Deliberative democracy and citizenship

In: Polish Political Science Yearbook, Band 35, Heft 1, S. 43-64

Abstract

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.