Law, interrupted: on legislative disruption and deliberative democracy

Abstract

This commentary piece teases out a theme that runs through the articles collected in this special issue: the relationship between legislative disruption and deliberative democracy. The practice of legislative disruption appears to go against the normative aspirations of deliberative democracy, but our discussion identifies several respects in which this mode of engagement can function to reinstate a deliberative environment in certain contexts. Drawing on the articles in this special issue, our analysis also brings to the fore certain inadequacies in deliberative democracy as a framework for evaluating legislative disruption.

Keywords:

• deliberative democracy
• deliberative systems
• global governance
• legislative disruption
• legislative assemblies

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Carole Spary, Jeff Haynes, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. The research for this article was carried out with the generous assistance of a Direct Grant from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Notes

Spary, “Disrupting Rituals of Debate,” 342–3.

Bohman, “The Coming of Age”; Dryzek, Foundations and Frontiers; Parkinson, Deliberating in the Real World.

Smith and Brassett, “Deliberation and Global Government.”

Young, “Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy.”

Estlund, “Deliberation Down and Dirty”; Fung, “Deliberation Before the Revolution”; Smith, “Democracy, Deliberation, and Disobedience.”

Smith, “Civil Disobedience and the Public Sphere.”

Spary, “Disrupting Rituals of Debate,” 342.

Ibid., 340.

This tendency to prefer non-parliamentary forums as sites of deliberation is reflected in the writings of Rawls and Fishkin, discussed and cited in the following paragraphs (see also Ferejohn, “The Citizen's Assembly Model,” 204–208, Fung, “Recipes for Public Spheres,” and the essays collected in Fung and Wright, Deepening Democracy). For critical analysis of this tendency, see Simone Chambers “Deliberation and Mass Democracy.”

Rawls, Political Liberalism, 231–40. It should be noted that this characterization by Rawls of the Supreme Court as non-partisan or impartial may strike some readers as strange given the controversy surrounding the appointment of judges to it. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising this point.

Fishkin, When the People Speak.

Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason,” 771–3, Fishkin, When the People Speak, 70–5.

The term “mass democracy” is from Chambers, “Rhetoric and the Public Sphere.”

Dryzek, Foundations and Frontiers, 7.

Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement, 358.

Habermas, “Political Communication in Media Society.”

Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 204–308.

Other studies that address the deliberative functions of legislative assemblies include Bessette, The Mild Voice of Reason and Steiner et al. Deliberative Politics in Action.

Spary, “Disrupting Rituals of Debate,” 338.

Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement, 358.

Ibid., 83.

Parkinson, Deliberating in the Real World, 172–3.

Dryzek, Foundations and Frontiers, 10–14; see also Parkinson and Mansbridge, Deliberative Systems.

The concept of “societal perspectives” is discussed in Bohman, “Democratizing the Global Order,” 439, Brown, “Citizens Panels,” 218–20, and Young, Inclusion and Democracy, 136–41.

Dryzek, Foundations and Frontiers, 73.

Dryzek, “Rhetoric in Democracy,” 327–8 and 332–3.

Spragens, Reason and Democracy, 249.

Dryzek, “Rhetoric in Democracy,” 327.

Ibid., 334.

Dryzek, Foundations and Frontiers, 82.

For more on the potential for conflict between categorical and systemic standards, see Dryzek, “Rhetoric in Democracy,” 333–5.

Markovits, “Democratic Disobedience,”

Dryzek, Foundations and Frontiers, 76–9.

It is, of course, difficult to measure these effects in practice. A helpful discussion of “meta-deliberation” can be found in Dryzek, Foundations and Frontiers, 85–118.

Spary, “Disrupting Rituals of Debate.”

Fell, “Putting on a Show.”

On the role of rhetoric, see also Chambers, “Rhetoric and the Public Sphere” and Finlayson, “What's the Problem?”

Green, “Analyzing Legislative Performance,” 420–421.

For more on the plebeian theory of democracy, see Green, Eyes of the People.

Brassett and Higgott, “Building the Normative Dimension”, Smith and Brassett, “Deliberation and Global Governance.”

Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.