Rethinking Democratic Procedures: Democracy and Deliberative Experiences in Turkey's LA21 Process
| Date | 01 December 2004 |
| Published date | 01 December 2004 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2004.00505.x |
| Author | Ülkü Doğanay |
| Subject Matter | Original Article |
Rethinking Democratic Procedures:
Democracy and Deliberative
Experiences in Turkey’s LA21 Process
Ülkü Do anay
Ankara University, Turkey
This paper attempts to describe the conditions necessary for the furthering of democracy in Turkey
by focusing on a certain conception of democratic legitimacy that goes beyond formal arrange-
ments. It argues that the effective participation of citizens in democratic procedures is necessary
for the consolidation of democracy in public life. To defend this argument, the theoretical back-
ground developed in deliberative models of democracy is followed. The quality of ‘talk’, as a con-
stitutive feature of democracy, is explored by following the critical perspectives in deliberative
theory that focus on the discursive mechanisms of exclusion and on power relations intrinsic to
deliberative procedures. For this purpose, the deliberative processes in a series of ‘working group
meetings’, carried out as a part of the Local Agenda 21 project, are analysed. The democratic capac-
ity of deliberative experiences and public dialogue is analysed by examining the inclusion/exclu-
sion of opposing ideas, different identities and discourse styles during these working groups
meetings.
In this paper, I aim to describe the conditions necessary for the furthering of democ-
racy in Turkey by focusing on a certain conception of democratic legitimacy that
goes beyond formal arrangements. At stake is the argument that the effective par-
ticipation of citizens in democratic procedures is essential for the consolidation of
democracy in public life. By defending this argument, I will follow the theoretical
background developed by deliberative models of democracy.
The mainstream tendency in liberal democracy is to consider the contemporary
crisis of politics as a crisis of ‘ungovernability’. This tendency claims to evaluate
democracy at the levels of structural and formal arrangements. Although such a
view is essential when discussing institutional elements entailed for democratisa-
tion, it disregards the role of the citizen as a political actor. However, the last quarter
of the twentieth century has witnessed the consolidation of the idea of political
participation and the extension of areas of public life. Although the answers to the
question of ‘how to transcend the actual crisis of democracy’ vary according to the
place they attribute to citizens as political subjects, alternative models of democ-
racy share the assumption that effective democratic participation has to be realised
through a more comprehensive consideration of political activity. These alternative
models include deliberative theories that place deliberation as the normative basis
of democratic theory, conceptualising democracy as a process that includes politi-
cal dialogue. These models highlight the notions of civil society and the public
sphere as the basis of democratic participation. They also draw attention to the
quality of ‘talk’ as a constitutive feature of democracy. Following Habermas (1990,
g˘
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2004 VOL 52, 728–744
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DEMOCRACY AND DELIBERATIVE EXPERIENCES IN TURKEY 729
1996), they argue that existing democratic institutions should be transformed,
through communicative experiences, into a more participatory political practice.1
Nevertheless, problems include questions of realisability and the comprehensive-
ness of deliberative processes. Critiques, mostly issued by the advocates of
deliberative theories, are significant because they reveal the limitations and the
prerequisites for a comprehensive public experience. In addition to the contro-
versies about how the rational and impartial functioning of deliberation is to be
guaranteed (Hanson and Marcus, 1993, p. 4; Blaug, 1996, p. 56; Johnson, 1998,
p. 171), more substantial problems of ensuring political equality threaten the
potential of deliberative experiences to democratic legitimacy.2The question of
‘how to compensate the unequal capacity of those who wish to enter the forum’
is central to such a critique. This perspective is essentially concerned with the many
ways in which power relations distort deliberation. In this paper, I will mainly
follow this critical line in deliberative democracy, which focuses on the micro-
processes of public deliberations. In so doing, I will attempt to show the participa-
tive potential and democratic legitimacy of deliberative practices in Turkey. The
dominant understanding of democracy in Turkey reduces democratisation into
modifications on the constitutional structure, and thus disregards how the process
itself should function. I will argue that such an understanding sets the limitations
of the effective participation of citizens in public practices.
In the first section of the paper, I will briefly explore the premises of democratisa-
tion in Turkey and the relationship between the macro-level and micro-level
practices of democracy. The argument here follows theoretical debates on deliber-
ative democracy. My aim is to question the grounds of the understanding of democ-
racy that underlies democratic practices in Turkey. In the second section, I will
examine the democratic capacity of public deliberations by focusing on delibera-
tive experiences at the local level. My concern here is to specify exactly what sort
of understanding of democracy underlies the processes of the participation of citi-
zens in public dialogue. The argument is heavily based on my observations of the
deliberative process in ‘working group meetings’, which were carried out as a part
of the Local Agenda 21 (LA21) project. The purpose of LA21, which was devel-
oped under the auspices of the United Nations Development Program, is to have
local authorities foster a participatory, multi-sectored process to strengthen local
‘governance’ all over the world by ensuring that civil society participates in
decision-making (IULA-EMME, 2002). Among the twenty-three partners of LA21
in Turkey, the working group meetings in Antalya – a middle-sized Mediterranean
city that is also one of the leading tourism centres – were chosen as examples, since
they gained recognition for ‘best practice in LA21 experiences’ from the UN.
My study of LA21 working group meetings proceeded on four levels. In order to
gather some background information, I first worked through the documents con-
working groups. Secondly, I interviewed the city council general secretary in
Antalya, who was responsible for the democratic functioning of the process and
the coordination between the working groups. The third and fundamental level
was my own observations of six LA21 working group meetings. All meetings were
open to the public and held in November 2001. By confining my activity in the
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