Justification Crisis: Brexit, Trump, and Deliberative Breakdown

Abstract

This essay explores the problem of legitimation crises in deliberative systems. For some time now, theorists of deliberative democracy have started to embrace a “systemic approach.” But if deliberative democracy is to be understood in the context of a system of multiple moving parts, then we must confront the possibility that that system’s dynamics may admit of breakdowns, contradictions, and tendencies toward crisis. Yet such crisis potentials remain largely unexplored in deliberative theory. The present article works toward rectifying this lacuna, using the 2016 Brexit and Trump votes as examples of a particular kind of “legitimation crisis” that results in a sequence of failures in the deliberative system. Drawing on recent work of Rainer Forst, I identify this particular kind of legitimation crisis as a “justification crisis.”

I Trends in Theorizing Democratic Legitimacy

“…These studies extend our knowledge of the conditions under which IOs are effective in curbing democratic backsliding in their member states. Simultaneously, a systematic approach to deliberative democracy contributes to our understanding of why militant democracy has become vulnerable to ani-democratic threats (Murdoch et al, 2021; Chung & Duggan, 2020), how anti-democratic actors claim the right to rule (Duke, 2020; Milstein, 2021), and why they are successful in undermining democracy (Scherz, 2021; Biale & Ottonelli, 2019).…”

“…At the same time, some students of deliberative democracies depart from the ideal of deliberation and its institutionalization in given sites and forums (Trojan, 2021; Hoyeck, 2021; Chung & Duggan, 2020) towards a systemic approach (Milstein, 2021). The supporters of the systemic turn theorize deliberative democracy at a mass scale across multiple actors, institutions, and stages.…”

“…The supporters of the systemic turn theorize deliberative democracy at a mass scale across multiple actors, institutions, and stages. They see deliberative democracy as a system of interacting parts whose dynamics allow for breakdowns, contradictions, and tendencies toward crisis (Milstein, 2021).…”

Sleights of Hand: Free Ports, Bordering, and the Racial Capitalist Roots of Economic Nationalist Strategies in the US and the UK

“…What I have tried to draw attention to here is the reliance on an inherently global, border-suspending financial and spatial strategy of free ports or FTZs by economic nationalists vigorously and ironically indicating walls and gangplanks need to be raised to protect the nation: for example, the London free port created quietly to buffer Brexiteers' own capital from the uncertainties of Brexit. I have attempted to demonstrate that, when an administration is promoting one policy to benefit the presumed national public, with the amplification social media affords, it is possible to explore ethnographically the simultaneous (Gorodnichenko, Pham, and Talavera 2021) and was 'reshaped around issues largely unthreatening to the interests of economic and political elites' (Milstein 2021).…”

Reviving democracy: Creating pathways out of legitimacy crises

“…If we are going to pursue an approach to democratic theory that responds to diagnosed legitimacy problems, we must then get much clearer about how exactly we understand the problem of legitimacy, and its relationship to democratic ideals. In doing so, there is significant scope for democratic theorists to engage productively with new work by realist and pragmatist theorists, who are working in parallel to better understand the problem of legitimacy driving contemporary democratic crises (Fossen, 2019;Macdonald, 2018;Milstein, 2021;Rossi, 2012;Sleat, 2014).…”