Deliberative democracy is theoretically plausible and institutionally impracticable

Résumé du document

According to some scholars, the modern meaning of 'democracy' is, 'a way of organizing the state, that has come to be narrowly identified with territorially based competitive elections of political leadership for legislative and executive offices' . The problem with this interpretation is that it has distanced itself from the central ideas of democratic politics. These central ideas include the ideas of encouraging active political involvement of citizens, reaching consensus through dialogue and being able to implement a decision that has been reached through consensus. In recent years, a new theory of democracy has evolved that tries to return to democratic traditions. This new theory of, deliberative democracy is highly contested at the theoretical level as well as at the practicable level. Thus if deliberative democracy is, as some scholars claim, 'theoretically plausible but institutionally impracticable' one must first understand what the concept of deliberative democracy is.

Extraits

[...] However, one cannot affirm, in many respects, that deliberative democracy is theoretically plausible. Now, it is yet to be shown if, as some scholars say, it is institutionally impracticable. Elstub, in 'Democarcy' gives an exhaustive list of the attempts to and the limits of those attempts to comply with the demands of deliberative democracy . He says that deliberative democracy would only be used when forming a constitution because otherwise the process is too heavy just for specific decision. As for the political parties, he deplores the lack of deliberation within them. [...]

[...] It can be useful to but there are other situations for which conventional systems of delegation or political representation work well, or could be improved, even though they are not as 'democratic' in the literal sense of the word as deliberative democracy Bibliography: Baichi, G., 'Paritcipation, Activism, and Politics: the Porto Alegre Experiment and Deliberative democracy Theory', Politics and Society, special issue: Deliberative Democracy, Vol No March 2001, pp.43-87. Boucher, D. and Kelly, P. (eds) Political Thinkers. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cohen, J. 'Extracts from “Deliberation and democratic Legitimacy”' in MacKenzie (ed.) Political Concepts: A reader and Guide. [...]

[...] Deliberative democracy assumes that people would take on broad interests over their own interests in order to convince the other participants . In this utopian view, consensus could happen but once one takes into account human nature, consensus appears to be impossible. Deliberative democracy theorists admit that even in theory, consensus is unlikely to be reached so they just say that consensus should be the ideal to approximate . Instead, they call for a vote but by doing so, they would obey to a mere majority rule and therefore lose their credibility by getting to close with other aggregative models . [...]

[...] First of all, when implementing deliberative democracy in Brazil or in the USA, some institutional reforms had to take place. In the case of the USA for example, the state of Illinois decentralised the governance of school, a thing it had never done before. In Porto Alegre, implementing deliberative democracy ended up in creating a whole new network of councils, assemblies and procedures such as the procedure according to which the mayor can veto the budget proposed by the assemblies . [...]

[...] Deliberative democracy therefore tends to include every one in the deliberation to which all actors take part, give their argument, criticise that of others and sometimes change their argument in favour of a more convincing argument. In the end, the 'force of the better argument' prevails . The main debate about this Ideal Situation of Speech is that in such a dialogue, people are not likely to be convinced by an argument because of its reasonableness but rather because of the provider of the information or the way in which it is provided . Iris Marion Young explores this deficiency of deliberative democracy in her essay entitled 'Communication and the Other: Beyond Deliberative Democracy'. [...]