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ABSTRACT
The normative and metanormative pluralism that figure among core self-descriptions of democratic theory, which seem incompatible with democratic theorists’ practical ambitions, may stem from the internal logic of research traditions in the social sciences and humanities and from the conceptual structure of political theory itself. One way to deal productively with intradisciplinary diversity is to appeal to the idea of a meta-consensus; another is to appeal to the argument from cognitive diversity that fuels recent work on epistemic democracy. For different reasons, both strategies fail, such that a metatheoretical step-aside may be desirable, one that entails modeling democratic theory after the public justification approach.
Notes
1 But see Merkel Citation2014 for a more cautious view of whether there is crisis of exceptional proportions.
2 As a political scientist with a keen interest in political theory asked, at an international conference, Who does actually listen to political philosophers? Who do they think listens to them? In this regard, my discussion parallels recent reflections on the state of International Relations theory (Lake Citation2011).
3 It might be objected that although this narrative of pluralism has seized the contemporary imagination, there is nevertheless a significant “technocratic value consensus” among citizens of liberal democracies, revolving around such goals as peace, low unemployment, a better life for one’s children, good education, low crime rates, quality health care, freedom from fear, and so on (Friedman Citation2018, Introduction; cf. Landemore Citation2013, 192, 216). If there is disagreement, then it concerns the means of achieving these goals, not the goals themselves. I admit that there is some substance to this response, but still, there are deep value disagreements in liberal democracies about fundamental policy issues, and many “consensual” values cease to be such once we have to make tradeoffs (say, between economic growth and environmental protection). At any rate, whether the “fact of pluralism” on the ground is real or just imagined is not central to my own argument about the state of democratic theory, as the analogy with real-world societies has been suggested by those who think intradisciplinary dissonance is a good thing.
4 Mark Bevir notes that political theorists routinely make implicit ontological (“a priori”) claims about the nature of the world (Knight et al. 2014, 22).
5 A similar point was made decades ago by Charles Taylor (Citation1967) with respect to the supposed scientific neutrality of political science.
6 One interesting corollary concerns whether any kind of convergence can be expected. Many democratic theorists believe that properly designed deliberation can lead to greater consensus among participants in the practice. But is such an expectation plausible in case of democratic theory itself? I will return to this question in section VI.
7 I take models as the most general level of conceptualization. Models might comprise several theories of democracy, which are themselves theoretical elaborations of various conceptions. At the most basic level stand definitions of democracy. However, various authors use these terms promiscuously. One exception is Philip Pettit (Citation2013), who reserves the term model for a set of institutional suggestions derived from a theory of democracy (in his case, republican).
8 The figure rises further once we include lists of “democracies with adjectives” (Dryzek Citation2004, 143; Collier and Levitsky Citation1997; Beetham Citation1999, 5).
9 Examples include the extent of direct participation vs. representation; grounds of legitimacy (input/procedure vs. output); normative (critical) vs. empirically based definitions; consensus vs. conflict as the guiding idea; instrumental vs. intrinsic justifications; methodological individualism vs. collectivism (also actor vs. structure); scalar (degreeist) vs. dichotomous conceptualizations; historical (inductive) vs. ahistorical (deductive) approaches; fixed (aggregative) vs. malleable (deliberative) preferences and identities; and first-order normative demandingness (relationship to justice; positive vs. negative freedom).
10 See also the discussion of the possibility of a super-paradigm/meta-consensus in section V.
11 I am grateful to Jeffrey Friedman for pressing me on this point.
12 Besides the intuitive choice of abstract moral principles discussed above, the foremost ones are reflective equilibrium based on considered judgments, and the construction of a suitably idealized choosing position that models impartiality. See Floyd Citation2017, 120–65.
13 Could universal basic income be the turning point? Or is it just an exception to the rule?
14 Whereas for republican democracy, the decline of social-responsibility journalism represents a clear threat to the quality or even possibility of the informed public debate necessary for cultivating “civic virtue,” liberal pluralism is more concerned with providing channels of political mobilization for numerous social groups, together with arenas for fair bargaining and compromise among them. In this sense, the discussed trend might even be viewed positively by liberal pluralists. Elitist democracy, by contrast, requires impartial, efficient media to check corruption and incompetence on the part of ruling elites, while also promoting the general legitimacy of the regime. The (non)problematic nature of audience segmentation follows a similar logic.
15 It should be noted that even the delineation of a consensual “core meaning,” “basic level,” or “minimum definition” of democracy proves extraordinarily difficult.
16 I follow here the account of a paradigm (or “cognitive system”) put forward in Kornmesser and Schurz Citation2014, 17ff., which, while slightly reorganizing Kuhn’s (1996) original categories, puts his fundamental insights in systematic order.
17 Azevedo Citation1997 thus defends “diversity without paradigms” in sociology.
18 A nontechnical sense of “multiparadigmaticity” in political theory is, I think, widely accepted by theorists themselves.
19 That is, along with the social sciences, a parent subject area of political/democratic theory.
20 As is the norm in the social sciences in general (Schurz Citation2014, 50ff.).
21 The need for caution about the label stems from the difficult philosophical questions surrounding semantic holism; cf. Jackman Citation2014.
22 I am not taking sides on the issue of essential contestability as I do not need to. My argument rests on the (weaker) assumption that there is no consensual neutral ground—no evaluative meta-standard—for deciding which conception of democracy is the best.
23 Carter Citation2015 argues, contrariwise, (a) that certain concepts, such as freedom and power, are essentially non-evaluative, in the sense that their definition is grounded in empirical (value-free) properties of the world, and (b) that we can discover (or rather develop, by abstraction) higher-order value-neutral concepts (say, justice or democracy) to cover various comprehensive concepts. Carter’s analysis is too elaborate to be addressed here; I proceed on the assumption that deep disagreement over the meaning of democracy does represent a “genuinely substantive disagreement about what counts as one of the defining elements of a concept of x” (Carter Citation2015, 302, italics omitted). Perhaps tellingly, Carter does not engage the concept of democracy in his analysis. But see Busen Citation2015.
24 I return to the latter option towards the end of section VI.
25 One important exception is Jonathan Floyd’s Is Political Philosophy Impossible? (Citation2017), which resonates with much of what I say in this paper. Although I have some doubts about the implications Floyd draws from the “normative behaviorism” approach he advocates, his critical exposition of the state of political philosophy is penetrating and sobering. Sustained engagement with Floyd’s argument would require a separate treatment, though.
26 But see Schwartzberg Citation2015 for a deflationary account (“judgment democracy” is her label) that eschews the procedure-independent standard assumption while retaining belief in epistemic capacities of deliberation and aggregation.
27 The other three are the reasonable difficulty of the problem (“not too easy”); the sufficient smartness of participants (“not too dumb”); and a large number of participants (Landemore Citation2013, 102).
28 For 1000 participants, the Condorcet Jury Theorem (in its original formulation) predicts a collective probability of getting things right at around 0.7 (assuming their individual P is 51 percent). The probability quickly rises once many more “voters” are added, but we should note that a thousand competent democratic theorists might actually constitute a bold assumption. Besides that, for such important issues as the type of democracy to be instituted, we might require a much higher probability.
29 One question that might arise concerns the permanent or temporary nature of such suspension (see Warren Citation1996 for an argument in favor of the latter option). I do not think political theory actually works like that or ever could, even though it is an intriguing possibility worth some further attention.
30 Sectarian justifications might be ultimately all that is left to epistemic conceptions of democracy and/or democratic theory; cf. Ingham Citation2012, 150.
31 Although they represent very different types of reaction, the agonist (agonistic pluralist) approach to democracy, and Jonathan Floyd’s (Citation2017) “normative behaviorism,” come to mind.