As the academic debate over the merits of deliberative democracy and deliberative polling heats up following Professor Lupia's criticisms (with more to come shortly) and the response of deliberative polling masterminds Professors Fishkin and Luskin (and part 2), it's time to get to grips with the details.
Here, Dennis Thompson - founding Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Professor of Public Policy and Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy in the Government Department at Harvard University - and Amy Guttmann - President of and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania - begin an introduction to the theories underlying the concept of deliberative democracy:
At the core of deliberative democracy is the idea that citizens and officials must justify any demands for collective action by giving reasons that can be accepted by those who are bound by the action. When citizens morally disagree about public policy, they therefore should deliberate with one other, seeking moral agreement when they can, and maintaining mutual respect when they cannot.
The distinctive character of this conception can be seen more clearly in contrast to the leading alternatives for dealing democratically with moral disagreement - proceduralism and constitutionalism. Proceduralists hope that if citizens agree on some basic rules of the game, they can domesticate the moral disagreement that remains by leaving it to political bargaining or by moving it off the political agenda into private life. But disagreement about procedures is often just as serious as disagreement about substance, usually because the procedural dispute covers a substantive one.
Constitutionalists try to avoid moral disagreement by carving out a sphere of agreement on fundamental values and protecting them from the pressures of ordinary politics by assigning them to an institution like the Supreme Court. But again what should count as a fundamental value, what should be enshrined as a right and how it should be interpreted, is legitimately open to continuing challenge.
Deliberative democracy goes beyond proceduralism and constitutionalism by not only tolerating but encouraging continuing discussion of fundamental values in all phases of the democratic process. Deliberative democracy is the opposite of soundbite democracy, which probably provides a more accurate description of our current political life.
Our soundbite democracy suffers from a deliberative deficit. The din and deadlock of public life - where insults are traded, slogans proclaimed, and self-serving deals are made and unmade - certainly reveal the deep disagreements that pervade public life. But soundbite democracy does nothing to resolve those disagreements on mutually acceptable grounds and still less to help citizens live with their ongoing disagreements in a mutually respectful way.
Democracies cannot avoid disagreement, but citizens, professionals and public officials can deliberate about their disagreements in a way that contributes to the health of a democratic society.
There are at least four important ways or purposes in which deliberation can serve democracy. Each responds to one of four ineradicable sources of moral disagreement...
