Deliberative democracy and the discursive dilemma

Abstract

Taken as a model for how groups should make collective judgments and decisions, the ideal of deliberative democracy is inherently ambiguous. Consider the idealised case where it is agreed on all sides that a certain conclusion should be endorsed if and only if certain premises are admitted. Does deliberative democracy recommend that members of the group debate the premises and then individually vote, in the light of that debate, on whether or not to support the conclusion? Or does it recommend that members individually vote on the premises, and then let their commitment to the conclusion be settled by whether or not the group endorses the required premises? Is deliberative democracy to enforce the discipline of reason at the individual level, as in the first possibility, or at the collective level, as in the second? Deliberative-democratic theory has not addressed this issue, perhaps because of an implicit assumption that it does not matter whether the discipline of reason is imposed at the individual or at the collective level. But that assumption is no and there is no excuse for neglecting the issue raised. The discursive dilemma of my title — a generalisation of the doctrinal paradox that has recently received attention in analytical jurisprudence — shows that the procedures distnguished can come apart. Thus deliberative democrats must make up their minds on where they stand in relation to the issue; they cannot sit on the fence. This paper is an attempt to address the issue and look at the grounds on which it may be resolved. In the first section, I give a brief account of the ideal of deliberative democracy, as I understand it. In the second, I introduce the discursive dilemma with the help of some stylised examples and then in the third section I show why the issue that it raises is of relevance, theoretically and practically, to the deliberative-democratic ideal. How should deliberative democrats resolve that issue? I argue in the fourth section that the role in which republican theory casts deliberative democracy argues for preferring the imposition of reason, where possible, at the collective level. And then in the final section I argue for the consistency of that position with the main sorts of argument put forward by others in defence of the ideal.