Deliberative Democracy Flashcards
(34 cards)
What is the difference between deliberative and agonistic democracy?
Agonistic democracy rejects the need to reach consensus.
What is the different between deliberative democracy and representative democracy?
Deliberative democracy focuses on process rather than on institutions, requires people to try to reach consensus and encourages compromise.
What is deliberative democracy?
Democracy as a process of collective deliberation among free and equal individuals rather than a particular set of institutions or constitutional structures.
What is agonistic democracy?
Rejects the idea that reason can transcend or resolve deep disagreements about moral/political matters in order to provide consensus.
Why might deliberative democracy be better than aggregative democracy?
Aggregating preferences might produce odd results that don’t seem to be true collective decisions. Moreover, there are problems with majority rule. Do the people really rule themselves if we’re only trying to aggregate isolated, individual preferences, rather than collective will?
What is the problem of adversarial politics?
Sometimes, democracies are presented as a fight between competing sides/parties who are battling it out for the people’s votes. They’re not trying to come to any sort of agreement; they’re basically opposing each other.
Who is deliberative democracy primarily associated with?
Habermas
What is deliberative democracy?
A model whereby people govern together as people through dialogue, deliberation, discourse and conversation. It’s not simply about registering our preferences, but having some sort of dialogue about the options. Through the model, people will get more information about the options, will have more opportunity to be engaged in popular government, and there will be more role for people in government.
What do Ackerman and Fishkin suggest?
Deliberation Day: a national holiday held a week before major national elections. Registered voters come together in neighbourhood meeting places in small groups (15) and larger groups (500) to discuss the central issues raised by the campaign. Each deliberator is paid for the day’s work on the condition that they show up at the polls the next week. All other work, except the most essential, is prohibited by law.
Why is deliberative democracy an ideal?
It combats rational ignorance: democracy is supposed to give everybody a voice, regardless of how much they know about what they’re voting. Thus, people may think there’s no need to spend time finding out about politics. Moreover, representatives may be able to give us lots of useful information about what they’d actually do, because they need the vote first. Deliberative democracy would combat this.
What are the strengths of deliberative democracy?
It incentivises us. We’ll have access to certain information and campaigners will be incentivised to give us good information. It’s inviting us to participate and engage. We’re incentivised because they’re really small groups so each person can speak. We don’t think of ourselves as one vote in however many million here.
What is the benefit of the model of discussion?
You’re trying to get people to understand your perspective, so you offer reasons why they should agree with you. Thus, you have to be responsive to the reasons of others, too. It should help understand each other, through active listening.
How would the people be grouped?
In fairly representative groupings. Rather than just grouping people from the same street together, who likely have similar life experiences, there’ll be an incentive to have different people participating together. We’ll get a microcosm of the larger society. We’ll be exposed to different decision-making.
What might be a problem with diverse groups?
It’s harder to find common ground. The ideal is that they see themselves as citizens trying to make a collective decision. But this is unlikely.
Why might deliberative democracy develop our beliefs?
Rather than being set in our ways, because we never have to test our thinking, deliberative democracy gives us an opportunity to share and listen to others, and then reflect. It allows us to change our minds.
Why is time a good thing in deliberative democracy?
Rather than voting being a 2 second process, we come to realise that we must give our time to invest in the process and think seriously about what it is to be a citizen. Everybody has the time to participate.
What challenge to deliberative democracy does Iris M. Young draw attention to?
She notes that ‘Many rights have been won in democratic societies by means of courageous activism - the eight-hour day, votes for women’. She says that contemporary democratic societies don’t reflect deliberative democracies ideals. A challenge for deliberative democrats will be to explain why activism, which confronts rather than engages in discussion, is has produced results.
What are some examples of activism that confronts political parties?
Street marches, boycotts, sit-ins
What does Young aim to do?
Explore where there’s common ground between the activist and the deliberative democrat, and where they diverge. She wants to bring out the limitations of deliberatively democratic norms, and explore whether they acknowledge that existing democracies have structural inequalities that underlie significant injustices and social harms. Moreover, she wants to explore the virtues of nondeliberative political practices.
How does Young characterise the deliberative democrat?
As somebody who ‘claims that parties to political conflict ought to deliberate with one another and through reasonable argument try to come to an agreement on policy satisfactory to all.’
How does Young characterise the activist?
As somebody who is ‘suspicious of exhortations to deliberate because he believes that in the real world of politics, where structural inequalities influence both procedures and outcomes, democratic processes that appear to conform to norms of deliberation are usually biased toward more powerful agents.’
What does the activist recommend, according to Young?
That those who care about promoting greater justice should engage primarily in critical oppositional activity, rather than attempt to come to agreement with those who support or benefit from existing power structure.
What is Young’s main criticism for deliberative democrats?
She notes that deliberative democrats develop a political philosophy that’s based on idealised version of the world, and hypothetical situations in which people can deliberate as equals. But political philosophy should take seriously the injustices of our world, and not gloss over them or develop philosophies that have idealised assumptions that are then not applicable.
What kind of account(s) is deliberative democracy for Young?
She sees deliberative democracy as both a normative account of the bases of democratic legitimacy, and a prescription for how citizens ought to be political engaged. Deliberative democracy holds that the best way to conduct political action is through public deliberation where people offer reasons for their opinions and listen to others to reach an agreement.
