Table Of ContentP o w e r i n
D e l i b e r a t i v e
D e m o c r a c y
NORMS, FORUMS, SYSTEMS
NICOLE CURATO,
MARIT HAMMOND,
AND JOHN B. MIN
Political Philosophy and Public Purpose
Series Editor
Michael J. Thompson
William Paterson University
New York, NY, USA
This series offers books that seek to explore new perspectives in social and
political criticism. Seeing contemporary academic political theory and
philosophy as largely dominated by hyper-academic and overly-technical
debates, the books in this series seek to connect the politically engaged
traditions of philosophical thought with contemporary social and political
life. The idea of philosophy emphasized here is not as an aloof enterprise,
but rather a publicly-oriented activity that emphasizes rational reflection as
well as informed praxis.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14542
Nicole Curato • Marit Hammond
John B. Min
Power in Deliberative
Democracy
Norms, Forums, Systems
Nicole Curato Marit Hammond
Centre for Deliberative Democracy School of Politics, Philosophy,
and Global Governance International Relations and
University of Canberra Environment
Canberra, ACT, Australia Keele University
Keele, Staffordshire, UK
John B. Min
Department of Social Sciences –
Philosophy Program
College of Southern Nevada
North Las Vegas, NV, USA
Political Philosophy and Public Purpose
ISBN 978-3-319-95533-9 ISBN 978-3-319-95534-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95534-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018952628
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
Cover design by Tjaša Krivec
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
P
reface
‘My problem with deliberative democracy’, a colleague confessed, ‘is it’s
too nice. I want to win.’1
It was a conversation about political movements in Latin America, how
radical democratic projects need to take power and not just talk about
power. Deliberative democracy is too meek, she finds. What is needed
today are bolder political strategies that can defend democratic values
from the vagaries of neoliberalism and the return of strongman rule.
At the same time, deliberative democracy has received criticism for its
increasing power over political life. Within normative democratic theory,
deliberative democracy is accused of reaching a hegemonic status, such
that there has been a ‘quasi-consensus’ on deliberative virtues (Pennington
2010). In the field of democratic practice, there has been an explosion of
the industry of consultants, practitioners, and development experts spe-
cialising in designing and running deliberative forums. States and munici-
palities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and development
bodies, international organisations, and charitable foundations have long
convened a series of deliberative forums to manage intractable conflict,
market-test ideas, generate policy solutions, and anticipate ethical issues of
future technologies. Far from being an abstract ideal, deliberative democ-
racy is a real-world political project, but its legacy is embattled with its
relationship with questionable forms of power.
Our goal in writing this book is not to determine whether deliberative
democracy is, on balance, a weak or influential political project that can
respond to the crises of modern democracies. Quite the opposite. Our
v
vi PREFACE
goal in writing this book is to emphasise the ambivalent relationship
between deliberative democracy and power.
We argue that deliberative democracy offers possibilities of confronting
coercive forms of power, but it also creates new forms of power of its own.
Contrary to celebratory views of deliberation, it can neither fully bracket
power out of communication, nor overcome the structural limitations of
political power. We argue that deliberative democracy’s inextricable rela-
tionship with power is not a problem. Deliberation’s tense relationship
with coercive and productive power is not a pathology, but constitutive of
deliberative practice. It gains relevance when it navigates complex rela-
tions of power in modern societies, learns from its mistakes, and remains
epistemically humble but not politically meek.
This book is organised in five substantive chapters. The introductory
chapter defines two concepts—deliberative democracy and power—and
the analytical link between the two. We develop our definition of delibera-
tive power based on Rainer Forst’s (2015) concept of ‘noumenal power’
which emphasises not the justifications of power, but the power of justifi-
cations. We find it important to emphasise the ‘space of reasons’ in shap-
ing the distribution and dynamic of power in the deliberative system. This
chapter concludes with three challenges for deliberative democracy: theo-
retical, empirical, and political. Each of these challenges is examined in the
book.
The second chapter on ‘norms’ seeks to dispel the view that deliberative
democracy’s origins have a naïve view of power. While we recognise that
deliberative democracy’s founding documents do not engage with theo-
ries of power per se, we argue that its theories of legitimacy are firmly
anchored on a critique against the arbitrary and unjustified use of coercive
power. In this chapter, we break down the definitions of power into agen-
tial, structural, and epistemic, each of which has implications for how
deliberative power is conceived. This chapter also responds to the critiques
from realpolitik as well as feminist and cultural studies about deliberative
democracy’s poor account of power. We make a case for deliberative
democracy’s renegotiation of its origins from Enlightenment ideals, and
instead broaden its foundations to experiences in the feminist and postco-
lonial public spheres. The chapter concludes by offering our own account
of deliberative democracy’s relationship with coercive and productive
power for it to claim relevance in an imperfect speech situation.
PREFACE vii
The third chapter focuses on ‘forums’, or ‘mini-publics’ as they are
called in the scholarly literature. We take a critical view of mini-publics—a
forum composed of randomly selected individuals that is designed to
listen, exchange reasons, reflect, and generate some form of collective out-
come reflecting what went on in the forum. We are critical in that we
refuse to advertise mini-publics—as some (though definitely not all) prac-
titioners do—as a magic bullet that can resolve collective problems. We
argue that mini-publics best serve deliberative democracy when they offer
spaces for critical and creative discourses, instead of bolstering the pre-
existing arrangements of power that skew the distribution of voice and
accountability in the broader political system. We argue that mini-p ublics’
relationship with power is best viewed as ambivalent, and, consequently,
their influence, whether in opinion- or will-formation or in decision-mak-
ing, must be shaped by norms of deliberation.
The topic of the fourth chapter is ‘systems’, or a macro view of delibera-
tive democracy that considers the distribution of functions, norms, and
power across a range of sites and mechanisms in the deliberative system.
This chapter is the longest, for it first demonstrates how deliberative democ-
racy has always taken a macro view of power, despite the perception that the
field has only focused on forums in the past decades. The second section
then provides our own concept of a deliberative system—one that under-
scores its critical, if not subversive, character, which allows it to lay bare vari-
ous instantiations of power. We consider this to be a crucial intervention, for
without it, a systemic view could lapse into a conservative and elitist view of
politics. The chapter concludes with in-depth practical examples of how
deliberative politics can unfold on the systemic level. We focus on the case
of ‘deliberative interventions’ or World Bank–funded deliberative forums
that seek to reshape the character of unequal political societies as well as
‘institutional reforms’ that allows deliberative virtues to take root even in
unhospitable environments. By placing power at the centre of systemic anal-
ysis, our goal is to demonstrate the ambivalent character of structural power
in the deliberative system. It is durable but contestable, it can obstruct
deliberative procedures, but it can also be corrected by democratic reforms.
The final substantive chapter contextualises deliberation to democratic
malaise of post-truth politics, populism, and illiberalism. This book is a
product of the time in which it was written. Brexit, the rise of Donald
Trump, and the return of the strongman in different parts of the world all
affect our research agenda about the prospects of deliberative democracy
in dark times. We discuss each of these issues in turn, identify the dangers
viii PREFACE
of each topic for deliberative politics, and offer possibilities for democratic
renewal. This chapter thus concludes with our account of change and con-
ceptualises a vision for deliberative democracy amidst uncertainty.
Canberra, Australia Nicole Curato
London, UK Marit Hammond
North Las Vegas, NV, USA John B. Min
note
1. This conversation took place between Nicole Curato and a fellow partici-
pant in a workshop on populism at the University of Oregon—the birth-
place of Discursive Democracy (Dryzek 1990).
references
Dryzek, John S. 1990. Discursive Democracy: Politics, Policy, and Political Science.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Forst, Rainer. 2015. Noumenal Power. The Journal of Political Philosophy 23 (2):
111–127.
Pennington, Mark. 2010. Democracy and the Deliberative Conceit. Critical
Review 22 (2–3): 159–184.
a
cknowledgements
The ideas behind this book were hatched in Canberra but completing the
manuscript was a transcontinental commitment. We are grateful for the
opportunities that connected the three of us at the early stages of our aca-
demic careers and made writing this book possible.
The Deliberative Democracy Summer School in 2015, hosted by the
Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance (the Centre),
was instrumental in forging our collaboration. We thank the University of
Canberra’s Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis (IGPA) for gen-
erously funding the Summer School, with Marit Hammond and John Min
receiving travel grants as PhD students. Nicole Curato, then a postdoc-
toral fellow, was the Summer School’s convener.
Since 2015, Marit and John have been visiting the University of
Canberra on several occasions. John returned in 2016 as IGPA’s visiting
fellow. It was during this visit that he broached the idea of writing about
power and deliberative democracy in one of Canberra’s iconic cafes. Marit
visited Canberra again in 2017, this time as a speaker at the Second
Deliberative Democracy Summer School. The Australian Research
Council’s (ARC) Laureate Project (FL140100154) made this trip possi-
ble. Meanwhile, Nicole continued her research position in Canberra as an
ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award Fellow from 2015 to 2018
(DE 150101866) and then as a primary investigator for an ARC Discovery
Project on the Meta-Study of Democratic Deliberation (DP 180103014)
beginning in 2018. We all thank the Centre for serving as our intellectual
home on different occasions, and for providing such a steady environment
for scholarly inspiration.
ix
