Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?

Social Research, Fall, 1999 by Chantal Mouffe

Let's examine this model of deliberative democracy closely. In their attempt to ground legitimacy on rationality its advocates must make a distinction that plays a key role in their approach, the distinction between "mere agreement" and "rational consensus." This commands the values of the procedure, which are impartiality and equality, openness (no one and no relevant information is excluded), lack of coercion, and unanimity. In combination, those values will guide the discussion towards generalizable interests to the agreement of all participants and they will produce legitimate outcomes. In other words, the process of public discussion can be guaranteed to have reasonable outcomes only to the extent that it realizes the conditions of ideal discourse: the more equal and impartial, the more open that process is and the less participants are coerced and ready to be guided by the force of the better argument, the more likely truly generalizable interests will be accepted by all persons relevantly affected.

Habermas and his followers do not deny that there will be obstacles to the realization of the ideal discourse but these obstacles are conceived as empirical ones. They are due to the fact that it is unlikely, given the practical and empirical limitation of social life, that we will ever be completely able to leave aside all our particular interests in order to coincide with our universal rational self. This is why the ideal speech situation must be conceived as regulative idea. On the other side, Habermas now accepts that there are issues that have to remain outside the practices of rational public debates like existential issues that concern not questions of justice but of the good life, or conflicts between interests groups about distributive problems that can only be resolved by means of compromises. But he affirms that "this differentiation within the field of issues that require political decisions negates neither the prime importance of moral considerations nor the practicability of rational debate as the very form of political communication" (1991, p. 448). Habermas is adamant that political questions can be decided rationally and that the exchange of arguments and counter-arguments as envisaged by his approach is the most suitable procedure for reaching the rational formation of the will from which the general interest will emerge. He considers that the superiority of his approach with respect to Rawls' one lies in its strictly procedural character which allow him to "leave more questions open because it entrusts more to the process of rational opinion and will formation" (1995, p. 130).

Deliberative Democracy: a Critique

There are several ways in which such an approach could be criticized but I will only envisage two of them here. We can, for instance, use Wittgenstein's insights to undermine Habermas's conception of procedure and to challenge the very idea of a neutral or rational dialogue. For Wittgenstein to have agreement in opinions there must first be agreement on the language used and this, as he points out, implies agreement in forms of life. According to him, procedure only exists as a complex ensemble of practices. Those practices constitute specific forms of individuality and identity that make possible the allegiance to the procedures. It is because they are inscribed in shared forms of life and agreements in judgments that procedures can be accepted and followed. They cannot be seen as rules that are created on the basis of principles and then applied to specific cases. Rules for Wittgenstein are always abridgments of practices, they are inseparable of specific forms of life. Therefore, distinctions between "procedural" and "substantial" or between "moral" and "ethical" that are central to the Habermasian approach cannot be maintained and one must acknowledge that procedures always involve substantial ethical commitments.