and ideology, and the ‘endless’ struggle for control.
For Walzer, then, the problem with deliberative democracy is that it is out of kilter with political reality. While we should make room for deliberation, we should be careful not to allow it to distract us from those other ‘properly political’ activities that (he believes) can really make a difference to our lives. For instance, in a world dominated by powerful interest groups, what ordinary people really need to do is to organize, to pool their resources, to mobilize, to demonstrate, to campaign, to vote in consort etc. (1999, 68–9). For ‘while legitimacy is strengthened if good arguments can be made about the substantive issues at stake, the victory is rarely won by making good arguments’ (1999, 66).
This first line of criticism allows that deliberation can have a role, albeit a subordinate one. However, a second, much-discussed line of criticism doubts even this. On a deliberative conception of democracy, people do not try to impose their views on one another, for example, through strategic voting (Gutmann and Thompson 2004, 3). Instead, each side tries to convince the other that the better arguments are on its side. To that end, they engage in an exchange of reasons (and other relevant considerations) in the hope of arriving at a shared view or an agreed judgement on what needs to be done. In reality, of course, we should not expect deliberation to be completely clean; it may be intermixed with partisanship, prejudice, hyperbole, ulterior motives, etc. But the basic idea remains that of decision on the merits of the case – what ultimately matters is the soundness of the reasons that we give for our decisions (Barry [1965] 2011, 87–8).
The worry is, however, that ordinary people may lack the motivation and the capacity for meaningful deliberation. Deliberation requires us to spell out the reasons for our views and to listen with an open mind to what others have to say. But since each voice is but one among many, ordinary people may have no real incentive to spend the time that careful reasoning requires, including the time to become sufficiently informed (Lupia 2016). Granted, much will depend on the nature of the topic and the context. The members of a local environmental group may be factually knowledgeable and politically vocal. But on issues of broader national significance, especially when those issues involve highly technical considerations, the average person’s motivation to learn new information and seek out opportunities to shape public discussion is likely to be very low (see Downs 1957; Olson 1965).
Even if the problem of motivation could be overcome, the problem of capacity might still persist. Deliberation is exacting; it requires time and effort. Among other things, it also requires a capacity for impartial or objective judgement (see Neblo 2015, 92; O’Flynn and Setälä 2020, 3). Yet we know from the political psychology literature that people are prone to letting their emotions get the better of their critical faculties. People are naturally biased towards information that confirms their prior views and tend to discount or dismiss information that challenges those views – especially when the issue under discussion bears on their personal happiness or wellbeing (see, e.g., Kahneman et al. 1982; Kunda 1990). For instance, people may deny new scientific information about climate change if that evidence does not sit comfortably with their existing way of life. After all, accepting the reality of climate change portends unpleasant environmental consequences and would require most people to make significant changes to their daily routines and larger worldview.
In short, people may fail to reason as we think they should when confronted by information that is contradictory and unsettling. In order to avoid ‘cognitive dissonance’, they may, in effect, unconsciously seek to deceive themselves. Far from keeping an open mind or being responsive to ‘the strength of the better argument’, in Jürgen Habermas’s (1984, 25) celebrated phrase, people may instead engage in ‘group think’ or ‘tribal’ or identity politics. On some accounts, people are prone to irrationalism. For instance, Achen and Bartels (2016, 116–45) point to evidence of blind retrospection – the fact that voters punish elected leaders for droughts, floods and even shark attacks, that is, for events that are way beyond anyone’s control.
Normative theory and empirical research
Deliberative democrats are alive to these other related criticisms. Indeed, it is probably no exaggeration to say that almost everything that has been written about deliberative democracy since the late twentieth century has been in response to them (at least to some degree). Whether that betrays a certain insecurity on the part of deliberative democrats or a courageous willingness to fight their corner is an interesting question. While this present book can also be read as a response to deliberative democracy’s critics – explicitly or implicitly, the two objections just discussed will reappear at multiple points throughout the text – there is one crucially important point to reinforce.
As already noted, deliberative democracy is a normative ideal. The term also refers to a range of theories about how this ideal might be pursued. There are some important differences between these theories – for example, as we will see in Chapter 2, there are different views on what should count as a genuine exchange of reasons. Yet, at bottom, they share the view that democracies can be legitimated by grounding the exercise of political power in the deliberation of their members. Or, as Cohen puts it, ‘outcomes are democratically legitimate if and only if they could be the object of a free and reasoned agreement among equals’ (1989, 22). The word ‘could’ is important here. Deliberative democrats accept that collective decisions are usually taken by legislative bodies. The crucial question or test, though, is whether those decisions are based on reasons that free and equal citizens could reasonably be expected to endorse (Rawls 1997). The actual world may fall short of the ideal. Legislators may fail to deliberate and ordinary people may fail to pay attention. Institutions may fail to provide the right incentives or impose the necessary sanctions. Nevertheless, the point of the ideal is to provide direction.
Although deliberative democracy is a normative ideal or theory, we do have some variable evidence that deliberative norms exist to some degree in some democratic systems. (They can also be found in nondemocratic systems, but since the concern in this book is with deliberative democracy, those cases can be set aside for now; see, e.g., He and Warren 2011). In recent years, scholars have spent a great deal of time and effort thinking about how deliberative democracy might be empirically measured and assessed, and have already produced an impressive body of findings. Arguably, the best-known measurement instrument is the ‘discourse quality index’ (Steenbergen et al. 2003; Steiner et al. 2004). This index is compiled or computed from a range of individual measures (e.g., questions about the degree to which a claim or statement is well reasoned, respectful or constructive, along with the degree to which it addresses the common good) and, in its original formulation, was used to analyse and compare levels of deliberation in different parliamentary systems. Evidence gathered in this way suggests that (overall) levels of deliberation are likely to be higher in consensus systems with low party discipline and credible veto points than in adversarial systems with high party discipline and no veto points (Steiner et al. 2004, 111–14). It is also likely to be higher in parliamentary settings that are open to the public than in parliamentary committee meetings that are held behind closed doors (Steiner et al. 2004, 128–31).
Empirical evidence is obviously important to any normative project. As Robert Goodin puts it, we ‘choose policies [or institutions] hoping to produce certain kinds of results, and we must know how the system is wired in order to know which lever to pull’ (1982, 4). In other words, if we want to improve our democracies, we must have some idea of what is likely to work in practice and what is not. Empirical research is pivotal in this respect. But that is not all. In an important essay on the relationship between deliberative democracy theory and empirical political science, Dennis Thompson (2008, 511–13) draws our attention to the ways in which empirical research can expose tensions within a normative democratic theory, and in particular between its core values, that otherwise might not be obvious. For instance, deliberative democracy supposes that everyone should have their say. This might lead one to ask: how can deliberative democracy exist in the real world? Usually, this question is framed as ‘the problem of scale’ (e.g., Parkinson 2003): how can modern
