Jurgen Habermas and Deliberative Democracy


The more these conditions are fulfilled, the greater the likelihood that the decisions reached are morally correct. Deliberative democracy takes on the role of an " epistemic democracy " in this way, as it thus has an epistemic value: Studies by James Fishkin and others have found that deliberative democracy tends to produce outcomes which are superior to those in other forms of democracy. For Ross, the key reason for this is that in deliberative democracy citizens are empowered by knowledge that their debates will have a measurable impact on society.

A claimed failure of most theories of deliberative democracy is that they do not address the problems of voting.

Features of deliberation

Discourse and democracy. Jürgen Habermas refers to his democratic theory as a “discourse theory of democracy”. He starts from the idea that. Deliberative democracy, school of thought in political theory that claims that democratic theory are the philosophers John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas.

James Fishkin 's work, "Democracy and Deliberation", introduced a way to apply the theory of deliberative democracy to real-world decision making, by way of what he calls the deliberative opinion poll. In the deliberative opinion poll, a statistically representative sample of the nation or a community is gathered to discuss an issue in conditions that further deliberation. The group is then polled, and the results of the poll and the actual deliberation can be used both as a recommending force and in certain circumstances, to replace a vote.

Dozens of deliberative opinion polls have been conducted across the United States since his book was published. The political philosopher Charles Blattberg has criticized deliberative democracy on four grounds: A criticism of deliberation is that potentially it allows those most skilled in rhetoric to sway the decision in their favour. This criticism has been made since deliberative democracy first arose in Ancient Athens. Consensus-based decision making similar to deliberative democracy is characteristic of the hunter gather band societies thought to predominate in pre-historical times.

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As some of these societies became more complex with developments like division of labour , community-based decision making was displaced by various forms of authoritarian rule. The first example of democracy arose in Greece as Athenian democracy during the sixth century BC. Athenian democracy was both deliberative and largely direct: Athenian democracy came to an end in BC.

When democracy was revived as a political system about years later, decisions were made by representatives rather than directly by the people. In a sense, this revived version was deliberative from its beginnings; for example, in Edmund Burke made a famous speech where he called Great Britain's parliament a deliberative assembly. The deliberative element of democracy was not widely studied by academics until the late 20th century. Although some of the seminal work was done in the s and 80s, it was only in that deliberative democracy began to attract substantial attention from political scientists.

The more common view, held by contributors such as James Fishkin , is that direct deliberative democracy can be complementary to traditional representative democracy. Since , hundreds of implementations of direct deliberative democracy have taken place throughout the world.

Deliberative democracy, the public sphere and the internet

For example, lay citizens have used deliberative democracy to determine local budget allocations in various cities and to undertake major public projects, such as the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Deliberative democracy recognizes a conflict of interest between the citizen participating, those affected or victimized by the process being undertaken, and the group-entity that organizes the decision.

Thus it usually involves an extensive outreach effort to include marginalized, isolated, ignored groups in decisions, and to extensively document dissent , grounds for dissent, and future predictions of consequences of actions. It focuses as much on the process as the results.

Key Concepts

However, robust critical testing of competing arguments depends in turn on the rhetorical quality of the persuasive process. Habermas's critical reflection takes a nuanced approach to both sides of the social unrest that characterized the late sixties. Kant , Practical Philosophy, ed. At the dialectical level, one must meet different burdens of proof by answering different types of challenges. A theory of rationality thus attempts to reconstruct the practical knowledge necessary for being a knowledgeable social actor among other knowledgeable social actors.

In this form it is a complete theory of civics. On the other hand, many practitioners of deliberative democracy attempt to be as neutral and open-ended as possible, inviting or even randomly selecting people who represent a wide range of views and providing them with balanced materials to guide their discussions. Examples include National Issues Forums , Choices for the 21st Century, study circles, deliberative opinion polls , the Citizens' Initiative Review , and the 21st-century town meetings convened by AmericaSpeaks , among others.

Democracy, literally, rule by the people. More broadly defined, however, the term comprehends actual as well as…. Ideology, a form of social or political philosophy in which practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones. It is a system of ideas that aspires both to explain the world and to change it. This article describes the nature, history, and significance of ideologies in terms of the….

Help us improve this article! Contact our editors with your feedback. Introduction Early influences Features of deliberation Challenges to deliberative democratic theory. You may find it helpful to search within the site to see how similar or related subjects are covered. Any text you add should be original, not copied from other sources. At the bottom of the article, feel free to list any sources that support your changes, so that we can fully understand their context.

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