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[2] The main thesis I want to defend, and it explains the title of my paper, is that the ideal of deliberative democracy requires a serious commitment, paradoxically, to greater depoliticisation in government. The claim is paradoxical because the usual assumption is that deliberative democrats are focussed on the need to raise the level of politics by having it become more deliberative, and at the same time to expand the domain of popular and political control – active, hands-on control by the people and their elected representatives. I do think that the ideal has to do with making public decision-making more deliberative, but I do not believe that it argues for expanding the domain of control that politics as such exercises.
[3] The paper is organised into three sections. In the first, I outline the idea of deliberative democracy, remedying an indeterminacy that figures in many presentations. In the second, I present what I see as the most persuasive case in its support – the ‘republican’ approach. And then in the third, I try to show some ways in which deliberative democracy, so characterised and justified, argues for greater depoliticisation.
[4] My interest in the argument does not just arise from the appeal of the
paradox. Discussion of the ideal leads to some important
lessons for the
organisation of the polity, and I look at those lessons with a particular focus
on democracy in Australia. The centenary
of Federation and of the Australian Constitution
provides an occasion for rethinking the nature of our democracy and, I hope,
an appropriate opportunity for putting forward this line.
I think that the
failure to appreciate the importance of depoliticisation represents a serious
threat to the quality of democratic
life. Let democracy be mistaken for
maximally politicised self-government, as it often is, and democracy is in
serious trouble.
[6] The ideal of deliberative democracy
imposes certain constraints on how the democratic process should work in any
such context.
Deliberative democrats differ on which forums should be
democratised in the deliberative way, but they agree that wherever the ideal
is
to be applied, then the following constraints should be satisfied:
[8] The judgmental constraint requires voters to deliberate about how they should vote, rather than vote in an unreflective, spontaneous or ‘reflex’ manner. More importantly, it requires voters to deliberate on the basis of what is best for the group as a whole – what is likely to advance those common interests that people would presumptively endorse, if only after some dialogue with others. What it counsels against is any pattern of voting in which each individual voter takes account only of what is good for his or her particular coterie, corner or circle. Thus, it rejects the idea that the best democratic arrangement would to design things so that assuming people vote in a self-seeking way, that will tend, as by an ‘invisible hand’, to work for aggregate overall benefit. The kind of voting recommended is sometimes described as judgment-voting rather than preference-voting.
[9] The dialogical constraint marks a further, important level of differentiation. It rules out the sort of plebiscitarian dispensation in which each participant privately forms his or her judgment about common, presumptively avowable interests and then votes on the basis of that judgment. The constraint requires open and unforced dialogue, whether it occur in a single assembly or in smaller groupings, even groups of two or three. The dialogue must be open in the sense that each can get a hearing and it must be unforced in the sense that no-one need fear to speak their mind; it must approximate the conditions for ideal speech that Jürgen Habermas is famous for emphasising.[1]
[10] These three constraints are concerned more with how people form their voting intentions than with how votes are put together to form a collective decision. They bear on the inputs we seek for democratic decision-making, not on the process of decision-making itself. There is an assumption in place that unanimity should not be required, on the ground that a requirement of unanimity would reduce any plausible body of people to stalemate on a variety of issues. However, nothing more is said on how votes should be put together; whether among the politicians in a party, the shareholders in a company, or the members of a public board.
[11] This silence turns out to be problematic. We are all aware of the possibility that a large-scale electorate is capable of giving majority support to inconsistent recommendations. Opinion polls regularly report, for example, that people want more government spending and lower taxes. That is one reason why it is not a good idea to have anything approaching rule by referendum: one reason why electoral democracy has to be a representative system under which personnel and not policies – not in most cases, at any rate – are selected. What is not a matter of common awareness, however, is that a group of people can give majority support to inconsistent recommendations even when they are each perfectly rational in their individual votes; even when they decide how to vote in a judgmental and dialogical way; and even when they are few in number.
[12] Suppose we have a group of three people, each voting
on three interconnected issues, and where the decision on each issue is
determined by majority vote. There can be majority support for each of an
inconsistent set of judgments, even though each of the
three voters is perfectly
consistent in his or her own views. Table 1 illustrates this. A majority in a
group of three people, A,
B and C, support ‘p’ (two Yes’s in
first column); a majority support ‘if p, then q’ (two Yes’s
in
second column); and yet a majority deny ‘q’ (two No’s in third
column).
TABLE 1: RATIONAL INDIVIDUAL VOTES LEADING TO INCONSISTENT OUTCOMES
>
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First issue: p?
|
Second issue: if p, then q?
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Third issue: q?
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Voter A
|
Yes
|
No
|
No
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Voter B
|
No
|
Yes
|
No
|
Voter C
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
TABLE 2: RATIONAL INDIVIDUAL VOTES LEADING TO INCONSISTENT VIEWS ON TAX AND EXPENDITURE
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Increase taxes?
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Increase defence spending?
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Increase other spending?
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Voter A
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No
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Yes
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No (reduce)
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Voter B
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No
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No (reduce)
|
Yes
|
Voter C
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
[16] There is, however, at least one style of argument that makes a powerful case for why group decisions should satisfy all four constraints and satisfy the full deliberatively democratic ideal. I think of this argument as republican in character. It fits into a way of thinking that goes back to defenders of the Roman republic; the renaissance republics of northern Italy; the English commonwealth or republic of the 17th century – and indeed the later republic that, in Montesquieu’s words, was concealed beneath the form of a monarchy; and the new American and French republics of the century following.
[17] Republican theory starts from the assumption that it is in the overall interest of each citizen to have a coercive, centralised government that pursues common avowable interests – the ‘common avowable good’ – and only such interests; it does not try to advance any sectional or factional preferences but deals equally with all. That assumption gives rise to a question that has been at the centre of republican thought for two thousand years. How can coercive, centralised government be stopped from representing an arbitrary power in the lives of citizens (ie, a coercive agency that has the capacity to abuse its power – even if it proves benevolent enough not to do so – by interfering with people in a manner that is not justified by the common avowable good)? How can the state be shackled so that we, its members, do not assume the status of debtors or slaves in relation to it, so that we do not live in its power or under its dominatio but rather have the standing of free men and women who do not have to act in fear of, or in deference to, anyone?
[18] In a sustained, centuries-long attempt to deal with this problem, the republican tradition generated a rich brew of ideas, many of which still rule in our political lives. The tradition argued for: introducing devices such as the rule of law, designed to ensure that state power cannot be used against an individual as such; the enactment of law by the vote of a public body or set of bodies, so that those who make the law are also subject to it; the dispersion of powers among such bodies and among other agencies of the state; limitation of tenure – and sometimes the rotation of tenure – in public, executive office; the provision of channels through which citizens can know of the decisions of the state and can effectively challenge them; and of course the popular election of various public officials, legislative and executive. These devices were all conceived as means for checking and balancing the coercive power of the state, allowing it to do its job but guarding against its becoming an arbitrary power; forcing it to be guided by the common avowable good, and only the common avowable good, in exercising any coercion over citizens.
[19] There is one other instrumentality that should be added to this list, and it went almost without saying among most republican thinkers. This is that in making its various decisions, the state – the state in its legislative, executive and indeed judicial aspects – should always be forced to give reasons for what it does, and in particular reasons that are meant to display its decisions as justified by the requirements of the common avowable good. The decisions may be justified in the manner of policy decisions that are said directly to further some common interest recognised in public discourse like the defence of the country or its economic prosperity. Alternatively, they may be justified in the manner of bureaucratic or judicial decisions that are derived from the terms of reference given to the official or department, or the court or commission involved – terms of reference that are themselves presumptively justified by requirements of the common avowable good.
[20] The idea, in a phrase, was that if a polity is to be one where the state is non-arbitrary – a servant of the people, rather than its master – then it has to be a republic of reasons. There has to be public discussion surrounding the selection of representatives by the populace and the determination of policies in the parliament, that helps to select, at whatever level of abstraction, the sorts of reasons that can be persuasively adduced as considerations of the common avowable good. The decisions that emanate from the various public bodies that operate in the name of the state, and with the coercive backing of the state, must be justifiable, directly or indirectly, in terms of those considerations. The decisions made must be susceptible to challenge by individual citizens or by groups of citizens. There should be channels through which those who would contest the decisions can argue that the reasons adduced are not considerations of the common avowable good, or do not provide support for the particular decisions. There should be a forum for these arguments – perhaps a court, a tribunal, a parliamentary committee, or just a public gathering – where governmental conduct can be fairly and effectively subjected to review.
[21] It is in this image of a republic of reasons – a republic where
the state, already checked by other measures, is forced
to relate to its
citizens as a co-reasoner – that the ideal of deliberative democracy is
most persuasively grounded. This is
why it has a natural appeal to the
imagination, and a compelling place in the currency of political appraisal.
This, ultimately,
is why it is an ideal. There is no hope of having a republic
of reasons unless deliberation regulates the way people debate and vote
and
unless the decisions made can be represented as rational positions.
[24] Popular control of policy, whether in a moderate or extreme variety, is very problematic from the point of view of the ideal of deliberative democracy. As demonstrated above, majority, issue-by-issue voting – even when the voting is judgmental and dialogical in character – can generate irrational collective positions. Let the people be as rational, informed and public-spirited as you like; it still remains that if they decide on policy issues as they come up over time – or even if they decide on a set of issues at the one time – there is every possibility that they will collectively support irrational policy-packages: packages that require policies as irrational as reducing taxes and increasing spending.
[25] If the decisions of government are irrational like this, then the group-rationality constraint of deliberative democracy is breached. Furthermore, it is unclear, under a regime of popular policy control, whether going back to the electorate with evidence of its collective irrationality would do any good. There is nothing that an electorate as a whole can do to discipline itself into making only collectively rational decisions. It lacks the organisation that such self-regulation would require. A political party, commercial organisation or professional grouping would be small enough and organised enough to reconsider and resolve such irrationality, but a populace is an unarticulated aggregate of individuals and it is hard to see how they could ever develop such a capacity. The people as a whole can represent the most arbitrary and dominating form of government.
[26] The obvious remedy for this is a regime of representative government, under which representatives have the autonomy required to take part in collective deliberations with other representatives, without always worrying about whether their judgments will be individually supported by their constituents. Representative government, in this sense, is the first requirement of deliberative democracy. It is also the first step along a path of depoliticisation.
[27] It is going to be important, of
course, for the people to be involved in government. This is an indispensable
check on representatives
and ensures that there will be the sort of popular
political discussion that helps select those considerations which ought to
influence
representatives. However, if the ideal of deliberative democracy is to
rule, then it is equally important that the role of the people
is restricted to
the choice of personnel, and only rarely runs to the determination of policy.
[29] This too is going to be problematic for the ideal of deliberative democracy, under two conditions: that the control involved means hands-on control, and that it extends to areas in which elected representatives have personal or party interests at stake. If interests of this kind are engaged in the policy-making decisions over which representatives have political control, they cannot be reliably expected to decide those issues in terms only of the common avowable good. The people over whom they rule cannot have any assurance in those matters that reasons dominate in the manner required for a deliberative democracy. Nemo judex in sua causa – no one to be judge in his or her own cause.
[30] One obvious area in which the principle applies is in determining electoral boundaries and the number of representatives for each area. Many countries, Australia included, have depoliticised this area. Electoral commissions may be subject to the ultimate control of parliament – parliament may have hands-off control, as it were – but they are designed precisely to meet the sort of problem we are dealing with. They take the decisions away from the direct influence of representatives and they are required to follow strict guidelines that have been accepted by those on all sides of politics. If the commissions fail to present a satisfactory justification for anything they do – to give democratically persuasive reasons for their decisions – then they will certainly face a public and political outcry.
[31] If Australia and some other countries have supported depoliticisation on this issue, thereby advancing the cause of a deliberative democracy, they have not done so on many others. Here I mention one example that is particularly striking, since it comes up day after day in national and state politics. The example is the way governments privilege, or at least are assumed to privilege, marginal seats in the exercise of various forms of discretion. If a government faces a decision that will benefit one constituency or another and it has a powerful party-related interest for favouring one of them, then there is little or no hope that it will be guided just by considerations of the common avowable good. Once again, the ideal of deliberative democracy will be compromised.
[32] The phenomenon I am discussing is pervasive, and is recognised without embarrassment. On 23 May 2001, The Canberra Times reported that the Liberal Chief Minister, Gary Humphries, thought that Canberra had done very well in the federal budget, considering that it had no marginal seats in the House of Representatives.[3] No one commented on the remark. This reveals the widespread assumption that those in government will feather their own party nest, presumably at some potential cost to the common avowable good, whenever the opportunity arises.
[33] Just as
electoral commissions depoliticise boundary decisions and allow them to be made
in a deliberatively democratic way, so
we might envisage the introduction of a
similar system that would guard against privileging marginal seats. The
commission would
operate at arm’s length from parliament and government
and might be required to review and approve any proposed government
expenditures
– at least expenditures above a certain amount – that benefit
constituencies that are marginal in a stipulated
degree. This is not the place
to formulate exactly how such a commission might be constituted, but anyone who
takes the ideal of
deliberative democracy seriously must have an interest in
investigating the feasibility of such a depoliticising institution.
[36] No matter how well the criminal system is working in a polity, there will eventually be a case where a convicted offender sentenced to community service would not have committed a later crime had he or she actually been put in prison. If the subsequent crime is especially horrific, then the politician who makes a big noise about it can be sure of exciting public passion about the issue. Given that such noise sells newspapers and attracts television viewers, the politician can be sure of support from the media. We can easily see why such a politician or party, particularly one out of government, can derive substantial advantage from denouncing the existing pattern of sentencing. They can activate a politics of passion, presenting themselves as the only group really concerned about the crime in question. They can create what Montesquieu called a ‘tyranny of the avengers’,[4] using knee-jerk emotional politics that work systematically against the common avowable good.
[37] This phenomenon has marked politics all over the western world in the last decade or two. It resulted in a bidding war in New South Wales (‘NSW’) elections, as parties vied with one another to appear tougher on crime. Without any discernible benefit in actual levels of crime, NSW is now reported to be imprisoning offenders at twice the rate of Victoria.[5] This is a vivid and melancholy illustration of how popular-political control – the sort of control that involves an interaction between people and politicians – can undermine deliberative democracy.
[38] How might this sort of
affront to deliberative democracy be rectified? The only hope I see is in a form
of depoliticisation,
whereby parliament would appoint a commission
representative of expert and popular opinion. This commission could establish
sentencing
guidelines, monitor any changes made in existing practice and judge
on those changes by the aggregate benefits and costs to the community.
Parliament might well retain ultimate control over such a commission, but
putting its control at arm’s length would better
serve deliberative
democracy than the current procedure.
[40] As in the first example, it is easy to see how a politician or party might find political advantage in denouncing the government for allowing prostitution to continue in the society. The individual or party might easily appeal to perfectly reasonable ideals, challenging people to say whether or not they countenance prostitution and gaining support from the large majority who do not. They can expect to activate a politics of moralism, in which the options are presented in a false, dichotomous light: denounce prostitution or embrace it. In this light, there is no attention given to the possibility of denouncing prostitution at a moral level, while recognising that it is impossible to stamp it out by legal and political means and that it is better to have a legalised, regulated system. A politician who makes this sort of issue a central electoral question will attract many voters.
[41] In the previous example, politicians might have hoped to attract voters to their side by focussing on a couple of horrific abuses, relying on vivid examples to arouse people’s passions and to move them more than any number of aggregate statistics. In this example, they can hope to attract voters to their side by invoking widely held and quite intelligible morals. When people are asked to vote on the legalisation of something like prostitution, they are not individually asked to decide whether there should be a regulated or a prohibitionist system. They are asked to give their opinion on the issue at stake, which sounds like a request for their moral judgment. As they respond in this way to prostitution, so in general we may expect them to respond to all of those questions in public life where personal, moral ideals are intimately engaged. The best current example arises with respect to ‘softer’ addictive drugs. Those politicians who take the high moral ground on that issue can do so in the assurance that it is good politics – good politics but not necessarily good government.
[42] As
in cases that ignite people’s passions, there is good reason to consider
the formation of a depoliticised forum, at
arm’s length from parliament,
which can offer guidelines on the legalisation of activities that conflict with
popular morals.
This body could represent different sectors of popular opinion
and professional expertise and would be able to take a long-term view
of the
costs and benefits of different approaches. While subject to the ultimate
control of parliament, its distance would surely
give a boost to the rule of
deliberative democracy in public life.
[44] This problem might also be solved by
depoliticisation. There is a proposal currently in circulation, which has now
been trialled
in a number of countries, including Australia, that attempts such
a solution. James Fishkin, of the University of Texas, introduced
the idea,
which he describes as a deliberative opinion
poll.[6] It involves taking
a random, statistical sample of the population – perhaps a group of about
three hundred – and bringing
them together for a period of discussion and
information-gathering before polling their opinions. Such a deliberative opinion
poll
would surely serve deliberative democracy well in many areas mentioned in
this third category, for it would give those in government
an excellent sense of
the balance of informed opinion in the society. It would enable political debate
to operate at a significant
remove from the intensity of lobby politics.
[46] We have seen in the last section that if the ideal of deliberative democracy is understood and justified in this way, then it makes demands that will strike many as paradoxical. It argues for increasing the depoliticisation of government that is exemplified in Australia by the role given to professional commissions in determining electoral boundaries. I looked at ways in which popular control, political control and popular-political control need to be restricted, and measures of depoliticisation introduced, if deliberative democracy is to thrive. The lesson is that democracy is too important to be left to the politicians, or even to the people voting in referendums.
[47] Democracy requires modes of
popular and political control, of course, but it also requires a regime under
which people and politicians
are willing and able to trust in various
depoliticised bodies to make decisions on certain matters of common interest.
Democracy
needs to be deliberative in character and there is no hope of its
achieving that character unless decision-making is routinely subject
to
depoliticised checks and controls. The democratic society which leaves the
exercise of power to popular majorities and political
elites may easily become
the worst of despotisms.
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