In this paper, I examine the view that, surprisingly, the more citizens
deliberate about politics, the less likely they are to participate in the
realm of the political, and vice versa. In the first part of the paper, I
approach the problem from the perspective of the paradox of voting, the
claim that voting itself is instrumentally irrational because of the very
low probability that a single vote will make any difference at the
elections. In the second part of the paper, I argue that rather than
analyzing voting instrumentally, it is better to view it as part of the
civic commitments that constitute what it means to be a citizen in a
democratic society. The act of voting is not primarily an individual?s
attempt to decisively influence any particular outcome, but an affirmation
of the key practice that upholds the democratic society in which citizens
play a part. This reveals a meta-paradox of voting. Namely, to not vote is
to exhibit a type of behavior that implies acceptance of democracy
simultaneously with rejecting its defining component. Because of that, I
will claim, not voting is itself irrational. In light of that conclusion, in
the third part of the paper, I explore the extant divide between
deliberation and participation by referring back to the analysis of civic
commitments. Whereas participation without deliberating reveals ideological
bias, deliberation without participation expresses a lack of understanding
of what it means to be a citizen. The way to connect them is to engage in a
process of attaining reflective equilibrium between the two, starting from
the practice of deliberation that would be fully informed by the awareness
of our democratic commitments and disconnected from ideologically motivated
participation.