Deliberative Democracy and Constitutionalism Aleksandar Jovanoski (original) (raw)

Deliberative Democracy and Constitutionalism

2013

In the last three decades, whitin academic debates about the future directions of development of the democratic practice, one new model has significant position, called deliberative democracy. On a level of theoretical elaboration, the conspirators of deliberative democracy develop arguments that justify proximate participation of the citizens in the process of creation of politics and political decision making. The goal of this paper is to show part of the viewpoint of the more significant political scientists and sociologists through the justification of deliberative democracy, as well as to indicate the connecting points between the principles of constitutionalism and deliberative democracy. This text also reviews the tension between liberalism and democracy at an ontological level and indicates the basic weaknesses and disadvantages in the attempts for consolidation of deliberative democracy under the principles of constitutionalism. The constitutionalism here is shown as a doct...

Deliberative Democracy and Citizenship

Polish Political Science Yearbook, 2006

Abstract The model of deliberative democracy poses a number of difficult questions about individual rationality, public reason and justification, public spiritedness, and an active and supportive public sphere. It also raises the question about what kind of civic involvement is required for the practices of democratic deliberation to be effective. The aim of this article is to examine the last question by looking at the role and value of citizenship understood in terms of participation. It argues that deliberative democracy implies a category of democratic citizens; its institutional framework calls for the activity and competence of citizenry, and consequently, the participatory forms of deliberative democracy come closest to the democratic ideal as such. Also, the model of participatory-deliberative democracy is more attractive as a truly democratic ideal than the model of formal deliberative democracy, but it certainly faces more difficulties when it comes to the practicalities, and especially the institutional design. This problem is raised in the last section of the article where the possible applicability of such a model to post-communist democracies is addressed. The major difficulty that the participatory-deliberative model poses for the post-communist democratization can be explained by a reference to the cultural approach towards democratization and to the revised modernization theory presented by Inglehart and Welzel. The problem of the applicability of such a model in the post-communist context seems to support the thesis presented here which suggests that active citizenship, civic skills and civic culture are indispensable for the development of deliberative politics. KEY WORDS: citizenship, deliberative democracy, deliberation, democratization, legitimacy, participation

Introducing Deliberative Democracy: A Goal, a Tool, or Just a Context?1

Human Affairs, 2008

Introducing Deliberative Democracy: A Goal, a Tool, or Just a Context?The concept of deliberative democracy is presented within a wide spectrum of variety of its operationalizations. Since the applicability of the principle of deliberation to the functioning of human society is of the author's primary interest, dilemmas of deliberative democracy related to different problems associated with deliberation in practice are described in some detail. The key questions raised aiming at elucidating the "ontology" of deliberativeness are as follows: is it only a tool for solving the problems of society and politics? Is it a context within which other processes decide on the running of society? Or does it embody a goal of democracy?

DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY IS NOTHING BUT AN INVITATION TO UTOPIA

It is never frivolous to consider an aspect of democracy such as deliberative democracy. Discursive democracy as it is also known centres on decision-making, a feature that is one of the many features of democracy, it is important to bring to the purview the different inherent characteristics of deliberative democracy to better appraise it relevance and redundancy in the scope of democracy. This essay is preoccupied with an exposition of the central theme; discursive democracy and in order to comprehensively accomplish this, this essay shall adopt the critical tool of philosophical inquiry to query the tenets of deliberative democracy it disadvantageousness to the requirement of inclusivity as championed by general notion of democracy. The element of democracy has been argued to come to bear, pre-eminently within the structural apparatus of deliberative democracy. The question of how deliberation (deliberative democracy) affects decision-making has been answered by a wide variety of scholars from different disciplines, across several countries, at different sites within the deliberative system. It has been a rich source of discussion between theorists and empirical social scientists and has occasionally crossed over the bounds of research into the realm of an applied science. The modern scope of democracy has been preoccupied with providing prompt solutions to embattling issues of governance in democracy due to the delay or slow in decision making, how can deliberative democracy that seeks to reach political decisions through a product of mere discussion?

Between deliberative and participatory democracy

Philosophy & social criticism, 2006

Habermas has suggested that' more democracy' will lead to the completion of the Enlightenment project of rationality. It is widely known that Habermas has sought to develop various instruments for this task, such as a strengthening of communicative rationality in order to enhance democratic practice. His conception of deliberative democracy, drawn from the amalgamation of a liberal focus on justice and a republican perception of negotiations and selfunderstanding, aims to improve the practice of democracy. Similarly Denise Vitale, in her article 'Between Deliberative and Participatory Democracy: a contribution on Habermas' (2006,) stresses the importance of democracy. However, she questions the Habermasian conception of democracy, due to its lack of concern with social and economic justice, and its failure to illustrate concrete procedures for institutionalizing democratic processes. Thus, she developed her own conception of Participatory democracy, and stresses its focus on social and economic inequalities. As a result, she concludes that a Habermasian focus on deliberation combined with a concern for social and economic justice can enhance democratic practice. __________________________________________________________________ This essay looks deeper into Vitale's perception of Habermasian deliberative conception and finds that, in fact, she fails to employ key concepts in the way that Habermas intended. Moreover, Habermas' aim to legitimise the process of deliberative democracy can also be argued to have failed, succeeding only to prompt us to ask the right questions. Last, but not least, the essay will illustrate that Vitales' interpretation of participatory democracy underestimates the voting usage. The Importance of Applying Critical Theory to Social Problems It is widely know that Critical Theory is a theoretical outlook associated with the Frankfurt School. Max Horkheimer, in his essay 'Traditional and Critical Theory' published in 1937, set the features of the theory. Accordingly, Critical Theory deals with what Horkheimer (1982: 247) calls an 'explanation of historical events' and is dominated 'at every turn by a concern for reasonable conditions of life'. Moreover, bearing in mind the

The Deliberative Turn in Democratic Theory

2024

Thirty years of developments in deliberative democracy (DD) have consolidated another subfield of democratic theory. Building on the conceptual innovations introduced by the academic debate in DD, a growing number of deliberative experiments have been carried out around world, yielding a flourishing empirical literature. The acquired disciplinary prestige has made theorists and practitioners very confident about the ability of DD to address the legitimacy crisis currently affecting liberal democracies the world over. This book advances a critical analysis of these developments, and casts doubts on this confidence. It claims that current theoretical debates are reproposing old methodological divisions, and struggle to overcome the minimalist conception of democracy employed in the second postwar period. Moreover, deliberative experiments at the micro level seem to have no impact at the macro level, and remain sets of isolated experiences with controversial political value. The book indicates that those defects are mainly due to the liberal frame of reference within which reflection in democratic theory and practice takes place within the deliberative camp. Consequently, it suggests the need to move beyond liberal understandings of democracy as a series of disjointed games for which external rules have to be devised in advance. By contrast, it advocates a vision of democracy as a self-correcting ‘metagame’ capable of establishing and revising its own criteria of validity. An outline of this alternative vision of democracy as a metagame is proposed in chapter 6, setting the research framework for my future work in the field.

Deliberative Democracy and the Problem of the Differend

Deliberative democracy is a branch of political theory that takes the ideal of public deliberation between citizens to be the best way to conduct public affairs. This thesis explores the exclusionary implications of conceptions of deliberative democracy that aim towards reaching consensus. As a corrective, I present an alternative conception of democracy that takes difference and antagonism as constitutive of the political. I will use Jean-François Lyotard’s concept of the differend as a critical tool for normative assessment of deliberative processes, and present a conception of communicative democracy, based mainly on the writings of Iris Marion Young, as a credible starting point for politics that aims towards solving differends by greater inclusion of group difference into politics. I take as my method that of critical theory, understood as normative analysis that takes as its starting point existing social processes and aims to construct an account of them that is both descriptive and prescriptive, aiming to reveal hidden normative possibilities inherent in them. This thesis consists of an introduction and four chapters. The first one explores the concept of the differend, understood as the problem of systemic distortions in political communication making expressing some experiences of injustice impossible. The second chapter presents a standard model of deliberative democracy based on the writings of Joshua Cohen, and then shows how its normative conditions of consensus, unity, reasonable argument and a focus on the common good result in the formation of differends by precluding inclusion of difference. The third chapter then presents an account of communicative democracy as an amendment to the standard model of deliberative democracy. To this end I use and comment on the thought of Iris Marion Young, Chantal Mouffe and Susan Bickford, among others. This account takes antagonism and group difference as constitutive of the political, and aims towards greater political inclusion of groups that are excluded from deliberation by structural relations of privilege and disadvantage. Commenting on discussion around culture in political theory, an account of social groups based on writings of Iris Marion Young is given that refuses to use cultural identity as its basis. Instead, group difference is conceptualized as a structurally constituted and situated phenomenon that must be reflected in politics through the inclusion of differently situated group perspectives into deliberative processes. Structural injustice leads to formation of differends in deliberative processes, and I claim that inclusion of situated perspectives into deliberation through the communicative modes of greeting, rhetoric and narratives are a way towards solving them. I also explore Paul Healy’s suggestion of replacing the deliberative template with the notion of transformative dialogue. In the fourth chapter I briefly discuss Iris Marion Young’s essay ‘Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy’ (2001) to explore the limits of deliberation as a method for solving differends.

The meanings of deliberation and citizen participation

Routledge eBooks, 2023

When political concepts such as deliberation are widely used and involve normative exigencies intended to legitimate institutional reforms, clarification becomes unavoidable. But clarifying is not the same as trying to find and adjudicate an unequivocal (uncontested) meaning. On the contrary, this exercise shows the implications of selecting its core components, something that always takes place within an academic and political context that determines where the emphasis is placed. So much has been written about deliberation, from so many theoretical perspectives, that it is difficult now to map these meanings and to define the criteria by which it can be assessed, whether normatively or empirically. Therefore, instead of explaining differences in the approaches organized in what has become assumed as the various "turns" of deliberative theory, highlighting the changes on the variegated interest of academics adopting a deliberative standpoint (Elstub et al., 2016; Owen and Smith, 2015; Parkinson, 2012 ; Dryzek and Niemeyer, 2010), it may be more fruitful to focus on the common questions they have tried to address. And their main concern is how to decide a fair common good in our pluralistic societies. In this note, we reflect on the normative content of deliberation, focusing on the way authors stressing its "democratic legitimating properties" have understood the main function of constitutions. Constitutions are the instruments that articulate the sovereign will of the People, but they are also the guarantee of its communicative power. This has been reflected in the tension between those defending a non-subjected sovereign will and those insisting on the limitations imposed by some preconditions (recognition of some basic rights and procedures). Therefore, to understand many current debates, it is important, firstly, to highlight how the family of meanings of deliberation has evolved. This genealogy shows us its deep connections with key (contested) issues related to the legitimacy of our democracies: the role and meaning of constitutions that embody them, as well as the construction of "the People" and the institutional expression of the "popular will" that is at their base. In this evolution, secondly, we can see how these meanings involve different images of citizens' role in democratic systems, as well as the right way they can be represented in decision-making processes. This allows us to understand differences in the approaches to deliberation nested on these first articulations of the deliberative stance from those that privilege the participatory narrative. To stress these differences, thirdly, help us identify the normative criteria

New Developments in Deliberative Democracy

Politics, 1996

This paper inspects recent theoretical work in deliberative democracy. It identifies three distinct ways in which such theories attempt to justify their claims for an increase in deliberation. Each has its strengths; each has its implications for practice. If the new deliberative theories are to move beyond a critique of liberal democracy in order to articulate a legitimate and practical politics, the respective gains of these three types must be brought together.