Arguing about arguing: a comment

Abstract

This symposium of Critical Policy Studies shares the concern for systematic empirical evaluations of the extent to which arguing and deliberation are relevant for explaining outcomes in the real world of public policy. The articles contribute to a growing body of literature on the conditions under which deliberative practices matter in politics. They provide rich empirical materials, and each article is based on solid and methodologically conscious research. My comment proceeds in three steps. First, I discuss three logics of action – consequentialism, appropriateness and deliberation. Second, I comment on the scope conditions under which arguing and deliberation are likely to affect the outcomes in public policy, with an eye on the contributions in this symposium. Third, I discuss the role of Habermasian ‘power in discourse’ and its relationship to a Foucaultian ‘power of discourse’. I conclude with remarks on the normative implications of the focus on deliberation.

Keywords:

• arguing
• deliberation
• institutions
• governance

Notes

1. 1. I thank Frank Fischer and Steven Griggs for inviting me to write this comment, and I am very grateful to Patrick Quantin and Andy Smith for putting this symposium together.

2. 2. There is an interesting twist to this logic, though: Why would actors give reasons and justifications in bargaining situation if each holds fixed preferences? If nobody is open to being persuaded, actors can argue and give reasons until they are blue in the face; nothing will happen. Therefore, rhetorical action assumes, at least, implicitly that somebody – be it the negotiation partner, be it the audience – actually listens and is open to persuasion.

3. 3. At a conference in Frankfurt/Main in June 2006. See Habermas (2007), also Habermas (1992).

4. 4. Note that Elster and Checkel have formulated contradictory expectations with regard to the role of audiences and publicity as enabling or foreclosing deliberation. Kleine and I suggested that both are correct, but there exists an additional scope condition, namely what speakers know about the certainty or uncertainty of the audiences whose consent is required. ‘Speaking to the convinced’ is generally not conducive to deliberation but results in ritualistic performances, as a result of which publicity and transparency might be counter-productive for arguing and deliberation.

5. 5. Unfortunately, Jörke’s contribution to this symposium (Jörke 2013) misrepresents the work of Risse et al. (1999, 2013) in at least two respects. First, the spiral model tried to integrate the various logics of social action in one conceptual framework rather than reconstructing ‘five stages of a process of persuasion’ (Jörke 2013, this issue). Second, Jörke claims that the empirical findings reflect the power hegemony of the West rather than the gradual promotion of universal norms. The case studies he cites were about torture, illegal killings, disappearances and the like rather than ‘Western’ civil liberties. If compliance with international norms against torture and disappearances reflect nothing but Western hegemony, I plead guilty as charged.

6. 6. Again, Jörke misrepresents the empirical work on deliberation in his contribution (2013, this issue). He correctly claims that it was not possible to demonstrate the existence of communicative orientations in empirical studies. He then argues that this led to an ‘inverted naturalistic fallacy’ in Risse’s and Deitelhoff’s works in the sense of deducing from some normative statement (there ought to be deliberation) to its actual existence. Just to reiterate the point made above, we concluded from our earlier empirical work that it was neither possible nor necessary to assume truth-seeking actor orientations in order to show that arguing and persuasion affected outcomes. As a result, the focus of attention shifted to the institutional conditions enabling deliberation (see above). May the readers decide whether this analytical move constitutes an ‘inverted naturalistic fallacy’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas Risse

Thomas Risse is Professor of International Relations at the Otto Suhr Institute for Political Science of the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. He coordinates the Research Center ‘Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood’ and co-directs the Research College ‘Transformative Power of Europe’ at the Freie Universität, both funded by the German Research Foundation. He is the author of A Community of Europeans? Transnational Identities and Public Spheres (Cornell University Press, 2010) and co-editor of (with Stephen Ropp und Kathrin Sikkink) The Persistent Power of Human Rights. From Commitment to Compliance (Cambridge University Press, 2013).