Can deliberation neutralise power?

Abstract

Most democratic theorists agree that concentrations of wealth and power tend to distort the functioning of democracy and ought to be countered wherever possible. Deliberative democrats are no exception: though not its only potential value, the capacity of deliberation to ‘neutralise power’ is often regarded as ‘fundamental’ to deliberative theory. Power may be neutralised, according to many deliberative democrats, if citizens can be induced to commit more fully to the deliberative resolution of common problems. If they do, they will be unable to get away with inconsistencies and bad or private reasons, thereby mitigating the illegitimate influence of power. I argue, however, that the means by which power inflects political disagreement is far more subtle than this model suggests and cannot be countered so simply. As a wealth of recent research in political psychology demonstrates, human beings persistently exhibit ‘motivated reasoning’, meaning that even when we are sincerely committed to the deliberative resolution of common problems, and even when we are exposed to the same reasons and evidence, we still disagree strongly about what ‘fair cooperation’ entails. Motivated reasoning can be counteracted, but only under exceptional circumstances such as those that enable modern science, which cannot be reliably replicated in our society at large. My analysis suggests that in democratic politics – which rules out the kind of anti-democratic practices available to scientists – we should not expect deliberation to reliably neutralise power.

The Fact of Unreasonable Pluralism

“…This is not to suggest that all efforts to persuade people to adopt more reasonable views are bound to fail, nor that we should give up trying. My point is just that there are formidable obstacles that are liable to severely limit the effectiveness of efforts to convert people to reasonable views through dialogue and debate (for more on this point, see Bagg 2018).…”

Building a Better Referendum: Linking Mini-Publics and Mass Publics in Popular Votes

“…Reconvening the previous mini-public may reduce costs and be composed of citizens who had already learned the subject matter in their initial deliberations Cutler et al, 2008). However, mini-publics may be biased or perceived as biased if they are believed to have a vested interest in their earlier findings or decisions (Bagg, 2015;Morrell, 2013). This concern may be mitigated if mini-publics are seen as deliberative and their members are regarded as legitimate citizen representatives.…”

“…In recent years, mini-publics have been grafted onto popular votes in Canada, Iceland, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and several U.S. states to institutionalize deliberation prior to popular votes. Mini-publics are small groups convened to deliberate, often made up of lay-citizens and selected by sortition or random stratified sampling from the broader population in order avoid self-selection models of participation that incentivize those with vested interests in a way that undermines deliberation (Bagg, 2015;Beauvais & Bächtiger, 2016;Warren, 2017). The participants of mini-publics can thus be understood as "citizen representatives" who represent those who are not present in these deliberative forums (Warren, 2008).…”

Human centred science and technology—transdisciplinary foresight and co-creation as tools for active needs-based innovation governance

“…Despite widespread PE enthusiasm, scholarly and political debate developed various critical and hypercritical arguments. The most commonly identified shortcomings include that PE fails to deliver the aimed for results, such as gains in rationality, stimulating debate or actual impact on strategy and policy-making [41,54,57,59,60,[71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80]. Here, discrepancies particularly emerge, when bridging the gap between theory and practice [81,82].…”