Today's Political Philosophy paper is James S. Fishkin's Deliberative Democracy (1991).
Fishkin discusses the tension between three aspects of democracy; Deliberation, Political Equality, and Non-Tyranny. Deliberation is the process of public reason to reach decisions, it is the "Filter" of society's values and preferences. Political Equality as well as being a value is a "Mirror" of the will of the people, and a leveller acting against entrenched interests and elites. Non-Tyranny is the goal to prevent, amongst other dangers, "Mob Rule".
There is at present no ideal location in the conceptual space of democracy. As such we must seek to optimise our political systems to create a balance between these competing concerns. We may not wish to have a 'dead centre' position, but certainly a position around the middle balancing the competing aspects. Of course just where we currently are and where we wish to be in the conceptual space is a matter for debate, and a process that is also subject to these competing aspects.
Fishkin's concern is that we are moving too much towards Political Equality, to the determent of Deliberation. This concern isn't against political equality in the sense of 'who gets the vote', but in a broader sense in how institutions are run. Who gets to decide, who gets elected and why, how is deliberation carried out, who is a member of the Senate, etc. This is a concern about the equality of the process of democracy, not the equality of the subjects of democracy within the state though that is a concern if the situation moves towards mob rule.
Simply put the problems here are a) modern democracies are too large for everyone to participate in the formal public deliberation, and b) most of the public will be in state of 'rational ignorance' whereby they are are not informed, and further they may be uninterested and unequipped to partake in the deliberation. Many of the issues here are of group dynamics and relate to humans interact generally. Two people can have a conversation. A handful of people can have a debate. Increase numbers further and there needs to be structures and processes in place, e.g. agenda setting, turn taking, etc. Standard effects that inhibit group discussion occur, e.g. production blocking, evaluation apprehension, and social loafing (also known as 'Why the traditional conception of brainstorming is actually counterproductive').
Fishkin's proposal is to borrow from the Athenian model had have small groups selected as a microcosm of the people, set aside time, resources, information, and provide structured support so that they can engage in deliberative debate. The output from this can either inform policy directly, or be as a pubic statement of the will of the people. We already do this with our citizen juries, another legacy we owe the Athenians.
Deliberative democracy is seen as a good thing for the standard reasons, that it will be manifestly fair, bring about better policies, engage the citizenry and so forth. Interestingly Fishkin quotes Maddison as saying that deliberative institutions are important to capture the "cool and deliberate sense of the community", as opposed to the uncool and undeliberate people as a whole. This has echoes of the philosophical debate [this is code for I can't find the reference but it might be Frankfurt] on Free Will and how we treat one and another normally. We have a sense of people being in their right mind, or out of it. That some decisions are made in the heat of the moment, or when under some form of psychological or physiological stress and that we discount these or at least moderate our judgements because of them. There is a sense that the 'real' you is the cooler and deliberative you that reflects your long term goals and interests. Again, another thing to thank the Ancient Greeks for; the rise of reason and the move to abstract, concept based, universal thinking.
Fishkin discusses the tension between three aspects of democracy; Deliberation, Political Equality, and Non-Tyranny. Deliberation is the process of public reason to reach decisions, it is the "Filter" of society's values and preferences. Political Equality as well as being a value is a "Mirror" of the will of the people, and a leveller acting against entrenched interests and elites. Non-Tyranny is the goal to prevent, amongst other dangers, "Mob Rule".
Fishkin's concern is that we are moving too much towards Political Equality, to the determent of Deliberation. This concern isn't against political equality in the sense of 'who gets the vote', but in a broader sense in how institutions are run. Who gets to decide, who gets elected and why, how is deliberation carried out, who is a member of the Senate, etc. This is a concern about the equality of the process of democracy, not the equality of the subjects of democracy within the state though that is a concern if the situation moves towards mob rule.
Simply put the problems here are a) modern democracies are too large for everyone to participate in the formal public deliberation, and b) most of the public will be in state of 'rational ignorance' whereby they are are not informed, and further they may be uninterested and unequipped to partake in the deliberation. Many of the issues here are of group dynamics and relate to humans interact generally. Two people can have a conversation. A handful of people can have a debate. Increase numbers further and there needs to be structures and processes in place, e.g. agenda setting, turn taking, etc. Standard effects that inhibit group discussion occur, e.g. production blocking, evaluation apprehension, and social loafing (also known as 'Why the traditional conception of brainstorming is actually counterproductive').
Fishkin's proposal is to borrow from the Athenian model had have small groups selected as a microcosm of the people, set aside time, resources, information, and provide structured support so that they can engage in deliberative debate. The output from this can either inform policy directly, or be as a pubic statement of the will of the people. We already do this with our citizen juries, another legacy we owe the Athenians.
Deliberative democracy is seen as a good thing for the standard reasons, that it will be manifestly fair, bring about better policies, engage the citizenry and so forth. Interestingly Fishkin quotes Maddison as saying that deliberative institutions are important to capture the "cool and deliberate sense of the community", as opposed to the uncool and undeliberate people as a whole. This has echoes of the philosophical debate [this is code for I can't find the reference but it might be Frankfurt] on Free Will and how we treat one and another normally. We have a sense of people being in their right mind, or out of it. That some decisions are made in the heat of the moment, or when under some form of psychological or physiological stress and that we discount these or at least moderate our judgements because of them. There is a sense that the 'real' you is the cooler and deliberative you that reflects your long term goals and interests. Again, another thing to thank the Ancient Greeks for; the rise of reason and the move to abstract, concept based, universal thinking.
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