Exercising Deliberative Agency in Deliberative Systems
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321717723514 |
| Author | Martin Ebeling,Fabio Wolkenstein |
| Published date | 01 August 2018 |
| Date | 01 August 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321717723514
Political Studies
2018, Vol. 66(3) 635 –650
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321717723514
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Exercising Deliberative Agency
in Deliberative Systems
Martin Ebeling and Fabio Wolkenstein
Abstract
At the heart of the ideal of deliberative democracy lies an emphasis on the political autonomy of
citizens participating in procedures of public justification aimed at the promotion of the common
good. The recent systemic turn in deliberative democracy has moved so far away from this ideal
that it relegates the deliberations of citizens to a secondary matter, legitimising forms of rule that
may even undermine the normative impulses central to the project of deliberative democracy. We
critically discuss this theoretical development and show how deliberative agency can effectively
be exercised in complex political systems. We argue, in particular, that political parties play a
central role in facilitating the exercise of deliberative agency, fostering deliberation among citizens
and linking their deliberations to decisions. Instead of giving up on the possibility that citizens
participate in procedures of public justification, deliberative democrats should look to parties’
unique ability to enable deliberation.
Keywords
deliberative systems, systemic turn, deliberative agency, political parties, participation
Accepted: 15 May 2017
The classic ideal of deliberative democracy is wedded to the idea of citizens participating
in procedures of public justification aimed at the promotion of the common good.
Deliberative democracy’s pioneers envisaged a society whose citizens share ‘a commit-
ment to coordinating their activities within institutions that make deliberation possible
and according to norms that they arrive at through their deliberation’ (Cohen, 1989: 21).
Cohen’s words encapsulate the distinctive conception of political autonomy deliberative
democrats endorse. At the heart of the classical ideal of deliberative democracy accord-
ingly lies the deliberative agency of citizens, or, to put it differently, a conception of citi-
zens as deliberative agents.
Centre for Advanced Studies Justitia Amplificata, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Corresponding author:
Fabio Wolkenstein, Centre for Advanced Studies Justitia Amplificata, Goethe University Frankfurt, 60629
Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Email: wolkenstein@em.uni-frankfurt.de
723514PSX0010.1177/0032321717723514Political StudiesEbeling and Wolkenstein
research-article2017
Article
636 Political Studies 66(3)
Political agents, we take it, are deliberative agents when they engage in public delib-
eration with the aim of influencing the exercise of political power in accordance with
their conception of the common good, which, in turn, is constitutive of their deliberative
agency. This definition differs from other ways of conceiving deliberative agency in the
relevant literature. Curato and Ong (2015: 581), for instance, define deliberative agents in
terms of an agent’s capabilities of articulating, defending and revising her views. Our
focus on political autonomy entails an emphasis on the exercise of deliberative agency
rather than the mere capability of doing so. Erman (2012) critiques the recent debate on
deliberative governance based on the related, yet more global, concept of democratic
agency. She argues that the norms of accountability, authorisation, deliberation and par-
ticipation jointly constitute democratic agency, an idea rooted in the democratic ideals of
political equality and political bindingness (Erman, 2012: 10). The notion of deliberative
agency is narrower in scope.
Given the manifold challenges to realising the ideal of deliberative democracy that arise
from the complexities of both contemporary political systems and the social world more
generally, the conception of political autonomy underpinning it can seem, and has seemed
to many observers, hopelessly utopian. Prominent theorists have therefore revised this
ideal several times (for an overview, see Mansbridge et al., 2010), which culminated in the
recent ‘systemic turn’ in deliberative democracy (Dryzek, 2012; Hendriks, 2016; Kuyper,
2015; Mansbridge et al., 2012; Owen and Smith, 2015). The systemic turn occurred after
a long period in which deliberative scholarship focused almost exclusively on designed
deliberative ‘mini-publics’ without paying sufficient attention to large-scale societal delib-
eration (Bohman, 1998; Goodin, 2008). It tries to think deliberative democracy big again
by applying the ideal of deliberative democracy to complex political systems.
Well-intentioned though the systemic approach to deliberative democracy is, it risks
losing sight of the important connection between deliberative agency and autonomy,
opening the door to a vision of deliberative democracy in which the deliberative engage-
ment of citizens is no longer a central concern (Owen and Smith, 2015). Reacting to this,
we aim to show how deliberative agency can make itself visible and felt in complex
political systems, rendering those systems genuinely ‘deliberative’ systems. While we
accept that contemporary democracies are a much less fertile ground for citizens’ exercise
of deliberative agency than early theorists of deliberative democracy believed, we argue
that there remains room for the exercise of deliberative agency and that the prima facie
attractive normative commitment to political autonomy is not completely unworldly.
Our suggestion is that the ideal of deliberative democracy needs to be refashioned with
other deliberative agents in mind than only individual citizens. We argue, in particular,
that political parties play a key role in facilitating the exercise of deliberative agency.
Drawing on the nascent political theory of parties and partisanship (Muirhead, 2006,
2014; Rosenblum, 2008; White and Ypi, 2010, 2011), as well as on empirical party schol-
arship, we show that parties can be unique enablers of citizen deliberation, both structur-
ing and facilitating citizens’ own deliberations and implicating citizens in meaningful and
consequential internal deliberations. In short, parties are indispensable if political power
is to be exercised in accordance with the ideal of deliberative agency.
The next section that follows sets out what deliberative agency is and why it is such a
vital component of the original ideal of deliberative democracy. The second section criti-
cally discusses different versions of the deliberative systems approach, highlighting their
most troublesome shortcomings. The third section details our own approach. In the final
section, we discuss possible objections to the argument advanced.
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