistic view on local eParticipation that is able to promote democratically valuable user experiences. (shrink)

The idea that it is acceptable to ‘nudge’ people to opt for the ‘healthy choice’ is gaining currency in health care policy circles. This article investigates whether researchers evaluating Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Screening Programmes (AAASP) attempt to influence decision makers in ways that are similar to popular ‘nudging’ techniques. Comparing two papers on the health economics of AAASP both published in the BMJ within the last 3 years, it is shown that the values chosen for the health economics modelling are (...) not representative of the literature and consistently favour the conclusions of the articles. It is argued (1) that this and other features of these articles may be justified within a Libertarian Paternalist framework as ‘nudging’ like ways of influencing decision makers, but also (2) that these ways of influencing decision makers raise significant ethical issues in the context of democratic decision making. (shrink)

The debate over rival conceptions of political legitimacy tends to focus on first-order considerations—for example, on the relative importance of procedural and substantive values. In this essay, I argue that there is an important, but often overlooked, distinction among rival conceptions of political legitimacy that originates at the meta-normative level. This distinction, which cuts across the distinctions drawn at the first-order level, concerns the source of the normativity of political legitimacy, or, as I refer to it here, the grounds of (...) political legitimacy. If we focus on the grounds of political legitimacy, there are three main conceptions of political legitimacy: will-based, belief-based, and fact-based conceptions. I present an objection to each of those main conceptions and defend a hybrid account of the grounds of political legitimacy. (shrink)

Critics and defenders of Rawls' idea of public reason have tended to neglect the relationship between this idea and his conception of democratic legitimacy. I shall argue that Rawls' idea of public reason can be interpreted in two different ways, and that the two interpretations support two different conceptions of legitimacy. What I call the substantive interpretation of Rawls' idea of public reason demands that it applies not just to the process of democratic decision-making, but that it extends to the (...) substantive justification of democratic decisions. I shall argue against this interpretation and suggest a procedural interpretation instead. On this view, public reason is invoked when it comes to the political justification of the principles that should govern the process of democratic decision-making, but not – at least not directly – in relation to the content of public deliberation. (shrink)

A conception of legitimacy is at the core of normative theories of democracy. Many different conceptions of legitimacy have been put forward, either explicitly or implicitly. In this article, I shall first provide a taxonomy of conceptions of legitimacy that can be identified in contemporary democratic theory. The taxonomy covers both aggregative and deliberative democracy. I then argue for a conception of democratic legitimacy that takes the epistemic dimension of public deliberation seriously. In contrast to standard interpretations of epistemic democracy, (...) however, the conception I put forward avoids procedure-independent standards of correctness. Instead, it relies on a procedural social epistemology and defines legitimacy entirely in terms of the fairness of procedures. I call this conception of democratic legitimacy `Pure Epistemic Proceduralism'. I shall argue that it should be preferred over `Rational Epistemic Proceduralism', the conception of legitimacy that underlies the standard interpretation of epistemic democracy. Key Words: legitimacy • deliberative democracy • epistemic democracy • social epistemology. (shrink)

Modern society is challenged by a loss of efficiency in national governance systems values, and lifestyles. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) discourse builds upon a conception of organizational legitimacy that does not appropriately reflect these changes. The problems arise from the a-political role of the corporation in the concepts of cognitive and pragmatic legitimacy, which are based on compliance to national law and on relatively homogeneous and stable societal expectations on the one hand and widely accepted rhetoric assuming that all members (...) of society benefit from capitalist production on the other. We therefore propose a fundamental shift to moral legitimacy, from an output and power oriented approach to an input related and discursive concept of legitimacy. This shift creates a new basis of legitimacy and involves organizations in processes of active justification vis-à-vis society rather than simply responding to the demands of powerful groups. We consider this a step towards the politicization of the corporation and attempt to re-embed the debate on corporate legitimacy into its broader context of political theory, while reflecting the recent turn from a liberal to a deliberative concept of democracy. (shrink)

Although the idea of the public interest features prominently in many accounts of deliberative democracy, the relationship between deliberative democracy and the public interest is rarely spelt out with any degree of precision. In this article, I identify and defend one particular way of framing this relationship. I begin by arguing that people can deliberate about the public interest only if the public interest is, in principle, identifiable independently of their deliberations. Of course, some pluralists claim that the public interest (...) is an implausible idea, which casts doubt on the idea that there might be something for people to deliberate about. Yet while, following Brian Barry, we can get around this problem by defining the public interest as an interest in which everyone shares qua member of the public, what still needs to be explained is why people should be prepared to privilege this particular capacity. I argue that the account of political equality with which deliberative democracy is bound up offers a compelling explanation of this sort, even if it also gives rise to some difficult questions of feasibility. I conclude by considering the charge that any political scheme that framed the relationship between deliberative democracy and the public interest in this way would be undesirable. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy entails a commitment to deciding political questions on their merits. To that end, people engage in an exchange of reasons in a shared endeavour to arrive at the right answer or the best judgement they can make in the circumstances. Of course, in practice a shared judgement may be impossible to reach. Yet while compromise may seem a natural way of dealing with the disagreement that deliberation leaves unresolved – for example, some deliberative theorists argue that a willingness (...) to compromise manifests respect for the considered views of others, even as we continue to disagree with them – the relationship between deliberation and compromise is not as straightforward as one might think. To explain why, this paper contrasts conflicts of judgement with conflicts of preference, interest and value to show why greater attention needs to be paid to the character of the decision to be made. (shrink)

This article provides a survey of existing studies of majority rule, outlines misconceptions of majority rule, and highlights underexplored fields of research. It argues that the reasons why the minority complies with majority decisions have been underexplored.

There can be good reasons to doubt the authority of a group of scientists. But those reasons do not include lack of unanimity among them. Indeed, holding science to a unanimity or near-unanimity standard has a pernicious effect on scientific deliberation, and on the transparency that is so crucial to the authority of science in a democracy. What authorizes a conclusion is the quality of the deliberation that produced it, which is enhanced by the presence of a non-dismissible minority. Scientists (...) can speak as one in more ways than one. We recommend a different sort of consensus that is partly substantive and partly procedural. It is a version of what Margaret Gilbert calls “joint acceptance” – we call it “deliberative acceptance.” It capitalizes on there being a persistent minority, and thereby encourages accurate reporting of the state of agreement and disagreement among deliberators. (shrink)

In her book Democracy and Truth: The Conflict between Political and Epistemic Virtues, Snjezana Prijic Samarzija advocates a stance that not only political, but also epistemic values are necessary for justification of democracy. Specifically, she mounts defense for one particular type of public deliberation on epistemic grounds. In this paper, I will discuss the following issue: What connects this type of public deliberation to the wider context of justification of democracy? I will attempt to explain why Prijic Samarzija's stance can (...) be understood as a version of deliberative epistemic instrumentalism and to discuss the role played by the public deliberation within this framework. (shrink)

This article offers a comprehensive review of the major theoretical issues and findings of the epistemic approaches to deliberative democracy. Section 2 surveys the norms and ideals of deliberative democracy in relation to deliberation's ability to “track the truth.” Section 3 examines the conditions under which deliberative mini‐publics can “track the truth.” Section 4 discusses how “truth‐tracking” deliberative democracy is possible through the division of epistemic labor in a deliberative system.

This paper examines the idea that straight talk can actually pose certain dangers for democracy by asking two interrelated questions. First, does our belief in the importance of sincerity necessarily improve political deliberation? Second, does our belief cause us to under-appreciate other important communicative resources? We will see that much hinges on our answers to these questions because they deal directly with whose voices are to be considered legitimate and authoritative in our public sphere. This paper begins from a deliberative (...) democratic standpoint: democracy is a logocentric enterprise—that is, language is at the center of democratic political projects. So it is critical that we pay attention to how we evaluate political words. Otherwise, not only can we not really understand what is going on in the public sphere, but we are also more likely to make poor judgments about what sort of speech and speakers make our democracy more robust. -/- To explore these questions, this paper examines the discourse ethics that underwrite much of deliberative democratic theory (section I). It then goes on to discuss some of the dangers that the particular ethic of sincerity poses for democratic communication. The paper argues that the emphasis on sincerity: -/- 1) too easily collapses the relation between claims to truthfulness and truth claims and contributes to an undemocratic epistemology; 2) oversimplifies human psychology, ignoring the possibility of multiple and complexly related intentions; 3) denigrates “rhetorical” forms of speech; and 4) privileges a seemingly non-rhetorical mode of communication: hyper-sincerity. (shrink)

A central discussion in the theory of deliberative democracy in recent decades has focused on whether democratic deliberation, and consequently those participating in it, should aim, at least ideally, for political consensus. Thus, pluralist deliberative democrats have criticized the consensualist approach to deliberative democracy for neglecting the moral importance of political disagreement because of their fixation with reaching consensus. The debate between these two positions, initiated in the 1990s, has evolved in recent years toward more precision and sophistication. However, some (...) vagueness and ambiguities remain in many of the contributions and prevent us from getting an exact idea of the object of discussion. This article starts making further distinctions about several types of agreement and disagreement in order to clarify much more precisely the exact niche of dispute between these two views. They do not need to disagree on the value of many forms of disagreement and consensus. Their dispute consists only in a controversy about the relative value of post-deliberative, operative, substantive, legislative, regulatory, or adjudicative reason-based consensus as opposed to the corresponding reason-based disagreement. Finally, the article argues that this relatively small niche is made smaller by certain considerations. The most important of them is that this controversy remains at a high theoretical level and lacks practical importance: it only affects the kind of personal ideal commitment or aspiration that virtuous deliberators should have when entering into a deliberative process, and has no concrete consequent institutional implications. (shrink)

What obligations are there on voters? This paper argues that voters should make their electoral decision competently, and does so by developing on a recent proposal for democratic legitimacy. It then explores three problems arising from this ‘competency obligation’. First, how should voters be competent? I propose three conditions required for voter competence. Second, how competent should voters be? I argue that the competency required tracks the significance of the consequences of the vote. Third, if the electorate are unlikely to (...) deliver a competent decision, should suffrage be restricted to the competent alone? I defend unrestricted suffrage on the grounds that restricting suffrage cannot guarantee a competently made electoral decision. Instead, obligations on voters should be minimised by political parties satisfying their obligations to be politically sound; if they are sound, then the obligation to be competent can be easily satisfied by voters. (shrink)

Schumpeter's redefinition of representative democracy as merely leadership competition was canonical in postwar political science. Schumpeter denies that individual will, common will, or common good are essential to democracy, but he, and anyone, I contend, is forced to assume these conditions in the course of denying them. Democracy is only a method, of no intrinsic value, its sole function to select leaders, according to Schumpeter. Leaders impose their views, and are not controlled by voters, and this is as it should (...) be, he says. I respond that his leadership democracy is implausible, both descriptively and prescriptively. Competitive election is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition of democracy, not sufficient even for the limited empirical purpose of regime classification. Any adequate definition of democracy must make reference to the common will, the common good, and other values, I submit. (shrink)

Discussion is frequently observed in democratic politics, but change in view is rarely observed. Call this the ‘unchanging minds hypothesis’. I assume that a given belief or desire is not isolated, but, rather, is located in a network structure of attitudes, such that persuasion sufficient to change an attitude in isolation is not sufficient to change the attitude as supported by its network. The network structure of attitudes explains why the unchanging minds hypothesis seems to be true, and why it (...) is false: due to the network, the effects of deliberative persuasion are typically latent, indirect, delayed, or disguised. Finally, I connect up the coherence account of attitudes to several topics in recent political and democratic theory. Key Words: deliberation • democracy • persuasion • change in view • coherence. (shrink)

According to an influential objection, which Martha Nussbaum has powerfully restated, expressing anger in democratic public discourse is counterproductive from the standpoint of justice. To resist this challenge, this article articulates a crucial yet underappreciated sense in which angry discourse is epistemically productive. Drawing on recent developments in the philosophy of emotion, which emphasize the distinctive phenomenology of emotion, I argue that conveying anger to one’s listeners is epistemically valuable in two respects: first, it can direct listeners’ attention to elusive (...) morally relevant features of the situation; second, it enables them to register injustices that their existing evaluative categories are not yet suited to capturing. Thus, when employed skillfully, angry speech promotes a greater understanding of existing injustices. This epistemic role is indispensable in highly divided societies, where the injustices endured by some groups are often invisible to, or misunderstood by, other... (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis rejoinder represents a final installment in a debate between myself and Paul Gunn over the feasibility and desirability of deliberative democracy. Here I argue that our debate has helped clarify an ambivalence in the literature surrounding the ends and means of deliberative democracy. I specify two ways to understand both ends and means, establish their importance in deliberative theory, and show how they can be combined. I conclude by showing how this systemic view incorporates and overcomes several challenges facing (...) modern democracy, such as the necessity of expert authority, the role of partisanship, and the problem of social complexity. (shrink)

Business firms play an increasingly influential role in contemporary societies, which has led many scholars to return to the question of the democratisation of corporate governance. However, the possibility of democratic deliberation within firms has received only marginal attention in the current debate. This article fills this gap in the literature by making a normative case for democratic deliberation at the workplace and empirically assessing the deliberative capacity of self-organised teams within business firms. It is based on sixteen in-depth interviews (...) in six German firms which practice various forms of self-organised teamwork. The article argues that self-organised teamwork can create a space for authentic, inclusive, and consequential deliberation by suspending authoritarian control structures within business firms. Finally, the article proposes the consideration of firms not only as necessary parts of a larger deliberative system but also as deliberative systems in themselves. (shrink)