Rummens, Stefan. Staging Deliberation

7/30/2019 Rummens, Stefan. Staging Deliberation

1/23

Staging Deliberation: The Role of Representative

Institutions in the Deliberative Democratic Process*

Stefan RummensPolitical Theory, Radboud University Nijmegen

I. THE FORUM, THE STAGE OR THE NETWORK?

THE proper institutionalization of the ideal of deliberative democracy

remains a contested issue. Whereas discourse theory conjures up the ideal of

democracy as based on face-to-face interactionsmodeled for instance in terms

of an ideal speech situation which is inclusive, symmetrical and free from

powerit is clear that this ideal cannot be realized in any straightforward

manner in the complex, large-scale and increasingly globalized societies of today.

Consequently, alternative ways of realizing in practice the promise of a more

radical and deliberative democracy have to be devised.

In this context, I propose to make an analytic distinction between three

different modes of institutionalization that have been discussed in the literature.First, the forum refers to deliberative theories that promote the use of

mini-publics such as citizens juries, participatory budgeting or deliberative

opinion polls as essential elements of democratic decision-making.1 These

mini-publics are actual but small fora of face-to-face deliberation that should

ideally reconstruct the will of the general public concerning specific issues. How

these fora connect to larger audiences and the extent to which they actually

determine the final decision remains to be further specified.2 Second, the stage

refers to theories that retain the idea that traditional representative institutions,the members of which are chosen on the basis of general elections, play a crucial

role in any adequate institutionalization of deliberative democracy. Here, Jrgen

Habermass two-track model serves as an example.3 Inclusive deliberation is

*The research for this paper was conducted partly at the Institute of Philosophy of the Universityof Leuven and was completed at the Institute for Management Research of the Radboud UniversityNijmegen. I would like to thank Ronald Tinnevelt for providing me with an opportunity to presentan earlier version of this paper at his VIDI-workshop on cosmopolitanism at the Faculty of Law ofthe Radboud University Nijmegen. I am very grateful to Roland Pierik and Bert van den Brink for

providing extensive comments on earlier drafts as well as to Sofia Nsstrm, Eva Erman, BertjanWolthuis and three anonymous referees of this journal for providing many helpful remarks.1For a brief survey and further references on mini-publics, see Goodin and Dryzek 2006,

The Journal of Political Philosophy: Volume 20, Number 1, 2012, pp. 2344


2/23

thereby essentially restricted to the informal public sphere in which arguments

are generated and transformed by individuals and civil society organizations. The

deliberative quality of the democratic process as a whole is guaranteed to the

extent that these informal deliberations actually influence deliberations in

the formal public sphere constituted by the traditional representative institutionsof parliament and government. The network, finally, refers to deliberative

theories that assume that democratic deliberation should take place in a dispersed

set of deliberative sites. In these sites face-to-face deliberation takes place on

limited aspects of certain issues and/or between more local stakeholders. In order

to cover all aspects of an issue and in order to include all people affected it is

important that the different deliberative sites are connected and linked together

in a network.4

As emphasized, the distinction between these three modes ofinstitutionalization is an analytic distinction. This means that they are not

mutually exclusive and that deliberative theories of democratic government can

and often do combine different modes. For example, nodes of governance

networks can and often do have some or most of the characteristics of fora or

stages. Also, fora and networks are not always advocated as substitutes for

parliamentary decisions but rather as providing additional inputs to the

parliamentary process. As these examples illustrate, the intricate question of the

proper institutionalization of deliberative democracy does not amount to anexclusive choice between modes of institutionalization but consists rather in a

search for that specific configuration of fora, representative institutions and

networks which maximizes the deliberative quality of the democratic process as

a whole on the local, the national or the transnational level.

This reformulation of the problem of institutionalization dovetails with a

recent systemic turn in deliberative theory signaled by several authors.

Academic debate increasingly focuses on the ways in which different deliberative

actors and sites are connected and form an encompassing democratic system.5

The analysis of such a system is markedly different from an analysis of clearly

delineated face-to-face micro-deliberations. Whereas, for instance, on the level of

micro-analysis, deliberative actors in face-to-face situations are supposed to

behave communicatively and strive for agreement, several authors recognize that,

from a macro-perspective, the inclusiveness of the larger public debate can be

strengthened if at least some actors behave strategically at least some of the time.

We can think here, for instance, of the need for repeated and stubborn civil

society action required to put new issues on the public agenda or the need for

politicians to present their own ideas in a rhetorically persuasive manner to amore general audience.6 Examples such as these illustrate that a macro-analysis

24 STEFAN RUMMENS


3/23

cannot simply retain the normative requirements on individual actors and

interactions as analyzed, for instance, in the idea of an ideal speech situation.

Instead, a more systemic approach requires a new normative measure for the

macro-deliberative quality of the democratic process as a whole and an analysis

of how the operations and combinations of different deliberative sites,institutions and actors contribute to sustain and improve this macro-deliberative

quality.7

It is not my purpose to deal with this formidable task in any general manner

and my focus will be much more limited. In this article, I present three related

normative requirements which I argue should be part of a more encompassing

measure of macro-deliberative quality and which are based on the need to sustain

deliberation as an open-ended and ongoing process (section II). I show,

additionally, that representative politics based on a general electoral mechanism(the stage) has certain characteristics which make it well suited to meet these

normative requirements. My central claim is, more specifically, that

representative politics provides the democratic debate with a kind of visibility

which allows representative institutions to play an ineliminable role in the

connection of political power to public reason as well as in the generation of the

epistemic resources and the sources of solidarity required to support ongoing and

open-ended democratic deliberation (sections III and IV).

As indicated, the present analysis of representative politics does not aim todiscredit the use of fora or networks as such. It aims, rather, to provide a critical

rejoinder to theorists who focus one-sidedly on fora and networks and downplay

the role of representative institutions in their deliberative designs or dispense with

them altogether. For instance, theorists working on the democratization of

transnational levels of politics are often keen to embrace the possibilities offered

by the network structure of transnational processes of governance. They argue

that the decentralized and deterritorialized nature of deliberative networks

implies that these could somehow mirror existing governance networks, hook

onto them at the nodes and democratize them from the bottom up.8 The problem

with these approaches is that they fail to accept that something would still be

missing even if existing governance structures could be fully democratized in the

ways suggested. The European Union provides a case in point. Whereas several

discourse theorists have hailed current European governance practices as a

promising example of deliberative democracy,9 this assessment contrasts sharply

with the general perception of European citizens who continue to experience a

7Parkinson and Bavister-Gould 2009. Mansbridge 1999. Parkinson 2006. Habermas 2008,pp. 14751.

8Th ifi i hi h di i k h ld fi i h k d

STAGING DELIBERATION 25


4/23

serious democratic deficit in the workings of the EU. In the final section of this

article, I will briefly argue that this perception is not misguided and that the

limited visibility of European politics indeed generates a serious democratic

deficit that needs to be dealt with (section V).

Before proceeding, two more remarks are in order. First, as already indi-cated, the notion of representative politics (the stage) as used here refers to

politics centered around one or more representative institutions with final

decision-making powers the members of which are chosen on the basis of general

elections. I accept, of course, that the notion of representation can be used in a

much larger sense.10 For instance, researchers dealing with the design of

deliberative mini-publics also have to face the problem of the representativeness

of their mini-publics.11 Also, much attention is devoted nowadays to civil society

actors as non-elected representatives in the absence of electoral mechanisms.12Recently, debate has also started about the possibility or desirability of

representing discourses.13 Although all of these issues are part and parcel of the

wider debate on the proper design of an overall deliberative system, they are

currently not my direct concern. Instead, I focus on representation as a relation

between citizens and elected representatives, whereby the precise nature of this

relationship will be further explained below. Second, the analysis presented here

is much indebted to the growing literature on the fundamental connection

between democracy and representation.14

Although I share the central belief thatrepresentative mechanisms are an ineliminable part of a genuinely democratic

process, the present article differs from this literature in the sense that it strongly

emphasizes the relation between representation and reason. It focuses on the

cognitive nature of the democratic process by arguing that representative

institutions play a crucial part in maintaining democratic deliberation as an

open-ended and ongoing epistemic endeavor aimed at decisions which serve the

pursuit of a more just society.

II. THE NORMATIVE CHALLENGE OF OPEN-ENDED DELIBERATION

The crucial importance of representative institutions for deliberative democracy

derives from the necessarily open-ended character of democratic deliberation.

Although many authors recognize that the outcomes of actual processes of

deliberation are necessarily fallible and, therefore, always subject to possible

future revisions, it is worthwhile to briefly expand on the significance and

normative implications of this fallibility. In this section I argue, first, that the

open-ended nature of fallible deliberation serves human freedom and, second,

26 STEFAN RUMMENS


5/23

that the preservation of open-ended deliberation poses a threefold normative

challenge for the institutionalization of democracy.15

First, the fallibility of actual deliberation derives from the fact that the ideal

conditions of reasonable deliberationin whichever way you specify themcan

never be fully realized in the real world. Because actual deliberations are, forinstance, never entirely inclusive nor entirely free from power asymmetries, their

outcomes are also always marred by unjustifiable partialities. Importantly, the

gap between actual and ideal discourse is not a superficial empirical gap that

arises for lack of time or resources. Instead, the gap is ontological in the sense

that the ineliminability of the gap is inherent in the ideal of reasonable

deliberation itself.16 Although a full development of this idea is beyond present

purposes,17 it should be pointed out that the argument essentially relies on the

fact that democratic deliberation serves the realization of the autonomy of allcitizens in an equal and impartial manner.18 The impartiality of democratic

outcomes is thereby not determined from an objective third person perspective

but conceived rather in terms of an inclusive we-perspective.19 This means that

citizens are not regarded as abstract and essentially identical persons but rather

as concrete others with specific values and needs which can and should be taken

into account and which will, thus, have an impact on the specific content of

actual legislation and policies.20 The desire to take citizens seriously as

historically situated, concrete individuals also explains the need for actualprocesses of deliberation in which these citizens can participate. Indeed, inclusive

deliberation serves a twofold epistemic role in the sense that it allows to track the

specific concerns and needs of citizens, to which only they themselves have

privileged epistemic access, and allows, moreover, for the transformation of these

concerns and convictions in view of the legitimate concerns and convictions of

other participants. Now, of course, if individuals should be respected as

autonomous, concrete beings, their preferences and values cannot be assumed to

be fixed once and for all. The historical nature of our human condition implies

that we are constantly faced with changing social, economic, cultural and natural

circumstances and that we are constantly challenged and able to shape and

reshape our preferences, values and convictions accordingly. Human freedom is

a historical and necessarily open-ended endeavor. This, in turn, implies that the

15Throughout the section, I assume that ideal deliberative theory is highly consensualistic. Thisassumption does not detract from the generality of the conclusions because less consensualisticapproaches accept even more readily the point that the fallibility of actual discourse should berecognized and dealt with.

16This distinction between an empirical and an ontological gap is found in Mouffe 2000, pp. 48,88, 98, 137. Unlike Mouffe, however, I do not believe that the ontological nature of the gap between

l d id l d lib i i b d h d lib i di i f f i i



6/23

process of deliberation can never come to any final closure. Every democratic

decision, even if it takes all existing preferences into account, creates itself a new

historical reality which elicits new reactions and new preferences which can be

used to question, again, in a never-ending process, the previous decision. The

dynamics of this ongoing process explain why the idea of autonomy is an ideawhich contains the impossibility of its own full realization and why every attempt

at a premature closure of deliberation poses a threat to the ongoing realization of

human freedom.

Second, the presence of an ineliminable gap between actual and ideal

deliberation poses three connected normative challenges for any attempt to

institutionalize deliberative democracy. The macro-deliberative quality of a

deliberative system partly depends on the extent to which it is able to meet these

challenges. The three normative challenges I have in mind can be derived fromthree closely connected normative claims central to deliberative democracy as an

ideal theory. In terms of reason, ideal theory stipulates that the outcomes of

democratic deliberation should be impartial in the sense of giving equal concern

to the interests and values of all people affected by them. In terms ofpower, ideal

theory requires that all political decisions should be based on an agreement

between all people concerned. Hence, no genuine coercive power is exercised in

the imposition of political decisions and, thus, the autonomy of all citizens

subjected to them remains fully intact. In terms ofsolidarity, ideal theory assumesthat deliberation is a transformative process not only on the cognitive but also on

the motivational level. A discursive change of preferences leads to a situation in

which all citizens endorse political decisions precisely because they understand

that they are impartial and, therefore, just and legitimate.

The ineliminable gap between actual and ideal deliberation now gives rise to

three related normative challenges in the sense that the gap implies that the three

normative claims mentioned are also counterfactual in an ineliminable sense. As

a result, the outcomes of actual deliberations are not fully impartial but always

fail to do justice to the legitimate interests of at least some people affected

(reason). This ineliminable partiality implies, in turn, that all actual political

decisions contain a volitional moment21 and, thus, an ineliminable remainder of

real, non-discursive power which is genuinely coercive for at least some of the

citizens (power). As a consequence, there will always be at least some citizens

who disapprove of the decisions taken and who have good reasons for their

disagreement (solidarity).

Meeting the challenges posed by the gap between actual and ideal deliberation

requires that an adequate institutional design of a democratic system should notonly try to devise and implement sites and moments of actual deliberation. It

28 STEFAN RUMMENS


7/23

ineliminable remainder of real power; and it should be able to deal with the

ineliminable dissent of some citizens. In the absence of such mechanisms,

deliberative democracy runs the risk of simply assuming that the outcomes of

actual deliberations instantiate a sufficiently close approximation of ideal

deliberation. This assumption would be dangerous because it would lead to thepremature closure of deliberation and, thus, to the premature legitimization of

the forms of exclusion in terms of reason, power and solidarity actual decisions

necessarily engender.

III. THE VISIBILITY OF REPRESENTATIVE POLITICS

Before explaining how representative politics is able to deal with the normative

challenge of open-ended deliberation, it is important to further clarify some of themain characteristics of representation as I wish to understand it here.

In this article I subscribe, first, to the two-track model of the representative

system.22 Such a system consists of a core of formal representative institutions

(paradigmatically parliament), which is surrounded by an informal public sphere

constituted by civil society actors aiming to influence decision-making in the

center of the system. The presence of an elected assembly at the formal core

thereby ensures that the representative system is characterized by a dynamic

interplay between majorities and minorities in an organized struggle for access topower. The presence of a vibrant informal public sphere ensures that the debates

in the formal institutions are influenced by the concerns and interests of the

citizens at large. Thereby, civil society organizations play a crucial role in feeding

and structuring the informal debates, whereas political parties play a crucial role

in connecting the informal public sphere with the debates and decisions in the

formal decision-making forums. It should be clear that the two-track model

implies a wide conception of the political stage. Although elected representatives

and political parties are key players in the core of the system and therefore key

actors on the political stage, the stage is much wider and also refers to the

political actions of groups and individuals in the wider informal public sphere. To

the extent that these actors give voice to the concerns of at least some groups in

society they are part of the wider process of representation which is thus centered

on but not limited to electoral forms of formalized representation. Similarly, the

wide conception implies that the political stage should not merely or even

primarily be located in the general assembly of parliament, but that it also refers

to the performances of political actors in a much wider, dispersed and highly

mediatized political public sphere.I assume, second, that representation is a constructive, responsive and



8/23

representative substantively acts for the represented, Michael Saward amongst

others has rightly argued that this approach remains firmly embedded in an

academic tradition which conceives of representation in terms of the

representation of interests or identities which are well defined prior to the process

of representation itself.23 Instead, I subscribe to an alternative and increasinglyinfluential tradition which conceives of representation as an ongoing, dynamic

process in which the identity and the will of the people are constantly under

construction. Thereby, representatives play a crucial role in structuring and

interpreting political events and processes and in providing citizens with a

meaningful set of alternative political projects and propositions which allow

them to understand political reality and to shape their political preferences. In

this context, Frank Ankersmit for instance advocates an aesthetic theory of

representation according to which political reality does not really exist in ameaningful way prior to the representative process itself.24 Similarly, John

Parkinson and Maarten Hajer analyze the constructive nature of representation

in terms of the theatrical characteristics of current day politics.25 According to

Hajer, an analysis from a dramaturgical perspective reveals that the political

process is a sequence of staged events in which actors interact over the meaning

of events and over how to move on. Thereby, Hajer analyzes the performance of

political actors in the dramaturgical vocabulary of scripting, setting and

mise-en-scne.26

Michael Saward, finally, analyzes the performative andconstructive nature of representation in terms of the representative claims made

by political actors who claim to identify citizens as members of a particular

audience, to provide an adequate image of these citizens and to legitimately speak

and act on their behalf.27

Analyzing representation in terms of constructive performances staged for an

audience should not mistakenly lead us to believe, however, that citizens are now

conceived as a merely passive audience influenced and shaped by political

actors. As Saward emphasizes, representative claims only work, or even exist, if

audiences acknowledge them in some way, and are able to absorb or reject or

accept them or otherwise engage with them.28 Whereas, according to Hajer, the

reception by audiences is sometimes measured directly by means of techniques

such as opinion-polling or focus groups, the audience is also active in the sense

that it frames and reframes [politics] claims, by readjusting its agenda and even

by inserting counter scripts.29 Here again, the informal public sphere and the

individual or collective actors of civil society play a crucial role in the to-and-fro

communication between representatives and citizens. In this context, Mansbridge

23Pitkin 1967. Saward 2006.24A k i 1996 21 63 2002 91 132 N 2006 325 7

30 STEFAN RUMMENS


9/23

talks about an overall process of ongoing representation whereby the quality of

this mutual communication depends on the overall functioning of the democratic

system, including political parties, political challengers, the media, interest

groups, hearings, opinion surveys, and all other processes of communication.30

Although Mansbridge rightly emphasizes the systemic nature of representation,contrasting it with a too restricted focus on the dual relationship between the

representative and the represented, the communicative to-and-fro she sketches

also testifies of the kernel of truth in the idea that representatives are

substantively acting for the represented. Even if representatives play a

constitutive role in framing the beliefs and preferences of their constituents, the

acknowledgements of these constituents themselves remain a decisive point of

reference in determining whether representation is adequately responsive to the

(framed) preferences which are properly theirs.31The same to-and-fro, finally, also demonstrates that representation remains

a transformative process in which the beliefs and preferences of both

representatives and voters can change on the basis of discursive

learning-processes. Importantly, the goal of this transformation is not a full

harmonization of interests and preferences. On the one hand, the impartiality of

the we-perspective allows for the presence of particular interests as constituent

parts of the common good.32 Additionally, the ineliminable gap between the

particular preferences of individual citizens and the outcome of the democraticprocess, testifies of the non-ideal nature of this outcome as an only temporary

interpretation of the common good. Here again, the responsiveness of the

representative process to the potentially changing preferences of autonomous

citizens guarantees the historically open-ended character of the democratic

process.

A third and crucial feature of representative politics I wish to highlight is that

it ensures the visibility of the public debate. The metaphor of the stage not only

refers to the fact that the performance of political actors helps to frame political

events and choices in meaningful ways, it also emphasizes that representative

politics generates narrative structures which make political debate accessible and

understandable for a large audience of citizens. In this regard, Habermass

description of the informal public sphere as an anonymous network in which

arguments are circulated and transformed is not entirely adequate. The public

debate is not some amorphous, decentralized conversation but is generally

structured around a limited number of topics at a time as well as around a limited

number of identifiable players and positions. Thereby, the informal public debate

is, in its structure and its content, oriented towards what is or could be going onin the formal institutions it encircles. The fact that the informal debate is



10/23

decision-making institutions helps to give the informal debate its focus points and

its urgency. Importantly, and this is a distinction which is not always adequately

appreciated, visibility thus differs from the notion of transparency which is

currently en vogue as a defining feature of the democratic legitimacy of

governance institutions. Whereas transparency, as the ability of citizens to gainaccess to the proceedings of decision-making processes, might be a necessary

prerequisite for visibility, it is, in itself, not sufficient. Indeed, even if the workings

of mini-publics or governance institutions are transparent, the structure and

content of the decision-making process can remain very hard or even impossible

to read for citizens. In order to understand which decision has been made against

which alternatives and which interest groups in society promoted which solution,

it is not sufficient to check through the internet the minutes of some committee

meeting somewhere. Only the visibility of the political stage, in which interestsgroups, civil society organizations and political parties publicly contest decisions,

gives the wider public of citizens adequate access to what is at stake in the

decision-making process.

As a fourth and final point, representative politics are played out in an

increasingly mediatized political public sphere. Thereby, the media obviously do

not simply function as a neutral transmission channel between representatives

and the larger public. Instead, the media function according to their own proper

constraints which shape to a large extent the content and form of the news thatis being reported and, thus, to a significant extent also the content and form of

what counts as political reality. Although an analysis of the impact of market

imperatives as external constraints on the functioning of highly commercialized

media networks is crucial for a fuller assessment of the macro-deliberative quality

of present day politics, this task is beyond our present means.33 More relevant in

the present context is the fact that media constraints are also determined by more

internal factors such as the communicative logic which characterizes the practice

of reporting. In this regard, both Parkinson and Hajer emphasize that the media

have a strong preference for dramaturgical modes of communication.34 Even

when reporting political events, the media generally make use of the mechanism

of narrative and story-telling. They thereby tend to focus on conflict rather than

agreement, they prefer colorful phrases and quick sound-bites over extensive

argument and they are keen to personalize politics. Of course, politicians are not

simply the victims of these mechanisms. Smart political actors, possibly assisted

by their spin-doctors, are able to make use of them to their own advantage.

Nevertheless, it should be clear that the workings of the media at least partly

determine what can become visible in the public sphere. Although I will brieflyreturn to this issue in the final section, it will already be clear that the

32 STEFAN RUMMENS


11/23

the dramaturgical logic of the media than the forum or the network.35 As a result,

representative politics have a unique capacity to reach, affect and mobilize larger

audiences when compared to other modes of institutionalized deliberation.

IV. FACING THE CHALLENGE

The previous sketch of some general characteristics of representative politics

allows us to explain how representative institutions play an important role in

meeting the challenges posed by the gap between actual and ideal deliberation.

A. REASON: WHATs YOUR STORY?

As argued, an ideal, impartial consensus can never be fully realized throughdeliberation and, therefore, every actual political decision will necessarily remain

partial towards the present or future preferences and values of at least some

citizens. Dealing with the ineliminable presence of this epistemic gap between

actual and ideal deliberation requires that we resist the urge to insist on reaching

actual agreements in the real world because this might lead to the premature

closure of deliberation. Instead, the deliberative system should be able to

recognize the gap between the actual and the ideal and should strive to make this

gap as tractable as possible.Here, I submit that the oppositional dynamics of representative politics play a

crucial role because the disagreement of the minority with the majority decision

precisely signifies and represents the reservations that we should always have

towards actual decisions. Importantly, representative politics thereby not only

reveals that all actual decisions are necessarily partly partial and exclusionary, it

also provide us with clues as to what these partialities and exclusions are and

which alternatives might, perhaps, in the future, lead to better and more just

results.

The fact that representation allows us to reveal the epistemic structure of

actual decisions is due to the narrative nature of representative politics which

structures political debate both in the spatial and the temporal dimension. In the

spatial dimension, political players on stage each provide a different perspective

on the political story that is being told. The fact that there is a discrete set of civil

society organizations and political parties which develop and express their own

views on debated issues implies that the story never collapses into one single

point. There is no privileged narrator, no privileged point of view and the story

necessarily remains multi-facetted and fragmented. Epistemically, this means thatopposition parties or organizations, by challenging majority decisions, are able to



12/23

to the preferences and values which, possibly, have not been sufficiently taken

into account and enables, thus, to disclose the more specific nature of the

partialities inherent in the decisions made. This differs markedly from more

consensus-oriented modes of institutionalized deliberation where, after the

decision-making process is over, no trace is left of the routes that have not beenchosen by the policy-makers. Since all participants are supposed to endorse the

consensus reached, the excluded alternatives are no longer visible. Because the

consensus leaves no traces and collapses the contestatory epistemic process into

a single outcome, the epistemic partiality and thus the volitional moment of

power contained in the outcome are obscured. If, however, this moment of power

is to be checked by reason, it should be made visible, not simply in terms of who

has decided what, but also in terms of the epistemic location of the decision

made. In this regard, it is not surprising that empirical analysis reveals thatplenary sessions in parliament have a limited discursive quality in the sense that

no real transformative discussion takes place. The role of the plenary session is

different and much more theatrical. Here, different parties expose to the larger

public their perspective on a certain issue and thus take stock of the epistemic

location of the decision made by the majority.36

In the temporal dimension, the narrative structure of representative politics

provides temporal continuity to the public debate and allows to maintain the

debate as an ongoing epistemic process. Present discussions are not merely aboutmaking future-oriented choices; the discussions are themselves couched in a

common history. Although there is, importantly, also constant renewal, political

parties and civil society organizations usually also carry with them a past and are

able to refer to the reasons lying behind past decisions or point out how certain

current issues are the result of concerns neglected in the past. Representative

politics, even today when the public debate seems so fleeting, provides politics

with a memory as well as an orientation to the future. In this regard, oppositional

parties and organizations function as epistemic reservoirs in a twofold sense.

They represent and keep alive the memory of interests and values which have

been excluded by majority decisions. By keeping these arguments and interests on

stage, it remains at the same time possible to use them in the design of policy

alternatives. By opposing the majority in the hope of a possible future access to

power, the opposition plays a crucial role in maintaining the dynamics of the

democratic process as an ongoing search for a better, more inclusive and less

partial future society. Again, consensus-based approaches typically lack this kind

of temporal continuity. In the absence of organized groups which function as the

memory and the potential future of the public debate precisely because theyrefuse to subscribe to the consensus, political decisions in more direct forms of

34 STEFAN RUMMENS


13/23

B. POWER: WHODUNIT?

As argued, the fact that an ideal consensus remains necessarily counterfactual

implies that all actual decisions contain a genuine volitional moment in which

real, partial and exclusionary power is being exercised. This implies, in turn, thatthe perennial political challenge of checking power is reintroduced in the

deliberative framework. At this point, discourse theory could and should refer to

the traditional checks and balances familiar from contemporary constitutional

arrangements as appropriate means for checking power. At the same time,

however, it should also emphasize that, in order to preserve the deliberative

quality of the democratic process, actual political power should be maximally

checked by the discursive power generated by the public debate.

Here again, representative politics can play a crucial, twofold role. First of all,

as already intimated, in order to check political power it is necessary that it is

exercised in a visible manner and that it is clear who has decided what. In a

consensus-oriented approach to the institutionalization of deliberation, the

outcome of the deliberative procedure is supposed to be a jointly reached

outcome, nobody or no group of persons is singled out as accountable for the

result and nobody or no group has much incentive to systematically question the

outcome in terms of the bias and partiality it might embody. In a representative

system, in contrast, these tasks are clearly allocated. The majority gets to make

the decisions but is, therefore, also always accountable. The minority, currentlydeprived of direct power, has a great incentive to challenge majority decisions it

believes will not enjoy the approval of the wider public. In doing so, the minority

is able to localize the exercise of non-discursive power and to bring to light all the

partial influences (by interest-groups or civil society organizations) which have

contributed to the biased results.

Second, visibility is not enough. Additionally, the majority in power should

have real incentives to remain susceptible to the influence of reasons generated in

the informal public sphere and, thus, remain within the parameters for thespectrum of possible politics which could be considered legitimate.38 Here, the

electoral mechanism and the to-and-fro communication between representatives

and citizens proves crucial in guaranteeing this responsiveness.39 In this context,

many authors now agree that two traditional accounts of representation are

inadequate. On the promissory account, electoral representation should be

understood (ex ante) in terms of the mandate given to parties by voters on the

basis of the promises regarding future policies they make during election

campaigns. On the accountability account, representation should be understood(ex post) in terms of the assessment of past policies made by voters at the time

of election More sophisticated accounts now talk about anticipatory



14/23

representation40 or representation as receptivity41 and recognize the need,

emphasized earlier, for a constant interplay between elected representatives on

the one hand and the opinions of the represented voters on the other. Indeed,

because representatives want to be reelected and parties want to win future

elections, they have a big incentive to conduct their policies in a way that isreceptive to the ongoing influence of the informal public debate. By promoting

the fear of a future loss of power or the hope of a future gain of power, the

electoral mechanism enables the connection between political power and public

reason.

C. SOLIDARITY: STILL PART OF THE BAND

As argued, the epistemic gap between actual and ideal decisions, resulting froma process of transformation of preferences which can never be completed, finds its

correlate in a similar motivational gap. Given the ineliminable partiality of every

actual outcome, there will always be members of society who feel excluded and

wronged by particular political decisions. Here again, representative institutions

play a crucial role in overcoming their disaffection and sustaining their ongoing

commitment to the democratic project.

In representative politics, the disaffection of outvoted minorities is overcome,

or at least mitigated, by the actions of oppositional parties and movements whichguarantee the ongoing presence on the political stage of the outvoted point of

view. Even if some groups in society have lost the political struggle, their defeat

does not imply that they, or their point of view, lose political legitimacy. Losers

are not removed from the stage; they remain legitimate members of the political

community and legitimate contributors to the democratic process. This means,

amongst other things, that their defeat is not necessarily final. The struggle is

open-ended and issues can reappear on the political agenda. If outvoted groups

manage to generate enough convincing reasons to support their position, there is

no reason why their fate could not be reversed in the future. The temporal

continuity of the political struggle and the ongoing visible presence of outvoted

positions on stage provide all citizens with reasons to identify with the

democratic process as a whole, if not necessarily with all particular decisions

taken.

In the absence of an ongoing oppositional presence with which to identify,

people who fail to agree with the outcomes of supposedly consensual

decision-making processes can turn against the decision-making system as a

whole. In this regard it has been plausibly argued that the blurring of the left-rightdistinction by so-called third way politics has been a major contributor to

36 STEFAN RUMMENS


15/23

anti-establishment or even anti-system parties.42 Similarly, it has been argued that

the Euro-skeptic attitudes amongst large sections of the European citizenry are

caused by the fact that the only way to contest the allegedly consensualistic

outcomes of European decision-making is to turn against the European Union as

such.43 Both phenomena suggest that consensualistic approaches to politics aredangerous because they undermine the visibility of the democratic process. When

people no longer know what is it stake, who is deciding what, what the

alternative options are or who is giving voice to their own point of view, there is

a serious risk of political disaffection.

In terms of motivation and the ongoing solidarity amongst members of a

democratic polity, representative institutions manage to avoid two pernicious

situations. On the one hand, the representation of opposing points of view on the

political stage avoids the need to conceive of the community as a harmoniousunity and, thus, avoids the suppression of the ineliminable motivational gap

between the individual preferences of citizens and the general will as temporarily

interpreted by the current majority. On the other hand, representation also avoids

the disintegration of society into a mere collection of individuals with potentially

conflicting values and interests. As convincingly argued by Claude Lefort, the

staging of values and interests, enables us to transform conflicts de facto into

conflicts de iure.44 This means that representative institutions provide society

with a visible image of itself and allow the groups and individuals in that societyto find means of visibly relating to each other. Representation thus provides

visible structure and orientation to the unity-in-diversity which characterizes

democratic society as an ongoing political project.

V. DEMOCRATIC DEFICITS

As indicated at the beginning of the article, I assume that an adequate

institutionalization of deliberative democracy will have to combine elements of

the forum, the stage and the network in order to realize the promise of a more

radical and inclusive democracy. Nevertheless, I believe that the argument

presented here should make us more critical of one-sided approaches which

assume that deliberative democracy should minimize the role of representative

institutions. In the absence of such institutions, or of institutions which can be

shown to have similar effects, the risk of a premature closure of deliberation

threatens the overall quality of the democratic process.

For instance, if the outcome of a forum discussion, such as in a citizens jury,

is simply presented to the public as the policy proposal the participating citizensbelieve to be the best solution to the problem at hand and subsequently made the



16/23

topic of a nation-wide referendum, it should not surprise us that other citizens,

who were left out of the discussion, are not always unconditionally enthusiastic

about what is being proposed. To them, the forum remains to a large extent a

black box process of which they can only see the outcome. They have no clue of

the different arguments raised, they do not know over and against whichalternatives and for which reasons the final proposal has been chosen. Unlike the

participating citizens, they have not been able to go through a transformative

learning process and are, therefore, left in the dark as to possible partialities and

exclusions the final outcome might still contain. Consensus-oriented processes of

this kind tend to collapse the political debate both in the temporal and the spatial

dimension and make political decisions appear, especially for the larger audience,

as a-historical, amorphous singular moments.

There are, moreover, no easy solutions for improving the visibility ofdeliberative fora. As nicely illustrated by John Parkinsons case study of a

deliberative poll on the future of the British National Health Service held at the

Manchester Metropolitan University in July 1998, attempts to increase visibility

by providing extensive media coverage are deeply problematic.45 In this case,

media coverage of the event, in which lay participants spent at least twenty hours

together over a span of three days, was provided by three one-hour television

programs broadcast by Channel 4. A comparison of the actual event with the

televised version of it, based for instance on a comparison of the relative talk timeof participants, clearly demonstrates that the televised version followed the

dramaturgical logic of media coverage. This means that the television program

focused on individuals making points and on moments of conflict rather than on

processes of discussion or on instances of agreement. Significant personalities,

such as the politicians questioned during some plenary sessions by the lay

participants or the well known reporter leading the plenary debates, took up

most of the broadcasting time at the expense of the contributions of lay

participants or invited experts. As a result, the television coverage of the poll

failed to capture most of the actual deliberating, failed to convey the learning

experience of actual participants to a larger audience and, thus, also failed to

convince the larger audience of the quality of the conclusions to which the

participants had come. It would be misguided, however, to blame the failure of

this attempt to cover the proceedings of a deliberative forum simply on the media.

The dramaturgical logic of the media is probably the only logic capable of

grasping the attention of a large audience as an audience and, therefore, the very

logic that is needed to sustain an ongoing public debate in large-scale democratic

societies. Large-scale as opposed to micro-deliberation requires that the debate isvisibly structured in space and time. This means that communication to and with

38 STEFAN RUMMENS


17/23

and defending different points of view, of making decisions in localizable and

accountable ways and of keeping outvoted points of views present as future

possibilities.

The problem of limited visibility is not restricted to deliberative fora but

similarly arises for deliberative networks.46 As argued, for instance, by YannisPapadopoulos and Claus Offe, governance networks are characterized by a

dilution of responsibility47 or an imputability of actions.48 Because networks

are decentralized and consensus-oriented and because they lack the dynamic

interplay between majorities and minorities, it is hard to identify actors who can

take responsibility for the outcomes of decision-making processes that go on in

these networks. The fact that network participants usually escape the threat of

electoral sanction by citizens, thus undermines the ability of citizens to ensure the

adequate responsiveness of these actors to their own interests and raises theprobability that policy outcomes are unduly and imperceptibly influenced by

partial socio-economic or other interests.49 According to Papadopoulos, the

current rise of governance structures generally leads to an unhealthy uncoupling

of backstage policy making (politique des problmes) from the frontstage public

debate (politique dopinions).50 As Offe, in turn, rightly emphasizes, this

uncoupling works both ways and implies that citizens facing the workings of

these opaque governance processes increasingly fail to understand, support or, if

necessary, endure the policy decisions imposed upon them.51

When applied to the debate concerning the European Union, these

observations should make us wary of the claim made by some deliberative

theorists that current European governance structures hold the promise of

realizing the ideal of deliberative democracy beyond the nation-state. Joshua

Cohen, Charles Sabel and Oliver Gerstenberg, for instance, argue that the EU is

best understood as a directly-deliberative polyarchy in the making.52 This means

that European governance structures consist of a decentralized network with a

fair amount of autonomy for more local decision-making units whereby

processes of deliberation within and between these units enable mutual learning

and adjustment.53 In this regard, the authors praise, for instance, the Open

Method of Co-ordination and the more general comitological nature of European

decision-making.54 On their account, such a polyarchical model allows for

effective and democratic problem-solving because it empowers local agents to

deal with the problems that affect them in a reflexive and other-regarding manner

46Papadopoulos 2007, p. 473. Hajer 2009, p. 176. Ankersmit 2002, pp. 18098.47Papadopoulos 2007, p. 473.48Offe 2009, p. 550.49Ibid 558



18/23

while stimulating mutual confidence and solidarity.55 One of the major

advantages of this new form of network democracy, they believe, is that it

dispenses with the need for a general public or demos as the originating subject

of democratic decision-making.56

[S]overeignty . . . is neither unitary nor personified, and politics is about addressingpractical problems and not simply about principles, much less performance oridentity. In this world, the public is simply an open group of actors . . . whichconstitutes itself as such in coming to address a common problem, and reconstitutesitself as efforts at problem-solving redefine the task at hand. The polity is the publicformed of these publics. . . .57

The claim, however, that the practical solidarity generated by the mutual

capacitation of citizens temporarily cooperating in solving specific problems

suffices to sustain the legitimacy of the European governance system,58 seemshighly problematic in view of the general rise of Euro-skeptic attitudes amongst

European citizens and the wide-spread sense of a European democratic deficit. Of

course, Cohen, Sabel and Gerstenberg recognize that the democratic credentials

of the EU are not fully established and that the realization of its full democratic

potential depends on whether its dispersed deliberative decision-making

processes can be subjected to the full blast of diverse opinions and interests in

society.59 In order to achieve this democratization, they argue, several conditions

have to be met such as the transparency of deliberations, fair participation andthe connection of deliberative decisions with wider public discussion.60 The

problem is, however, that they fail to explain how this connection could be

established in view of the fact, illustrated by Papadopoulos, that problem solving

politics in governance networks in reality tend to un-couple from the wider

public debate. Although transparency is, indeed, a necessary condition for

connecting European politics with the public debate, it is not a sufficient

condition. A political system which consists of a decentered network of local sites

of deliberation connected to ad hoc publics dealing with specific problems as theyarise, clearly lacks adequate coherence and visibility. In this context, Paul

Magnette aptly quotes John Dewey, who argues that there can be too much

public in the sense that a multitude of fleeting publics focused on their own

fleeting problems fails to provide sufficient integration to the democratic debate

and, thus, to democratic society.61 A true connection of politics with a larger

audience requires, instead, a dramatization of politics through the performance

of personalized political actors.62

55Cohen and Sabel 1997, pp. 3334.56Gerstenberg and Sabel 2002.57C h d S b l 2004 164 5

40 STEFAN RUMMENS


19/23

Indeed, many authors have argued that the absence of the drama of

oppositional politics in the EU, with a real struggle for power positions between

identifiable political actors, engenders many of the problems we have associated

with the gap between actual and ideal deliberation and, thus, explains the true

origin of the perceived democratic deficit. Because of the absence of oppositionalpolitics, European citizens are simply presented with the outcome of network

deliberations as the official version of the truth but never with possible policy

alternatives which have lost out or which could provide future alternatives.63

Because the network structure leads to a structure of shared irresponsibilities in

which all political actors are able to distance themselves from the outcomes and

blame undesired effects on others,64 citizens are dispossessed of the means to

sanction political actors who have failed to act in sufficiently responsive manners.

Indeed, checking whether network deliberation actually serves the public interestrather than the particular interests of those with better access to the deliberative

sites is very hard and several authors have expressed serious doubts about the

often optimistically assumed inclusiveness of European decision-making.65

Finally, as already suggested, it is precisely the inability of citizens to sanction

actual policies and to support an oppositional point of view within the European

political system which strengthens the tendency of citizens to become

Euro-skeptic and which turns policy-orientated opposition into systemic

opposition.66

Although, again, these remarks do not aim to discredit thedemocratic possibilities of deliberative networks as such, they do aim to illustrate

that network deliberation in itself is insufficient to guarantee the macro-

deliberative quality of the democratic process. In the case of the European Union

it seems, therefore, advisable to try and find ways of strengthening the

oppositional dynamics in its institutional architecture.67

VI. CONCLUSION

This article has focused on the fallibility of actual discourse and the concomitant

gap between actual and ideal deliberation. I have argued that this gap poses a

threefold challenge for the institutionalization of deliberative democracy. It

implies that in order to ensure the macro-deliberative quality of the democratic

system we have to provide mechanisms which can reveal the partialities and

exclusions involved in these actual outcomes; which can deal with the remainder

of non-discursive power generated by these partialities; and which can help to

guarantee the ongoing political commitment of citizens who feel, possibly rightly

so, wronged by the decisions taken. I have argued, next, that representative



20/23

politics provide political debate with a narrative structure which makes the

political process particularly visible and accessible to larger audiences. This

visibility allows to deal in an adequate manner with the challenges identified.

Representative politics are particularly well suited to reveal the epistemic location

of decisions made; they are capable of identifying responsible political actors andholding them accountable; and they are able to maintain the commitment of

those outvoted by holding out the promise of a possible future revision of the

outcome. Although this article falls short of providing a more thorough

comparison of the merits and shortcomings of the forum, the stage and the

network, it aims to serve as a reminder. If discourse is always accompanied by a

remainder of real power, then we should not let this power float freely in black

box mini-publics or anonymous networks where it can hide from sight and move

unchecked. Instead we should try to make it visible and restrain its exclusionaryand disaffecting impact.

REFERENCES

Ankersmit, Frank R. 1996. Aesthetic Politics: Political Philosophy Beyond Fact and Value.Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Ankersmit, Frank R. 2002. Political Representation. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Bellamy, Richard. 2010. Democracy without democracy? Can the EUs democratic

outputs be separated from the democratic inputs provided by competitive parties andmajority rule? Journal of European Public Policy, 17, 219.

Benhabib, Seyla. 1992. Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism inContemporary Ethics. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bohman, James. 2005. The democratic minimum: democracy a means to global justice?Ethics and International Affairs, 19, 10116.

Bohman, James. 2007. Democracy across Borders: from Dmos to Dmoi. Cambridge:The MIT Press.

Brown, Mark B. 2006. Citizen panels and the concept of representation. The Journal ofPolitical Philosophy, 14, 20325.

Chambers, Simone. 2009. Rhetoric and the public sphere. Has deliberative democracy

abandoned mass democracy? Political Theory, 37, 32350.Cohen, Joshua and Charles Sabel. 1997. Directly-deliberative polyarchy. European LawJournal, 3, 31342.

Cohen, Joshua and Charles Sabel. 2004. Sovereignty and solidarity: EU and US. Pp.15775 in Karl-Heinz Ladeur (ed.), Public Governance in the Age of Globalization.Aldershot: Ashgate.

Dewey, John. [1927] 1989. The Public and Its Problems. Athens: Ohio University Press.Dryzek, John S. 2006. Deliberative Global Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press.Dryzek, John S. 2010a. Foundations and Frontiers of Deliberative Governance. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.Dryzek, John S. 2010b. Rhetoric in democracy: a systemic appreciation. Political Theory,

38, 31939.Dryzek, John S. and Simon Niemeyer. 2008. Discursive representation. American Political

Science Review 102 48193

42 STEFAN RUMMENS


21/23

Fung, Archon. 2003. Recipes for public spheres: eight institutional design choices andtheir consequences. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 11, 33867.

Gerstenberg, Oliver and Charles F. Sabel. 2002. Directly-deliberative polyarchy: aninstitutional ideal for Europe? Pp. 289341 in Christian Joerges and Renaud Dehousse(eds), Good Governance in Europes Integrated Market. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.Gilabert, Pablo. 2005. The substantive dimension of deliberative practical rationality.

Philosophy & Social Criticism, 31, 185210.Goodin, Robert E. 2005. Sequencing deliberative moments. Acta Politica, 40, 18296.Goodin, Robert E. & John S. Dryzek. 2006. Deliberative impacts: the macro-political

uptake of mini-publics. Politics & Society, 34, 21944.Habermas, Jrgen. 1996. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory

of Law and Democracy. Cambridge: MIT Press.Habermas, Jrgen. 2003. Rightness versus truth: on the sense of normative validity in

moral judgments and norms. Pp. 23778 in Truth and Justification. Cambridge: PolityPress.

Habermas, Jrgen. 2008. Hat die Demokratie noch eine epistemische Dimension?Empirische Forschung und normative Theorie. Pp. 13891 in Ach, Europa: KleinePolitische Schriften XI. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Hajer, Maarten A. 2009. Authoritative Governance: Policy-making in the Age ofMediatization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hendriks, Carolyn M. 2006. Integrated deliberation: reconciling civil societys dual role indeliberative democracy. Political Studies, 54, 486508.

Hendriks, Carolyn M. 2009. The democratic soup: mixed meanings of politicalrepresentation in governance networks. Governance: An International Journal ofPolicy, Administration, and Institutions, 22, 689715.

Hix, Simon. 2008. Whats Wrong with the European Union & How to Fix it. Cambridge:Polity Press.Kuper, Andrew. 2004. Democracy Beyond Borders: Justice and Representation in Global

Institutions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Landwehr, Claudia. 2010. Discourse and coordination: modes of interaction and their

roles in political decision-making. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 18, 10122.

Lefort, Claude. 1988. Democracy and Political Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.Magnette, Paul. 2006. Democracy in the European Union: why and how to combine

representation and participation? Pp. 2341 in Stijn Smismans (ed.), Civil Society andLegitimate European Governance. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Mair, Peter. 2007. Political opposition and the European Union. Government andOpposition, 42, 117.Mansbridge, Jane. 1999. Everyday talk in the deliberative system. Pp. 21139 in S.

Macedo (ed.), Deliberative Politics: Essays on Democracy and Disagreement. Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Mansbridge, Jane. 2003. Rethinking representation. American Political Science Review,97, 51528.

Mansbridge, Jane with James Bohman, Simone Chambers, David Estlund, AndreasFllesdal, Archon Fung, Cristina Lafont, Bernard Manin and Jos Luis Mart. 2010.The place of self-interest and the role of power in deliberative democracy. The Journalof Political Philosophy, 18, 64100.

Mouffe, Chantal. 2000. The Democratic Paradox. London: Verso.Mouffe, Chantal. 2005. On the Political. London: Routledge.Nsstrm Sofia 2006 Representative democracy as tautology: Ankersmit and Lefort on



22/23

Papadopoulos, Yannis. 2007. Problems of democratic accountability in network andmultilevel governance. European Law Journal, 13, 46986.

Parkinson, John. 2005. Rickety bridges: using the media in deliberative democracy. BritishJournal of Political Science, 36, 17583.

Parkinson, John. 2006. Deliberating in the Real World. Problems of Legitimacy in

Deliberative Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Parkinson, John and Alex Bavister-Gould. 2009. Judging macro-deliberative quality.

Paper presented at the Democracy and the Deliberative Society Conference,University of York, June 2009.

Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. 1967. The Concept of Representation. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press.

Plotke, David. 1997. Representation is democracy. Constellations, 4, 1934.Rummens, Stefan. 2006. Debate: the cooriginality of private and public autonomy in

deliberative democracy. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 14, 46981.Rummens, Stefan. 2007. Democratic deliberation as the open-ended construction of

justice. Ratio Juris, 20, 33554.Rummens, Stefan. 2008. Deliberation interrupted: confronting Jrgen Habermas with

Claude Lefort. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 34, 383408.Rummens, Stefan. 2009. Democracy as a non-hegemonic struggle: disambiguating

Chantal Mouffes agonistic model of politics. Constellations, 16, 37791.Saward, Michael. 2006. The representative claim. Contemporary Political Theory, 5,

297318.Saward, Michael. 2009. Authorisation and authenticity: representation and the unelected.

The Journal of Political Philosophy, 17, 122.Smismans, Stijn. 2008. New modes of governance and the participatory myth. West

European Politics, 31, 87495.

Urbinati, Nadia. 2006. Representative Democracy: Principles & Genealogy. Chicago: TheUniversity of Chicago Press.Urbinati, Nadia and Mark E. Warren. 2008. The concept of representation in

contemporary democratic theory. Annual Review of Political Science, 11, 387412.Warren, Mark E. 2007. Institutionalizing deliberative democracy. Pp. 27288 in Shawn

Rosenberg (ed.), Deliberation, Participation and Democracy. Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan.

Young, Iris M. 2001. Activist challenges to deliberative democracy. Political Theory, 29,67090.

Young, Iris M. 2006. De-centering deliberative democracy. Kettering Review, 24, 4353.

44 STEFAN RUMMENS


23/23

Copyright of Journal of Political Philosophy is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be

copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written

permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

Rummens, Stefan. Staging Deliberation

Documents

Transcript of Rummens, Stefan. Staging Deliberation