Deliberative democracy

Hi. I’m Geoff Pynn, and I teach philosophy at Elgin Community College. In this video, I’m going to talk about the idea of deliberative democracy. The word “democracy” can mean a lot of different things. We all know that it means something like “rule by the people”. But that’s pretty abstract. To get more concrete, think of some of the symbols of democracy. One symbol is the ballot box. Think of images you’ve seen of the citizens of a new democracy proudly emerging from the voting booth having cast a ballot in a free election for the first time in their life. This symbol captures how democratic decisions are finalized. Once the votes have been cast, the issue is settled, and everyone hopefully returns home in peace. In a democracy, at the end of the day, it’s the people who have the final say over big political decisions, and they do it by casting their votes. Another symbol is the town hall. Imagine a contentious meeting inside your local municipal building concerning your town’s growing problem with homelessness. One person gets up to share their experience, another gives their opinion on what should be done, a third brings a different perspective, a fourth shares that she is homeless and explains why the second’s proposal won’t work, and so on. This symbol captures the part of a democratic decision that happens before any votes are cast. This process is called deliberation. It seems clear that you need both the town hall and the ballot box to have a functioning democracy. Elections where people cast their ballots for a pre-selected candidate they’ve been instructed to vote for aren’t really democratic. And if a vote takes place behind closed doors, secretly unaffected by the vigorous debate going on in public, well that’s not democratic either. Some theorists argue that the deliberative process is the true heart of democracy. Proponents of deliberative democracy hold that democracy’s real value lies here, rather than in the vote that, in effect, puts an end to deliberation. So what’s going on in that town hall meeting? What makes it so valuable? A wise government promotes society’s common good. But society comprises many different perspectives, needs, interests, and desires. How can we know what really is in society’s interest? And how can we know how to promote that? One answer is: take a vote! But this answer assumes that each of those casting their votes has a fully formed respectable opinion on the matter. Why think we learn anything about the common good from the votes of people who don’t really care, or haven’t really thought about it, or are being paid to vote in a certain way? Another answer is: have people talk about it with each other until they come up with some solutions. Here are some things that are likely to happen if you do that: People will come to a deeper understanding of the problems they face People will encounter reasonable perspectives on the problems other than their own People will arrive at proposals to address the problem that are supported by the majority These outcomes aren’t guaranteed ofcourse, but they’re certainly more likely to occur through deliberation than they are through checking off a box in a voting booth. And there is empirical evidence that deliberative democracy Produces better outcomes than simply taking a vote. Plus, in addition to helping solve the problem at hand, the practice of deliberation strengthens connections among citizens, enabling them to forge a sense of solidarity across their disagreements. Of course, deliberative democracy may seem pretty unrealistic in the modern world. There are over 300 million people in the US -- how is meaningful deliberation possible in a country so massive? But efforts have been made to implement deliberative democracy in some large scale contexts. For example, in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, which has a population of 1.4million, citizens meet in small deliberative groups to identify needs and set budget priorities. The city budget is then shaped in response to this deliberative process. It’s not hard to imagine how such a system might be implemented to shape the spending priorities and policy decisions of other large political bodies. But there’s no denying that it would look very different from the way decisions are currently made in the world’s largest so-called democracies. If meaningful deliberation is the true heart of democracy, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that most modern democracies are on life support. What do you think?