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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

Deliberative democracy « Previous | |Next »
December 2, 2004

The turn to deliberative democracy makes sense in the light of these examples of the political intimidation of public debate on matters of public importance.

Deliberative democracy highlights the way that democratic legitimacy depends on the ability or opportunity to participate in the effective deliberation on the part of those citizens subject to collective decisions. To participate in deliberation means argument, rhetoric, humor, emotion testimony, story telling or gossip. It implies an emphasis on a strong critical theory of communication, an oppositional civil society and a public sphere as sources of democratic critique and renewal. Deliberative democracy implies changing views and opinions, reasoned agreement through deliberation and and a critical voice.

This is a different conception of democracy to that of rational choice theory, which treats democracy as the strategic pursuit of goals and interests on the part of individuals and other actors. Democratic politics is seen as a contest in which individual actors compete for advantage.

I am going to put the conflict between deliberative democracy and ratinal cholice theory (politics as economics) to one side as my interest is in the way that deliberative democracy is embodied in the everyday work of the Australian or American Senate.

Saying this places me at odds with Hannah Arendt and Jurgen Habermas.They retrieve a deliberative rationality from the reasonable public discourse embodied in Aristotle's phronesis and praxis in the classical polis and rework in opposition to a hegemonic instrumental rationality in modernity.

Arendt's duality is in terms of politics (free relaxed discourse of elite individuals about matters of principle, liberty, particpation etc) and the social, which the world of inequality, crime, poverty, work .unemployment and environmental problems that is dealt with by the expert instrumental rationality of bureaucrats and administrators.

Habermas' duality is the lifeworld of social interaction where individuals construct and interpret their identity of themselves, morality, asethetics and common culture. This is constrated to the system, which is the world of state and economy ruled by instrumental rationality, cost efficiency and technical manipulation.

Arendt locates deliberation in politics not in the social, whilst Habermas locates deliberation (communicative rationality) in the lifeworld not the system and he seeks to defend the lifewold against further colonization from the system. By saying that deliberation (deliberative democracy) operates within the Senate, I am locating it within the world of instrumental rationality.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:53 PM | | Comments (7)
Comments

Comments

Gary,

It is not correct to align Habermas' notion of system to instrumental rationality. System is rather the domain where action mediation is through anonymous media (through money in the domain of capitalist economy and through power in the domain of modern administration), from behind the back of actors, so to speak.

Senate is not the example of anonymous power mediation (bureaucracy and executives or more obvious examples). Senate would probably be regarded as the place of deliberation by Habermas rather than the domain of instrumental rationality or system.

Gary

I think your interest in the Senate as a place where deliberative democracy does, or at least can, take place is an excellent idea. The one problem I see in the United States, however, is that the Senate increasingly reflects the secular/religious divisions in the broader society. The last election has certainly demonstrated that many people are far more "religious" (at least by a certain definition)in specific areas of the country. The "moral values" debate is likely to increase polarization in the Senate, and lead to less civil discourse than we already have. At this time, I am not sure that I see a way out of this impass.

Alain,
you write that the US:


" Senate increasingly reflects the secular/religious divisions in the broader society...The "moral values" debate is likely to increase polarization in the Senate, and lead to less civil discourse than we already have."

True. Point taken. The effect is a downplaying of collective reasoning and a reasoned resolution of the clash of interests and ideologies.

In Australia, once the Howard Government gains control of the Senate after 30 June 2005, there will be the closing down of deliberative democracy. The Senate will become a rubber stamp of a dominant executive and a tool of the government's instrumental reason.

The upshot is bad policy formation, and the sidelining of the voices and concerns of civil society in the Senate through its committee system. Ordinary citizens increasingly become the spectators of politics.

The fight to widen and deepen deliberative democracy is a fight to defend the Senate as the embodiment of deliberative democracy and a part of an open public sphere.

Ali,
you write:


"Senate would probably be regarded as the place of deliberation by Habermas rather than the domain of instrumental rationality or system."

Okay.
But the Senate does not reconfigures, disrupt, or revitalize what passes for public debate in our day.

Presumably the House of Representatives is not a palce of democrativc deliberation as it is the domain of the executive.

As an aside the House may be a place where moments of the politics as understood by Arendt takes place--politics as theatre? These moments can take us beyond the power relations, competing interests and claims for recognition, conflicting assertions of "simple" truths. Secondly, what is embodied in the actions of federal parliament is a tacit understanding of the political as a distinctive mode of human experience and existence from the academic or business.

Ali,
presumably we agree that communicative rationality offers an alternative to instrumental rationality, that it is a basis from which to understand social interaction, and a way to expose the distortions that result from the over-extension of instrumental reason in society.

You write:


"It is not correct to align Habermas' notion of system to instrumental rationality. System is rather the domain where action mediation is through anonymous media (through money in the domain of capitalist economy and through power in the domain of modern administration), from behind the back of actors, so to speak."

Okay.It sounds very Talcott Parsons to me.

But is not this domain of money and power the world of instrumental rationality? Does not our interaction in the world of the capitalist economy and (governmental and commercial) administration involve the use of instrumental reason?

Are not these social systems governed by instrumental rationality (not communicative rationality)? Are not the rules of social systems determined by the need for efficiency in realising given objectives? In this domain are not social agents following the rules of the system to the extent that we no longer question (or even understand) the rules that govern our actions.

Are not the knowledge-based cultures in this domain (economy and administration) primarily technocratic and elite controlled?

It looks like I need some help in sorting these questions out.

Gary,

My aim was just to point out that lifeworld/system distinction does not correspond to communicative/instrumental/strategic distinction. Instrumental rationality also operates within lifeworld, for example.

The distinction between lifeworld/system plays a different role in Habermas's architectonic than communicative rationality/instrumental rationality/strategic rationality distinction.

Ali,
got it. Thanks for that.