Against Political Compromise: Sustaining Democratic Debate by Alexander Ruser & Amanda Machin

Author:Alexander Ruser & Amanda Machin [Ruser, Alexander & Machin, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781351599870
Google: 2ggqDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 35584160
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-07-14T00:00:00+00:00

Deliberating compromise?

As we saw in the last chapter, compromises are seen as useful – even essential – for assuaging situations of intense social conflict. Jones and O’Flynn, for example, regard (principled) compromise as a stabilizing factor for international conflicts partly because it encourages parties ‘to look beyond their own concerns’ (2012a: 397) and facilitates their participation in a shared form of public reasoning. They describe and commend a virtuous circle: ‘a principled compromise promotes principled deliberation and that principled deliberation in turn reinforces the principled compromise’ (2012a: 411). The process of compromise, they suggest, nurtures a ‘common currency of political debate’ (2012a: 412). Many accounts of principled compromise go further, however, and suggest that compromise is of value not only because it encourages careful and respectful deliberation, but rather because it is based upon it. Indeed, it is often valued in as far as it involves the deliberative practices that are seen by many theorists as crucial for democracy.

Over the last twenty years, democratic theory has been dominated by the deliberative paradigm. Deliberation is the process that comes before and helps formulate a decision; it is ‘the process of the formation of the will, the particular moment that precedes choice’ (Manin 1987: 345). Advocates of deliberation demand that this formative process that is prior to any decision is crucial in rendering it democratic; they argue that political policies and institutions can only claim legitimacy when they are underpinned by, in the words of renowned deliberative theorist Seyla Benhabib, ‘processes of collective deliberation conducted rationally and fairly among free and equal individuals’ (1996: 69).

The political negotiations envisioned by deliberative democrats do not involve blinkered self-centred antagonists shouting over the top of those who disagree with them. Nor are they situations in which opponents with predefined and fixed interests bargain strategically. Rather, they are inclusive discussions in which participants have equal opportunity to speak and be heard with respect. These discussions involve the mutual exchange of reasons; reasons ‘that should be accepted by free and equal persons seeking fair terms of cooperation’ (Gutmann and Thompson 2004: 3). Citizen juries, citizen councils, town meetings and consensus conferences are all promoted as forums in which deliberation improves the quality of political participation (Bäckstrand et al. 2010). Deliberation is expected to educate citizens, nurture a sense of community and produce an optimal outcome (Miller 1992).

The initial focus of deliberative democracy was upon achieving consensus. Indeed, in the work of Jurgen Habermas, in which deliberative democratic theory can arguably find its first expression, the telos of reaching agreement was precisely what allowed the operation of ‘communicative rationality’ in discussions within the public sphere: ‘the practice of argumentation sets in motion a cooperative competition for the better argument, where the orientation to the goal of a communicatively reached agreement unites the participants from the outset’ (Habermas 1998: 44). The rationality of communication within the public sphere ensured that the discussion was inclusive, reasonable and cooperative and it was this that helped unite a plural society: ‘the democratic

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