Critique of deliberative rationality

As I argued in part I and in the previous chapter, theorists of deliberative democracy try to conceptualize political sphere and democratic decision making processes as more inclusive than in conventional liberal theory and at the same time to reconcile the universal norms of liberal democracy, institutionalized as constitutional rights, with the values of inclusive democracy and the recognition of difference, diversity and plurality. The central thesis of deliberative democracy in this regard is that anyone should be able to enter the political sphere with any issues that can eventually be politicized even if they are not regarded properly political prior to the public deliberations; given that she abides by “the rules of the game”, that is, the deliberative moral conditions of universal respect and egalitarian symmetry, and is prepared to publicly justify the claims she makes by giving generally acceptable reasons in its favor.

Mouffe’s argument presented in the previous section indicates that the proponents of radical democracy are not convinced by the deliberative attempts to conceive the values of democracy as compatible and indeed interdependent with the universalist politics of rights; and that they dismiss such attempts as just ways to expand and naturalize the liberal hegemony and lend it democratic legitimacy by appeals to apparent inclusiveness that is bound to remain illusionary unless the conflictual dimension of “the political” is explicitly recognized. Here I introduce some other aspects of deliberative theory that proponents of radical and inclusive democracy find problematic. These are related to the universal moral and rational values contained in the deliberative argument; like the meaning and content of the

“rational” norms as criteria for evaluating political arguments; the reasonable style of argumentation that allegedly discriminates “different” styles of speech and action;

and the norms of symmetry and mutual respect as well as other idealistic dimensions of the Habermasian “ideal speech situation” that in the real world of existent inequalities are claimed to contribute to the perpetuation of existing inequalities rather than help to cure them.

Mouffe, as it appears from the discussions above, does not regard “deliberative democracy” as a democratic theory that can be distinguished from conventional liberalism. She does acknowledge a difference between “aggregative” and

“deliberative” modes of liberal democracy, and places Rawls and Rawlsian liberals as well as Habermas and other proponents of deliberative democracy in the latter

category. The theory of deliberative democracy does not in Mouffe’s view escape the difficulties of the more conventional Rawlsian model of democracy; indeed it earns even more severe criticism for pretending to do so, for allegedly believing in the possibility of finding “harmonious” consensus in political questions through rational and inclusive deliberations and for asserting that political decisions can be made without exclusions, from an intersubjectively achieved impartial standpoint and equally in the interests of all. Against the hope that the deliberative conditions contribute to more legitimate and just outcomes of democratic procedures, Mouffe, holding on to her Schmittian definition of democracy being based on a frontier between “us” and “them”, argues that “the obstacles to the realization of the ideal speech situation – and to the consensus without exclusion it would bring about - are inscribed in the democratic logic itself” (Mouffe 2000, 48). She criticizes deliberative democrats for denying the contingency and the contestability of all political decisions and for naturalizing political decisions by making them appear as if they were achieved through inclusive deliberations and unanimous consensus; and argues:

“Consensus in a liberal-democratic society is – and always will be – the expression of hegemony and a crystallization of power relations. The frontier that it establishes between what is and what is not legitimate is a political one, and for that reason it should remain contestable” (Ibid. 49, my emphasis).

It is hard to see how for example Benhabib’s account of deliberative democracy, with its emphasis on ongoing deliberations and the principally open possibility to contest all results of previous deliberations and accepted norms, contradicts that statement.

However, Mouffe is convinced that due to its commitment to rationality, and to the universality of certain norms as those expressed through the institutionalization of basic rights, the deliberative model is bound, just like Rawlsian liberalism, to “escape politics” and implicitly try to displace genuine disagreement by establishing a unity of certain moral norms that all reasonable persons are expected to share. Mouffe’s critique particularly focuses on the attempt by deliberative democrats like Habermas, Benhabib and Cohen to secure the link between democracy and liberalism, popular sovereignty and individual rights; and on their emphasis on normative, as opposed to merely instrumental, rationality. In Mouffe’s view all arguments invoking morality and rationality are out of place in the political sphere, and any attempt to introduce such arguments to political justification processes is an

attempt to deny the political dimensions of democracy and ultimately to repress difference. Above all, Mouffe criticizes deliberative democrats as well as Rawlsian liberals for trying to deny that there is a “fundamental tension” between the logics of

“liberalism” and “democracy”, a tension whose existence Mouffe herself firmly asserts. (Mouffe 2000, 83-93.)

From a slightly different angle, Young, who is generally more sympathetic toward the deliberative model, also expresses her concern that it insufficiently increases the inclusiveness of the political sphere. Like Mouffe, she perceives its demand of rational arguments to be too restrictive in terms of inclusion – not because it is in conflict with some crucial ontological features of “the political”, but because it allegedly discriminates styles of expression other than those characteristic of the dominant groups and discourses. Young considers deliberative democratic theory to be far too idealistic in terms of the possibility of removing the influences of inequalities of power and resources from the political sphere. She points out that theorizing politics as free of coercive power and particular interests does not necessarily make it so in practice; and that eventually, presenting democratic politics as if it is symmetrical, equal, mutually respectful and free of partial interests, makes existent imbalances of power and influence just harder to distinguish in real life deliberations. Like some other feminist theorists, Young introduces a psychological dimension to the debate, arguing that removing the tangible indicators or social power from political debates will not remove internalized social roles and the norms that elevate the speech of some people, while marginalizing that of others:

“Deliberative theorists tend to assume that bracketing political and economic power is sufficient to make speakers equal. This assumption fails to notice that the social power that can prevent people from being equal speakers derives not only from economic dependence or political domination but also from an internalized sense of the right one has to speak or not to speak” (Young 1996, 122).

Young invokes the historical development of liberal democratic ideals in general and the ideal of public deliberations in particular, reminding of the exclusions, based on gender, class and “race”, which have contributed to the Enlightenment ideal of reason and the bourgeois ideal of the civic public. Thus, the pretense of universality of the deliberative values is necessarily false:

“Despite the claim of deliberative forms of orderly meetings to express pure universal reason, the norms of deliberation are culturally specific and often operate as forms of power that silence or devalue the speech of some people” (Young 1996, 123).

Young argues in accord with Mouffe that contrary to the ideals of deliberative theory, power cannot be bracketed from political debates in practice; and that in reality, political deliberations should rather be described as competitive and agonistic. She also claims that contrary to the deliberative ideals of universal respect, public forums tend to favor some styles of speech at the expense of others, for example assertive and argumentative speech is preferred to tentative or conciliatory. Thus, they implicitly also favor the groups who have been socially and culturally prepared to follow the dominant norms, such as men and majority cultures. Similarly, the norms of rationality make dispassionate speech appear preferable to more emotional forms of expression; articulate and educated speech to slang and dialects etc. Young also takes issue with the ideal of “unity” and the appeal to common good in deliberative democracy: given the de facto inequality of participants, “common good” is likely to be defined by those in privileged position while the rhetorical universalizing of their definition just makes it easier to marginalize deviant positions. (Ibid. 120-126.)

Young later argues that paradoxically, the tendency to favor status quo and thus implicitly protect the existing inequalities is inherent in the logic of democracy:

“Where there are structural inequalities of wealth and power, formally democratic procedures are likely to reinforce them, because privileged people are able to marginalize the voices and issues of those less privileged” (Young 2000, 34).

To break out of this disturbing “logical circle” that seems to force the more marginalized sections of society to wait until the society becomes more fair in order to be able to assert their conception of fairness, Young suggests, in addition to her account of identity-based “politics of difference” (that I will discuss further in part III), that deliberative democracy extend the range of acceptable modes of political communication and loosen the norms of rationality and reasonableness. Like Honig, she argues that “disruptive, annoying or distracting means of communication are often necessary or effective elements in […] efforts to engage others in debate over issues and outcomes” (Ibid. 50). Instead of dialogue, Young prefers to conceive of democracy as struggle, because in her view it takes struggle from the least privileged to put their issues of concern on the political agenda. She is nevertheless less inclined to remove all normative considerations from the political sphere than

Mouffe, Honig or Brown: a purely agonistic vision, in her view, is not very different from a “model of interest group competition in which aggregated might makes right”

(Ibid. 51). Young is willing to retain the legitimacy of public appeals to justice as well as communicative orientation towards normative reason; as long as it is not formally so restrictive that it enhances exclusions instead of opening ways to contest them.

(Ibid. 36-51.)

The critique introduced here raises many questions about the legitimacy of normative universalism in politics that will be further discussed in the remaining chapters. If the norm of symmetry indeed implicitly favors those with dominant position and character, is there any sense to theorize democracy as free and equal public debate of all citizens in the name of public good? If the liberal politics of universal rights is implicitly oppressive of difference, and the deliberative criteria of reciprocity, symmetry and equal respect remain likewise because of their inherent endorsement of the same morally universalistic ideal, is there any alternative to a return to conceptualizing the political in terms of “might is right”? Does the theory of deliberative democracy manage to envision a political sphere that respects inclusion of diversity and the equality of rights, or is it just another formulation of the same old story of “impartial” liberal rationality, as some critics claim? Some confusing issues in connection with this debate need to be clarified. One regards the ambiguous relation of radical democrats to the politics of universal rights. The framework of rights, treated by deliberative theorists as “the rules of the game”, is, as I will argue in more detail below, accepted somewhat reluctantly by radical critics of liberalism in practice as a contingent definition of “our way of life”, as a likewise contingent outcome of the current political hegemony, or as something we “cannot not want”, but should not be too enthusiastic about (Brown 2002, 420-432); while heavily criticized at the rhetorical level. Benhabib challenges the critics of morality in politics by arguing that they assume what they are unwilling to explicitly endorse:

“[…] antifoundationalist theories of democracy are circular in that they either posit or simply take for granted precisely those moral and political norms of citizens’ equality, freedom and democratic legitimacy for the justification of which what are dubbed “foundationalist” models were developed in the first place” (Benhabib 1996, 71).

Another question regards the meaning of the notion of inclusiveness: Young is concerned for the capacity of the deliberative political sphere of including different political styles primarily because persons or groups of persons who are likely to

represent disprivileged styles are thus excluded from participation on equal terms;

while Mouffe, Honig and Isaac are more concerned for the capacity of the liberal or deliberative constraints to exclude certain kinds of political arguments from the public sphere. I will argue below that there is a difference, not always acknowledged, between those conceptions of inclusiveness, and that indeed they may contradict each other in cases where political positions are excluded from the political spheres because they are exclusive of persons or groups of persons: in those cases, proponents of inclusiveness face a choice that they may be reluctant to make.

Apparently, inclusiveness cannot be divorced from normative universalism as easily as the critics of the latter seem to assume.