Risse’s deliberative logic and governance: a critical engagement

Abstract

Over the last 20 years, ‘deliberation’ has become both a concept increasingly used by social science and a label for procedures many practitioners have introduced to ‘re-enchant’ democracies. Moving away from normative and political uses of the term and towards theories of public action, the four articles that follow this one pose the question when does deliberation actually take place within governance? Having first set out the contribution of existing publications on deliberation, this introductory article then presents why Thomas Risse’s definition – ‘a logic of truth seeking or arguing’ – is adopted and used throughout the articles that follow to shape and test a single analytical framework. Finally, the piece closes by presenting the individual, empirically grounded, articles that follow. Drawn from a variety of polities and scales of governance, these pieces are all inspired by a deeply sociological approach to public policymaking designed to open up decisions and deliberations to rigorous empirical enquiry.

Keywords:

• argumentation
• decision-making
• deliberation
• governance
• public policy

Notes

1. 1. The databases used here were JSTOR for texts in English and CAIRNS for those published in French. The first article containing the word ‘deliberation’ in its title was published in 1966 in a Philosophy journal. Until 1980, only nine other articles of this type can be found, all hailing from philosophy or law. During the 1980s, 15 more articles were published, some of them now in ‘political theory’ journals. Between 1991 and 2000, however, no less than 38 ‘deliberation’ articles were published, notably in major political science journals such as The American Political Science Review. In France, it is really only since 2000 that this theme has taken off (18 pieces between 2000 and 2009).

2. 2. In his original article Risse developed two empirical examples: the acceptance of German reunification by the USSR in 1990 and that of ‘human rights’ provisions by developing countries.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patrick Quantin

Patrick Quantin is a research professor at the Centre Emile Durkheim at the University of Bordeaux. He has been a specialist in African politics in general, and their democratization in particular, for the last 25 years. He is the author of Nord–Sud: conflits et dialogues (2011) and editor of Gouverner les sociétés africaines (2005). His current research is focused upon the political regulation of North–South trade.

Andy Smith

Andy Smith is a research professor at the Centre Emile Durkheim at the University of Bordeaux. He specializes in European public policymaking and political economy, and his recent research has focused upon how industries in general, and wine and pharmaceuticals in particular, are governed at the scale of the EU. In so doing, he has also sought to develop a framework for analysis that combines elements from constructivist and institutionalist political science, economics and sociology. See for example his co-edited (with B. Jullien) book Industries and Globalization (2008) and article in Review of International Political Economy (2011).