Class 5: deliberative democracy

Habermas

• Legitimacy through deliberation – laws are legitimate when they result from public reasoning, not just voting

• Free and equal participants – all affected should have the chance to participate in discussion

• Reason-giving – arguments must be justified in ways others can accept

• No pre-given common good – collective will is formed through discourse, not assumed

• Public sphere matters – democracy extends beyond elections to ongoing public debate

Rawls vs. Habermas

• Rawls: legitimacy comes from just principles identified through philosophical reasoning (e.g. veil of ignorance) before political debate.

• Habermas: legitimacy comes from deliberation itself; political goals and norms are formed through public discourse, not fixed in advance.

Manin’s formulation

“The source of legitimacy is not the predetermined will of individuals, but deliberation itself (…) a legitimate decision does not represent the will of all, but results from the deliberation of all.”

Deliberative mini- publics

Carefully designed forums where representative subsets of the population deliberate in an inclusive, informed, and consequential way on political issues .

Design features: the mirror

The ideal

• Random selection → perfect descriptively representative sample

Design features: the filter

Deliberation transforms “raw” opinion into considered opinion through:

• ground rules

• facilitation

• balanced information

• expert testimony

Lafont- arguments against mini- publics

• Against binding mini-publics – they risk bypassing citizens instead of empowering them

• “Shortcut” problem – decisions made by a few replace public contestation

• Democratic legitimacy requires uptake – citizens must be able to contest and endorse decisions

• Deliberation should empower the public – not substitute for mass participation

• Mini-publics as complements – useful only if they feed into wider democratic debate