Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy

Joshua Cohen gives an account for an ideal deliberative procedure in Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy (from The Good Polity (1989)). This overview is another quick summary of paragraphs and sections.

1. "A deliberative democracy is.. an association whose affairs are governed by the public deliberation of its members"
2. "Democratic politics involves public deliberation focused on the common good, requires some form of manifest equality among citizens, and shapes the identity and interests of citizens in ways that contribute to formation of a public conception of the good"
3. Cohen doesn't think that these three features (2) are 'natural sequences' of the ideal of fairness
4. These features are arrived at by trying to instantiate an ideal of fairness whilst taking into account psychological and sociological assumptions (e.g. self-interest over collective interest, entrenched privilege, etc)
5. Cohen doesn't think this (4) is good enough, as it is too indirect and instrumental a reason. Rather we arrive at (2) based on building an ideal of public deliberation
6. Ideal deliberation:
1. Is free. Free to deliberate (freed of prior norms), and free to implement the outcome and that the fact of an outcome is sufficient to comply with it
2. Deliberation is reasoned (deliberation occurs). Here we can refer to Rawls' burdens of reason. 
3. Parties are equal formally (as per rule and convention) and substantially (actually free without constraints, e.g. vested interests and the like)
4. It aims to reach a consensus
7. Public deliberation focuses the debate on the common good. "While I may take my preferences as a sufficient reason for advancing a proposal, deliberation under conditions of pluralism requires that I find reasons that make the proposal acceptable to others who cannot be expected to regard my preferences as sufficient reason for agreeing."

One of the possible objections that Cohen tackles is of injustice. His defence is roughly to analogous to the robust defence of liberal constraints that "liberal constraints are there to maximise liberty for all". Cohen's defence appears to be (obviously given here in rough form) that democracy is served by liberal values, e.g. free expression allows for the maximisation of deliberation, and therefore it is wrong (invalid?) for democratic decision making to reduce these liberal values. This argument takes liberal values to be instrumental in realising deliberative democracy.

Elster - The Market and the Forum

Democracy is "the worse form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from to time" - Churchill

Democracy has some problems in idealised forms. A democracy needs some form of decision making procedure for those instances where the people don't unanimously back a course of action, and this is usually done by majority voting. This can be a problem because you can have a 'tyranny of the majority' where minority interests are either neglected, or oppressed. Secondly, everyone has an equal vote (which can also be argued as a plus point). Thus the uninterested, the uneducated, the bigoted, the malicious, the bribed, etc all have an equal vote to the careful and considerate voter.

Elster's paper tackles different approaches to democracy. He defines three views of politics, and divides these between Market based and Forum based views. The first is Social Choice Theory (SCT), which is the Market based view. SCT is considered to be an instrumental good (it brings about good ends but isn't good in itself), and is private. SCT is about preference ordering. There are problems with this, as a Market based view it is self centred and an aggregation of individual ego-centric votes will bring about a resolution that is a) for the general good, or even b) good at all. There are a number of other issues as well, such as strategic voting where citizens vote for the most likely least-worst outcome rather than the desired outcome. An ideal SCT based voting system should have "... anonymity (that all individuals should equally), non-dictatorship (a foritori no single individual should dictate the social choice), liberalism (all individuals should have some private domains within which their preferences are decisive), and strategy-proofness (it should not pay to express false preferences).

The second view of politics denies its privateness, and the third also denies that it is an instrumental good (and affirms that it is a good in itself). They are views of politics as the Forum where the citizenship engage and debate with each other.

When politics is public the political process can shape public opinion. Sharing ideas can broaden horizons and provide different views, which aids in bringing about a better state of affairs. Elster has seven objections to this: (1) if citizens are 'encouraged' to participate this is overly paternalistic; (2) unanimous and rationale agreement may not follow (see Rawls' public reason, see also various news articles and blogs...) and there may be no way of resolving competing conceptions of the good; (3) there may not be enough time to satisfactorily discuss an issues; (4) public discussion may not be positive and may not bring around a positive end; (5) the people as a whole are not necessarily equipped to reach a better outcome than a subset of people (witness the rise of homeopathy)(6) unanimity might be brought about by conformity rather than rational agreement, and; (7) it does not follow that public debate will purge selfish desires.

In the third view the political process is a good in itself. It causes people to engage reasonably and rationally with others, and the idea is that this becomes a 'habit'. People will have to frame their views in terms of public reason which others can engage with. This works as an end for society as a whole, but ultimately individuals would rarely be engaging in politics in order to become more reasonable and tolerant, they would merely be by products.

Walzer's Philosophy and Democracy

Today's reading was Walzer's Philosophy and Democracy (1981). Walzer's piece is interesting, and sometimes heavy on exposition, and covers tensions between philosophy and democracy. Two tensions Walzer highlights are:

1. The will of the people vs what is right: quoting Rosseau's argument that political legitimacy rests on will (consent) and not on reason (rightness)
2. The more rights the judges award to the people as individuals the less free the people are as a decision making body

Point 1 can in a simple form be summed up as 'mob rule'. We are not willing to give limitless decision making power to the people as a whole, because this power can be used to abuse others. Boundaries must be placed to constrain the decision making power of the people, as this is normally done in the form of rights and/or a constitution. Persons are granted rights such as the right to life, such that the people cannot simply will the death of an individual. Which brings us around to point 2; the more rights that are given out, the less decision making power the people have in a democracy.

This may or may not be a problem. If rights are limited to 'foundational rights', those that should take precedence, then this can only be a good thing. The situation becomes problematic when we have rights inflation, or rights are over-applied or over-interpreted.

Returning to point 1, another aspect of the issue is that what the people choose may not be right. There is a clear tension here, and it needs to be carefully considered to see where the boundaries lie. Democracy can loosely be termed rule by the people for the people. The decisions reached should be beneficial for the people, and not parochial. Both parts here are important; decisions and beneficial. The people should influence the law because they are the subject of the law. Autonomy, freedom, liberty... are goods and therefore beneficial. One must have plausible options to be exercising freedom and autonomy. The people then must be allowed to make bad choices, or perhaps at least choices that aren't as good. How to define this is of course fraught with danger, potential totalitarianism and the like. Returning to point 2, the according of rights could be said to constrain certain choices but to act to overall maximise autonomy. As Walzer says "[providing a minimum set of welfare]... would guarantee to each citizen the opportunity to exercise his citizenship, and that is an opportunity he can hardly be said to have, or to have in any meaningful fashion, if he were starving to death or desperately seeking shelter for himself and his family".

Rights constrain certain choices, but maximise choice overall. Democracy-as-autonomy is preserved and enhanced by an appropriate set of rights.

Can we go further? To bound potential choices to better choices? We already do this in part through supporting democratic citizenship (education etc), public discourse, and general progress of knowledge. We, at least in the West, are no longer in a position where burning little old ladies as witches can be seen to be a 'good' choice in the political landscape. Much remains open in the political landscape, and it is the job of political theorists and philosophers to help us move up to the heights and avoid the valleys.