In democratic countries, deliberative democracy is proposed to rectify problems of liberal democracy. This paper explores deliberative democracy in China, conventionally regarded as an authoritarian country. After examining some deliberative practices and institutions in China and its more democratic public sphere, a conclusion is drawn that despite problems such as flawed institutional design and state domination, an immature deliberative democracy exists in China. The prospect of deliberative democracy in China is optimistically predicted, based on the public's strong democratic consciousness, the government's interest in democratic reform and the relatively moderate practices of deliberative democracy.
The model of deliberative democracy poses a number of dificult questions about individual rationality, public reason and justification, public spiritedness, and an active and supportive public sphere. It also raises the question about what kind of civic involvement is required for the practices of democratic deliberation to be effective. The aim of this article is to examine the last question by looking at the role and value of citizenship understood in terms of participation. It argues that deliberative democracy implies a category of democratic citizens; its institutional framework calls for the activity and competence of citizenry, and consequently, the participatory forms of deliberative democracy come closest to the democratic ideal as such. Also, the model of participatory-deliberative democracy is more attractive as a truly democratic ideal than the model of formal deliberative democracy, but it certainly faces more dificulties when it comes to the practicalities, and especially the institutional design. This problem is raised in the last section of the article where the possible applicability of such a model to post-communist democracies is addressed. The major dificulty that the participatory-deliberative model poses for the post-communist democratization can be explained by a reference to the cultural approach towards democratization and to the revised modernization theory presented by Inglehart and Welzel. The problem of the applicability of such a model in the post-communist context seems to support the thesis presented here which suggests that active citizenship, civic skills and civic culture are indispensable for the development of deliberative politics.
The topic of authority only rarely figures into theories of deliberative democracy, no doubt owing to the widely held view that authority is inherently undemocratic. But deliberative democrats need a concept of authoritative decision making, not least because the scale and complexity of contemporary societies radically limit the numbers of decisions that can be made by deliberatively democratic means. I argue for an inherently democratic conception of authority, in large part by examining and rejecting the view—held by radical democrats, conservatives, and most liberals—that authority involves a surrender of judgment by those subject to authority. In contrast, I develop the view that authority, particularly in posttraditional contexts, involves a limited suspension of judgment enabled by a context of democratic challenge and public accountability. An important point is that democratic authority supports robust deliberative decision making by enabling individuals to allocate their time, energy, and knowledge to the issues most significant to them.
Intro -- Deliberative Freedom -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Why "Dimensions" of Freedom? -- Overview of the Book -- 1. Deliberation, Aggregation,and Negative Freedom -- Beyond the Aggregation and Transformation Dichotomy -- The Negative Freedom Tradition and Democracy -- Conclusion -- 2. Republican Freedom and Discursive Status -- Domination without Interference -- Republican Freedom and Demoracy -- Deliberative Democracy beyond Republicanism -- Conclusion -- 3. Preferences and Paternalism -- Nonautonomously Formed Preferences -- Paternalism -- Collective Self-Legislation and Freedom as Status -- Conclusion -- 4. Freedom as Accommodation: The Limits of Rawlsian Deliberative Democracy -- The Accommodation of Reasonable Doctrinesand Negative Freedom -- Public Reason and Reasonableness -- Political and Moral Autonomy -- Conclusion -- 5. Freedom as Emancipation: Deliberative Democracy as Critical Theory -- The Critique of Ideology and Internal Autonomy -- Deliberation and Politicization -- Social Critics, Triggering Self-Re ection, and Public Autonomy -- Conclusion -- 6. Democratic Ethos and Procedural Independence -- The Interdependence of the Ethical and the Moral -- Deliberation and Privacy -- Democratic Ethos -- Thinking for Oneself -- Conclusion -- 7. Freedom, Reason, and Participation -- The Epistemic Dimension of Deliberative Democracy -- Reason, Freedom, and Radical Democracy -- Participation, Freedom, and Neutrality -- Conclusion -- 8. Conclusion: Toward a Theory of Deliberative Freedom -- Four Conceptions of Freedom Reinterpreted -- A Multidimensional Theory of Deliberation and Freedom -- On the Need for Institutional Reformand Economic Redistribution -- Notes -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3 -- Chapter 4 -- Chapter 5 -- Chapter 6 -- Chapter 7 -- Chapter 8 -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C.
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Deliberative Democracy is the darling of democratic theory and political theory more generally, and generates international interest. In this book a number of leading democratic theorists address the key issues that surround the theory and practice of deliberative democracy. The problems faced by deliberative democracy are outlined in the context of the available empirical evidence, solutions are surveyed, and new and innovative ideas are proposed to resolve these issues. Each chapter takes a key issue as its focus: Conflict ́⁰Ø Inequality ́⁰Ø Expertise ́⁰Ø Interests ́⁰Ø Pluralism ́⁰Ø Citizens' Psychological Attributes ́⁰Ø Scale ́⁰Ø Public Openness ́⁰Ø The Public Sphere ́⁰Ø Minipublics Key Features. Makes a profound contribution to the development of deliberative democracy in theory and practice Weighs in on the ongoing, and increasingly urgent, debates about the meaning, desirability and practicality of deliberative democracy The contributors have all written widely about deliberative democracy
Deliberative democracy is usually presented as a polity in which legitimacy is achieved by deliberative participation on the part of those subject to a collective decision. But cast in these terms, the theory runs headlong into the long-recognized impossibility of directly involving more than a few members of any large-scale democracy in decision making. After canvassing the available solutions to this problem, an argument is made for conceptualizing deliberative democracy in terms of the contestation of discourses in the public sphere, and public opinion as the provisional outcome of this contestation as transmitted to the state. Legitimacy is then achieved to the degree collective outcomes respond to the balance of discourses in the polity, to the extent this balance is itself subject to dispersed and competent political control.
Deliberative democracy is usually presented as a polity in which legitimacy is achieved by deliberative participation on the part of those subject to a collective decision. But cast in these terms, the theory runs headlong into the long-recognized impossibility of directly involving more than a few members of any large-scale democracy in decision making. After canvassing the available solutions to this problem, an argument is made for conceptualizing deliberative democracy in terms of the contestation of discourses in the public sphere, and public opinion as the provisional outcome of this contestation as transmitted to the state. Legitimacy is then achieved to the degree collective outcomes respond to the balance of discourses in the polity, to the extent this balance is itself subject to dispersed and competent political control.
Epistemic democracy is standardly characterized in terms of "aiming at truth". This presupposes a veritistic conception of epistemic value, according to which truth is the fundamental epistemic goal. I will raise an objection to the standard (veritistic) account of epistemic democracy, focusing specifically on deliberative democracy. I then propose a version of deliberative democracy that is grounded in non‐veritistic epistemic goals. In particular, I argue that deliberation is valuable because it facilitates empathetic understanding. I claim that empathetic understanding is an epistemic good that doesn't have truth as its primary goal.
'Dieser Artikel widmet sich dem gegenwärtigen Diskurs über das Wesen der Demokratie und untersucht die zentralen Thesen des Ansatzes der 'deliberativen Demokratie' in ihren zwei wesentlichen Ausprägungsformen: die von John Rawls und die von Jürgen Habermas. Obwohl die Autorin mit diesen Zugangsweisen insofern übereinstimmt, als sie es ebenfalls für notwendig erachtet, eine weitreichendere Konzeption von Demokratie als jene die durch das 'aggregative' Modell bereitgestellt wird, zu entwickeln, gibt sie zu bedenken, daß diese Konzepte nicht im Stande sind, ein angemessenes Verständnis für die Hauptaufgabe der Demokratie zu vermitteln. Indem Anhänger des Konzepts der 'deliberativen Demokratie' festhalten, daß Demokratie nicht auf Verfahrensfragen zur Vermittlung von entgegengesetzten Interessen reduziert werden kann, verteidigen sie zwar zweifelsohne eine Auffassungsweise der Demokratie, die eine weitreichendere Konzeption von Politik beinhaltet. Ihre Zugangsweise ist jedoch sehr wohl - wenn auch in einer anderen Form als jene Herangehensweise an der sie Kritik üben - auch rational, wonach die wesentliche Rolle die 'Leidenschaft' und kollektive Formen der Identifikation im Bereich der Politik spielen, außer Acht gelassen wird. In dem Bestreben die liberale Zugangsweise mit jener der demokratischen Herangehensweise zu vereinen, neigen die Vertreter des Ansatzes der 'deliberativen' Demokratie dazu, die Spannungen, die zwischen ihnen existieren aufzulösen und sind somit nicht in der Lage, das konfliktreiche Wesen der demokratischen Politik zu bewältigen. Die Haupthese, die die Autorin in diesem Artikel vertritt, geht davon aus, daß demokratische Theorie die Unüberwindbarkeit von gewissen Antagonismen zu berücksichtigen hat. Sie vertritt die Meinung, daß ein Demokratiemodell in der Ausprägung des 'agonistic pluralism' dazu beitragen kann, die wesentliche Herausforderung mit der sich demokratische Politik derzeit konfrontiert sieht, besser zu bewältigen: demokratische Formen der Identifikation zu schaffen, die dazu führen können, Kräfte und 'Passionen' für demokratische Modelle zu mobilisieren.' (Autorenreferat)
Abstract The word topos is greek and denotes a place. Later on, it took on the meaning of the latin locus communis-literally "common place". The English word "commonplace" is rendered in the Oxford English Dictionary as "an ordinary topic of conversation" or "an everyday saying; a platitude". In my paper i would like to stress the existential aspect of the topic, related to the "deep" topics of enemity and conflict, of friendship and love and care, themes that are reiterated and re-established in the more or less artificial settings that we call schooling and education. This leads me to the question of the transcendental, or rather the work of the transcendental in the activity of education. The main point is that the transcendental is not far away or beyond of our real life, but has its place and setting in that very life, inside the life we live. My argument here starts with a thought figure sifted from g.w.f. Hegel's logic, the finite-infinite relation presented in the first book under the heading of the doctrine of being. There is, in short, an inner and intimate relationship between the finite and the infinite, the real and the utopian, the here and the beyond. I shall argue that hegel's dialectic configures an everyday, existential and tran-scendental thinking relevant for education.ResumenTopos es la palabra griega que denota un lugar. Este término tomó posteriormente el significado del latÃn locus communis -literalmente, "lugar común"-. Y el diccionario de Oxford traduce la palabra inglesa "common-place" como "un tema ordinario de conversación" que viene a ser lo que se entiende en castellano por "tópico" o "lugar común". En mi artículo me gustaría subrayar el aspecto existencial de los "tópicos", tales como por ejemplo, la enemistad y el conflicto, o la amistad y amor; que son temas recurrentes y reestablecidos en los escenarios más o menos artificiales a los que llamamos escolarización y educación. Esto me conduce hacia la cuestión de lo trascendental o, mejor, al papel que desempeña lo trascendental en la actividad educativa. El punto principal es que lo trascendental no es lo que está lejano o más allá de nuestra existencia ordinaria, sino que se encuentra dentro de la misma vida que vivimos. Mi argumento comienza con la consideración de la íntima e intrínseca relación entre lo finito y lo infinito, lo real y lo utópico, el aquí y el más allá, tal como la presenta Hegel en el epígrafe dedicado a la doctrina del ser, en el primer libro de su lógica. Sostendré que la dialéctica Hegeliana configura un modo de pensar cotidiano, existencial y trascendental, que tiene una gran relevancia para la educación.
