Review article: Divided societies and deliberative democracy

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 37, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 731-751

  O'Flynn, Ian ^a  

^a NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34548733102     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123407000397     Document Type: Review

References (101)

1. I will use the term 'ethnic' in the sense of embracing any ascriptive identity regarded as a natural boundary marker between members of different groups, defined, among other things, in terms of race, language, religion, culture or nationality. See generally, John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith, eds, Ethnicity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
2. For a general overview, see Timothy D. Sisk, Power Sharing and International Mediation in Ethnic Conflicts (Washington, D.C.: USIP, 1996).
3. For the phrases, 'value of inclusion' and 'value of moderation', see Stefan Wolff, 'Electoral Systems Design and Power-Sharing Regimes', in Ian O'Flynn and David Russell, eds, Power Sharing: New Challenges for Divided Societies (London: Pluto Press, 2005), pp. 59-74, at pp. 61-2.
4. See, for example, Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977), p. 223.
5. For an overview, see Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy? (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 13-21.
6. Many deliberative democrats, including Gutmann and Thompson, refer to the liberal model as the 'aggregative model'. This is somewhat misleading, however, since what ultimately distinguishes these two models is not preference aggregation (or even deliberation, for that matter) but preference formation. James Fishkin and Ian Shapiro have recently debated this distinction. See James Fishkin, 'Defending Deliberation: A Comment on Ian Shapiro's The State of Democratic Theory', Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 8 (2005), 71-8;
7. and Ian Shapiro, 'The State of Democratic Theory: A Reply to James Fishkin', Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 8 (2005), 79-83.
8. David Miller, 'Deliberative Democracy and Social Choice', in David Held, ed., Prospects for Democracy : North, South, East, West (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), pp. 74-92, at p. 75.
9. William H. Riker, Liberalism Against Populism: A Confrontation Between the Theory of Democracy and the Theory of Social Choice (San Francisco, Calif.: W. H. Freeman, 1982), p. 241 and passim.
10. But see Miller, 'Deliberative Democracy and Social Choice', pp. 74-92; John S. Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), chap. 2.
11. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement: Why Moral Conflict Cannot be Avoided, and What Should be Done About It (Cambridge, Mass. : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 127-38, 146-7.
12. Arend Lijphart, 'Constitutional Design for Divided Societies', Journal of Democracy, 15 (2004), 96-109, p. 99.
13. Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies, chap. 2;
14. Lijphart, 'Constitutional Design for Divided Societies', p. 97.
15. The 'majoritarian approach' is often not majoritarian but instead empowers a plurality.
16. Arend Lijphart, 'The Wave of Power-Sharing Democracy', in Andrew Reynolds, ed., The Architecture of Democracy: Constitutional Design, Conflict Management and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 37-54, at p. 40.
17. Lijphart, 'Constitutional Design for Divided Societies', pp. 99-103; cf. Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), pp. 104, 3.12 n.13.
18. There is no assumption in this article that moderate attitudes can somehow be generated or engineered ex nihilo. Where they do not exist, there is little that institutions can do to create them. However, on the assumption that we are dealing with societies that are making the transition to democracy, we can assume that some such attitudes already exist in society, however tentative those may be. The issue, then, is how to protect and build upon those sentiments.
19. For this reason, PR electoral systems are classified as 'centrifugal systems'. See Gary W. Cox, 'Centripetal and Centrifugal Incentives in Electoral Systems', American Journal of Political Science, 34 (1990), 903-35, at pp. 921-2.
20. Donald L. Horowitz, 'Electoral Systems: A Primer for Decision Makers', Journal of Democracy, 14 (2003), 115-27, pp. 12.1-2.
21. Brian Barry, 'Review Article: Political Accommodation and Consociational Democracy', British Journal of Political Science, 5 (1975), 477-505, p. 505.
22. Lijphart, 'The Wave of Power-Sharing Democracy', p. 44. For an empirical illustration, see John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary, The Northern Ireland Conflict: Consociational Engagements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 25-6, 27.
23. But see McGarry and O'Leary, The Northern Ireland Conflict, p. 26.
24. See, for example, Donald L. Horowitz, 'Constitutional Design: An Oxymoron?' in Ian Shapiro and Stephan Macedo, eds, Nomos XLII: Designing Democratic Institutions (New York: New York University Press, 2000), pp. 253-84, at pp. 256-8;
25. Donald L. Horowitz, 'Constitutional Design: Proposals versus Process', in Reynolds, ed., The Architecture of Democracy, pp. 15-36, at p. 19.
26. Donald L. Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa ? Constitutional Engineering in a Divided Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), p. 189.
27. Under STV or AV, candidates who do not receive enough first-preference votes to meet the relevant quota may meet that threshold on the basis of second or subsequent preferences transferred from those whose first-preference candidates have already been elected (or eliminated, as the case may be). See Benjamin Reilly, Democracy in Divided Societies: Electoral Engineering for Conflict Management (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 18-9, 27-41.
28. See, for example, Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa? p. 177;
29. Horowitz, 'Constitutional Design', p. 259.
30. Richard Rose, Northern Ireland: Time of Choice (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1976), p. 78;
31. referenced in Horowitz, A. Democratic South Africa?, p. 174.
32. This judgement needs to be qualified, because the fact that STV operates in multi-member constituencies means that district magnitude will have an important bearing on just where the threshold for election lies.
33. Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa? p. 189.
34. Michael Rabinder James treats this failure of direct representation as a positive feature of AV. See Michael Rabinder James, Deliberative Democracy and the Plural Polity (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), pp. 171-2.
35. Relatedly, AV also has no moderating impact whatsoever in districts where hard-liners constitute a majority.
36. Donald L. Horowitz, 'Explaining the Northern Ireland Agreement: The Sources of an Unlikely Constitutional Consensus', British Journal of Political Science, 32 (2002), 193-220, p. 196.
37. So much, then, for Aristotle's golden mean. See Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 36-40.
38. Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 52.
39. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 60;
40. Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement, pp. 9, 56. Stated thus, behaving reasonably has to do with how our position is justified, and not necessarily the content of that position.
41. See Peter Jones, 'Political Equality and Majority Rule', in David Miller and Larry Siedentop, eds, The Nature of Political Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 155-82, at pp. 156-60.
42. For a useful introduction to the topics of reciprocity and publicity, see Robert E. Goodin, Motivating Political Morality (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), chaps. 2 and 7.
43. James Bohman, Public Deliberation: Pluralism, Complexity, and Democracy (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1996);
44. James, Deliberative Democracy and the Plural Polity;
45. Jack Knight and James Johnson, 'What Sort of Political Equality Does Deliberative Democracy Require?' in James Bohman and William Rehg, eds, Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press), pp. 279-319, at pp. 295-9.
46. Iris Marion Young, 'Justice, Inclusion, and Deliberative Democracy', in Stephan Macedo, ed., Deliberative Politics: Essays on Democracy and Disagreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 151-8, at p. 155.
47. John Rawls, 'The Idea of Public Reason Revisited', in John Rawls, Collected Papers, ed. Samuel Freeman (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 573-615, at pp. 579-80.
48. David Miller, 'Is Deliberative Democracy Unfair to Disadvantaged Groups?' in David Miller, Citizenship and National Identity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), pp. 142-60, at p. 149.
49. John Rawls, 'The Idea of Public Reason Revisited', pp. 579-80; Miller, 'Is Deliberative Democracy Unfair to Disadvantaged Groups?' p. 142.
50. John Dryzek, 'Deliberative Democracy in Divided Societies', Political Theory, 33 (2005), 218-42, p. 219.
51. Dryzek, 'Deliberative Democracy in Divided Societies', p. 226.
52. Spoilers, who seek to destroy a peace process in order to advance their own political ambitions, are a particularly insidious variant of this phenomenon. See Stephen Stedman, 'Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes', International Security, 22 (1997), 5-53.
53. William Zartman, 'Dynamics and Constraints in Negotiations in Internal Conflicts', in William Zartman, ed., Elusive Peace: Negotiating and End to Civil Wars (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1995), pp. 3-29.
54. Brendan O'Leary, 'The Nature of the Agreement', New Left Review, 233 (1999), 66-96, p. 68.
55. For a more complete description of the nature and details of this bargain, see O'Leary, 'The Nature of the Agreement', pp. 90-1.
56. See, for example, the 'Declaration of Support' with which the Belfast Agreement begins (Agreement Reached in the Multi-Party Talks (Belfast: HMSO, 1998)).
57. None of this implies that every aspect of a negotiation process should be conducted solely in terms of basic principles. For example, just like some deliberative theorists, some conflict scholars have stressed the need to incorporate narrative and other forms of communication in programmes to manage and resolve conflict. See, for example, Vamik Volkan, Blood Lines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997);
58. Mark Howard Ross, 'Psychocultural Interpretations and Dramas: Identity Dynamics in Ethnic Conflict', Political Psychology, 22 (2001), 157-78.
59. Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 60.
60. I suggest what those institutions could look like in the final section.
61. Cf. Miller, 'Is Deliberative Democracy Unfair to Disadvantaged Groups?', pp. 154-5.
62. Horowitz, 'Explaining the Northern Ireland Agreement', p. 193. See also Reilly, Democracy in Divided Societies.
63. McGarry and O'Leary, The Northern Ireland Conflict, p. 25.
64. To be clear: unlike Horowitz and his followers, deliberative democracy does not start from the assumption that the middle of the political spectrum is the correct or most desirable position. Rather, it insists that, wherever we are situated on the political spectrum, we seek to defend that position in ways that recognize others as political equals.
65. Dryzek, 'Deliberative Democracy in Divided Societies', p. 220.
66. Dryzek, 'Deliberative Democracy in Divided Societies', p. 230.
67. But see, for example, Ashutosh Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002).
68. Dryzek, 'Deliberative Democracy in Divided Societies', pp. 222, 238.
69. James, Deliberative Democracy and the Plural Polity, p. 145.
70. See, for example, Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement, chap. 3.
71. For a discussion, see David Luban, 'The Publicity Principle', in Robert E. Goodin, ed., The Theory of Institutional Design (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 154-98, at pp. 155-6.
72. John Stuart Mill, 'Considerations on Representative Government', in John Gray, ed., John Stuart Mill: On Liberty and Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991 [1861]), pp. 203-467, at p. 282.
73. It almost goes without saying that publicity, so conceived, is crucially important to the development of trust in a deeply divided society. See Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement, p. 97.
74. For discussions of this objection, see, for example, Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (London: Quartet Books, 1980), pp. 165-81;
75. Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement, pp. 101-26;
76. Jon Elster, 'Deliberation and Constitution Making', in Jon Elster, ed., Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 97-122, at pp. 109-10.
77. Peter Harris and Benjamin Reilly, eds, Democracy and Deep-Rooted Conflict: Options for Negotiators (Stockholm.: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 1998), p. 85.
78. Arguably, the accords were not negotiated at all, but imposed by Richard Holbrooke. See David Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy after Dayton (London: Pluto Press, 1999), p. 43.
79. Harris and Reilly, eds, Democracy and Deep-Rooted Conflict, p. 85.
80. Cf. Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement, p. 115.
81. Simone Chambers, 'Behind Closed Doors: Publicity, Secrecy, and the Quality of Deliberation', Journal of Political Philosophy, 12 (2004), 389-410, p. 390.
82. Chambers, 'Behind Closed Doors', pp. 393-4.
83. Chambers, 'Behind Closed Doors', pp. 391, 398-405.
84. Chambers, 'Behind Closed Doors', p. 404.
85. Robert E. Goodin, Political Theory and Public Policy (Chicago, Ill.: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 4.
86. Goodin, Political Theory and Public Policy, p. 7.
87. Robert E. Goodin and Phillip Pettit, 'Introduction', in Robert E. Goodin and Phillip Pettit, eds, A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), pp. 1-4, at p. 1.
88. Sisk, Power Sharing and International Mediation, p. 43.
89. See also Reilly, Democracy in Divided Societies, p. 11.
90. See Brian Barry, 'The Consociational Model and Its Dangers,' European Journal of Political Research, 3 (1975), 393-412, pp. 405-6.
91. McGarry and O'Leary, The Northern Ireland Conflict, p. 30.
92. McGarry and O'Leary, The Northern Ireland Conflict, pp. 30-1.
93. James, Deliberative Democracy and the Plural Polity, p. 70.
94. See also Dryzek, 'Deliberative Democracy in Divided Societies', p. 228.
95. James, Deliberative Democracy and the Plural Polity, pp. 166, 175.
96. Dryzek, 'Deliberative Democracy in Divided Societies', p. 228. James confines his analysis to electoral systems and hence does not discuss consociational or other legislative designs.
97. But see McGarry and O'Leary, The Northern Ireland Conflict, pp. 32-6.
98. Wolff, 'Electoral Systems Design and Power-Sharing Regimes', p. 63.
99. See Robin Wilson and Rick Wilford, Northern Ireland: A Route to Stability? (Birmingham: ESRC/The Devolution Papers, 2003), p. 8.
100. McGarry and O'Leary, The Northern Ireland Conflict, p. 25.
101. See Wilson and Wilford, Northern Ireland, p. 10.