Delivering deliberation's emancipatory potential

Political Theory

Volumn 34, Issue 5, 2006, Pages 594-623

  Knops, Andrew ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Argumentation theory; Deliberative democracy; Emancipation; Political participation; Social exclusion

Indexed keywords

EID: 33748488421     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: 15527476     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591706290780     Document Type: Review

References (121)

1. Jürgen Habermas, "Warheitstheorien," in Wirklichkeit und Reflexion: Walter Schulz zum 60 Gebürtstag, ed. Helmut Fahrenbach (Pfüllingen, Germany: Neske, 1973), 211-63;
2. and Jürgen Habermas, "Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification," in Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge: Polity, 1990). 43-115.
3. Frans H. van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of Argumentation: The Pragma-dialectical Approach ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004 ).
4. Joshua Cohen, "Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy," in Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics, ed. James Bohman and William Rehg (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997). 67-91, at 73-73.
5. Cohen, "Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy," 74-74
6. quoting Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon, 1975). 108-108.
7. John Elster, "Introduction," in Deliberative Democracy, ed. John Elster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 1-18, at 8-8.
8. Elster, "Introduction," 5.
9. A review of significant contributions bears this out: for example, Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action Vol. 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Cambridge, Polity 1984).
10. Habermas, "Discourse Ethics";
11. Nancy Fraser, "Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy," in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993). 109-142 ;
12. Seyla Benhabib, "Toward a Deliberative Model of Democratic Legitimacy," in Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. Seyla Benhabib (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996). 67-94;
13. and Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996). All share the notion of democratic legitimacy, grounded in free reason, held out by Cohen.
14. Iris Marion Young, "Communication and the Other: Beyond Deliberative Democracy," in Benhabib, Democracy and Difference, 120-135.
15. See Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) for a later and more sympathetic treatment of deliberation.
16. John S. Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 3-3.
17. John S. Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations Ibid., 24-27.
18. John S. Dryzek, Discursive Democracy: Politics, Policy and Political Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 14-19 ;
19. and Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond, 27-27.
20. David Miller, "Is Deliberative Democracy Unfair to Disadvantaged Groups?" in Democracy as Public Deliberation: New Perspectives, ed. Maurizio Passerin D'Entrèves (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2002). 201-225, at 225-225.
21. Habermas, "Discourse Ethics."
22. Benhabib, "Toward a Deliberative Model";
23. Young, "Communication and the Other";
24. Lyn Sanders, "Against Deliberation," Political Theory 25 (1997). 347-376;
25. Fraser, "Rethinking the Public Sphere";
26. and Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond, ch. 3.
27. David Miller argues against deliberation's bias against marginalised groups, discounting the effects of language mentioned by Young and Sanders. However, he does so principally on the basis of language effects, rather than revisiting deliberation's formal argumentative mechanisms. See Miller, "Is Deliberative Democracy Unfair?"
28. Fraser, "Rethinking the Public Sphere" ;
29. Young, "Communication and the Other";
30. William E. Connolly, Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991).
31. William E. Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).
32. and Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox ( London: Verso, 2000 ).
33. Young, "Communication and the Other";
34. and Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond, ch. 3.
35. Fraser, "Rethinking the Public Sphere."
36. Benhabib, "Toward a Deliberative Model" ;
37. Young, "Communication and the Other" ;
38. and Young, Inclusion and Democracy, 44-44.
39. Connolly, Identity/Difference;
40. and Connolly, Ethos of Pluralization.
41. Mouffe, Democratic Paradox.
42. Arguably, Habermas's account answers their concerns by recognising that any actual deliberative agreement is always open to revision: Jürgen Habermas, "A Reply to My Critics," in Habermas: Critical Debates, ed. John. B. Thompson and David Held (London: Macmillan, 1982). 219-283, at 231-231 ;
43. Jürgen Habermas, "Justice and Solidarity: On the Discussion concerning 'Stage 6,'" Philosophical Forum 21 (1989). 41-56 ;
44. and Simone Chambers, Reasonable Democracy: Jürgen Habermas and the Politics of Discourse (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996). 169-169.
45. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action Vol. 1, 50-52 ;
46. and see Jürgen Habermas, "Social Action, Purposive Activity, and Communication," in On The Pragmatics of Communication, ed. Maeve Cooke (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998). 105-182 ;
47. and Jürgen Habermas, "What Is Universal Pragmatics?" in Jürgen Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (London: Heinemann Educational, 1979). 1-68, esp. 1 n. 2.
48. Jürgen Habermas, "Social Action," 140-140 ;
49. and Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action Vol. 2: The Critique of Functionalist Reason, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Cambridge, Polity, 1987). 73-73.
50. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action Vol. 1, 52-52.
51. Habermas, "Discourse Ethics," 67-67.
52. Habermas first attempted a formulation of the conditions for practical discourse, or deliberation, in his essay "Wahrheitstheorein." In that piece, he termed the relation these conditions described an "ideal speech situation." He has since regretted this terminology (see Maeve Cooke, Language and Reason: A Study of Habermas's Pragmatics [ Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994 ], 31-31).
53. yet not the intuition that led him to try to specify these conditions (see Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action Vol. 1, 25-25 ;
54. and Habermas, "Discourse Ethics," 88-88).
55. Indeed, in the light of constructive criticism from Alexy (Robert Alexy, "A Theory of Practical Discourse," in The Communicative Ethics Controversy, ed. Seyla Benhabib and Fred Dallmyr [ Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990 ], 151-190) he attempted a more detailed outline of these conditions in his essay "Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification." It is this more detailed formulation that I will examine here, in the light of Habermas's earlier account and Alexy's development.
56. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action Vol. 1, 26-26.
57. Habermas, "Discourse Ethics," 87-87.
58. Habermas, "Discourse Ethics," 87-87 Ibid.
59. Habermas, "Discourse Ethics," 87-87 Ibid.
60. Habermas, "Discourse Ethics," Ibid., 88.
61. Habermas, "Discourse Ethics," Ibid., 88-89.
62. Habermas, "Discourse Ethics," Ibid., 89, my additions.
63. Habermas, "Discourse Ethics," 89 Ibid.
64. Habermas, "Discourse Ethics," Ibid., 91-92.
65. Habermas, "Discourse Ethics," Ibid., 92.
66. Habermas, "Discourse Ethics," Ibid., 92.
67. Habermas, "Discourse Ethics," Ibid., 92;
68. Habermas, "Discourse Ethics," Ibid., 92;
69. and see especially Stephen E. Toulmin, Human Understanding (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972).
70. Stephen E. Toulmin, Knowing and Acting: An Invitation to Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1976).
71. and Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argument, trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver ( Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969).
72. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of Argumentation.
73. Frans H. van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst, Speech Acts in Argumentative Discussions: A Theoretical Model for the Analysis of Discussions Directed towards Solving Conflicts of Opinion (Berlin/Dordrecht: De Gruyter/Foris Publications, 1984).
74. Frans H. van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst, Argumentation, Communication and Fallacies: A Pragma-dialectical perspective (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1992).
75. and van Eemeren and Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of Argumentation.
76. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of Argumentation, 20-22.
77. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of Argumentation Ibid., ch. 2.
78. I have substituted "validity claims" for van Eemeren and Grootendorst's "standpoints" or "propositions" for the sake of consistency. Strictly, standpoints are propositions in issue in an argument. When it is necessary to identify a standpoint, I refer to a "validity claim in issue.
79. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of Argumentation, 16-16 (my substitution).
80. Above, at 5.
81. William Kneale and Martha Kneale, The Development of Logic (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984). 2-3 ;
82. and Toulmin, Knowing and Acting, 44-45.
83. Toulmin, Knowing and Acting, 48-48 ;
84. and Michael Leff, "The Relation between Dialectic and Rhetoric in a Classical and a Modern Perspective," in Dialectic and Rhetoric: The Warp and Woof of Argumentation Analysis, ed. Frans H. van Eemeren and Peter Houtlosser (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2002). 54-64.
85. Habermas, "Discourse Ethics," 87-87.
86. Above, at 5.
87. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of Argumentation, 59-59.
88. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of Argumentation Ibid., 59-62.
89. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of Argumentation Ibid., 138-39.
90. John L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 2nd ed. ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980 ).
91. John R. Searle, Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979 ).
92. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of Argumentation, 63-63.
93. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of Argumentation, Ibid., 64.
94. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of Argumentation, Ibid., 63-65.
95. There is no such obligation if a validity claim has already been redeemed in argument between the same interlocutors, and no new reasons are being advanced for its rejection: Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of Argumentation, ibid., 138-39.
96. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of Argumentation, Ibid., 135-57.
97. However, if rules are reformulated as a result, discussion carried out under them will strictly count as a new argument: Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of Argumentation, Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of Argumentation ibid., 142-43.
98. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of Argumentation Ibid., ch. 7, esp. 159.
99. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of Argumentation Ibid., 175.
100. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action Vol. 1, 52-52.
101. Formal fallacies relate to the application of a shared standard of inference, and so are covered by its correct application (see previous paragraph).
102. Once identified, fallacies of ambiguity can be addressed by requesting clarification through a usage declarative (and see subsequent section, "Clarification of Language").
103. An analysis of this fallacy as a contravention of the rules of procedure for resolving a difference of opinion using reasons also serves to explain the possibility of admitting expert evidence, within careful limitations, without compromising emancipation. On the face of it, expert evidence is just another form of authority. In accepting such evidence, parties to an argument must relinquish their own judgement to that of the expert. However, analyses of the fallacy of appeal to authority suggest that expert evidence is admissible if the evidence is within the expert's field of competence, and the expert can provide elaboration of their findings if required: see esp. Douglas Walton, Logical Dialogue Games and Fallacies (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984). 40-45. These limitations are designed to ensure that, although dealing with matters that a party to argument does not fully understand, the expert will nonetheless themselves be motivated by good reasons. I would argue that a dialectical analysis also suggests there should be evidence that an expert has had their work critically evaluated by other, independent experts in their subject. For an application of these restrictions, see 13 below and note 75.
104. 17-18, above.
105. This process does, of course, rely on the unfamiliar party at least being aware that they can challenge procedures in this way, should they not understand them. In practise, this idea of asking for an explanation if you do not understand needs to be very carefully handled, as people are often wary of being made to look stupid should they employ it. The exercise of this right by the less experienced can also frequently occasion irritation on the part of the initiated, compounding the problem. So it is often particularly important to make this right to challenge, and the reasons for its importance, the subject of explicit agreement between all parties at the outset of any deliberative exchange.
106. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, A Systematic Theory of Argumentation, ch. 5.
107. Benhabib, "Toward a Deliberative Model";
108. Young, "Communication and the Other" ;
109. and Young, Inclusion and Democracy, 44-44.
110. Connolly, Identity/Difference ;
111. Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization ;
112. and Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox.
113. Dryzek in particular advocates such a model. See, for example, John S. Dryzek, "Legitimacy and Economy in Deliberative Democracy," Political Theory 29 (2001). 651-666, at 660-664 ;
114. and Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond, 77-79.
115. Extract from transcript of a panel of voters and host Jeremy Paxman questioning Tony Blair on BBC TV Newsnight, February 6, 2003, 10:09 P.M.
116. Blair's formulation is actually ambiguous between the intelligence services having formed the opinion that Iraq has weapons, and giving evidence of previous possession and concealment, or their having formed their opinion based on that evidence. Both, however, rely on an appeal to authority, so the more charitable version is adopted here.
117. Due to space constraints, no attempt has been made to analyse the range of panellists canvassed, nor the range of views, although this would normally comprise a further dimension of critique.
118. For example, the expert must be clearly qualified in the relevant field, and not merely rely on their general repute; they must be capable of providing elaboration or explanation of their findings, whenever this is requested (Walton, Logical Dialogue Games and Fallacies, 40-45). and their work should be submitted to critical evaluation by other independent experts (note 65, above).
119. The goal of equal reasoning refers to Habermas's process-level stipulation of coercion-free reasoning, the goal of consistency in language summarises his product-level goals, and the goal of honest acknowledgment of commitments is obtained through the emancipatory mechanisms of deliberation outlined in this essay and stated by Habermas at both the procedure and process levels (see 5 above).
120. See 6 above.
121. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. William Rehg ( Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998 ).