The understanding of radical and plural democracy introduced by Mouffe is complemented by the concept of ‘dialogic democracy’ proposed by Giddens in his book Beyond Left and Right. Giddens illustrates the features and structure of dialogic democracy by underlining its distinctiveness from liberal and deliberative democracy. Liberal democracy is described as a system of representation and it utilizes a form of government based on regular elections, universal suffrage, freedom of conscience and universal right to hold an office and establish political associations
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in line with the principles of pluralism and expression of various interests. According to Fukuyama (1992: xiii), liberal democracy stands as “end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” and the “final form of human government”. Even though liberal democracy functions well in giving opportunity to people to represent their particular interests and voice their problems in the public space, it is a clearly acknowledged fact that such a democracy is exercised by a group distant from voters and it mostly deals with intra-party and interparty concerns rather than increasing the welfare of the society. Moreover, despite its principle of plurality, within liberal democracy, only a minority of plurality can have a chance to express their ideas, concerns and problems.
In such a political environment, deliberative democracy stands as an opponent to liberal democracy. According to Miller (1992:55), deliberative model “starts from the premise that political preferences will conflict and the purpose of democratic institutions must be to resolve this conflict”. Further, similar to discursive and deliberative understanding of public space supported by Habermas, Miller (1992) notes that in order to the process of conflict resolution be democratic, it has to be an open and uncoerced discussion of the issue for reaching an agreed agreement. During this process, public deliberation over policy issues is regarded as a signifier of democracy. The most crucial point to be addressed in this discussion is that, as Giddens (1994:114) points out, deliberative democracy might bring about greater openness and transparency to policy-making mechanisms such as parliaments and congressional assemblies compared to liberal democratic systems.
While we can assert that Miller’s understanding of deliberative democracy can be regarded as a betterment in the quality of political participation and expression, since it confines democratization practices to formal political realm, it falls short of
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responding the changes in late-modern (post-traditional) society. As Giddens (1994:111) states, “democratization processes today are driven by the expansion of social reflexivity and detraditionalization [...] Many of the most important changes which affect people’s lives today do not originate in the formal political sphere and can only in some part be coped with by it”. Today, practices of democratization have been fundamentally altered due to influences of globalization, computer-mediated communication and changing nature of politics. Therefore, people, namely voters in liberal democracy, tend to participate in politics more directly without having almost any need for a representative in the formal political sphere. Moreover, in line with the rise of life politics and identity politics, today we experience politicization of everyday life. Therefore, this new political and social atmosphere requires a new conception of democracy, namely dialogic democracy completely different from its preceeding forms.
In the words of Giddens (1994:112), “dialogic democratization is not an extension of liberal democracy or even a complement to it; in so far as it proceeds, however, it creates forms of social interchange which can contribute substantially, perhaps even decisively, to the reconstructing of social solidarity. Dialogic democracy is not primarily about either the proliferation of rights or the representation of interests.
Rather it concerns the furthering of cultural cosmopolitanism and is a prime building of that connection of autonomy and solidarity”. Dialogic democracy favours the autonomy of communication in the form of a dialogue. However, such a process of communication does not resemble the ideal speech situation supported by Habermas.
Dialogic democracy regards social reflexivity as a condition of day-to-day activities and formation of collective organization. Further, dialogic democracy does not aim at reaching consensus between conflicting ideas and interests. Giddens (1994: 115)
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indicates “dialogic democracy presumes only that dialogue in a public space provides a means of living along with the other in a relation of mutual tolerance – whether that ‘other’ be an individual or a global community of religious believers”.
Therefore, in such an understanding of democracy, there is no place for fundamentalisms in any kind.
Giddens underlines the fact that dialogic democracy has reflected mainly in four connected areas, namely personal life including marriage, sexuality, friendship, social movements such as feminist movement and ecological movement and self-help groups, organizational arena and finally global order. In these areas, the principles of mutual involvement, responsibility, mutual tolerance and active trust have played significant roles.
With all these features, according to Giddens, dialogic democracy paves the way for the project of democratizing of democracy within the framework of liberal democracy. For Giddens, in order to democratize democracy, a series of changes is regarded necessary. As Giddens (1999) states, this project necessitates the decentralization of state, greater transparency and openness of the public sphere, introduction of new forms of democracy other than voting process such as local direct democracy and electronic referenda, and renewal of civil society.