The Instrumental Value of Deliberative Democracy – Or, do we have Good Reasons to be Deliberative Democrats?

Abstract

Though commanding a prominent role in political theory, deliberative democracy has also become a mainstay of myriad other research traditions in recent years. This diffusion has been propelled along by the notion that deliberation, properly conceived and enacted, generates many beneficial outcomes. This article has three goals geared toward understanding whether these instrumental benefits provide us with good reasons-beyond intrinsic ones-to be deliberative democrats. First, the proclaimed instrumental benefits are systematized in terms of micro, meso, and macro outcomes. Second, relevant literatures are canvassed to critically assess what we know-and what we do not know-about deliberation's effects. Finally, the instrumental benefits of deliberation are recast in light of the ongoing systemic turn in deliberative theory. This article adds to our theoretical understanding of deliberation's promises and pitfalls, and helps practitioners identify gaps in our knowledge concerning how deliberation works and what its wider societal implications might be.

Empathetic Understanding and Deliberative Democracy

“…My claim is not that empathetic understanding is easy or that it will naturally result from discussing politics with people from diverse perspectives. 20 Rather, I claim that mutual understanding ought to be a conscious goal of democratic deliberation and (more controversially) that it should often take priority over other deliberative 19 Mendelberg and Oleske (2000) found that discussion did not produce greater tolerance for opposing views, but Kuyper (2018) argues that this work suffers from a methodological bias, namely, it was reliant upon participants' self-assessment for measures of empathy. Recent studies that rely upon more objective measures (e.g., Siu 2008) are more promising.…”

Repairing Political Trust for Practical Sustainability

“…In addition to having a good understanding of citizens' dissatisfaction with the status quo, there is also evidence that it is possible to meet expectations and close the Arnstein gap. Previous research on the case studies used later in this article analyzed a deliberative democracy intervention [79] aimed specifically at increasing the public participation level to "partnership" [55]. The Arnstein gap between expectation and reality closed by two-thirds in response to this intervention.…”

Integrative Democracy: Mary Parker Follett’s Integration and Deliberative Democracy

“…An even more complicated question is why we should consider deliberation the foundation of democratic legitimacy. Although deliberative democracy is often justified on intrinsic, deontological grounds (Gutmann & Thompson, 1996;Habermas, 1996), a number of theorists have argued that it also requires an instrumental justification, showing that it tends to produce beneficial outcomes (Kuyper, 2018;Martí, 2006). However, the claim that deliberation produces beneficial outcomes raises a new question, which has perhaps been insufficiently articulated in earlier work, and which has no single answer: beneficial relative to what alternative?…”