Finding common ground
| Author | Lochlan Morrissey,John Boswell |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1474885120969920 |
| Published date | 01 January 2023 |
| Date | 01 January 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article EJPT
Finding common ground
Lochlan Morrissey
Griffith University, Australia
John Boswell
University of Southampton, UK
Abstract
Deliberative democrats have abandoned the ideal of consensus in favour of a range of
different, more realistic alternatives. But these alternatives provide little anchorage to
guide or even evaluate deliberative practice – something acutely problematic given the
contemporary context of accelerating polarization in many advanced liberal democra-
cies. In this article, we turn to Stalnaker’s account of the ‘common ground’ – the shared
pool of information that is agreed upon by the parties to a discourse – to reassert a
distinct ideal standard for democratic deliberation which remains malleable enough to
apply across messy contexts of real-world political contestation and debate. Our
account offers an appropriate normative yardstick by which to assess deliberative
practices across different discursive contexts, as well as impetus for further experi-
mentation and innovation in efforts towards democratic renewal and reform.
Keywords
Common ground, consensus, deliberative democracy, philosophy of language, Stalnaker
Our contemporary democratic malaise is increasingly attributed to a loss of
‘common ground’ underlying political contestation and debate. Key democratic
institutions have been breached by powerful actors who pay no attention to estab-
lished norms of reciprocity, with elites incentivized to play to their base rather than
Corresponding author:
John Boswell, University of Southampton, Highfield Campus, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK.
Email: j.c.boswell@soton.ac.uk
European Journal of Political Theory
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885120969920
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2023, Vol. 22(1) 141–160
seek common ground with adversaries. The public sphere is fragmented and frac-
tured, with increasingly vitriolic echo chambers unable to underpin any common
ground in the form of shared understandings, knowledge or values. (Re-)finding
common ground, it seems, is the key to resurrecting and reforming a kinder, gen-
tler, more constructive form of democratic politics.
This apparently sudden and violent loss of ‘common ground’ in real-world
democratic practice represents a particularly cruel irony for proponents of a
more deliberative form of democratic politics. Not only does it provide ammuni-
tion for the growing realist critique which paints deliberative democracy as a ‘uto-
pian fantasy’ disconnected from actually existing democracy (see Achen and
Bartels, 2017), but it also echoes the departure from an equivalent form of
‘common ground’ in normative democratic theory – namely the abandonment of
consensus as the ideal goal of democratic deliberation.
At one level, of course, the abandonment of consensus is entirely consistent with
these real-world developments. It reflects a healthy scepticism that democratic
deliberation ‘in the real world’ can ever truly be oriented to consensus, amid the
strategic action and pervasive power dynamics that afflict and inflect actual delib-
erative practice (Mansbridge et al., 2010). In a context where politicians ‘play to
the base’ and online echo chambers continue to radicalize and proliferate, we can
recognize that the pursuit of consensus is not just futile – it may inadvertently
repress or reinforce the asymmetries and pathologies of real-world deliberative
practice. After all, asserting that an outcome reflects acceptance of the forceless
force of the better argument risks disguising the intensely political dynamics which
shape the perceived legitimacy of different perspectives. In other words, we have
long known that we probably will not attain consensus, but we now realize that it
may be better not to even try. The realist critics of deliberative democracy – if they
were listening – would no doubt be impressed.
But at another level the abandonment of consensus as an ideal presents an
under-appreciated problem for democratic deliberation, particularly for the
hopes of making it better in practice. The pursuit of consensus at least provided
an orienting standard by which to understand and measure different deliberative
and democratic practices, and to develop innovative interventions designed to
improve those practices. But the abandonment of consensus has led to nothing
nearly as stable or clear as an orienting standard in its place. In a particularly
influential account, for example, Mansbridge et al. (2010) point to a range of at
least four suitable outcomes from deliberation, to be applied differentially depend-
ing on the subtleties of context. Lack of specificity about the appropriate ends of
deliberation, in this sense, is emblematic of a growing concern about the lack
of specificity in the greatly adapted model of deliberative democracy. In trying
to be all things to all people, to adapt and absorb all manner of different modes of
communication and participation, the distinctive value of deliberative democracy
as a set of normative ideals and empirical standards risks ebbing away. As Bob
Goodin (2018) puts it succinctly: ‘If deliberation is everything, maybe it is nothing’.
Certainly, the shape-shifting standards of the adapted deliberative model would
142 European Journal of Political Theory 22(1)
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