Animal rights and the deliberative turn in democratic theory
| Author | Robert Garner |
| Published date | 01 July 2019 |
| Date | 01 July 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1474885116630937 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
2019, Vol. 18(3) 309–329
!The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885116630937
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Article
Animal rights and the
deliberative turn in
democratic theory
Robert Garner
University of Leicester, UK
Abstract
Deliberative democracy has been castigated by those who regard it as exclusive and
elitist because of its failure to take into account a range of structural inequalities existing
within contemporary liberal democracies. As a result, it is suggested, deliberative arenas
will merely reproduce these inequalities, advantaging the already powerful extolling
mainstream worldviews excluding the interests of the less powerful and those expound-
ing alternative worldviews. Moreover, the tactics employed by those excluded social
movements seeking to right an injustice are typically those – involving various forms of
protest and direct action – which are incompatible with the key characteristics of
deliberatively democracy. This paper seeks to examine the case against deliberative
democracy through the prism of animal rights. It will be argued that the critique of
deliberative democracy, at least in the case of animal rights, is largely misplaced because
it underestimates the rationalistic basis of animal rights philosophy, misunderstands the
aspirational character of deliberative theory and mistakenly attributes problems that are
not restricted to deliberation but result from interest group politics in general. It is
further argued that this debate about the apparent incompatibility between the ideals
of deliberative democracy and non-deliberative activism disguises the potential that
deliberative democracy has for advocates of animal rights and, by extension, other
social movements too.
Keywords
Deliberative democracy, animal rights, democratic theory
Deliberative democracy began life as a radical critique of the conventional, aggre-
gative-based, theory and practice of democracy, which, it is argued, is too open to
abuse by those elites with money and the capacity to manipulate public opinion.
Corresponding author:
Robert Garner, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1
7RH, UK.
Email: rwg2@le.ac.uk
However, deliberative democracy has, in turn, been castigated by those who regard
it as exclusive and elitist because of its failure to take into account a range of
structural inequalities existing within contemporary liberal democracies. As a
result, it is suggested, deliberative arenas will merely reproduce these inequalities,
advantaging the already powerful extolling mainstream worldviews excluding the
interests of the less powerful and those expounding alternative worldviews.
Moreover, the tactics employed by those excluded social movements seeking to
right an injustice are typically those – involving various forms of protest and direct
action – which are incompatible with the key characteristics of deliberatively dem-
ocracy and are therefore deemed to be illegitimate by deliberative theorists.
One social movement to which this critique of deliberative democracy has been
applied is that concerned with advocating animal rights. This article seeks to evalu-
ate the case against deliberative democracy through the prism of this one social
movement and one issue. It will seek to defend deliberative democracy against
the charge that it is incompatible with animal rights activism, and by so
doing seeks to defend deliberative democracy more broadly. It will be argued
that the critique of deliberative democracy, at least in the case of animal rights,
is largely misplaced because it underestimates the rationalistic basis of animal
rights activism and philosophy, misunderstands the aspirational character of
deliberative theory and mistakenly attributes problems that are not restricted to
deliberation but result from interest group politics in general. It is further argued
that this debate about the apparent incompatibility between the ideals of delib-
erative democracy and non-deliberative activism disguises the potential that delib-
erative democracy has for advocates of animal protection and, by extension, other
social movements too.
Deliberative democracy: From saviour to pariah
The idea of deliberation has a long history in political thought (Gutmann and
Thompson, 2004: 8–9) but, since the 1980s – led by the seminal work of
Habermas (1990, 1996) in particular – democratic theory has taken a ‘deliberative
turn’ (Bohman, 1998; Dryzek, 2000: 1). Indeed, it is little exaggeration to claim
that, since then, deliberative democracy has played a leading role in political theory
itself. Its purchase has been the offering of a remedy, or at least a partial one, to the
perceived weaknesses of traditional democracies – characterised by sound bite pol-
itics, the dominance of money, poor decision-making, declining participation,
increasing moral and political divisions, and so forth. The academic scholarship
on deliberative democracy is extensive and varied
1
with differences over such key
issues as the types of communication to be permitted in deliberative forums and the
goal and purpose of deliberation. Even the site of deliberation is contested, with
some deliberative theorists focusing on the benefits of small-scale so-called mini-
publics, such as citizen juries (Elstub, 2014; Fung, 2007), whereas others talk in
terms of deliberative political institutions such as legislatures (Steiner et al., 2004;
Uhr, 1998) or in terms of a ‘deliberative system’ within civil society (Benhabib,
1996; Dryzek, 2010; Elstub, 2008). Deliberative participants, too, can be
310 European Journal of Political Theory 18(3)
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