Between deliberative and participatory democracy: A contribution on Habermas

Philosophy & Social Criticism

Volumn 32, Issue 6, 2006, Pages 739-766

  Vitale, Denise ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SÃO PAULO   (Brazil)

Author keywords

deliberation; democracy; discourse theory; modernity; participation

Indexed keywords

EID: 43249148684     PISSN: 01914537     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0191453706064022     Document Type: Article

References (93)

1. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. I, trans. T. McCarthy (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1984[1981]), p. 163.
2. Max Weber, ‘Religious Rejections of the World and their Directions’, in H. Gerth and C. W. Mills (eds) From Max Weber: Essays on Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), pp. 323–59.
3. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, vol. I, pp. 165–7, 237–40.
4. Instruments of mediation are needed if the imbalance among the spheres of knowledge that comprise the lifeworld is to be avoided. Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987[1985]), pp. 208, 340.
5. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, vol. I, p. 70.
6. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. II, trans. T. McCarthy (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1987), p. 134.
7. Weber, ‘Bureaucracy’, in From Max Weber: Essays on Sociology, p. 230, 230–2.
8. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, vol. I, p. 183.
9. Habermas identifies this problem of internal colonization of the lifeworld by system imperatives as a sociopathology. As the lifeworld is increasingly rationalized, it not only is uncoupled from but also is dependent upon the system domains of action. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, vol. II, p. 305.
10. As Habermas points out: ‘At one time, democracy was something to be asserted against the despotism palpably embodied in the king, members of the aristocracy, and higher-ranking clerics. Since then, political authority has been depersonalized. Democratization now works to overcome not genuinely political forms of resistance but rather the systemic imperatives of differentiated economic and administrative systems.’ Jürgen Habermas, ‘Popular Sovereignty as Procedure’, in Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics, ed. James Bohman and William Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999[1997]), p. 41.
11. Bernard Manin distinguishes the two meanings of deliberation. In the first, deliberation means the process of discussion that precedes the decision. In the second, deliberation means the decision itself. Manin argues that the decision is formed during the process of discussion, with the clash between different viewpoints, the exchange of information and the clarification of doubts and possible contradictions. ‘On Legitimacy and Political Deliberation’, Political Theory 15 (1987): 341–52.
12. In this context, the concept of institutionalization refers to behavior expected from a normative standpoint, and to the institutionalization of procedures that guarantee the equality of the possible compromises. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge. MA: MIT Press, 1996[1992]), p. 177, 110.
13. As Joshua Cohen claims: ‘In particular, outcomes are democratically legitimate if and only if they could be the object of a free and reasoned agreement among equals.’ Joshua Cohen, ‘Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy’, in Deliberative Democracy, ed. Bohman and Rehg, p. 73.
14. The defense of legitimacy through legality starts from modern societies' need to find a substitute for sacred law and for empty customary law. Habermas believes this can only be achieved by means of a procedural rationality, which can anchor positive law without contingent interventions. Jürgen Habermas, ‘Direito e Moral (Tanner Lectures 1986)’, in Direito e Democracia: entre Facticidade e Validade, trans. F. Siebeneichler (Rio de Janeiro: Tempo Brasileiro, 1997), pp. 237–46.
15. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 299.
16. Thomas Christiano, ‘The Significance of Public Deliberation’, in Deliberative Democracy, ed. Bohman and Rehg, p. 243.
17. Jürgen Habermas, ‘Three Normative Models of Democracy’, in The Inclusion of the Other (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001[1996]), p. 245.
18. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 298, 299.
19. Habermas, ‘Three Normative Models of Democracy’, pp. 250–1.
20. He claims that ‘The legal system as a whole needs to be anchored in basic principles of legitimation. In the bourgeois constitutional state these are, in the first place, basic rights and the principle of popular sovereignty.’ Theory of Communicative Action, vol. II, p. 178.
21. See also Habermas, ‘Popular Sovereignty as Procedure’, p. 37
22. and Between Facts and Norms, p. 99.
23. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, pp. 134, 143.
24. Jürgen Habermas, ‘Remarks on Legitimation through Human Rights’, in The Postnational Constellation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), p. 117.
25. Habermas claims that the idea of a tension between human rights and popular sovereignty, also expressed as a tension between liberty and equality, or private and public autonomy, has prevailed since the French Revolution, with the debate between liberals and republicans. ‘Popular Sovereignty as Procedure’, pp. 44–5
26. and Between Facts and Norms, p. 99.
27. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, pp. 103–4.
28. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor Books, 2000), pp. 36–7.
29. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 123. Challenging the priority of civil and political over economic and social rights, Sen argues that for this claim to be plausible, in contexts of intense poverty, the term ‘liberty’ must be extensively qualified.
30. Sen, Development as Freedom, p. 64.
31. Kevin Olson, ‘Democratic Inequalities: the Problem of Equal Citizenship in Habermas's Democratic Theory’, Constellations 5 (1998): 218–21.
32. David Held, Models of Democracy, 2nd edn (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), p. 236.
33. Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999[1992]), p. 19.
34. The main criticism is of the vagueness of the term ‘participation’ and the conditions of its implementation. These two criticisms will be addressed below. See Giovanni Sartori, Theory of Revisited Democracy (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1987).
35. I refer specifically to Carole Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970)
36. and C. B. Macpherson, The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).
37. Held systematically combines the common elements of these authors in the 8th model in Models of Democracy, pp. 263–73.
38. Held, Models of Democracy, p. 264, 253–63).
39. Pateman and Macpherson explicitly challenge the elitist authors (Schumpeter and descendants), but their criticisms can be equally applied to neo-liberal thinkers. See Macpherson, Life and Times of Liberal Democracy, ch. 2
40. and Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory, p. 13.
41. Benjamin Barber also develops this criticism in Strong Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), part one.
42. See also Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper Perennial, 1976);
43. Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974);
44. and Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1960).
45. Joshua Cohen points out a second problem of the elitist and pluralist scheme. For Cohen, the democratic political debate has to be organized in terms of conceptions of the common good rather than in terms of inter-group bargaining, where each one tries to satisfy its own particular interests. See ‘Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy’, in Deliberative Democracy, ed. Bohman and Rehg, p. 68.
46. Barber, Strong Democracy, pp. 136, 154. Barber characterizes participatory politics as a continuous and self-legislative process, marked by the creation of a political community able to transform dependent and private individuals into free citizens, and partial and private interests into public goods (p. 132). The argument for the enlargement of citizenship justifies participation once the desires and arguments of each individual in the building of the collective space are given higher value. Each citizen has much more to contribute to the process of collective will-formation, and to win from it, than the representative system permits. In the participatory conception, the distance between the latent potential of participation and the lack of institutional sluices able to bridge wider public deliberations constitutes the main source of the legitimacy deficit identified in the elitist and pluralist model.
47. Macpherson, Life and Times of Liberal Democracy, p. 94, 98–102.
48. The relation between participation and substantial democracy is also stressed by C. Pateman, in The Problem of Political Obligation: A Critique of Liberal Theory (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1979), pp. 168, 171.
49. Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory, pp. 42–4.
50. In Pateman's participatory theory, democratic education takes place through participatory processes in non-governmental authority structures, primarily industry. This is what she means by a ‘participatory society’. Indeed, the primary focus of Pateman's idea of participatory democracy is not the macro-political sphere, but social structures such as the workplace. Thus, instead of improving the democratic structures proper to the political sphere, her work attempts to clarify the possibilities of democratizing social spheres' frontiers to the specific political sphere. This perspective is also adopted by Peter Bachrach and Aryeh Botwinick in Power and Empowerment: A Radical Theory of Participatory Democracy (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1992). According to Pateman, it is important to focus on the workplace, especially in industry, because that is where most people spend most of their time, and in that it contains the relations of superiority and subordination, it is the most ‘political’ of all areas. Furthermore, reduction of economic inequalities could be attained by reducing the gap in salaries.
51. Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory, pp. 43, 117.
52. Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation, p. 173.
53. This is Jon Elster's interpretation. Although his reading of the meaning of politics in John Stuart Mill and Hannah Arendt is correct, in that it considers the educative effects of political participation as its main objective, and not a by-product, the model of participatory democracy at stake suggests a distinct reading: the main reason for participation is to establish more legitimate decisions in the process of resolving concrete problems. Jon Elster, ‘The Market and the Forum’, in Deliberative Democracy, ed. Bohman and Rehg, pp. 23–6.
54. This is why Macpherson makes political consciousness a condition (see note 39). Although Jane Mansbridge construes Pateman's argument as something ultimate, in which democracy would be an end in itself, she later emphasizes the fact that there is a strong connection between engagement in political life and public responsibility. Thus, although education constitutes the main goal of participation in order to enhance democracy, as Pateman alleges, it is by no means an end in itself. A more enhanced democracy will bring, at the very least, a greater sense of public responsibility and a more careful and conscious decision-making process. See Jane Mansbridge, ‘On the Idea that Participation Makes Better Citizens’, in Citizen Competence and Democratic Institutions, ed. Stephen Elkin and Karol Soltan (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), pp. 313, 319. In this regard, Manin emphasizes the fact that the purpose of some Athenian practices, such as rotation of public offices, was not only to foster human excellence, but to constitute a good form of government. The Greeks saw participation (above all, the alternate experience of command and obedience) not as an end in itself, but as a means for the good government.
55. Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 29.
56. Macpherson and Pateman propose this, adopting a more realistic approach that recognizes the complexity of modern societies and the immense practical difficulty of withdrawing representative mechanisms. This position is also endorsed by Bachrach and Botwinick, in Power and Empowerment
57. and by Held, in Models of Democracy, p. 269. Barber's argument challenges this notion. He claims that as representation is typical of a thin democracy it is incompatible with participatory systems. Considering the centrality of Pateman and Macpherson's thought in our model, Cohen and Arato's criticism of the idea of participatory democracy is mistaken, since participatory democracy does not imply the utopia of the substitution of representation by direct democracy, but the introduction of direct practices as a complement that is just as important as the indirect means.
58. Cohen and Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory, p. 7.
59. Macpherson, Life and Times of Liberal Democracy, pp. 108–14, 112, 97, 113.
60. Again, making representatives more accountable depends on reducing class conflicts, since these require more bargaining power to reconcile opposing interests. See Held, Models of Democracy, p. 171.
61. Barber, Strong Democracy, p. 136, 153.
62. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du Contract Social, Oeuvres Politiques (Paris: Bordas, 1989), p. 268.
63. Macpherson, Life and Times of Liberal Democracy, pp. 97–8.
64. Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory, p. 42.
65. The Brazilian experiences of the ‘Participatory Budgeting’, best exemplified by the experience of Porto Alegre, is a process of popular discussion and definition of the municipal budget. The distribution of resources is determined by the political decisions of the residents and also by criteria of social justice that permit a redistributive policy. For an English bibliography see, for instance, Rebecca Abers, Inventing Local Democracy: Grassroots Politics in Brazil (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000)
66. and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, ‘Participatory Budgeting in Porto Alegre: Toward a Redistributive Democracy’, Politics and Society 26 (1998): 461–510.
67. See also Vitale, Democracia semidireta no Brasil pós-1988: a experiência do Orçamento Participativo [Semi-direct Democracy in Brazil after 1988: the experience of the Participatory Budgeting]. PhD Dissertation. Department of Philosophy and General Theory of Law of Universidade de São Paulo, 2004.
68. Norberto Bobbio, Il Futuro della Democrazia (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1984), pp. 44–6. It is worth noting that the extension of the concept of the citizen and political rights has not yet been exhausted, although historically speaking it has become more inclusive. If in ancient Greece, women, slaves and foreigners were excluded from citizenship, foreigners still lack political rights in nation-states.
69. Jürgen Habermas, ‘Legitimation Problems in the Modern State’, in Communication and Evolution of Society (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1979), pp. 186–7.
70. Habermas, Held and Anthony Giddens are representative thinkers in this regard. See the idea of political inclusion in Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 182;
71. Held's arguments about democratic autonomy, in Models of Democracy, p. 324;
72. and Giddens's suggestions for dialogic democracy in Beyond Left and Right: The Future of Radical Politics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 15–17, p. xli.
73. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 78.
74. Although the ultimate ideal of the deliberative proposal is consensus and unanimity, these are not conditions of its existence. It is essential that there be maximum participation in decision-making, and that a majority assents to the decisions. If consensus and unanimity are achieved, so much the better. Indeed, Habermas suggests that majority rule is an example of institutionalized procedure of public deliberation. See Between Facts and Norms, p. 179.
75. See also Manin, ‘On Legitimacy and Political Deliberation’, p. 362.
76. Hannah Arendt's analysis of discourse and action illuminates this idea from another angle. Each individual reveals his or her singular identity, a risk we all run, through discourse, action and, above all, in living together with other people. See her The Human Condition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 179–80.
77. Habermas, ‘Three Normative Models of Democracy’, p. 244.
78. As Habermas says: ‘Justified and binding decisions about policies and laws demand, on the one hand, that deliberation and decision making take place face-to-face. On the other hand, at the level of direct and simple interactions, not all the citizens can join in the shared exercise of such a practice. A solution to this problem is provided by the parliamentary principle of establishing representative bodies for deliberation and decision making.’ Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 170, 182.
79. Jürgen Habermas, ‘Legitimation Problems in the Modern State’, in Communication and the Evolution of Society (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1979), pp. 185–7.
80. This argument is also supported by Cohen and Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory, pp. 348, 390.
81. The relative acceptance of both forms accords with the middle course Habermas steers between the republican and liberal models. In the former, representation cannot in principle be admitted, since popular sovereignty cannot be delegated. In the latter, though, representation is justifiable, since it is the only realistic way of implementing democracy. Habermas, ‘Three Normative Models of Democracy’, p. 250.
82. Habermas attributes the origins of the confusion between the two levels to Rousseau, who first related questions of legitimacy to questions of procedure; see ‘Legitimation Problems in the Modern State’, pp. 185–7. In the context of modernity, Niklas Luhmann also recognizes the need for more abstract and less restricted justifications of participation, although the source of his theoretical construction is a totally different conception. For him, the ideas of participation and legitimacy have to be understood in terms of more abstract concepts such as communication or action in order to satisfy the expectations of social contexts in which they are applied. This movement to more abstract levels is essential to avoid disillusionment.
83. Niklas Luhmann, ‘Participación y Legitimación: Ideas y Experiencias’, La Participación, Anuari de la Facultad de Dret, Biblioteca de la Universitat de Barcelona, Estudi General de Lleida (1985): 14.
84. J. Elster, ‘Introduction’. In Deliberative Democracy, ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 5.
85. Cohen and Arato argue that the conditions of democratic legitimacy should be fulfilled, ‘in principle, at least, by a direct democracy of councils pyramidally organized, as well as by a representative type of democracy whose delegated authorities are controlled by viable public spheres’: Civil Society and Political Theory, p. 411.
86. According to Cohen and Arato, ‘Habermas has omitted to give the minimum conditions necessary for organizing democratic institutions’. ‘The idea of institutionalizing discourse is hardly absent from Habermas's overall conception’: Civil Society and Political Theory, pp. 391–2, 392.
87. Cohen, ‘Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy’, in Deliberative Democracy, ed. Bohman and Rehg, pp. 84–6, 85.
88. In this regard, Giddens identifies some conditions for the functioning of deliberative democracy in representative systems. The most important would guarantee visibility of the acts taken by the representatives through the recall process, and ensure publicity in many areas of the government, especially in the distribution of resources. Giddens, Beyond Left and Right, pp. 114–5.
89. Cohen, ‘Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy’, in Deliberative Democracy, ed. Bohman and Rehg, p. 85.
90. This limitation of the concept is clear when by ‘human rights’, in the liberal perspective as well as in the republican view, Habermas refers exclusively to civil and political rights. ‘Popular Sovereignty as Procedure’, p. 44.
91. Cohen and Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory, pp. 397–405, 392.
92. Nancy Fraser advocates a broader conception of public sphere than the one adopted by Habermas. Fraser argues that Habermas' idea of the public sphere is limited to a bourgeois conception that does not consider material equality to be a condition to political equality. ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere’, in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoum (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999[1992]), p. 121.
93. These principles are guaranteed by article 5 of the Vienna Declaration of Plan of Action, adopted by the World Conference of Human Rights, 14–25 June 1993.