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Deliberative democracy (also called discursive democracy) is a form of democracy in which deliberation is central to legitimate lawmaking. It adopts elements of both consensus decision-making and majority rule. Deliberative democracy differs from traditional democratic theory in that authentic deliberation, not mere voting, is the primary source of a law's legitimacy. Deliberative democracy is compatible with both representative democracy and direct democracy.
The term "deliberative democracy" was originally coined by Joseph M. Bessette in his 1980 work "Deliberative Democracy: The Majority Principle in Republican Government."
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Deliberative democracy holds that, for a democratic decision to be legitimate, it must be preceded by authentic deliberation. "Authentic deliberation" is deliberation among decision-makers that is free from distortions of unequal political power, such as power a decision-maker obtained through economic wealth or the support of interest groups. If the decision-makers cannot reach consensus after authentically deliberating on a proposal, then they vote on the proposal using a form of majority rule.
Deliberative democracy can be practiced by decision-makers in both representative democracies and direct democracies.[1] Principles of deliberative democracy may be applied to both elite societal decision-making bodies, such as legislatures and courts (elitist deliberative democracy), and to groups of lay citizens who are empowered to make decisions (populist deliberative democracy). One purpose of populist deliberative democracy can be to use deliberation among a group of lay citizens to distill a more authentic public opinion about societal issues, but not to create binding law; methods such as the deliberative opinion poll have been designed to achieve this goal. Another purpose of populist deliberative democracy can be to use deliberation among a group of lay citizens to form a public will that creates binding law. If political decisions are made by deliberation but not by the people themselves or their elected representatives, there is no democratic element; the resulting process is called elite deliberation. [2]
Professor James Fiskin, who has designed practical implementations of deliberative democracy for over 15 years in various countries, describes five characteristics essential for legitimate deliberation:[3]
Joshua Cohen, a student of John Rawls, outlined conditions that he thinks constitute the root principles of the theory of deliberative democracy, in the article "Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy" in the 1989 book The Good Polity. He outlines five main features of deliberative democracy, which include:
Cohen presents deliberative democracy as more than a theory of legitimacy, and forms a body of substantive rights around it based on achieving "ideal deliberation":
In Democracy and Liberty, an essay published in 1998, Cohen reiterated many of these points, also emphasizing the concept of "reasonable pluralism" – the acceptance of different, incompatible worldviews and the importance of good faith deliberative efforts to ensure that as far as possible the holders of these views can live together on terms acceptable to all. [5]
A claimed strength of deliberative democratic models is that they are more easily able to incorporate scientific opinion and base policy on outputs of ongoing research, because:
According to the proponents, another strength of deliberative democratic models is that they tend, more than any other model, to generate ideal conditions of impartiality, rationality and knowledge of the relevant facts. The more these conditions are fulfilled, the greater the likelihood that the decisions reached are morally correct. Deliberative democracy has thus an epistemic value: it allows participants to deduce what is morally correct. This view has been prominently held by Carlos Nino.
Studies by Professor James Fishkin and others have found that deliberative democracy tends to produce outcomes which are superior to those in other forms of democracy. [6] [7] Deliberative democracy produces less partisanship and more sympathy with opposing views; more respect for evidence based reasoning rather than opinion; a greater commitment to the decisions taken by those involved; and a greater chance for widely shared consensus to emerge, thus promoting social cohesion between people from different backgrounds. [8] [9] Former diplomat Carne Ross writes that in 2011 that the debates arising from deliberative democracy are also much more civil, collaborative, and evidence-based than the debates in traditional town hall meetings or in internet forums. For Ross, the key reason for this is that in deliberative democracy citizens are empowered by knowledge that their debates will have a measurable impact on society. [10]
A claimed failure of most theories of deliberative democracy is that they do not address the problems of voting. James Fishkin's 1991 work, "Democracy and Deliberation" introduced a way to apply the theory of deliberative democracy to real-world decision making, by way of what he calls the deliberative opinion poll. In the deliberative opinion poll, a statistically representative sample of the nation or a community is gathered to discuss an issue in conditions that further deliberation. The group is then polled, and the results of the poll and the actual deliberation can be used both as a recommending force and in certain circumstances, to replace a vote. Dozens of deliberative opinion polls have been conducted across the United States since his book was published.
The political philosopher Charles Blattberg has criticized deliberative democracy on four grounds: (i) the rules for deliberation that deliberative theorists affirm interfere with, rather than facilitate, good practical reasoning; (ii) deliberative democracy is ideologically biased in favor of liberalism as well as republican over parliamentary democratic systems; (iii) deliberative democrats assert a too-sharp division between just and rational deliberation on the one hand and self-interested and coercive bargaining or negotiation on the other; and (iv) deliberative democrats encourage an adversarial relationship between state and society, one that undermines solidarity between citizens.
Social choice theory presents deliberative democracy with a distinct challenge. Critics of deliberative democracy have pointed to Arrow's impossibility theorem as limiting the use of deliberative democracy. Deliberative theorists (in particular Christian List) have responded with a recent body of research in support of the claim that deliberation actually makes the conditions necessary for Arrow's Theorem to apply less likely.
Deliberative democracy recognizes a conflict of interest between the citizen participating, those affected or victimized by the process being undertaken, and the group-entity that organizes the decision. Thus it usually involves an extensive outreach effort to include marginalized, isolated, ignored groups in decisions, and to extensively document dissent, grounds for dissent, and future predictions of consequences of actions. It focuses as much on the process as the results. In this form it is a complete theory of civics.
The Green Party of the United States refers to its particular proposals for grassroots democracy and electoral reform by this name.
On the other hand, many practitioners of deliberative democracy attempt to be as neutral and open-ended as possible, inviting (or even randomly selecting) people who represent a wide range of views and providing them with balanced materials to guide their discussions. Examples include National Issues Forums, Choices for the 21st Century, study circles, deliberative opinion polls, and the 21st-century town meetings convened by AmericaSpeaks, among others. In these cases, deliberative democracy is not connected to left-wing politics but is intended to create a conversation among people of different philosophies and beliefs.
In Canada, there have been two prominent applications of deliberative democratic models. In 2004, the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform convened a policy jury to consider alternatives to the first-past-the-post electoral systems. In 2007, the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform convened to consider alternative electoral systems in that province.
Similarly, three of Ontario’s Local Health Integration Networks (LHIN) have referred their budget priorities to a policy jury for advice and refinement.
Consensus based decision making essentially similar to deliberative democracy is characteristic of the hunter gather Band societies thought to predominate in pre historical times. As some of these societies became more complex with developments like Division of labour , community based decision making was displaced by various forms of authoritarian rule. The first historical example of democracy arose in Greece as Athenian democracy during the sixth century BC. Athenian democracy was both deliberative and largely direct - some decisions were taken by representatives but many were taken by the people themselves. Athenian democracy came to an end in 322BC. When democracy was revived as a political system about 2000 years later, decisions were made by representatives rather than directly by the people themselves. In a sense though the revived version was deliberative right from its beginnings - In 1774 Edmund Burke made a famous speech where he said Great Britain's parliament is a "deliberative assembly" rather than a place where delegates come together to aggregate the preferences of their electors. [11] [12]Similarly, the Founding Fathers had considered deliberation an essential part of the government they had created for the United States in the late 18th century. [13]
The deliberative element of democracy was not widely studied by academics until the late 20th century. In the US one of the results was calls to make regular representative democracy more deliberative. A different and more fruitful result has been the efforts to revive direct deliberative democracy by promoting projects where political decision making is done by regular people. Some advocates of the direct version, such as Carne Ross are anti statist and see deliberative democracy as an alternative to representative government. The more common view is that direct deliberative democracy can be complementary to traditional government, with Professor James Fishkin being the most prominent practitioner. Since 1994 hundreds of implementations of deliberative democracy have taken place all around the world, with regular people taking decisions on matters such of the allocation of local budgets, or on how to best undertake major projects such as the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. [14] [15] [16]
According to Professor Stephen Tierney, perhaps the earliest noteable example of accademic interest in the deliberative aspects of democracy occured in John Rawls 1971 work A Theory of Justice. [17]
Joseph M. Bessette populised the term "deliberative democracy" in his 1980 work "Deliberative Democracy: The Majority Principle in Republican Government,", going on to elaborate and defend the notion in "The Mild Voice of Reason" (1994). Others contributing to the notion of deliberative democracy include David A. Crocker, Jon Elster, Jürgen Habermas, David Held, Joshua Cohen, John Rawls, Amy Gutmann, Noëlle Mcafee, John Dryzek, Rense Bos, James Fishkin, Jane Mansbridge, Dennis Thompson, Benny Hjern, Hal Koch, Seyla Benhabib, Ethan Leib, Jeffrey K. Tulis David Estlund and Robert B. Talisse.