Deliberative Democracy

Deliberative democracy is an idealized form of sociopolitical discussion in which people are expected to reach consensus about a political decision by way of reasoned argument. The decisions over which people deliberate typically concern how to establish policies, formulate laws, and set up institutions. When citizens or politicians deliberate with one another, they are obligated to provide reasons that justify the decisions, laws, and policies they support. Strict deliberative democracy is rarely, and often with difficulty, realized in practice. However, its advocates argue that it is not intended to be a descriptive theory about how political decision making actually works; rather, it is a normative ideal about how citizens and organizations in a [Page 250]democracy should conduct discussions with one another. With respect to public relations, deliberative democracy represents a dialogic ideal of how political leaders and organizations should communicate with their publics.

Deliberative democracy differs from other forms of political decision making such as elite rule, aggregation, and bargaining. It differs most from elite rule, particularly in its authoritarian forms, because it emphasizes the right of everyone affected by a political decision to participate and be treated equally in discussions about its viability. Deliberative democracy should also be distinguished from aggregative conceptions of democracy and political decision making. When people deliberate over a decision, they are expected to express, challenge, and above all to justify their reasons for supporting or opposing it. By contrast, aggregative political procedures require people only to express their preferences, and they generally take the model of “one person, one vote.” One example is when people vote for candidates or policies in elections; another is when they answer questions about preferences on public opinion surveys. Finally, deliberative democracy should not be confused with bargaining. Bargaining consists of negotiations among people who try to exert certain types of power to promote their own interests, and the best outcome it can achieve is a compromise among rivals. By contrast, deliberation aims for the more demanding cooperative goal of consensus about a political decision that the deliberating group as a whole could agree is most acceptable.

Critics have pointed out several problems with the ideals and procedures of deliberative democracy. One is that the goal of consensus is too difficult for people to achieve under actual circumstances. Particularly in diverse societies—where different groups of people hold incommensurable cultural values, and where media systems are becoming increasingly fragmented—the deliberative process might aggravate disagreements and differences between groups more than it brings about consensus. A second criticism is that people often arrive at consensus by overlooking or excluding the views of society's less powerful members. The public relations profession might aggravate this problem because it is usually wealthy or powerful clients who have greater access to the public discussion and more resources to devote to expressing their views and getting them accepted. Third, feminist, multiculturalist, and postmodernist critics have argued that the deliberative procedures of expressing and arguing about reasons is ethnocentric and culturally determined; for this reason, those procedures by their very nature discriminate against those who may not be competent in these culturally determined skills. A fourth criticism is that, among all the activities necessary for politics, deliberation ranks relatively low compared to other, more urgent political activities such as educating, organizing, mobilizing, demonstrating, campaigning, fundraising, voting, and ruling.

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