Rationality, values, and voting: Deliberative democracy and deliberative education

Abstract

This paper has four parts. 1 In the first, I discuss criteria for determining whether outcomes of individual and social choice are relevant. I examine the criteria listed in Arrow's theorem and how they pertain to Arrow's conclusion that there are no rational outcomes of social choice. In the second part, I discuss values that democratic institutions ought to embody. I try to show that the procedural system of voting does not always embody such values. I then examine differences between procedural and deliberative democracy, the latter being proposed as a potential resolution for the problem of irrationality of social choice. As empirical research shows, however, the level of deliberation is still fairly low. Because the success of deliberative democracy lies in its efficient implementation, in the fourth part of the paper I argue that the best route toward implementing it is not in discussing how deliberative process ought to work, but in developing deliberative education programme.