Minimally Deliberative Deliberative Systems? Problematisation and the Deliberative Democratic Effects of Poorly Deliberative Communication
| Published date | 01 February 2018 |
| Date | 01 February 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321717710567 |
| Author | Marcos Engelken-Jorge |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321717710567
Political Studies
2018, Vol. 66(1) 137 –153
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321717710567
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Minimally Deliberative
Deliberative Systems?
Problematisation and the
Deliberative Democratic
Effects of Poorly Deliberative
Communication
Marcos Engelken-Jorge
Abstract
This article deals with the role of public communication in democratic decision-making, with a
view to identifying communicative practices that can be expected to meet deliberative democratic
standards. On the basis of two case studies, a mechanism is reconstructed through which public
communication, although being poorly deliberative, can influence decision-making and achieve
some of deliberative democracy’s most fundamental goals, namely, to attain mutually justified
decisions, to secure the free and reasoned consent of citizens and to promote substantively
correct decisions. This mechanism consists in the recurrent problematisation of a situation and
the concomitant generation of political demands and proposals. This argument can at least be
formulated if one adopts an institutional system perspective coupled with a concept of mutual
justification understood along the lines of the ‘reasonable rejection test’.
Keywords
deliberative democracy, public communication, deliberative systems, discourse, problematisation
Accepted: 9 March 2017
Since Simone Chambers’ (2009) essay on ‘Rhetoric and the Public Sphere’ at the latest,
deliberative democratic theory has evinced a renewed interest in ‘systemic’ (Mansbridge
et al., 2012) or ‘macro’ (Lafont, 2015) approaches to deliberative democracy. In this arti-
cle, I seek to advance these perspectives by concentrating on one aspect of deliberative
systems; namely, the role of public communication in democratic decision-making. More
precisely, I examine two cases – the abolition of military service in Germany and in
Department of Politics, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Leioa - Bizkaia, Spain
Corresponding author:
Marcos Engelken-Jorge, Department of Politics, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU),
Leioa - Bizkaia 48940, Spain.
Email: marcos.engelken@ehu.eus
710567PSX0010.1177/0032321717710567Political StudiesEngelken-Jorge
research-article2017
Article
138 Political Studies 66(1)
Spain, reconstruct public communication’s role in the processes leading to these deci-
sions, and argue that these cases illustrate a mechanism through which public communi-
cation, although being poorly deliberative, manages to influence decision-making and
achieve some of deliberative democracy’s most fundamental goals – namely, to attain
mutually justified decisions, to secure the free, reasoned and informed consent of citizens,
and to promote substantively correct decisions. This mechanism consists in the recurrent
problematisation of a situation and the concomitant generation of variation (i.e. political
demands and proposals). As such, my argument addresses the question how public com-
munication can work in order to produce deliberative democratic outcomes, rather than
why or under what conditions.
The interest of this argument is that it contributes to the identification of the social
practices that can realise the ideal of deliberative democracy, which, among other things,
has the potential to advance the empirical agenda of systemic perspectives. To be sure, my
argument is not that the respectful give and take of reasons, which many deliberative
democrats advocate, should not represent an ideal of public communication. Rather, what
I argue is that other mechanisms apart from rational persuasion – mechanisms that are
possibly more realistic – can also have deliberative democratic effects. The policy pro-
cess, as described by the multiple streams approach (MSA) and illustrated by the two
cases analysed, markedly differs from the idea of decision-making as driven by rational
deliberation. Under these non-ideal conditions, the mechanism of problematisation
proved to be able to promote deliberative democratic goals.
However, this argument should be qualified. Systemic perspectives have not come
without controversy (e.g. Owen and Smith, 2015), which are partly due to different inter-
pretations of the normative principles of deliberative democracy. In this article, I take a
modest approach vis-à-vis these controversies. Instead of addressing the overall cogency
of competing models of deliberative democracy, I simply spell out the theoretical param-
eters within which the mechanism of problematisation can be regarded as promoting delib-
erative democratic standards, while leaving open the question whether these parameters
are preferable to those underlying other approaches. My argument about the deliberative
democratic effects of problematisation holds within a view of deliberative democracy that
concentrates on the functioning of the political system as a whole and the political deci-
sions it takes, rather than on isolated speech acts (Dryzek, 2010; Habermas, [1992] 1996).
This view, furthermore, should be coupled with an understanding of the ideal of mutual
justification understood along the lines of the ‘reasonable rejection test’ (Forst, 2014: 39),
according to which norms and decisions are mutually justified if they are non-rejectable
with generally and reciprocally valid reasons (Forst, [2007] 2012). This contrasts with
another common understanding of mutual justification as a form of ‘we’-thinking.
The argument unfolds in six sections: In the first, I explain how I approach empirically
public communication in the political system. In the next two sections, the case studies
are introduced, in order subsequently to be able to reconstruct the mechanism of prob-
lematisation. This mechanism is discussed from a normative perspective in the penulti-
mate section. Finally, the concluding section summarises the argument.
An Empirical Approach to Public Communication in the
Political System
In exploring perspectives such as the macro or systemic ones, one can operate at vari-
ous levels. First, the question how to justify and elaborate the general normative
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