As I discussed above, deliberative theorists hold that we can consider ourselves legitimately bound by democratic decisions where those decisions follow from free and inclusive debate that has been tempered by the reasonability requirement. However, some theorists argue that as well as ensuring participation, deliberation is more likely to result in the best decisions. Such theorists hold that deliberation is not only the most democratic method for organising a polity, but is the procedure through which the most satisfactory results will be produced and they further argue that it is crucial for any democratic theory to show how:
[I]ndependently of the outcome of the democratic process, there is a sense in which a particular decision is correct— truly just or representing the common good. If this property
12 See (Peter 2007) for a taxonomy of some different models of deliberative (as well as aggregative) democracy. I consider part of Peter’s taxonomy here, namely the difference between what she terms epistemic and rational proceduralism. See also (Estlund 2002) for a further taxonomy of deliberative models.
40 applies, collective choices will qualify as either right or wrong and alternative institutionalizations of the democratic process will be seen as differing in their truth-tracking potential. (Peter 2007, p.337)
This is an old story that stretches back at least to Rousseau’s invocation of the General Will on the basis that it will create the best outcomes (Rousseau 1968[1762]). This instrumental understanding of deliberation purports that the deliberative process necessarily creates the best outcomes and is thus the most legitimate exercise of political power.
What is often at stake for theorists who take this line is the notion that deliberation is the best way to ensure that bad decisions are weeded out: ‘Political equality without deliberation is not of much use, for it amounts to nothing more than power without the opportunity to think about how that power ought to be exercised.’ (Fishkin 1991, p.36) Here, Fishkin argues that if we hold only to the democratic ideals of equality and participation, we can hold direct, aggregative democracy to be legitimate, because under that system everyone has an equal vote, with the outcome determined by the highest number of votes. Deliberation is necessary, he argues, because without the opportunity to consider alternatives, democratic decision-making becomes the blind will of citizens who may not be availed of the facts. Thus, aggregative democracy without deliberation will likely result in a greater number of unjust outcomes, particularly as the majority ignore minority concerns (Fishkin 1991, p.21). Furthermore, having no deliberative requirement means that politics is more open to corruption by powers other than the democratic polis, for example: where political representatives bow to industry at the expense of their voters’ needs, and fail to present crucial evidence; or where the media is uniformly biased towards a particular outcome such that voters do not consider a range of alternatives. Without deliberation at the centre of democracy, Fishkin argues, in both of these cases the outcome would still count as democratic, as long as citizens have a vote. Thus, for
41 Fishkin, we require deliberation because the democratic process is easily co-opted by external powers when there is a paucity of information and debate, resulting in an increased likelihood of outcomes of diminished quality. This is not to say that deliberative fora cannot be co-opted and influenced by interested parties, or that direct democracy will never result in favourable outcomes. However, Fishkin makes a fairly modest appeal to deliberation as central to ensuring that there are a higher number of good decisions made; while he makes no claim that those decisions will always be the best or absolutely correct.13
Similarly, Marti defends the thesis that deliberation is attractive because it will, under ideal conditions at least, more often result in the best outcomes:
The instrumental justification… consists mainly (though not exclusively) in attributing some value to the decisions made through the deliberative procedure. Since such value is the rightness of the decision, the procedure can be seen as a way of identifying right decisions and, hence, it is supposed to have epistemic value, and it may be called, as Estlund does, epistemic proceduralism[.] (Martí 2006, p.36)
Thus, even though he concedes that any deliberation will be imperfect and may not always result in the best decisions, Marti holds that decisions resulting from deliberation are more likely to be correct (Martí 2006, p.35). Since in deliberation we are defending and debating the decisions that we think are right, he argues, we can value the final decision as the right decision, as that which we considered most right
from the range of available options:
As a discursive process based on reasons, deliberation assumes, as we will see, both the existence ofrightness (or impartiality, or some other equivalent) in political decisions, and the possibility to know which is the right (or impartial) decision… To argue in favour of decision A means briefly to show that decision A is the right decision, or at least, that A is better in terms of rightness than other decisions being compared. To the extent that [deliberative democracy] involves the possibility of exchanging reasons and rational communication, participants in deliberation must assume the existence of some intersubjective criterion of validity of their claims, a criterion that should at least be partly independent from the participants’ preferences and from the process itself[.] (Martí 2006, p.30)
13 One of Fishkin’s aims in this book is to argue that there is a problem with representatives taking citizens’ views on board too readily, as often citizens don’t have sufficient information or time to engage with political questions. He forwards ‘deliberative polling’ as a way of representing how the electorate would decide on an issue if they had sufficient information and time (Fishkin 1991, 1995, 2009).
42 So, Marti argues that without the possibility of arguing for a conclusion in terms of how right or just it is in comparison to others, there wouldn’t be any reason to deliberate at all. The fact that democratic deliberation actively requires interlocutors to give reasons for courses of action, means that the entire process is one of collectively considering what the most right decision will be, thus leading to a higher probability of the most right decisions being implemented. Moreover, when we argue over what is right, we appeal to reasons that are outside of the democratic procedure; thus, Marti argues, our standards of rightness do not depend wholly on the deliberative procedure itself. However, he simultaneously argues that we don’t need to hold to a particular meta-ethical standard—we only have to accept that there is always a right decision to be found (Martí 2006, p.34-5).
By contrast, Peter rejects this line of reasoning on the grounds that we simply can’t prove or know that the deliberative procedure will yield better results than other methods of decision-making because, Peter argues, we can’t know what is right independent of the procedure. Even though we make appeals to rightness or correctness in a number of ways during deliberation, in a bid to come to a good decision, we can’t know with any certainty that we will in fact choose the right decision. Furthermore, Peter argues that some problems can result from the belief that deliberation leads to the right decisions. One such problem is that we may stick with bad decisions for longer; another is that we may dismiss lingering dissent as mere folly: ‘Because of the normative weight the standard account attaches to correctness, it will tend to cast persisting dissent in terms of an opposition between what counts as the correct view and what must be an expression of error.’ (Peter 2008, p.34) Even where the deliberative conditions of inclusion and reasonability are met, it’s not clear that we should defer to the majority decision where we think there are better
43 justifications for a different course of action. Thus, the task for Peter is to show why we should consider deliberative outcomes to be legitimate, without appealing to a procedure-independent standard of correctness, since a strength of the instrumental theories, such as Marti’s, is that if outcomes are known to be correct, they are easily defended as legitimate.
Peter argues that the instrumental epistemic conception of deliberation, such as Marti’s, is not supportive of plurality, which she argues should be central to our defence of democracy. Peter therefore defends a version of deliberative democracy from the basis of pluralism, arguing that once we see democratic actors as agents capable of creating constructive plural perspectives in deliberation, we can consider inclusive deliberation to be intrinsically valuable:
[T]o respect individual agency is to ensure that individuals have the possibility to participate in the evaluation of alternative social arrangements. If individuals are not just seen as passive carriers of wellbeing, but as causal forces in the forming of individual and collective goals, there is need for inclusive procedures which allow individuals with differing conceptions of the good to participate in the collective evaluation and choice of their social arrangements. We thus have an argument for why respect of reasonable value pluralism entails a demand for inclusive, fair procedures which enable individual agents to act together, or, in other words, for why respect of value pluralism entails that democratic procedures form an irreducible component of legitimacy. (Peter 2008, p.36)
In other words, pluralism itself gives us a justification for the legitimacy of equal and inclusive deliberation. It’s not necessary to appeal to the truth-tracking ability of deliberation: we have sufficient reason to choose deliberation because we value political agency, as well as the different perspectives and constructions of outcomes that increased political participation provides. Because we can gain increased understanding and perspectives, and change and form opinions within the deliberative process, Peter attests, the process has intrinsic value: ‘Epistemic practices… are best interpreted as irreducibly procedural—there is nothing beyond critically engaging with each other in transparent and non-authoritarian ways.’ (Peter 2008, p.47) Thus, for Peter, the continual process of public democratic deliberation is a knowledge-
44 producing practise that can persist as legitimate and valuable ‘without referring to the idea that there exists, procedure-independently, a correct outcome of democratic decision-making[.]’ (Peter 2008, p.50) We still have to make decisions in deliberation, but according to Peter, it is a mistake to understand these as objectively correct; instead, all outcomes are, at least potentially, revisable and the epistemic gain made in deliberation results from the sharing of different perspectives and socially-located knowledge.
Peter therefore argues that we should abandon the notion of correct outcomes from deliberation altogether. Peter makes an analogy, using Longino’s work, with scientific enquiry: in science there are no absolutes that sit as presuppositions for knowledge, even though particular frameworks use specific premises in order to build theory; nor are there scientific outcomes that can be considered to be constitutively and timelessly correct (Longino 1990). The only principles that are more or less fixed in science, by contrast, are those that demand that scientific knowledge is constantly queried and revised. The fact that deliberative fora create similar conditions for political enquiry, Peter argues, shows the intrinsic value of the procedure itself. Thus, there is an epistemic upshot from the sharing of ideas and reasons, as shared knowledge and understanding increases, but not in the sense that the definitively correct outcome is arrived at. By extension, Peter does not think that absolute consensus is the aim of deliberation: if we really do value plurality, and consider democracy as an ongoing process of deliberation, then majority consensus at any one time is not indicative of correctness.
My own conclusion is that Peter’s pure epistemic proceduralism is a stronger conception of deliberative democracy than Marti’s instrumental account. Under Peter’s procedural model, we can affirm that the decision made is legitimate because it
45 was made under the most ideal conditions and with the best available knowledge; we can also value the fact that deliberation has increased or broadened our understanding of the issues at hand and has allowed political actors to participate as autonomous agents. Furthermore, we can do this without having to appeal to procedure- independent standards of correctness, which are difficult to agree upon. We can also avoid having to summarily dismiss our opponents as wrong for continuing to argue for outcomes that differ from a majority decision. Thus, Peter’s model leaves room not only for dissent, but for an active plurality, with the theory geared towards greater participation of people from a range of perspectives. However, as I will show with Cohen’s account, below, we can and should still hold to deliberation being in the service of creating good decisions, without going so far as to say that those decisions are correct.