Deliberative Democracy

Democracy as Dialogue

Deliberative democracy is based on open and uncoerced dialogue characterized by reason giving. Joshua Cohen defines its characteristics as free, reasoned, equal, and aiming for a consensus. Deliberators present arguments that justify their judgments and preferences. Others are expected to listen to these arguments and adjust their beliefs, judgments, and preferences as a result. This reciprocity of justifying arguments and listening to the arguments of others is a key feature of deliberative democracy. Deliberation is democratic if it is equal in that each individual has equal opportunity to speak and each point of view and argument has an equal opportunity to be put forward.

Deliberative democracy is a theory of democracy that gives power to arguments through the introduction of a number of different viewpoints and beliefs. Thus, it is not brute numbers, but well-argued cases that lead to the selection of policies. If participants scrutinize the reasons for judgments and preferences, then it is more likely that genuinely good policies will be adopted. Proponents of deliberative democracy believe that because of the transformative power of deliberation, deliberators will be convinced by good arguments and eventually the majority of citizens will come to believe in them. Deliberation also empowers all citizens to advance their arguments as equals in the political forum. In the ideal form of deliberation, each deliberator has equal opportunity and power to advance his or her argument and influence the beliefs, judgments, and preferences of others.

Deliberative democracy is assumed to give more weight to other-regarding than to selfish arguments. The reason for this is that deliberators will have to convince others to adopt their position and this is more difficult to achieve if arguments are put in terms of what would benefit them, rather than what would benefit everyone. In the long run, this is assumed to lead to a genuine orientation toward the common good.

To exclude discriminatory or otherwise offensive arguments from deliberation, it is required that deliberators launder their preferences. This means that deliberators use generally other-regarding arguments and that they would cease using arguments that discriminate against others. In practice, who would block such arguments and how this would be achieved is problematic. Thus, it is possible that arguments that discriminate against some group in society would become dominant through deliberation. Alternatively, some reasonable arguments may be laundered out through such a process.

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