Deliberative democracy as a critical theory

Abstract

Deliberative democracy’s roots in critical theory are often invoked in relation to deliberative norms; yet critical theory also stands for an ambition to provoke tangible change in the real world of political practice. From this perspective, this paper reconsiders what deliberative democracy ought to look like as a critical theory, which has not just theoretical and practical, but also methodological implications. Against conceptions of activism as pushing through one’s pregiven convictions, recent debates in critical theory highlight the necessity for critical activism to be emancipatory in way that is enabling rather than imposing, and inclusive rather than ‘enlightened’. As such deliberative democracy must be at once a critical theory of democracy and a democratic critical theory: committing itself to being an innately inclusive, itself reflexive and self-reflexive project rather than a substantive theory to be implemented.

Keywords:

• Deliberative democracy
• critical theory
• emancipation
• activist political theory
• ideal theory

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Sorin Baiasu, John Boswell, John Dryzek, Carys Hughes, and the two anonymous reviewers for the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy for their valuable feeback on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes

1. And indeed, the timing for such a change in self-perception might be just right. The current political context of rising populism and ‘protest voting’ by the ‘left behind’ might well illustrate a failure of democratic theory’s empirical turn to sufficiently engage with people’s real concerns for the scholarly enthusiasm about novel innovations to be matched by actual public interest and trust in these. At the same time, this very context has prompted scholars to publish commentaries through non-academic channels, presumably out of a perceived need to now reach a broader audience (e.g. Moore, 2016; Mouffe, 2016; Parkinson, 2016). It might be argued that in times of ‘post-truth’ and rejection of experts, academics’ refraining from making their voice heard will only make matters worse; and it is thus no coincidence that ‘impact’ and ‘public engagement’ agendas increasingly drive research pursuits. Still, inasmuch as the stance of those ‘left behind’ may be the result precisely of having been treated as a merely reactive, ‘blind’ audience in the past, continuation of the same practice of one-sided messages is unlikely to lead to more reflective engagement. From a critical perspective, ‘activist’ channels such as online blog posts still remain problematically one-directional, and like a mere extension of the academy’s own ‘echo chamber’. Thus, in this overall constellation, it seems particularly important to exploit scholars’ renewed interest in genuine public engagement, yet explore new ways towards rendering it dialogic and emancipatory as opposed to one-sided and top-down.