Andrew Shorten - Democracy

5
Democracy
O INTRODUCTION
O RIVAL PERSPECTIVES
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O KEY DEBATES
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O FUTURE CHALLENGES
Introduction
Democracy is one of those things that everyone seems to be in favour of. Unfor-
tunately, the glow of approval that surrounds the term can be misleading. This
is because, as Bernard Crick once suggested, ‘[d]emocracy is perhaps the most
promiscuous word in the world of public affairs’ (1962, p. 56). For example, a
person who says that they want more democracy might mean that governments
should be more responsive to citizens, that politicians should be more socially
representative, that people should have more control over political decisions,
or that more institutions should be subject to popular control. Confusingly,
however, someone could also oppose any of these things on democratic grounds.
For instance, being responsive to popular opinion might neglect the interests of
minorities, and a socially representative legislature might need to implement a
quota scheme in place of free and open elections. Similarly, empowering people
to directly control political decisions might impoverish democratic deliberation
by focussing attention on blunt and simplistic referenda questions, and democ-
ratising institutions like the workplace might undermine the freedom of employ-
ers to run their own businesses. Democracy, then, might be something that
nearly everyone favours, but not everyone favours the same kind of democracy.
One way in which scholars have responded to these ambiguities is to
distinguish amongst different ‘models’ of democracy (Held, 2006), such as by
identifying ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ forms of democracy. Direct democracy refers
to popular self-government, whereby citizens rule themselves directly without
transferring that responsibility to elected officials. This requires particular
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108 | C O N T E M P O R A RY P O L I T IC A L T H E O RY
kinds of institutions, such as assemblies where citizens can gather together or
technologies that allow them to express their political preferences. A strong
(but highly exclusive) form of direct democracy was practised by the ancient
Athenians, and something similar continues today in ‘town-hall’ democracies,
such as those found in parts of New England and Switzerland. Occasional
manifestations of direct democracy also occur when governments solicit the
views of citizens in popular referenda. Meanwhile, ‘indirect’ democracy refers
to government by elected officials, and is sometimes called ‘representative
democracy’. As we saw in Chapter 4, the democratic credentials of this model
are often thought to rest on whether politicians have been authorised or are
accountable to those whom they represent.
Although the distinction between direct and indirect democracy can help to
explain some of the disagreements that we began with, it obscures as much as
it illuminates. We can see this by asking if the two models are different versions
of the same ideal, or if they are different ideals. If we say they are manifestations
of the same ideal, then it may appear as if indirect democracy is a less complete
but more feasible version of direct democracy. This might be true, but as we
shall see later, many political theorists think that representative democracy
has some distinctive virtues that cannot be realised in a direct democracy.
Meanwhile, if we say that they are different ideals, then it becomes difficult to
say whether there is a single underlying ideal of democracy. This has important
practical consequences, because many political systems combine features of both
models, for instance by allocating some decision making competences to elected
representatives and reserving others for the people themselves. If we want to
know how to make these systems more democratic, then we need an account of
democracy that can stand apart from these two models.
One way to do this is to map out the various values and principles that we
associate with democracy. For example, all theories of democracy connect it to
the idea of political equality, albeit in different ways. Some political theorists also
associate democracy with freedom, since they believe that only in a democracy
can people be truly free. Although this claim is controversial, it has a strong
intuitive appeal, as we often describe people living under non-democratic rulers
as being unfree. Others connect democracy to political legitimacy, arguing that
only democratic procedures can yield outcomes that are authoritatively binding.
Again, although this is controversial, it is implicit in many everyday sentiments
about the authority of democracy. Furthermore, some political theorists think
that democracy is valuable because it leads to better quality decision making, or
because it enables citizens to cultivate virtuous dispositions.
As will become clear, different theories of democracy configure this cluster of
values and principles in different ways, giving priority to some and excluding
others. Although it is possible to discriminate amongst different approaches to
democracy by mapping out the various ways to arrange these values, this would
not illuminate the full scope of disagreements among contemporary political
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theorists. This is because they disagree not only about the value of democracy,
but also about what kind of an activity democratic politics is. Consequently,
the three rival perspectives we shall explore in this chapter, and which are
summarised in Table 5.1, have been selected because they each capture a
different sense of what it means for citizens to ‘do’ democratic politics.
According to the first view, competitive elections are the key democratic
institution and voting is the fundamental democratic activity. Competitive
democrats believe that democracy is simply a method for selecting political
leaders and that it has nothing to do with identifying policies or institutions to
serve the common good or the public interest. Contemporary advocates tend
to present this theory as a realistic alternative to the other theories we shall
consider, not least because it closely resembles actually existing democracies.
Nevertheless, competitive democracy does have a prescriptive component,
since advocates are concerned about establishing institutional and social
conditions that allow for meaningful political competition amongst parties,
candidates and policies.
Meanwhile, participatory democrats associate the democratic ideal with
living in a participatory society. This is a social form in which citizens
collectively control the institutions that shape their lives, including not only
laws and government, but also the component parts of civil society, such as
the workplace, schools and universities, and even the family. Thus, unlike
competitive democrats, participatory democrats believe that democratic activity
is ongoing rather than sporadic, and involves thoroughgoing and active
engagement rather than simply ticking boxes. The intellectual progenitors of
this view include Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the eighteenth century and Hannah
Arendt in the mid-twentieth century. During its heyday – which spanned the
1960s, 1970s and early 1980s – it was the leading radical alternative to both the
theory of competitive democracy and to the actual practices of Western capitalist
democracies. Although participatory democracy became ‘unfashionable’ during
the 1980s and 1990s (Pateman, 2012, p. 7), it has resurfaced in recent years.
Finally, the theory of deliberative democracy identifies public argument and
reasoning as the key democratic acts. This view has risen to prominence in
recent years, and is certainly the most widely discussed amongst contemporary
political theorists. According to this view, what makes a society democratic
is the quality of deliberation that precedes decision making, rather than the
gathering of votes. A society upholds the ideal of deliberative democracy to the
extent that its members deliberate on an equal basis about how to arrange their
institutions. Deliberation does not simply mean expressing one’s preferences,
but rather involves a collective search for solutions to shared problems, in
which participants aim to reach a rationally motivated consensus by suggesting
and criticising arguments. Importantly, deliberation involves both speaking
and listening, and citizens must be willing to recognise the force of the better
argument, even when doing so goes against their own self-interest.
Table 5.1 Summary of rival perspectives on democracy
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Competitive Participatory Deliberative

Aim To establish legitimate rule Popular control by citizens of their own affairs Rationally motivated consensus about basic
political principles, and perhaps about specific
laws and policies
Site Democracy occurs during election Ideally, all institutions or ‘common activities’ Deliberation may be dispersed throughout civil
campaigns, when politicians position should be democratised, including universities society or it might occur in specially designed fora
themselves in order to capture the largest and the workplace (legislatures, mini publics, deliberative polls)
share of the vote
Frequency Periodic voting at elections More participation is better than less, and More deliberation is better than less, and ideally
ideally participation should be ongoing; all decisions should be reached through
otherwise, one-off ‘participatory experiments’ deliberation; otherwise, ongoing or one-off
are to be favoured ‘deliberative experiments’ are to be favoured
Popular control Political outcomes are not subject to Political and civil society institutions should by Political principles, laws and policies should attract
popular control subject to popular control the consent of those who are subject to them
Citizen attributes Voters are self-interested and may be poorly Participation has a ‘developmental’ aspect, Deliberation forces citizens to adopt an orientation
informed; voter preferences are assumed to transforming the character of citizens, ideally to the common good; good deliberators are
be fixed making them better informed and authentically responsive to reasons and the force of the better
orientated towards the common good argument
Values Respects equality (formal), promotes Respects equality (formal and substantive); Respects equality (formal and substantive); achieves
stability and efficiency; potentially honours (positive) freedom; nourishes virtuous legitimacy; encourages good government; nourishes
responsive to the needs and interests of dispositions (e.g. civility) and skills (e.g. critical virtuous dispositions (e.g. civility) and skills
citizens; nourishes virtuous dispositions reasoning) amongst citizens (e.g. critical reasoning) amongst citizens
amongst citizens (e.g. individuality)
Favourable Adequate political competition; political Approximate material equality; engaged Citizens are informed and rational, and able to
conditions parties offering a range of alternatives citizens; opportunities for meaningful deliberate as equals; adequate opportunities for
democratic participation that will determine meaningful deliberation and to allow citizens to
outcomes influence political outcomes
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Each of these rival perspectives makes different assumptions about the nature
and value of democracy, as well as delivering different recommendations about
how to realise the democratic ideal. We will begin the second half of the chapter
by comparing them across two dimensions. First, we will address the nature of
democracy, focussing especially on whether democratic citizens and societies should
aim to promote the common good. Whilst deliberative and participatory democrats
think that they should, competitive democrats favour a model of democratic
politics that puts the self-interests of voters and politicians at its centre. Second,
we will turn to the value of democracy, and explore some different normative
explanations that have been given in support of democratic institutions. Whilst
some political theorists think that democracy is intrinsically valuable, others believe
that it is valuable because it delivers good outcomes. Each of our rival perspectives
associates democracy with different clusters of values, and comparing them in
this way illustrates some of the fundamental divisions amongst them. Third, since
it has captured the greatest amount of attention amongst contemporary political
theorists, we will look more closely at deliberative democracy, exploring whether
it is a feasible ideal for large and complex societies. Finally, we will conclude the
chapter by addressing a future challenge for democratic theory, which has emerged
from a radical critique of consensus-orientated forms of democratic politics.
Rival perspectives
Competitive democracy
The theory of competitive democracy, which is also sometimes described as
the elitist theory of democracy, was given its classic formulation by Joseph
Schumpeter in the middle of the twentieth century and has been defended more
recently been by Samuel Huntingdon, Richard Posner and Ian Shapiro. Propon-
ents say that democracy is fundamentally a method for establishing legitimate
leadership. For example, Posner describes democratic politics as ‘a competition
among self-interested politicians, constituting a ruling class, for the support of
the people, also assumed to be self-interested, and none too interested or well
informed about politics’ (Posner, 2003, p. 144). From the perspective of the
majority of citizens, popular involvement in politics is limited to periodically
voting at elections. Advocates identify three main attractions of this vision of
democratic politics. First, by granting citizens the right to ‘throw the rascals
out’, competitive democracy empowers people to protect themselves against bad
rulers. Second, because elections tend to be a stable mechanism for transition-
ing between different rulers, competitive democracies are less likely than other
political formations to experience instability and violence. Third, because it
does not expect much in the way of citizen involvement in politics, competitive
democracy is a feasible and realistic theory.
The classic articulation of the competitive theory of democracy can be
found in Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, first published
in 1942. At the centre of his vision of democratic life was an image of multiple
political parties competing against one another in open and regular elections.
Schumpeter, an economist, understood political competition for votes to
operate in a similar fashion to competition in an economic market. Voters
are like consumers, choosing amongst the different policy packages offered by
political parties. However, just as consumers are often poorly informed and
vulnerable to manipulation from advertisers, Schumpeter was also sceptical
about the independence and rationality of voters, at one point concluding that
the ‘electoral mass’ are ‘incapable of action other than a stampede’ (1956, p. 272).
However, not all proponents of competitive democracy paint so bleak a picture
of the electorate. Posner, for example, writes that ‘[t]he people are the repository
of common sense, which, dull though it is, is a barrier to the mad schemes,
whether of social engineering or foreign adventures, hatched by specialists and
intellectuals’ (2003, p. 168).
Schumpeter formally defined democracy as ‘that institutional arrangement
for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to
decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote’ (Schumpeter,
1956, p. 269). He presented this characterisation as a realistic alternative to
what he termed the ‘classical’ theory of democracy, which took democracy
to be ‘that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions which
realises the common good by making the people itself decide issues through
the election of individuals who are to assemble in order to carry out its will’
(1956, p. 250). Schumpeter did not specify which political theorists endorsed
the classical view, and it is not clear that any particular thinker to be found
in the history of ideas really did (Pateman, 1970, p. 17). Nevertheless, his
juxtaposition between the two ideals helps to bring out four of the most
distinctive features of his own view.
First, unlike the classical model, Schumpeter’s definition of democracy does
not include the idea that the people themselves should directly influence or
control political outcomes. Instead, decision making responsibility is allocated
to elected officials, who are entitled to this power because they have captured
a sufficient share of the vote. Thus, Schumpeterian democracy is not a means
to empower the people to ‘control their political leaders’ (Schumpeter, 1956,
p. 272), and it is less rule-by-the-people than rule-of-the-elected-politician
(Schumpeter, 1956, p. 285). Second, although elections are crucial to both
theories, they perform different roles in each. In the classical theory, elections
are an opportunity to define the popular will. For example, if voters prefer anti-
war to pro-war candidates or parties, then this sends a signal to the government
about which decisions have popular support. Meanwhile, Schumpeter denied
that voters could convey meaningful information at elections, which for him
were simply a vehicle for selecting political decision makers. Third, whilst
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the classical theory of democracy assumes that representatives will act more
or less as delegates, advancing the common good as the people themselves
perceive it, Schumpeter instead favours a trustee model, in which politicians act
independently and according to their own judgements (see Chapter 4). Fourth,
whilst the classical model connects democracy to the ideal of realising the
common good, Schumpeter’s model explicitly disavows moralistic or utopian
rhetoric. His was a defiantly ‘realist’ theory, which characterised democracy simply
as ‘a political method, that is to say, a certain type of institutional arrangement for
arriving at political – legal and administrative – decisions’ (1956, p. 242).
Schumpeter supported his controversial theory of democracy by casting doubt
on the rationality of voters, which led him to conclude that the popular will (or
the will of the people) could not serve as a legitimate basis for law, administration
and government. Schumpeter’s scepticism about individual rationality stemmed
from his observation that people tend to respond emotionally rather than
rationally in the political domain. For instance, in a famous passage he claims
that when talking about politics, most citizens exhibit little more than ‘an
indeterminate bundle of vague impulses loosely playing about given slogans
and mistaken impressions’ (1956, pp. 253–4). This was because, on his account,
people only fully grasp things that are fully ‘real’ to them, and this usually does
not include political affairs:
[T]he typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as

soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyses in a way that he
would readily recognise as infantile within the sphere of his real interests.
(Schumpeter, 1956, p. 262)
Because people tend to reason poorly about politics, Schumpeter infers that
they are vulnerable to manipulation and are easily swayed by outside forces.
Consequently, he concludes that what the people believe themselves to want –
what they perceive to be the popular will – is often the product of interest group
and elite manipulation, and lacks an independent rational foundation (1956,
pp. 256–68). Even if the people think they have come to an agreement about
what is in their shared interests, this agreement is likely to have been ‘manufac-
tured’. As Schumpeter puts it:
If all the people can in the short run be ‘fooled’ step by step into something
they do not really want, and if this is not an exceptional case which we could
afford to neglect, then no amount of retrospective common sense will alter
the fact that in reality they neither raise nor decide issues but that the issues
that shape their fate are normally raised and decided for them. (1956, p. 264)
As a consequence, if we are to have democracy then Schumpeter thinks that we

need to give up on the idea that the people themselves should choose what they
want, since they are not capable of making such decisions.
BOX 5.1 VOTER RATIONALITY,
INFORMATION AND INCENTIVES
As we have seen, Schumpeter’s case against ‘classical democracy’ rested partly on what
he perceived to be the intellectual shortcomings of citizens in existing democracies.
One response to Schumpeter’s pessimism – suggested by deliberative democrat James
Fishkin (1991, 1995) and drawing on Anthony Downs (1957) – is to accept that voters in
actually existing democracies are often poorly informed about politics, but to attribute
this to a rational calculation on their part. The logic of this calculation is that since
becoming informed about politics is costly (in terms of the time and effort that must
be invested), and since individuals have only a limited influence on political outcomes,
then it is rational for voters in a competitive democracy to delegate the responsibility
of learning and thinking about politics to their representatives. If this logic is convincing,
then it is unwarranted for Schumpeter to infer that ordinary people are always poor
political thinkers, because increasing voter influence over political outcomes could have
the effect of encouraging voters to become more informed.
Are voters more likely to become informed about politics if they believe that their voice
counts? What does this imply about the theory and practice of democracy?
Schumpeter’s critics have suggested that his view is unduly pessimistic and
contains unjustified inferences. One objection, discussed in Box 5.1, is that
Schumpeter’s depiction of voters as irrational confuses something produced by
a competitive democratic system with an enduring quality of voters themselves.
According to critics who press this objection, it is unwarranted for Schumpeter
to infer that voters could never be capable of making informed and rational
decisions (Parry, 1969). Meanwhile, supposing that Schumpeter’s scepticism
about voter rationality is correct raises another problem, because it would imply
that we should give up on the democratic project entirely. As Held rhetorically
asks: ‘If the electorate is regarded as unable to form reasonable judgements
about pressing political questions, why should it be regarded as capable of
discriminating between alternative sets of leaders?’ (Held, 2006, p. 154).
A final objection is that Schumpeterian democracy is not competitive enough.
For instance, participatory democrat C. B. Macpherson has suggested that
Schumpeter’s view is more ‘oligopolistic’ than democratic, since it allows political
parties a lot of discretion in selecting the range of political alternatives presented to
voters (Macpherson, 1977, p. 89). Similarly, contemporary competitive democrat
Ian Shapiro suggests that ‘Schumpeterian democracy leads to less than fully
adequate political competition’ (Shapiro, 2003a, p. 203). One basis for these
worries is that politicians, at least in many capitalist societies, need to campaign
for financial contributions as well as for votes. As a consequence, the agendas of
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wealthy elites will often influence and constrain the proposals that politicians
are able to offer to the people. In response to this, contemporary proponents
of competitive democracy have suggested that adequate political competition
will require things such as the tighter regulation of political financing and the
dismantling of large political parties (Posner, 2003). Furthermore, according to
one commentator, ‘if competitive democracy is to survive, voters must be provided
with a space in which they can voice their political opinions’ (Kelly, 2012, p. 51).
Shapiro makes a similar point, suggesting that ‘meaningful political competition
requires that there be opposition parties waiting in the wings, criticising the
government and offering voters potential alternatives’ (Shapiro, 2003a, p. 59). At
the very least, this implies that competitive democracies must secure rights to
free speech and political participation. More demandingly, it may also require
citizenship education to ensure that voters can think critically and evaluate the
options that are put before them.
Participatory democracy
Participatory democrats – such as Carole Pateman, Archon Fung, Benjamin

Barber and C. B. Macpherson – regard competitive theories of democracy as
unduly minimalist. Whilst Schumpeter argued that the public should be dis-
couraged from participating in politics between elections – even suggesting that
citizens should refrain from ‘back-seat driving’ (1956, p. 295) – participatory
democrats favour greater public involvement in decision making. For them,
public participation is at the heart of democratic politics, since ‘democracy is
control by citizens of their own affairs’ (Cunningham, 2002, p. 126). Participatory
democrats understand this to mean that citizens must be willing and able to par-
ticipate in decision making at a variety of different levels, not only in the formal
political system but also in everyday institutions such as universities, the work-
place and the family. Ultimately, the aim of participatory democrats is to create a
‘participatory society’ (Pateman, 1970), and this will require radically transform-
ing citizens themselves as well as the social and political structures they inhabit.
Participatory democrats believe that people need to be afforded meaningful
opportunities to participate in collective self-government. However, in many
societies the opportunity to participate often does not seem to translate
into actual participation. In response, participatory democrats argue that
contemporary political disenchantment is the product of existing (competitive)
democratic institutions, which fail to empower citizens (Pateman, 1970,
p. 104). For example, Benjamin Barber suggests that people are ‘apathetic because
they are powerless’ (Barber, 1984, p. 272). Thus, instead of seeing democratic
disenchantment as an obstacle to the participatory project, participatory
democrats see their own proposals as solutions to it.
Notwithstanding this, many participatory democrats accept the Schumpeterian
premise that people will be less interested in ‘high politics’ than in local matters
that impact directly upon them. For instance, Pateman concedes ‘that it is doubtful
if the average citizen will ever be as interested in all the decisions made at national
level as [they] would in those made nearer home’ (1970, p. 110). Consequently,
she argues that we first need to encourage greater participation in ‘local’ forms of
politics, such as in the workplace, and that this could have the effect of enabling
people to ‘better appreciate the connection between the public and the private
spheres’ (1970, p. 110). Ultimately, Pateman accepts that the institutions of ‘high
politics’, even in a participatory society, are likely to resemble those in a competitive
democracy, and she acknowledges the need for parties, political representation
and competitive elections in a mass society. However, and importantly, she argues
that a more participatory society would alter the ‘context within which all political
activity was carried out’ (1970, p. 110). In particular, she thinks that participation
has an educative or developmental aspect. As a consequence, citizens who
participate locally, and who live in a participatory society, will be ‘better able to
assess the performance of representatives at the national level, better equipped to
take decisions of national scope when the opportunity arose to do so, and better
able to weigh up the impact of decisions taken by national representatives on his
own life and immediate surroundings’ (1970, p. 110).
Participatory democrats want citizens to participate in decision making
in a range of institutions, and one of their most significant theoretical
contributions has been to expand the range of sites that might be imagined
to fall under democratic or popular control. For example, participatory
democrats supported the student movements in the 1960s, which sought greater
democratic involvement in matters such as curriculum design and university
administration. Similarly, they have argued for democratising the workplace,
claiming that we need to modify ‘the orthodox authority structure’ and to
move away from the model whereby ‘decision making is the “prerogative” of
management, in which workers play no part’ (Pateman, 1970, p. 68). There
are at least two participatory rationales for democratising the university and
workplace. First, as we have seen, participatory democrats believe that ‘local’
participation trains people to become more effective citizens, thus improving the
quality of ‘national’ politics. Second, these institutions have a profound impact
upon people’s lives, are ‘political systems in their own right’ (Pateman, 1970,
p. 83), and should therefore be subject to democratic control. Pateman puts
special emphasis in this regard on workplace democracy, arguing that ‘industry,
with its relationships of superiority and subordination, is the most “political” of
all areas in which ordinary individuals interact and decisions taken there have a
great effect on the rest of their lives’ (1970, pp. 83–4).
Participatory democrats are sensitive to the fact that managers and
administrators can manipulate the language of participation. For instance,
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Pateman points to the phenomenon of ‘pseudo participation’, giving the example
of a ‘supervisor [who] instead of merely telling the employees of a decision,
allows them to question him about it and to discuss it’ (Pateman, 1970, p. 69).
Although cases such as these may create a ‘feeling’ of participation, they are
not genuinely participatory, if employees have little influence over the decision
itself. In other cases, students and employees may be given some say about how
their organisations are run, but they may not have an equal influence if the
final decision is made by administrators and managers, and Pateman labels this
‘partial participation’ (Pateman, 1970, p. 70). Although partial and even pseudo
participation may have beneficial educative effects, they are inadequate when
considered as forms of democratic control. What democracy really requires,
on Pateman’s account, is ‘full participation’, in which everyone has ‘equal power
to determine the outcome of decisions’ (Pateman, 1970, p. 71). Moreover, full
participation must apply both at the lower level (such as to decisions about
the shop floor and everyday work process) and at the higher level (such as
to decisions about investment strategies and marketing) (Pateman, 1970,
pp. 70–3). Achieving this in the workplace will require a radical overhaul of the
structure of industrial authority, for instance along the lines of workers’ self-
government. Consequently, Pateman dedicates a substantial portion of her book
to examining the feasibility of such a model (Pateman, 1970, ch. 5).
Critics of participatory democracy have drawn attention to its seemingly
‘utopian cast’ (Bohman, 1996, p. 9), in one case suggesting that it is ‘beset by
a fuzzy utopianism that fails to confront limitations of complexity, size and
scale of advanced industrial societies’ (Warren, 1996, p. 242). For example,
many citizens lack both the time and the disposition to learn about and
participate in political life. Conceivably, this problem could be solved by legally
requiring people to participate in politics, but as Habermas notes, this solution
‘has something totalitarian about it’ (Habermas, 1996, p. 120). Furthermore,
mandatory participation would not guarantee that citizens would participate
responsibly, for instance by researching political issues and seriously exploring
the alternatives. Thus, if the project of creating a participatory society is to
be realised, it will require a substantial transformation in citizens themselves.
Although participatory democrats have suggested that the radical alterations in
authority structures they favour will bring about such a change (Macpherson,
1977, pp. 108–14; Barber, 1984, p. 307), it is difficult to see what evidence could
be appealed to in support of this.
Although few contemporary scholars embrace the call for a participatory
society, many of the central themes elaborated by the participatory democrats
continue to inspire political theorists, scientists and activists today, albeit
in a piecemeal fashion. For example, building on the work of participatory
democrats, political scientists have appealed to the idea of ‘social capital’
to explain why democracies are more likely to flourish when citizens are
BOX 5.2 PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING IN
PORTO ALEGRE
Since 1989, an influential experiment in public participation has been attempted in the
Brazilian town of Porto Alegre. There, all citizens are able to contribute to open meetings,
where they can raise local concerns, and which inform decisions about municipal budget
priorities and about the distribution of investments. Studies of this process suggest that
it has brought about some of the transformative effects that political theorists attribute
to participation. First, it seems to have enhanced participants’ awareness of political
procedures and issues. For instance, one participant – reflecting on their experience –
remarked: ‘I had to learn about the process as the meetings took place. The first time
I participated, I was unsure, because there were people there with college degrees, and
I don’t [have one]. But in time I learned’ (Baiocchi, 2005, p. 43). Second, it also seems to
have empowered participants, who came to more vividly appreciate that administrators
and politicians were accountable to them (Hilmer, 2010, p. 57). Third, it also seems to
have led to substantive changes in policy priorities. For example, one observer noted
that the proportion of citizens with access to water and sewage in one district of Porto
Alegre nearly doubled between 1989 and 1996 (Santos, 2006, p. 313).
Should participatory budgeting be attempted in other towns and cities?
actively involved in civic associations (Putnam, 2000). This work has inspired
politicians in Western democracies to advocate a variety of measures intended
to strengthen and encourage participation in civil society. For example, the
World Bank has published a Participation Sourcebook (1996) and a report on
Participatory Budgeting (2008). Likewise, development agencies and NGOs have
become increasingly concerned to promote political participation, and have
become especially interested in participatory budgeting schemes, such as the one
discussed in Box 5.2.
Deliberative democracy
Whilst the profile of participatory theories of democracy has waned in recent

decades, theories of deliberative democracy have flourished. Although the two
approaches are recognisably distinct, important elements of the participatory
project have filtered into deliberative accounts of democracy. For example,
deliberative democrats agree that citizens should make a greater contribution
to decision making than either contemporary democratic formations or the
competitive theory of democracy allow. They also agree that political participa-
tion has a transformative effect, enabling citizens to better perceive their own
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interests and those of their fellow citizens. Furthermore, deliberative democrats
agree that citizens will make more reasoned and intelligent contributions to
political debate if they are convinced that their voice counts. However, although
they are committed to improving the quality of democracy in the real world,
deliberative democrats tend to have less radical ambitions than participatory
democrats, and their theory can perhaps be realised without a thorough over-
haul of existing social and political structures.
At its core, deliberative democracy describes a normative ideal in which
free and equal citizens publicly exchange reasons with one another with a view
to reaching a consensus about some issue or policy, or about the principles
underlying the political system as a whole. The central claim endorsed by its
proponents – such as Joshua Cohen, Seyla Benhabib, Jürgen Habermas, James
Fishkin, John Dryzek, Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson – is that a political
decision or system is legitimate if it can command ‘free and reasoned agreement
among equals’ (Cohen, 1989, p. 22). Thus, a political decision or system is ideally
or maximally legitimate if it attracts the reasoned support of citizens, each of
whom had an equal opportunity to make their voice heard, to listen to their
fellow citizens, and to exchange views and reasons amongst one another. Clearly,
this is an idealised conception, of which contemporary political life – with its
partisan rivalries and messy compromises – often falls short. Nevertheless,
underlying the deliberative ideal is a powerful moral intuition about the nature
of truly democratic association, according to which ‘the justification of the terms
and conditions of association proceeds through public argument and reasoning
among equal citizens’ (Cohen, 1989, p. 21).
Alongside their demanding theory of political legitimacy, deliberative democrats
also have a demanding conception of deliberation. Deliberation is valuable as it
offers citizens a way ‘to live with moral disagreement’ (Gutmann and Thompson,
1996, p. 361). Disagreement in politics applies both to public policy decisions and
to the basic rules and procedures of democratic association (for instance, about
who should participate in political life, or about what constitutionally guaranteed
rights people should have). Political disagreement is often quite deep, involving
not only practical disagreements about how to reach desirable goals but also moral
disagreements about what those goals should be (Gutmann and Thompson, 1996,
pp. 40–41). For instance, whilst we might disagree about what policies are likely
to encourage economic growth, we might also disagree about how important
economic growth is and about how it should be balanced against other political
concerns, such as the welfare of the least advantaged or the protection of the
environment. Deliberation, at least according to its proponents, offers us the best
democratic means to negotiate these deep and complex disagreements.
Four important features of deliberation are especially worth picking out.
First, deliberation is ‘reasoned’ and non-coercive. As Habermas puts it, when
deliberation goes well, then ‘no force except that of the better argument is
exercised’ (1976, p. 108). This means that deliberators must offer arguments
in support of their positions and be open to persuasion. It also means that
domination, manipulation, deception and threats should not influence political
outcomes. Second, parties deliberate on equal terms, and this means both
that the voice of each counts equally and that each participant has an equal
opportunity to influence the outcome. As Cohen puts it:
In ideal deliberation parties are both formally and substantively equal. They
are formally equal in that the rules regulating the procedure do not single
out individuals. Everyone with the deliberative capacities has equal standing
at each stage of the deliberative process. Each can put issues on the agenda,
propose solutions, and offer reasons in support of or in criticism of proposals.
And each has an equal voice in the decision. The participants are substantively
equal in that the existing distribution of power and resources does not shape
their chances to contribute to deliberation, nor does that distribution play an
authoritative role in their deliberation. (Cohen, 1989, p. 23)
The requirement of ‘substantive’ equality might turn out to be quite demanding,

since it requires ensuring that inequalities in power and/or resources do not influ-
ence political discourse. For some critics of deliberative democracy, such as com-
petitive democrat Shapiro, this is hopelessly idealistic, and it ignores the reality
that, fundamentally, ‘politics is about interests and power’ (Shapiro, 1999, p. 36).
Third, deliberative democrats emphasise that deliberation can be transforma-
tive, because it involves speaking and listening. Proponents often contrast this
aspect of their theory with the notion of ‘aggregation’ underlying traditional
conceptions of democracy. According to aggregative views, if we want to resolve
political disagreements democratically, then we should tally up the preferences
of citizens, for instance by convening a referendum or an election. By contrast,
deliberative democrats emphasise that democracy is not just about preference
aggregation, but is also about the processes of preference formation and
transformation. Proper deliberation ought to induce citizens to reflect on their
preferences (Dryzek, 2000, p. 68), and (non-deliberative) democratic procedures
are unsatisfactory if they do not offer citizens a meaningful opportunity to
listen and learn. For instance, suppose that a group of citizens are divided
over a political issue, such as healthcare policy, and imagine that each citizen
begins from a set of preferences about what services should be provided and
how. The significance of deliberation is that in the course of arguing and giving
reasons those citizens may acquire new information, learn about the different
experiences of others, realise that they have neglected important possibilities, or
discover that they have misunderstood how the healthcare system operates. The
process of deliberation, then, should reduce prejudice and ignorance, resulting
in a more informed citizenry who are better equipped to make informed and
well-reasoned political judgements.
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Fourth, deliberative democrats have traditionally required that participants
aim at consensus, which means that they ought to seek to persuade all of their
fellow citizens and not simply a majority of them. Not only does this reduce the
likelihood of citizens invoking self-interested reasons during political debate,
or adopting bargaining strategies to get their own way, but it also ‘forces the
individual to think of what would count as a good reason for all others involved’
(Benhabib, 1996, pp. 71–2). Indeed, because citizens must try to communicate
with (and convince) others who do not share their point of view, who have
different interests and who are moved by different values, then a particular
ideal of reciprocity is built into the idea of consensus-orientated deliberation
(Gutmann and Thompson, 2004). In this context, reciprocity refers to citizens
offering justifications in support of their views that are intelligible to people with
different perspectives. Thus, the arguments that citizens propose to one another
must be comprehensible, stated publicly, and draw upon evidence and beliefs that
others can understand and assess. Some deliberative democrats go even further,
and appeal to an ideal of public reason that is very similar to the one defended by
political liberals, who we examined in Chapter 3. For these authors, deliberators
should evaluate the different proposals by using evidence and reasons that are
acceptable to all, and this means excluding ‘sectarian’ views, whose ‘justification
depends on a particular view of the human good’ (Cohen, 1989, p. 27).
An important objection to deliberative democracy is that it is unfeasible, since
it seemingly requires that all citizens deliberate in an informed and restrained
way about every political decision, and that legitimate decisions attract the
rational support of everyone. Competitive democrats such as Posner, for
example, think that ordinary citizens are generally too muddled, confused and
ignorant to act as deliberative democrats require them to (Posner, 2003, p. 163).
Even if deliberative democrats can overcome this problem, they still face what
Michael Walzer has called the ‘central problem’ of deliberative democracy, which
is that deliberation is not meaningfully possible in large-scale nation-states
(2004, p. 109). As we shall see in the final key debate, deliberative democrats
have recently proposed a variety of solutions to this challenge.
Key debates
Should democracy promote the common good?
Should democratic citizens vote, act and speak on the basis of what they believe
is good for society, or on the basis of what they believe is good for themselves?
Whilst participatory and deliberative democrats argue that democracies should
aim to promote the common good, competitive democrats argue that the idea
of a common good is both conceptually confused and a normatively unattract-
ive basis for democratic politics. Instead, they favour a democratic politics in
which citizens aim only to promote their self-interest. In this key debate we will
compare these alternatives.
The locus classicus for the view that democracy should promote the common
good is Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract, written during the eighteenth
century. Rousseau thought that democratic procedures should ensure that
political rule is based on the ‘general will’, by which he meant principles that
would advance the public interest. This is captured most clearly in the contrast
he draws between the ‘general will’ and the ‘will of all’, which was his shorthand
for the sum of private preferences. The ‘will of all’ can be discerned, for example,
by convening a referendum in which each person votes for whatever outcome
will best satisfy their own self-interest. Although a society governed on this
basis might appear to be democratic, it would allow for the possibility of citizens
voting for policies that they know to be bad for society but good for themselves.
Consequently, a society governed by the ‘will of all’ is unlikely to be democratic
by Rousseau’s standards, because it does not guarantee that government will
advance the public interest.
Rousseau’s alternative to the ‘will of all’ was the ‘general will’. Unfortunately,
his account of this concept is notoriously ambiguous (Bertram, 2012). On the
one hand, it might refer to principles that the people themselves have voted for,
after being asked to reflect on the common good. On the other hand, it might
refer to principles that actually are in the public interest, defined independently
of what the people themselves say. Regardless of this interpretive issue, it is
clear that Rousseau believed that if democratic procedures are to result in
decisions that have the effect of promoting the common good, then citizens
must be moved by a concern to put the public interest above their own narrow
self-interest. This raises a motivational challenge, which on his account could
only be solved in small city states, since only in such settings do citizens share
enough in common to be willing to make sacrifices for one another. For many
political theorists, including competitive democrats, this solution is sufficient to
render Rousseau’s project irrelevant to contemporary political life. Meanwhile,
participatory and deliberative democrats have sought to rehabilitate the idea
that democratic politics could advance the common good, and have explored
different ways in which this could be achieved in large and complex societies.
Some participatory democrats are committed to a very strong interpretation
of what a democratic politics of the common good requires. For example, Barber
suggests that real (or ‘strong’) democracy will require citizens to set aside their
self-interest and to express themselves only in terms of the common good. As he
puts it, ‘[i]n place of “I want Y” the strong democrat must say “Y will be good
for us”’ (Barber, 1984, p. 200). Because many of us do not approach politics in
this way, Barber’s theory encounters a particularly stark motivational challenge.
One solution might be found in the developmental or educative dimensions of
political participation, since participatory democrats believe that experience
of participation has the potential to yield an orientation toward the common
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good amongst citizens. According to them, political participation is not just
about voting, making decisions and protecting one’s interests. Rather, it is a rich,
multifaceted and ongoing activity that requires us to speak and act amongst
people from different backgrounds, with different perspectives, and with
different interests. In the course of doing so, we learn that we need to take those
perspectives and interests seriously if we are to gain the co-operation of others.
Consequently, greater participation could discourage us from pursuing self-
interest and instead induce us to adopt an orientation toward the common good.
This line of argument is endorsed by Pateman, who believes that the experience
of participation ‘attaches the individual to [their] society’ and ‘increases the
feeling among individual citizens that they “belong” in their community’
(Pateman, 1970, p. 27). Thus, for her, a willingness to look towards the
common good (rather than self-interest) ‘is provided by the transformation of
consciousness that is gradually brought about through the participatory process’
(Pateman, 1985, p. 156). Barber makes an even stronger claim, arguing that active
participation in a common life, where people regularly and openly confront
one another’s different desires and interests, can help citizens to form a ‘creative
consensus’ (Barber, 1984, p. 224). For him, widespread and ongoing participation
can both stimulate citizens to search for the common good and help them to find
out what it is. However, as discussed in Box 5.3, some political theorists think
that this solution to the motivational challenge is paradoxical, since it implies that
participatory democracy requires something that it is designed to give us.
BOX 5.3 THE PARADOX OF PARTICIPATORY

DEMOCRACY
Participatory democrats argue that the experience of participation has a developmental
or educative quality, since exercising power with others can increase people’s capacities
as citizens and empower them with a sense of their own political efficacy. For example,
participating in a grassroots campaign might equip someone to become a more
effective political activist or organiser, whilst the experience of talking and arguing
amongst both their fellow campaigners and opponents might help someone to
finesse their debating skills. Furthermore, democratic participation might also enhance
someone’s capacities for empathy and understanding, allowing them to gain a richer
appreciation of how their fellow citizens think and feel. However, an early advocate of
participatory democracy noted a ‘paradox of democratic participation’, which is that
people who have not experienced participation may lack the capacities to be good
democratic citizens (Kaufman, 1968). The paradox is that a participatory society seems
to require something of its members which they currently lack, and which they can only
gain by participating in a good participatory society.
How much of a problem is the paradox of participatory democracy? Can it be solved?

Meanwhile, deliberative democrats argue that deliberation, properly
understood, already has an orientation toward the common good built into it.
This follows from their conception of deliberation, in which participants are
required to justify themselves to one another whilst aiming to reach a rational
consensus. Thus, although citizens may begin from different standpoints,
with competing interests and preferences, once they start trying to convince
their fellow citizens they have no choice but to reason ‘from the point of
view of others’ (Benhabib, 1992, pp. 9–10). Indeed, at least according to some
deliberative democrats, appealing to self-interest will often be incompatible with
a proper commitment to deliberation:
There are certain arguments that simply cannot be stated publicly. In a political
debate it is pragmatically impossible to argue that a given solution should be
chosen just because it is good for oneself. By the very act of engaging in a
public debate – by arguing rather than bargaining – one has ruled out the
possibility of invoking such reasons. (Elster, 1986, pp. 112–13)
Consequently, deliberative democrats believe that ‘through public deliberation,

citizens transform their preferences according to public-minded ends, and
reason together about the nature of those ends and the best means to realize
them’ (Young, 1996, pp. 120–1).
Like theorists of participatory democracy, then, deliberative democrats believe
that properly constructed democratic procedures can help to ‘transform’ citizens,
encouraging them to set aside considerations of self-interest and instead to focus
on the interests we share in common. One possible advantage of the deliberative
conception, at least as described so far, is that it supplies a clearer explanation as
to why citizens should adopt an orientation toward the common good. This is
because whilst self-interested participation is still participation – albeit possibly
of a bad kind – self-interested deliberation would not count as real deliberation
at all. However, as discussed in Box 5.4, some recent formulations of deliberative
democracy have questioned the assumption that deliberation either can or
should exclude appeals to self-interest, instead suggesting that at least some self-
interested claims might have a legitimate role to play in political deliberation.
By contrast, proponents of competitive democracy think it is conceptually
muddled to require voters to be guided by a concern to promote the common
good. In Schumpeter’s case, this was because – much like the modus vivendi and
agonistic pluralists we discussed in Chapter 3 – he believed that people have
radically different wants, interests, values and needs. On his account, these result in
profound disagreements that cannot be overcome through rational argument and
persuasion, since disagreements about values are ‘beyond the range of mere logic’
(Schumpeter, 1956, p. 251). The lesson that Schumpeter draws from this is that:
[There is] no such thing as a uniquely determined common good that

all people could agree on or be made to agree on by the force of rational
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BOX 5.4 DELIBERATION AND SELF-INTEREST
In strict formulations of deliberative democracy, deliberators are not permitted to
appeal to their own interests and must instead adopt an impersonal or dispassionate
point of view. Some philosophers propose relaxing this requirement. For example,
Simone Chambers allows for self-interested deliberators, provided they introduce
such concerns with a ‘public spirited attitude’ (Chambers, 2003, p. 318). Similarly, Jane
Mansbridge and her co-authors say that deliberative democracy should accommodate
‘suitably constrained forms of self-interest’ (Mansbridge et al., 2010, p. 66). Deliberative
democrats have given two reasons for incorporating self-interest. First, ‘statements
of self-interest’ should be permitted so that deliberators can ‘present information’
to one another (Cohen and Rogers, 2003, p. 247). For example, a deliberator might
(self-interestedly) explain to their fellow citizens that some proposed policy will
disproportionately burden the members of their group (Pettit, 2006, p. 100). Second,
and more controversially, appeals to self-interest may serve to help justify some policy
or principle. For instance, we might think that individual self-interest is ‘worthy of being
counted’ on the grounds that satisfying an individual’s interests will be good for them
(Mansbridge et al., 2010, p. 76). To illustrate this, Mansbridge and her co-authors discuss
the following example:
One member of a married couple has a job offer in Chicago and the other an offer in
Boston. It would distort their communication and decision-making to ‘force’ them to
discuss the issues solely in terms of what is good for ‘us’, e.g., for the ‘marriage’ or for
the children. Only by recognizing their self-interests and the conflict between them
can the couple negotiate a fair … agreement. In the good that they forge through
their deliberative negotiation, their self-interested claims are intrinsically justifiable,
that is, self-justifying in the absence of negating considerations. (Mansbridge et al.,
2010, p. 76)
What role, if any, should self-interest play in deliberative democracy?
argument. This is due not primarily to the fact that some people may want
things other than the common good but to the much more fundamental fact
that to different individuals and groups the common good is bound to mean
different things. (Schumpeter, 1956, p. 251)
He then goes on to suggest that even if citizens did unanimously agree to par-
ticular principles, we should not expect this agreement to yield further consen-
sus about concrete policy proposals. For instance, each citizen might accept that
the state should secure adequate health for its citizens, but they might continue
to disagree about what treatment options should be available, or about whether
medical insurance should be mandatory, and so forth.
How far reaching is Schumpeter’s critique? At the very least, his position
is that it is unfeasible to expect democratic procedures to yield an agreement
about the common good, because there is no way to combine people’s different
preferences, opinions and desires to form something ‘that could in any
convincing sense be called the will of the people’ (1956, p. 254). In addition
to this, Schumpeter advances the more controversial claim that there is no
such thing as a common good, as people have radically different wants, needs
and desires. Moreover, at least according to some scholars, Schumpeter also
endorses an even stronger claim, which is that a democratic politics orientated
around the common good might be dangerous, as it could have the effect of
marginalising minority perspectives that do not easily fall in step with majority
conceptions of the common good (Held, 2006, p. 148). This final claim has been
taken up by others and directed against participatory theories of democracy. For
example, Frank Cunningham suggests that ‘there would be enormous pressure
to conform to majority sentiment in a participatory-democratic community’
because ‘[m]inority dissent is easily taken to be evidence of a lack of will or
ability to seek consensus and hence of being a bad citizen’ (2002, p. 134).
Given this scepticism about the common good, it is unsurprising that the logic
of competitive democracy points towards a vision of political life based on ‘the
will of all’ rather than the ‘general will’. For competitive democrats, democratic
citizens should act on the basis of self-interest and behave like consumers, voting
for whichever candidate or party promises to satisfy most of their (individual)
preferences. One problem with this type of view, however, is that it fits uneasily
alongside many of our considered views about what we are doing when we
engage in democratic politics, which involves arguing with others about what it
is that we should do. For instance, according to the democratic pragmatist Robert
Talisse, competitive democrats misrepresent many of the ordinary and mundane
features of democratic practice. To support this, he points out that ‘citizens
generally take their political beliefs to stand in need of arguments and evidence,
they often believe their opponents mistaken rather than simply craven, and they
think that political argument is possible as something distinct from political
bargaining’ (Talisse, 2007, p. 110). Thus, a conception of democracy in which
politics is conducted purely on the basis of self-interest, without reference to the
idea of the common good, is descriptively inadequate, since it does not capture
what most of us think we are doing during political discussion and debate.
Why is democracy valuable?

Explaining why democracy is morally desirable is crucial for any theory of
democracy, because such an account is needed to inform decisions about how
democratic procedures and institutions should be designed or reformed. In this
key debate we will begin by examining two different ways in which democracy
might be valuable, before going on to explore some of the different explan-
ations of democracy’s value that have been given by proponents of our three
rival perspectives.
DEMO CRACY | 127
One way in which democracy could be valuable is instrumentally. Something
has instrumental value if it is ‘valued for the sake of something else’ (Korsgaard,
1996, p. 250). For example, money and cleaning are instrumentally valuable,
since although they have no value in themselves, having or doing them allows
you to bring about some desirable state of affairs. Thus, to describe democracy
as instrumentally valuable is to imply that it is a means to achieve some good
end or consequence, such as better quality government or political stability. If we
discovered that democracy did not lead to these outcomes, or if we realised that
these outcomes were not themselves valuable, then they would no longer count as
instrumental reasons for valuing democracy. Another way in which democracy
might be valuable is intrinsically. For example, suppose we find that democracy
has destabilising effects, perhaps because the people keep electing incompetent
governments. We might nevertheless say that it was good that the people had the
opportunity to choose their government. This might be because democracy has
‘goodness in itself ’ (Korsgaard, 1996, p. 250). If we say that democracy is intrinsically
valuable, then we imply that it is valuable regardless of its consequences.
An important argument for the conclusion that democracy is intrinsically
valuable, which can be endorsed by all three rival perspectives, is that it is
the only system of political rule that treats people as equals (Waldron, 1999).
Importantly, however, each of our rival perspectives interprets political equality
differently. Whilst competitive democrats think that it is satisfied provided
that votes are distributed equally, participatory democrats tend to argue that
certain material preconditions must be satisfied if people are to participate
on equal terms. For example, unless people are sufficiently educated and have
enough leisure time, they are unlikely to be able to defend their interests against
those who occupy more fortunate social positions. Similarly, as we have seen,
deliberative democrats argue that proper deliberation presupposes formal and
substantive kinds of equality, meaning that, for example, citizens should both be
able to shape the political agenda and to exercise meaningful influence over the
outcome of deliberations. One implication of these different interpretations, as
we shall see below, is that proponents of one conception of democracy can use
their understanding of political equality to criticise other conceptions as being
not truly democratic.
Let us now turn to competitive theories of democracy. Schumpeter denied that
democracy could possess any intrinsic value because he thought it was merely
a political ‘method’ – ‘like a steam engine or a disinfectant’ (Schumpeter, 1956,
p. 266) – and ‘incapable of being an end in itself ’ (1956, p. 242). He was also
unsympathetic to the claim that democracy is instrumentally valuable. Although
he noted that democrats themselves are often ‘convinced that democracy will
guarantee … ideals and interests such as freedom of conscience and speech,
justice, decent government and so on’, he pointed out that the ‘democratic
method’ could also be used to support various immoral practices, such as ‘the
persecution of Christians, the burning of witches, and the slaughtering of Jews’
(1956, p. 242). Thus, as one commentator summarises it, Schumpeter’s own view
was that ‘[d]emocracy is just a method, neither valuable in itself nor tending to
right action or good ends’ (Mackie, 2009, p. 129).
Many of Schumpeter’s critics concur that his conception of democracy cannot
be valuable. For example, Amy Gutmann and Robert Dahl have both pointed
out that Schumpeter did not require a democracy to grant everyone the vote or
to count each vote equally. Because he was not committed to political equality,
then (incredibly) ‘by Schumpeter’s understanding, South Africa in 1992 (with
an exclusively white electorate) [was] democratic and Stalinist Russia would
[have been democratic] if only members of the Communist Party could vote’
(Gutmann, 2007, p. 522; see also Dahl, 1989, pp. 121–2).
Notwithstanding this, recent defenders of competitive democracy, who
generally are committed to political equality, have suggested that political
competition is instrumentally valuable because it supports important goods.
For instance, Shapiro describes it as ‘truth’s ally’ (Shapiro, 2003b, p. 200) because
political competition provides a mechanism to hold politicians to account,
allowing opposition parties to publicly identify when governments ‘fail to live
up to their promises and misrepresent reality’ (Shapiro, 2003b, p. 200). Similarly,
Posner suggests that political competition encourages governments to be
responsive to the interests of the electorate and to avoid unpopular policies, since
they face the threat of electoral ‘punishment’ (Posner, 2003, p. 182). Additionally,
political competition could also perform an important role in preserving stability,
ensuring peaceful transitions from one government to the next, if citizens
generally perceive the institutions of competitive democracy to be legitimate.
Another grounds for believing that competitive democracy is instrumentally
valuable is that it fosters important moral or civic virtues (see Chapter 2), a
possibility that has been suggested by George Kateb. His account begins from
the observation that competitive electoral systems tend to have the effect of
‘chastening’, ‘demystifying’ and ‘desacralizing’ political authority by continuously
reasserting its ‘artificial’ nature:
When political authority is, at every moment, a temporary and conditional

grant, regularly revocable … a major moral distinctiveness enters the life
of society. Society is taught – society teaches itself – a fundamental lesson
about the nature of all authority … The overall lesson can be expressed in a
number of ways. Most commonly, we speak of a pervasive skepticism toward
authority; a reluctance to defer; a conviction that those who wield authority
must themselves be skeptical toward their roles and themselves and that
necessary authority must be wielded in a way that inflicts minimum damage
on the moral equality of all people. Furthermore, there is a tendency to try to
do without authority wherever possible or to disperse or disguise it, and thus
to soften it. (Kateb, 1981, p. 358)
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According to Kateb, ‘chastened’ political authority, of the kind that one might
expect to find in a competitive democracy, nourishes particular political dis-
positions, and these ‘spill over’ into our non-political (or everyday) lives. For
example, he suggests that electoral democracy supports ‘independence of spirit’
by encouraging ‘individuals to be less fearful of all authority’ (1981, p. 360). Sim-
ilarly, he thinks that political competition encourages tolerance or even affection
for diversity, discouraging the belief that there is a single best way to lead one’s
life, or a single best answer to a difficult problem. Thus, if Kateb is right, then
competitive democracy might be valuable because of the positive effects it has
on the moral qualities of society and its members.
As we have seen, participatory and deliberative democrats have reached similar
sounding conclusions, since they also believe that meaningful involvement
in politics could have an educative or developmental aspect. For example,
political participation might be intellectually edifying, because it requires us to
solve collective problems by thinking through different issues, gathering and
analysing information, listening and responding to arguments, presenting our
views clearly, and so forth. Moreover, political participation or deliberation that
is orientated around the search for a common good might improve our moral
characters, since it requires us to address the needs of others, to treat them
respectfully, to think about what is good for them, and to modify our own claims
in light of their interests.
However, competitive, participatory and deliberative democracies might
conceivably yield different kinds of moral virtues. For example, Kateb suggests
that forms of political engagement which are orientated around a search for
the common good could lead to ‘modesty, denial of gratification, obedience to
legally constituted authority…, self-control … and a decent propriety’ (Kateb,
1981, p. 387). These virtues, clearly, are different to the independence of spirit
and tolerance that he thinks would be engendered by self-interested forms of
engagement in a competitive democracy. Moreover, the virtues encouraged by
one form of democratic practice might be ‘gravely weakened’ by another form of
democracy (Kateb, 1981, p. 367). This suggests that one way to arbitrate between
the rival perspectives is to reflect on which does the best job of stimulating
genuine human excellences.
Some participatory democrats have also argued that participatory democracy
is intrinsically valuable, suggesting at least three different arguments to this effect.
First, as discussed in Box 5.5, participatory democracy could be intrinsically
valuable because the activity of political participation is itself intrinsically
valuable. Second, as discussed earlier, participatory democracy could be
intrinsically valuable because it is the only form of decision making that treats
people as equals. Third, as we shall discuss now, participatory democracy could
be intrinsically valuable because it is the only form of political organisation that
respects human freedom.
BOX 5.5 PARTICIPATION AND THE GOOD LIFE
Some civic republicans believe that political participation represents ‘the highest form
of human living-together that most individuals can aspire to’ (Oldfield, 1990, p. 6). This
view depends on a distinctive conception of the human excellences, in which political
participation itself is understood to be part of each person’s individual good. If political
participation is something that everyone should find rewarding and valuable, then a life
without it is stunted, inadequate or incomplete. However, Mark Warren characterises
the idea that ‘democratic participation is an attractive activity, one that people would
naturally choose if only they had the opportunity’ as a ‘romantic dogma’ (Warren, 1996,
p. 243). Similarly, Philip Pettit, a contemporary republican, describes this demanding
vision of citizenship as ‘romantic’ and ‘other-worldly’ (Pettit, 2012, p. 227). Certainly,
in contemporary liberal democracies, many citizens seem to lack the disposition to
learn about and participate in politics, in many cases because they find other things
in life more rewarding (such as their families, careers and hobbies). Consequently, Will
Kymlicka and Wayne Norman conclude that the participatory ideal is ‘markedly at odds
with the way most people in the modern world understand both citizenship and the
good life’ (1994, p. 362).
Must participatory democrats be committed to the idea that participation is part of the
good life? How plausible is this idea?
The connections between political participation and freedom were first

suggested by Rousseau, who argued that a people can only be truly free if
they live together under laws they have given to themselves. The attraction
of this view is that it brings out the difference between a people collectively
participating in self-government and a people having their affairs arranged for
them, for instance by an elite or by an occupying power. For many people, only
the first kind of society respects freedom. However, Rousseau’s own argument
has attracted controversy, especially because it relies on his ambiguous notion
of a ‘general will’. One recent attempt to rehabilitate Rousseau’s position has
been suggested by Carol Gould (1988), who favours a rich form of participatory
democracy on the grounds that it supports a conception of freedom as self-
development. On her account, freedom refers to ‘the freedom to develop oneself
through one’s actions’ (Gould, 1988, p. 40). Because we each have an equal
right to the ‘conditions of self-development’ (1988, p. 60), then ‘every person
who engages in a common activity with others has an equal right to participate
in making decisions concerning such activity’ (1988, p. 84). To put her point
another way, unless people can shape the institutions that in turn shape their
self-development, they cannot truly be free. The implication is that outside of
a participatory society human beings are not (and cannot be) free to develop
themselves. Like Rousseau, Gould endorses a controversial ‘positive’ conception
of freedom, which we shall examine more fully in Chapter 7.
DEMO CRACY | 131
Finally, deliberative democrats have developed two distinctive arguments to
explain why deliberation is morally desirable. According to the first of these,
deliberation is instrumentally valuable as it results in better quality decisions.
For example, according to Gutmann and Thompson:
A well-constituted deliberative forum provides an opportunity for advancing

both individual and collective understanding. Through the give-and-take of
argument, participants can learn from each other, come to recognize their
individual and collective misapprehensions, and develop new views and
policies that can more successfully withstand critical scrutiny. When citizens …
deliberate, they can expand their knowledge, including both their self-
understanding and their collective understanding of what will best serve their
fellow citizens. (Gutmann and Thompson, 2004, p. 12)
According to this argument, deliberation – at least when conducted appropri-

ately – transforms and enhances our understanding of political issues, resulting
in better quality decisions. As discussed in Box 5.6, empirical evidence derived
BOX 5.6 THE BENEFITS OF DELIBERATION

Deliberative democrats believe that deliberation has transformative and beneficial
effects. For example, John Dryzek suggests that studies of citizens’ juries and assemblies
reveal that ‘given the opportunity, ordinary citizens can make good deliberators’ and
that ‘in many cases individuals come in with little or no interest or capability in politics,
yet leave as energized and competent actors’ (Dryzek, 2010, p. 158). Moreover, he
thinks that these benefits obtain even when citizens are asked to deliberate about
difficult and contested political issues (Dryzek, 2010, p. 158). One source of evidence
for this conclusion has been provided by James Fishkin, who has conducted a number
of ‘deliberative polls’, which he describes as follows:
Take a national random sample of the electorate and transport those people from all
over the country to a single place. Immerse the sample in the issues, with carefully
balanced briefing materials, with intensive discussions in small groups, and with the
chance to question competing experts and politicians. At the end of several days
of working through the issues face to face, poll the participants in detail. (Fishkin,
1995, p. 162)
By comparing polls from before and after deliberation, Fishkin has found that ‘it is
routine to find large and statistically significant changes of opinion’ (2009, p. 26). In
particular, he has found that after the process of deliberation, the judgements of citizens
tend to be more informed and considered (Fishkin, 2009, p. 35).
Suppose that deliberators routinely alter their judgements after deliberation – should
democrats accord their later judgements greater weight or credibility?
from small-scale deliberative experiments seems to support this conclusion.
However, some political theorists believe that deliberation is likely to result in
worse decisions. Rousseau, for example, thought that it would open the door to
factionalism and manipulation, and instead proposed that citizens should reason
about politics in isolation from one another. More recently, Cass Sunstein has
suggested that the effects of deliberation are often negative, since rather than
encouraging people towards consensus on the common good, deliberation tends
to entrench and widen disagreements, because people are more likely to deliber-
ate amongst those with whom they already agree (Sunstein, 2002).
The second distinctively deliberative argument in favour of democracy
says that deliberative democracy is intrinsically valuable because it manifests
a correct understanding of the ideal of political justification. Deliberative
democrats hold that the ‘justification of the exercise of collective political power
is to proceed on the basis of a free public reasoning among equals’ (Cohen,
1996, p. 99). This means that not all putatively democratic decisions are binding
on those who are subject to them – just as laws enforced by dictators lack
democratic legitimacy, so too do ostensibly democratic laws that have been
arrived at by non-deliberative procedures. For deliberative democrats, only some
kinds of (deliberative) democratic procedure are adequate to justify legitimate
and binding decisions.
In summary, there are a number of different instrumental grounds to
favour democracy. For instance, democracy might encourage transparency,
responsiveness and stability, or it might nourish morally desirable character traits
or improve the quality of decision making. If one (or more) of these grounds
really is adequate to justify democracy, then proponents must demonstrate that
democracies consistently and reliably promote these consequences. A different
way to argue for the value of democracy is to say that it is intrinsically valuable,
for instance by appealing to equality, freedom or political legitimacy. Although
I have suggested that some of these instrumental and intrinsic reasons ‘fit’ more
closely with one or another of the rival perspectives, in principle proponents of
all three theories could lay claim to them. Crucially, whatever understanding
of the value of democracy one settles on will have prescriptive implications,
suggesting ways in which our democratic institutions need reform.
Is deliberative democracy possible?
This final key debate explores two serious challenges to the prospects of imple-
menting deliberative democracy: that deliberation may be impossible in large and
complex societies, and that the ideal of deliberation may be unrealistically narrow
and restrictive. The first challenge has been described as the ‘scale’ problem
(Dryzek, 2010, p. 24), which Michael Walzer captures by suggesting that ‘deliber-
ation is not an activity for the demos … [since] 300 million of them, or even one
DEMO CRACY | 133
million or a hundred thousand, can’t plausibly reason together’ (2004, p. 109).
We will begin by exploring three different strategies for addressing this problem.
The first strategy is to relax one or another of the conditions for political
legitimacy. Recall, deliberative democrats have a demanding theory of political
legitimacy, according to which only laws that meet with the reasoned assent of
all citizens in a deliberative setting are legitimate (Habermas, 1996, p. 110). Since
it would be difficult for a whole society to realise this demanding standard, some
deliberative democrats propose lowering the bar. One possibility for doing so is
to replace the requirement that laws command everyone’s actual agreement with
a test of hypothetical consent. This has been suggested by Cohen, who believes
that ‘outcomes are legitimate if and only if they could be the object of a free and
reasoned agreement among equals’ (1989, p. 22, emphasis added). Thus, a law
that people could assent to, even if they in fact did not, might still be legitimate,
provided that the deliberative procedures were appropriately designed and
that participants proceeded by aiming ‘to find reasons that are persuasive to
all’ (Cohen, 1989, p. 23). However, although this solution solves the feasibility
problem, it struggles to explain why people who disagreed with a decision
should regard it as binding upon them.
Another possibility is to relax the requirement that all political decisions be
reached through a discursive process, and to retain the demanding standards of
deliberative democracy only for matters of basic justice, such as when society
is deciding on its constitutional essentials (Rawls, 1996). According to some
scholars, society-wide deliberation can and does occur at critical historical
moments. For example, writing about the US, Bruce Ackerman (1991) suggests
that the debates surrounding the constitutional founding, the reconstruction
amendments and the New Deal all qualify as deliberative. However, other
scholars have also observed that ‘high politics’ is often anything but deliberative.
For example, Dryzek argues that the Australian debates about whether to replace
the British monarch with a republic were deliberative failures (Dryzek, 2010,
p. 25). Moreover, even if ‘high politics’ can be adequately deliberative, restricting
deliberation to these occasions would arguably empty deliberative democracy of
much of its radical promise.
A further possibility is to relax the condition that all citizens must participate
in deliberation, either by making participation voluntary or by establishing ‘mini-
publics’. The first of these alternatives has been suggested by Bernard Manin, who
argues that deliberative outcomes are legitimate provided that ‘the right of all to
participate in deliberation’ is satisfied (Manin, 1987, p. 352). On this view, the
outcomes of a deliberative procedure can justifiably be imposed on those who did
not participate, provided that they had the opportunity to do so. Although this
conceivably addresses the scale problem, it comes at the cost of accepting (and even
requiring!) a large dose of political apathy. The second alternative, discussed in Box
5.7, is to limit participation to a small representative sample of the population, for
example one that has been selected by lot. In support of this, Fishkin has argued
BOX 5.7 MINI-PUBLICS AND THE SCALE
PROBLEM
Suppose an advanced democratic country were to create a ‘minipopulus’ consisting
of perhaps a thousand citizens randomly selected out of the entire demos. Its task
would be to deliberate, for a year perhaps, on an issue and then to announce its
choices. The members of the minipopulus could ‘meet’ by telecommunications. One
minipopulus could decide on the agenda of issues, while another might concern itself
with a major issue. Thus, one minipopulus could exist for each major issue on the
agenda. A minipopulus could exist at any level of government national, state, or local.
It could be attended – again by telecommunications – by an advisory committee
of scholars and specialists and by an administrative staff. It could hold hearings,
commission research, and engage in debate and discussion. (Dahl, 1989, p. 340)
Dahl envisaged the minipopulus serving as a complement to ordinary democratic
procedures, providing an additional input. Now generally referred to as a mini-public,
versions of this innovation have been attempted in various parts of the world (see
Smith, 2009 for a survey). For example, the British Columbia Citizens Assembly met
over the course of 2004. There, a random sample of voters discussed their electoral
system and put forward their recommendations for reform to a popular (and binding)
referendum. Similar experiments were attempted in Iceland (in 2009–10) and Ireland
(in 2013–14), although both of these involved the participation of elected politicians.
Can ‘mini-publics’ solve deliberative democracy’s scale problem?
that the results of properly designed ‘deliberative polls’ offer ‘a representation of the
considered judgements of the public – the views the entire public would come to
if it had the same experience of behaving more like ideal citizens immersed in the
issues for an extended period’ (1995, p. 162). Thus, he suggests that deliberative
polls have a ‘recommending force’. However, as Fishkin notes, it is not clear
whether such polls could (or should) be binding on the rest of society.
A different strategy for overcoming the ‘scale’ problem is to adopt a ‘systemic’
perspective, focussing on the outcomes of the system as a whole rather than the
procedures adopted within particular deliberative institutions (Habermas, 1996;
Parkinson, 2006; Goodin, 2008; Parkinson and Mansbridge, 2009). Proponents
of this approach emphasise that deliberation can and does occur at multiple
sites within the political system, such as, for example, legislatures, town halls,
bureaucracies, political parties, trade unions, interest groups, new and traditional
forms of media, universities, petitions, protests, elections, citizens’ juries and
public hearings. These different sites encourage different forms of deliberation,
are accessible to different kinds of deliberators, and should be held to different
standards of legitimacy. What matters is that they are interdependent, in the
sense that what happens in one site influences what happens elsewhere.
DEMO CRACY | 135
The systemic approach seems promising, since it begins by identifying existing
and potential deliberative sites and moves outwards to ask whether – as a whole –
the political system encourages ‘a talk-based approach to political conflict and
problem-solving’ (Mansbridge et al., 2010, pp. 4–5). Although many of the
individual sites within a deliberative system are unlikely to satisfy the strict
procedural requirements of deliberative democracy, taken as a whole they might
nevertheless contribute to achieving deliberative outcomes. This would be the
case if we were able to conclude that the decisions reached are the product of
informed judgement and reflection, and that they are acceptable to citizens who
each had an opportunity to make their voice heard by participating in one or
another deliberative site. If we conclude that our current systems fail to meet this
standard, for instance because some citizens had restricted access to deliberative
fora, or because the decisions made are not the product of informed judgement,
then this can be addressed by adjusting our institutional arrangements.
A final strategy for addressing the ‘scale’ problem has been suggested by
Robert Goodin, who has proposed a theory of ‘democratic deliberation from
within’ (Goodin, 2003, pp. 169–93). Goodin argues that instead of trying
to facilitate society-wide democratic conversations, deliberative democrats
should focus on the quality of the deliberation that occurs within individual
minds. He points out that good deliberators internalise the perspective of
others, empathising with them and engaging in an imaginary dialogue. The
importance of empathy has also been stressed by other democratic theorists,
since unless citizens actively listen to one another, and take into account their
different interests, beliefs and feelings, then democracy will be unable to ‘fulfil
its promise to give equal consideration to all citizens’ (Morrell, 2010, p. 12).
Distinctively, Goodin thinks that some of the merits of deliberative democracy
can be realised even when others are not ‘conversationally present’, provided
that they are ‘imaginatively present’. One potential implication of this is that
actual deliberation could play a more modest role in political life, if it was
complemented by ‘deliberation from within’. If this strategy is to work, then
it will be crucial that citizens are actually able to imaginatively construct the
lives of others, free from prejudice and distortion. Interestingly, this means that
deliberative democrats would need to pay greater attention to the production
and distribution of things such as ‘the literary, visual, and performing arts’
(Goodin, 2003, p. 171).
The second serious challenge to the feasibility of deliberative democracy is
that the ideal of deliberation itself might be too narrow and restrictive. As we
have seen, in its earliest formulations, deliberative democracy was an idealistic
and demanding theory, and deliberation itself was presented as a highly stylised
form of communication, distinct from familiar forms of political speech. Good
deliberators were required to satisfy a demanding list of conditions, such as
speaking truthfully and sincerely, justifying their preferences with reasons and
arguments, treating their fellow citizens respectfully, listening to one another’s
views in an open-minded way, and yielding to the force of the better argument.
Proponents were aware that such manifestations ‘have an improbable character
and are like islands in the ocean of everyday praxis’ (Habermas, 1996, p. 323).
Nevertheless, their point was that a demanding ideal of deliberation was required
for us to envisage the form a truly democratic politics might take.
Many political theorists who are otherwise sympathetic to the deliberative
project believe that this idealistic conception of deliberation is excessively
narrow. For example, it seems to neglect the healthy contribution to political
discourse that non-deliberative forms of political communication often make,
such as protests and demonstrations (Warren, 2007, p. 278). Similarly, it seems
to ignore the role and significance of passions and emotions in democratic life
(Walzer, 2004; Hall, 2007; Krause, 2008). Accounting for these would arguably
require a much wider conception of what qualifies as deliberation. For example,
if citizens are to empathetically engage with the lived experiences and political
preferences of one another, then narratives and storytelling might sometimes be
more important than reasons and arguments. To illustrate this, Michael Morrell
has suggested that since ‘white people tend to have few experiences analogous
to living as a black person in a racist society’, they are more likely to empathise
with the experiences of black people if they listen to their stories than if they are
exposed to abstract arguments (Morrell, 2010, p. 142).
Another objection to the ideal of deliberation has been suggested by difference
theorists (see Chapter 2), who have criticised the ‘identification of reasonable
open public debate with polite, orderly, dispassionate, gentlemanly argument’
(Young, 2000, p. 49). On their account, a restrictive model of deliberation could
turn out to disadvantage socially marginalised groups. For instance, according
to Lynn Sanders:
[T]aking deliberation as a signal of democratic practice paradoxically works

undemocratically, discrediting on seemingly democratic grounds the views of
those who are less likely to present their arguments in ways that we recognize
as characteristically deliberative. In our political culture, these citizens are
likely to be those who are already underrepresented in formal political
institutions and who are systematically materially disadvantaged, namely
women; racial minorities, especially Blacks; and poorer people. (Sanders,
1999, p. 348)
Relatedly, others have worried that the requirement that deliberation be both
public and reasonable might have the effect of stifling unpopular or radical
views, the articulation of which might otherwise benefit political discourse
(Kuran, 1998, p. 536).
In response to objections such as these, some deliberative democrats have
begun to develop ‘realistic’ models of deliberation. Characteristically, these views
entail relaxing one or more of the demanding criteria associated with proper
DEMO CRACY | 137
deliberation and permitting forms of communication that would otherwise be
forbidden. For instance, Dryzek suggests that deliberation should be broadened
to allow not only rational argument, but also ‘rhetoric, humour, emotion,
testimony or storytelling, and gossip’ (Dryzek, 2000, p. 48). Similarly, Bohman
thinks that when other deliberators are ‘deceived by their own ideologies and
self-deceptions’, it may be acceptable to use ‘irony, jokes, metaphors and other
jarring ways of expressing something’ to ‘achieve understanding’ (Bohman,
1996, p. 205). Likewise, Young (2000) praises the use of narratives and testimony
to enable disadvantaged individuals and groups to convey their distinctive
experiences and perspectives, since as we saw in Box 4.7, marginalised groups
often face special difficulties in conveying their perspectives.
Each of these proposals entails a departure from the original ideal of
deliberation. Although the use of rhetoric, irony, jokes, narratives, testimony
and even gossip might enhance our understanding of some situation, they
might also jeopardise the requirements that deliberators yield to the force of the
better argument, speak sincerely, and justify their preferences by appealing to
reasons and arguments. Consequently, although these modifications may make
deliberation more feasible, they might also have a ‘diluting’ effect, rendering
deliberation indistinguishable from other forms of communication. Perhaps
more importantly, they could also undermine one of the fundamental aims of
deliberation, which is to reach a rational consensus.
Future challenges
Schumpeter’s critique of ‘classical’ theories of democracy has recently been
revived by a group of political theorists styling themselves as ‘radical democrats’.
These authors object to the connections that deliberative democrats have drawn
between consensus, reason and the common good, and they claim that delibera-
tive democracy both neglects the conflictual aspects of politics and underesti-
mates the scope and depth of disagreement. We will conclude by examining this
critique and exploring one response to it.
Radical democrats argue that deliberative democrats have an otherworldly
tendency to ‘spirit away the moment of antagonism as if it were marginal to
the experience of the public sphere’ (Martin, 2009, p. 97). This is mistaken,
they argue, because conflict is a permanent and central feature of politics.
According to them, deliberation orientated towards consensus is an evasion of
the democratic ideal, since it marginalises oppositional and radical perspectives
and reduces the scope for genuine political engagement (Rancière, 1999, 2009).
This critique overlaps with the agonistic challenge to political liberalism, which
we examined in Chapter 3, and in both cases the quest for a rational consensus
is associated with a deadening conformity. The radical critique is not that
deliberation in practice will most likely fail to yield a consensus. Rather, it is
that consensus can only be reached at the cost of stifling genuine disagreements,
which is too high a price to pay.
Some deliberative democrats have seemingly accepted the spirit of this
critique, and have begun to explore the possibility of reconciling deliberative
democracy with radical pluralism. One promising line of argument has been
suggested by John Dryzek and Simon Niemeyer, who argue that ‘the purpose of
deliberation is not to secure consensus’ but is rather ‘to produce meta-consensus
that structures continued dispute’ (Dryzek, 2010, p. 15). Meta-consensus refers
to an agreement about which values, judgements and discourses do (and do
not) have a bearing on some problem or issue. We can therefore reach a meta-
consensus without forming an actual consensus about what to do. Although
meta-consensus is still a form of consensus, and may still be exclusionary in
the sense that radical democrats oppose, it does not eliminate the possibility of
continued disagreement.
We can get a sense of this proposal by looking at an example of what Dryzek
and Niemeyer call ‘normative meta-consensus’ (adapted from Niemeyer, 2004).
Imagine that a community is deciding whether or not to build a road, a proposal
opposed by some citizens who believe it will be ugly and environmentally
destructive, but supported by others who think it will bring economic benefits.
Dryzek and Niemeyer accept that deliberation is unlikely to yield uniform
agreement about what to do. However, they suggest that deliberation could have
the more modest goal of reaching agreement about what values are relevant
to settling the issue, and this is what they call normative meta-consensus. For
example, after deliberation the participants might agree that economic and
environmental values legitimately have a bearing on the issue, and that aesthetic
ones do not. Thus, they would have reached a meta-consensus despite not
agreeing about how economic and environmental values should be ranked – in
other words, without agreeing about what they should actually do.
In addition to normative meta-consensus, Dryzek and Niemeyer also suggest
that deliberation should aim towards epistemic and preference meta-consensus.
Epistemic meta-consensus refers to an agreement about what kinds of knowledge
claims should (and should not) inform some particular policy domain. So, for
example, deliberation might yield an agreement that both epidemiological studies
and personal testimony supply evidence that is relevant to deciding whether
a nuclear power station should be built, but that evidence based on religious
revelation does not. Meanwhile, preference meta-consensus refers to an agreement
about what policy alternatives are acceptable and about how those alternatives are
to be compared. Deliberators reach preference meta-consensus when they agree
about how policy alternatives should be ordered (for example, on a left-to-right
scale) even when they disagree about which alternatives are preferable.
As discussed in Box 5.8, one attraction of Dryzek and Niemeyer’s approach
is that it potentially reveals how people who disagree deeply can make progress
by deliberating with one another, without requiring them to reach a substantive
DEMO CRACY | 139
BOX 5.8 META-CONSENSUS AND THE GOOD
FRIDAY AGREEMENT
Dryzek and Niemeyer believe that theirs is an eminently realistic theory, and they cite
the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 (discussed in Chapter 3) to illustrate how meta-
consensus already happens in practice:
In the wake of that agreement, Protestant Unionists and Catholic Republicans still
find their own identities in the rejection of the other side, and still oppose the core
project of the other side (be it a republic encompassing all thirty-two counties of
Ireland, or continued union with Britain). But each side’s leadership has come to
recognize the legitimacy of the discourse underlying the aspirations of the other
side, even as both leaderships remain strenuously opposed to those aspirations.
(Dryzek, 2010, p. 110)
Of course, because meta-consensus is not substantive agreement, it leaves open the

question of how outcomes are to be settled on. Consequently, even after reaching a
meta-consensus some additional decision procedure may need to be employed, such
as bargaining or a majority vote.
Are decisions that are ‘structured’ by free and reasoned meta-consensus legitimate? Does
this approach adequately accommodate deep disagreement and value pluralism?
agreement about what course of action to take and without unfairly constraining
the range of views expressed by deliberators. Meanwhile, what should radical
democrats say about Dryzek and Niemeyer’s proposal? On the one hand, they
might be sceptical about it, since meta-consensus is still exclusionary, in the
sense that deliberation may result in the exclusion of certain values, knowledge
claims and policies. However, this kind of exclusion is of a different order to the
one that radical democrats object to. Radical democrats believe that deliberation
which aims at consensus will be stifling since citizens will have to communicate
in a contrived and limited fashion. Meanwhile, Dryzek and Niemeyer favour
‘open-ended’ deliberation, in which exclusion is not constitutive to deliberation
itself but occurs after deliberation. On the other hand, radical democrats might
also have reasons to be sympathetically disposed towards Dryzek and Niemeyer’s
approach, because it might strengthen the disposition of citizens to treat one
another with civility and respect. Recall, as we saw in Chapter 3, a key concern
of agonistic pluralists is to find ways in which antagonism can be converted into
agonistic respect. According to Dryzek and Niemeyer, deliberation orientated
around the pursuit of normative meta-consensus might achieve this by making
it more likely that citizens ‘will engage in a creative search for outcomes that
respect the basic values of all parties, however different these values remain’
(Dryzek, 2010, p. 103).

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5

Competitive Participatory Deliberative

[T]he typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as

As a consequence, if we are to have democracy then Schumpeter thinks that we

Participatory democrats – such as Carole Pateman, Archon Fung, Benjamin

Should participatory budgeting be attempted in other towns and cities?

Whilst the profile of participatory theories of democracy has waned in recent

The requirement of ‘substantive’ equality might turn out to be quite demanding,

BOX 5.3 THE PARADOX OF PARTICIPATORY

How much of a problem is the paradox of participatory democracy? Can it be solved?

Consequently, deliberative democrats believe that ‘through public deliberation,

[There is] no such thing as a uniquely determined common good that

What role, if any, should self-interest play in deliberative democracy?

Why is democracy valuable?

When political authority is, at every moment, a temporary and conditional

The connections between political participation and freedom were first

A well-constituted deliberative forum provides an opportunity for advancing

According to this argument, deliberation – at least when conducted appropri-

BOX 5.6 THE BENEFITS OF DELIBERATION

Is deliberative democracy possible?

Can ‘mini-publics’ solve deliberative democracy’s scale problem?

[T]aking deliberation as a signal of democratic practice paradoxically works

Of course, because meta-consensus is not substantive agreement, it leaves open the

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