scholarly journals From public reason to deliberative democracy

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 237-256
Author(s):  
Ivan Mladenovic
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Relationship

In this paper I shall investigate the relationship between public reason and deliberative democracy, mainly as it is presented in Rawls?s later political theory. Against the critics who claim that Rawls has no deliberative democratic theory, I shall argue that he presented a complex view of public deliberation that contains a set of formal and substantive requirements derived from the idea of public reason. My main aim in this paper is to defend and further elaborate the thesis that Rawls?s later political theory is crucially important for deliberative democracy. Furthermore, in light of the recent literature on deliberative democracy, I examine the relevance of Rawls?s view for addressing some current problems, but also look at some limits of the public reason perspective.

Introduction: Religion and public life

Ethnicities ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-153
Author(s):  
Matteo Bonotti ◽  
Jonathan Seglow
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Religious Establishment ◽  
The Relationship

Political debate about the place of religion and religious identities in liberal democracies is as vigorous as ever, as evidenced by Christians' assertiveness against what they regard as secularising tendencies and the attempt to eliminate their established place in public life, as well as religious minorities seeking to combat their often marginalised position and the specific injustices to which they are subject (such as anti-Semitism and Islamophobia). The papers in this collection aim to address these and similar issues, and to offer novel and fresh perspectives on some of the key themes and debates on religion and public life in contemporary political theory. In this introductory essay, we illustrate, first, the key elements of four contemporary debates on religion and public life which are explored in the articles that follow. These are the conflict between secularism and religious establishment, public reason and the use of religious arguments in public deliberation, the accommodation of religious beliefs, and the relationship between freedom of speech and religion. After surveying these debates we end with an overview of the essays in this special issue.

Enacting Public Value on the Abc's Q&A: From Normative to Performative Approaches

2013 ◽  
Vol 146 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gay Hawkins
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Public Address ◽  
Public Value ◽  
The Public ◽  
Current Affairs ◽  
Alternative Approach

Is there anything left to say about public value and public service broadcasting (PSB) without lapsing into boosterism, special pleading, or wildly unsubstantiated claims about the role of PSB in making citizens and democracy? This article develops an alternative approach, one that considers publicness not as a pre-given or static value, but as something that has to be continually enacted or performed. Using recent debates in political theory, it examines the processes and ontological effects of what Latour calls ‘making things public’. It makes two assumptions. The first is that there is no such thing as ‘the public’ out there waiting to be addressed; rather, publics have to be called into being The second is that there are a multiplicity of ways in which publicness can be assembled, and the challenge for PSB is to establish why its strategies are better. The example used is the ABC's current affairs discussion show Q&A, which is investigated to see how it generates an ontology of publicness. In what ways is the notion of public address and assembly mobilised? How does the experience of a public as a form of what Warner calls ‘Stranger sociability’ extend from the live audience to the household viewer? In what ways are the notions of public reason and rational discussion enacted and disrupted? And how does this enactment of publicness generate a sometimes poetic, anarchic or ribald shadow reality tweeted in from anonymous participants competing for public attention? Finally, how does it both reproduce and reinvent existing institutional regimes of value within the ABC?

scholarly journals The Political Theory of Parties and Partisanship: Catching Up

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-110
Author(s):  
Russell Muirhead ◽  
Nancy L. Rosenblum
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Catching Up ◽  
Political Rivalry

Despite their centrality to modern democracy, until recently political parties were relegated to the margins of normative democratic theory, taking a back seat to social movements, civil society associations, deliberative experiments, spaces for local participatory government, and direct popular participation. Yet, in the past 15 years, a burgeoning literature has emerged in democratic theory focused directly on parties and partisanship; that is our focus in this review. We locate three main normative defenses of parties: one centered in the special role parties can play in political justification as agents of public reason, a second that looks to the way parties contribute to deliberation, and a third that focuses on the partisan commitment to regulated political rivalry and peaceful rotation in office. In this last connection, we survey work on the constitutional status of parties and reasons for banning parties. We then consider the relation of partisanship to citizenship, and in a fourth section we turn to the ethics of partisanship. Parties and partisanship are interwoven but separable: If partisans are necessary to realize the value of parties, the reverse holds as well, and parties are necessary to realize the value of partisanship.

Participatory Democracy Revisited

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carole Pateman
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
Active Area ◽  
Democracy Promotion ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Form

Over the past two decades we have heard an historically unprecedented volume of talk about and praise of democracy, and many governmental, non-governmental, and international organizations have been engaged in democracy promotion. Democracy is a subject that crosses the boundaries in political science, and within my own field of political theory there has been a major revival of democratic theory. In political theory, argument about “democracy” is usually now qualified by one of an array of adjectives, which include cosmopolitan, agonistic, republican, and monitory. But the new form that has been by far the most successful is deliberative democracy. By 2007 John Dryzek could write that “deliberative democracy now constitutes the most active area of political theory in its entirety (not just democratic theory).” Not only is there an extremely large and rapidly growing literature, both theoretical and empirical, on deliberative democracy, but its influence has spread far outside universities.

Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Muirhead
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Median Voter ◽  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Positive Theory ◽  
Median Voter Theorem ◽  
Theory Of Democracy ◽  
Models Of Democracy

Anthony Downs’s Economic Theory of Democracy has been marginalized in normative democratic theory, notwithstanding its prominence in positive political theory. For normative theorists, the “paradox of voting” testifies to the reality of moral motivation in politics, a species of motivation foreign to Downs’s theory and central to the ideals of deliberative democracy that normative theorists developed in the 1980s and 1990s. The deliberative ideal displaced aggregative conceptions of democracy such as Downs’s model. The ensuing segmentation of normative democratic theories that assume moral motives (like deliberative democracy) and positive models of democracy that assume selfish motives (like Downs’s theory) leaves both without the resources to diagnose the persistence of ideological partisanship and polarization that beset modern democracies. Engaging Downs’s theoretical contributions, especially the median voter theorem, would constitute a salutary step toward a democratic theory that integrates normative and positive theory.

scholarly journals New Trouble For Deliberative Democracy

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-123
Author(s):  
Robert Talisse
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Democratic Practice

In the past two decades, democratic political practice has taken a deliberative turn. That is, contemporary democratic politics has become increasingly focused on facilitating citizen participation in the public exchange of reasons. Although the deliberative turn in democratic practice is in several respects welcome, the technological and communicative advances that have facilitated it also make possible new kinds of deliberative democratic pathology. This essay calls attention to and examines new epistemological troubles for public deliberation enacted under contemporary conditions. Drawing from a lesson offered by Lyn Sanders two decades ago, the paper raises the concern that the deliberative turn in democratic practice has counter-democratic effects.

scholarly journals Bloggers and Deliberative Democracy in Indonesia's Blogosphere

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (28) ◽  
pp. 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Jacky
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
The Public ◽  
Study Support ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship

<p>The study of the relationship between the Internet and democracy has produced two main debates. Some studies have said that the Internet has significantly contributed to democracy while others disagree. This study challenged the thesis of Habermas (2006) about the relationship between the Internet and Deliberative Democracy. This study was built on the following propositions: that the Internet causes bloggers to become parasitic, fragmented, and isolated; that it is effective in breaking down authoritarian regimes to create an egalitarian relationship, but it fails as a deliberative medium. This study used the concept of the public sphere and Habermas’ Deliberative Democracy (2006). It also explored the use of 2.0 qualitative methods with a hacking analysis perspective. Moreover, it gained data from the Internet by using the latest version of 2.0 Web and a virtual community. It focused on both discursive and non-discursive construction. The results of this study support only one of Habermas’ three propositions: that the Internet creates egalitarianism. Thus, this study rejects Habermas’ thesis apart from this one proposition. Furthermore, this study recommends that further research be done using the same propositions but on Twitter instead of the Internet.</p>

scholarly journals In Defense of Moderate Inclusivism: Revisiting Rawls and Habermas on Religion in the Public Sphere

2018 ◽  
pp. 143-157
Author(s):  
Jonas Jakobsen ◽  
Kjersti Fjørtoft
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Religious Reasons ◽  
Do So

The paper discusses Rawls’ and Habermas’ theories of deliberative democracy, focusing on the question of religious reasons in political discourse. Whereas Rawls as well as Habermas defend a fully inclusivist position on the use of religious reasons in the ‘background culture’ (Rawls) or ‘informal public sphere’ (Habermas), we defend a moderately inclusivist position. Moderate inclusivism welcomes religiously inspired contributions to public debate, but it also makes normative demands on public argumentation beyond the ‘public forum’ (Rawls) or ‘formal public sphere’ (Habermas). In particular, moderate inclusivism implies what we call a ‘conversational translation proviso’ according to which citizens have a duty to supplement religious with proper political arguments if – but only if – they are asked to do so by their co-discussants. This position, we argue, is more in line with the deeper intuitions behind Rawls’ political liberalism and Habermas’ deliberative model than is the fully inclusivist alternative. Keywords: conversational translation proviso, deliberative democracy, ethics of citizenship, Habermas, moderate inclusivism, public reason, Rawls

Deliberative Democracy

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-110
Author(s):  
Selen A. Ercan
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
The Relationship

Deliberative democracy is a growing branch of democratic theory. It suggests understanding and assessing democracy in terms of the quality of communication among citizens, politicians, as well as between citizens and politicians. In this interview, drawing on his extensive research on deliberative practice within and beyond parliaments, André Bächtiger reflects on the development of the field over the last two decades, the relationship between normative theory and empirical research, and the prospects for practicing deliberation in populist times.

Rethinking Religious Reasons in Public Justification

2013 ◽  
Vol 107 (3) ◽  
pp. 523-539 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW F. MARCH
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
Religious Reasons ◽  
Moral Questions

This article intervenes in the debate on the place of religious arguments in public reason. I advance the debate not by asking whether something called “religious reasons” ought to be invoked in the justification of coercive laws, but by creating a typology of (a) different kinds and forms of religious arguments and, more importantly, (b) different areas of political and social life which coercive laws regulate or about which human political communities deliberate. Religious arguments are of many different kinds, are offered to others in a variety of ways, and the spheres of life about which communities deliberate pose distinct moral questions. Turning back to the public reason debate, I argue then that political liberals ought to be concerned primarily about the invocation of a certain subset of religious reasons in a certain subset of areas of human activity, but also that inclusivist arguments on behalf of religious contributions to public deliberation fail to justify the use of religious arguments in all areas of public deliberation.

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