Pragmatism and Democracy: In Search of Deliberative Publics

Author(s): JOHN S. DRYZEK

Source: The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, New Series, Vol. 18, No. 1, Pragmatism and
Deliberative Politics (2004), pp. 72-79
Published by: Penn State University Press
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mm?

Pragmatism and Democracy:

InSearch of Deliberative Publics
JOHN S. DRYZEK

Australian National University

Pragmatism sees continuity between theproblem-solving effortsof experts and

lay citizens. All problem-solving is experimental inquiry under conditions of
uncertainty, and involves a number of inquirers rather than the solitary thinker.
Social problem-solving inparticular features an ever-changing agenda towhich
particular sorts of expertise may be relevant, but forwhich any single sort of
expertise is rarely conclusive. In this context, the decisive test of any argument
or claim is to be found in its application in political problem-solving practice.
Publics can thenbe constituted around particular problem-solving efforts (though
Dewey also spoke of the public).
On the face of it,pragmatism provides a congenial philosophical basis
fordeliberative democracy, whose essence is the idea that the legitimacy of any
collective decision should be sought in reflective acceptance on thepart of those
subject to the decision. The best way to ensure such acceptance is to define the
relevant public as those affected, and to allow these individuals access (directly
or indirectly) to consequential deliberation about the content of the decision at
hand. Thus it is no surprise to find thatpragmatism is recognized by some con
temporary deliberative democrats (notably Habermas) as part of their intellec
tual ancestry.

Truth,Opinion, and Pluralism

On one interpretationof pragmatism, which can appeal toDewey as well as to

Peirce, the idea would be tomake the public as it confronts social problems
much more like a scientific community in terms of its commitment to the pur
suit of truth.The real world of politics does of course feature plenty in theway
of partisanship, inequality, self-interest, ideology, strategizing, deceit, and the

Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 18,No. 1, 2004.

Copyright ? 2004 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

72

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 PRAGMATISM AND DEMOCRACY 73

raw exercise of power. So would a pragmatist program for public deliberation

have to involve an attack on these pervasive yet deeply problematic aspects of
politics? Any attempt to eliminate them altogether would be trulyheroic, in
volving massive efforts in citizen education as well as institutional redesign. A
more modest approach might begin by seeking to establish islands of delibera
tive practice in the ocean of partisan politics, in the hope that theymight with
time expand their territoryas theyprove theireffectiveness. Such is perhaps one
rationale for themicrolevel experiments in deliberative democracy that have
proliferated in recent years, including citizens' juries in theUnited States and
(especially) theUnited Kingdom, planning cells (inGermany), consensus con
ferences (beginning inDenmark), deliberative opinion polls, mediation of policy
disputes, policy dialogues, and regulatory negotiation. Reform could also be
directed at the operating rules of putatively deliberative components of domi
nant institutions, such as parliaments (Uhr 1998) and courts. Exactly where "the
public" is to be found in all these experiments and reforms is by no means self
evident, especially in the context of a representative democracy that asks of
citizens no more than an occasional vote.

Before starting to think about the content and purpose of any such re
forms, a prior question arises. Is the truth-seekingaspiration on which theycould
be based really appropriatewhen itcomes topolitical decision-making? As Cheryl
Misak points out in her contribution to this special issue, truthinpolitical judg
ment cannot refer to correspondence to some mind-independent world. Yet, fol
lowing Peirce, she still believes that truthin the sense of indefeasible collective
judgments is a proper aspiration in politics, such that there are right answers if
only we deliberate long enough and well enough about a particular problem.
But why exactly should pursuit of truth in any sense be the ideal for po
litical deliberation?especially in light of the fact thatdeliberative democracy
arrives mainly as an account of legitimacy? For Misak, "a legitimate procedure
must be answerable to reasons," and so must the content of decisions. Yet it
matters enormously whether or not these reasons have to be accepted in their
content and their priority uniformly by all actors. To argue for a belief is, for
Misak, to be prepared to give up the belief if one hears conclusive arguments
against it.
However praiseworthy such an ideal might be in, say, a scientific com
munity, there are two reasons why it is deeply problematic when it comes to
politics. The first is that ifone is seen to give up a belief, "face" and credibility
may be lost. This is why when it comes to deliberation across partisan lines,
people are rarely observed to admit to changing theirminds within the context
of any given forum. Even if they really do change theirminds, it ismuch easier
to admit it in some subsequent forum with different participants (see Mackie
2002). Institutional design might solve this problem, if itcan find opportunities
to revisit an issue, and possibly to reframe it.

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 74 JOHNS. DRYZEK

A second problem cuts deeper. Without the preparedness to give up a

belief in the face of decisive counterarguments, Misak says we will get "the
degradation of belief tomere opinion." But in politics, opinion is not mere.
What we mean by "public opinion" can be more or less distorted,more or less
defensible. But do we really want to convert "public opinion" into "public be
lief? The problem is that under any realistic time constraints, opinion cannot
be eliminated. But even without such constraints, therewould, as Hannah Arendt
(1958) has argued, be something very peculiar about a politics that sought to
exchange opinion for truth.Implicit in a situationwhere moral truthis sought is
an incipient danger of the eventual silencing of the differing opinions that are
the very grist of politics, especially if,asMisak puts it,"disagreement implies a
mistake on somebody's part." A pragmatic defense against silencing here would
be thatall individuals should accept that they are as likely to be in error as their
opponent in an argument. But opinions are not like truthclaims in science, and
here the pragmatist's view of continuity between science and democratic poli
tics starts to look suspect. Opinions differ in large part because experiences and
thus identities differ, and experiences may never be fully accessible to those
who have not shared them. Such a view can find support inRorty's pluralistic
interpretationof pragmatism, which highlights linguistically-constituted vari
ety.Asking an identity to be provisional and capable of being discarded if an
argument is lost means the identity is not a core part of being?it is not an
identity at all.
InMisak's pragmatism and Habermas's deliberative democracy the regu
lative ideal is consensus on matters normative and empirical, and consensus is
indeed a kind of gold standard of legitimacy for collective decisions. But in a
world of irreducible plurality of experience?the kind of world we live in?
consensus may only be achievable at the expense of erasing particular kinds of
voices. Even seemingly neutral rules of dialogue may in practice discriminate
against those less able to communicate in terms ofmaking arguments (Young
1996). As anyone who has observed political deliberation among ordinary people
will attest, deliberation inpractice is oftenmore about telling stories than it is
about making arguments.

FromWhat's True toWhat Works?And itsCritique

not
Skepticism about the idea that inquiry in politics ought to seek truthdoes
mean giving up on the search for agreement in deliberative While
settings. I do
not have the space to develop the possibilities therein, they include:

A metaconsensus that can be epistemic (on the range of credible beliefs),

or preference
normative (concerning recognition of different points of view),

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 PRAGMATISM AND DEMOCRACY 75

based (concerning the dimension along which preferences are to be ordered)

(Dryzek andNiemeyer 2003).

Incompletely theorized agreements, to which individuals subscribe for dif
ferent reasons (Sunstein 1995; cf.Maclntyre 1984). To distinguish from a mere
modus vivendi (in Rawls's terms), it is crucial that individuals recognize and

accept the reasons of others (Dryzek 1990, 16-17).

These possibilities are consistent with pragmatism's practical problem

solving aspect, and supportNoelle McAfee's "quasi-Deweyian," "integrative"
model of deliberative democracy, which seeks "what works" rather than "what's
true." Such a model is less concerned with precise procedural specifications of
the sort thatHabermas and Rawls might desire in the search for consensus on
norms, and more concerned with how tomove forward on pressing but contro
versial social issues. McAfee's model ismore grounded in the practice of en
deavors such as theNational Issues Forum than in any political theory. Such
exercises do not seek consensus, but ratherways forward that respect the vari
ety of conflicting beliefs and positions towhich participants (reflectively) cling.
However, there is a danger here in sacrificing theory for practice too readily.
The National Issues Forum and its ilk proceed within the context of an existing
framework of political institutions,cultural norms, and political-economic struc
ture.All are taken for granted as fixed and given. Yet all are massive sources of
constraint upon thepossibilities for authentic problem-oriented deliberation, let
alone deliberation thatmight actually make a difference to the content of public
policy. Deliberative democrats should not sacrifice the need for critique on the
altar of a practical, problem-solving orientation. And effective critique can ben
efit from a of theoretical distance?for of the sort Habermas's
degree example,
critical theory of society once provided, before he defected to liberalism in the
1990s.
This continuing need for critique highlights a key challenge for contem
porary attempts to furtherdeliberative democracy. In a political world subject to
all kinds of constraints on authentic dialogue, exactly how and where might
more deliberative publics be constituted? In canvassing alternative microlevel
designs, McAfee provides one kind of answer, and good reasons for preferring
one kind of design (the "integrative" model) over another (the deliberative poll).
As I have already pointed out, there aremany more micromodels now in opera
tion inmany countries. Those that recruit ordinary citizens (deliberative polls,
citizens' juries, planning cells, consensus conferences, theNational Issues Fo
rums) as opposed to partisans actually construct a public from the ground up
frompeople who, prior to deliberation, had no particular agenda on the issue in
question. Partisans, notably interestgroups, may well resent such construction
of a public that excludes them from deliberation (confining them to roles such
as presentations to the deliberators). Indeed, there are cases of interestgroups
trying to sabotage such microexercises for fear of what theymay produce

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 76 JOHNS. DRYZEK

(Hendriks 2002), and ridiculing their findings if they find them uncongenial to
their interests.This fear is justified: in theUnited Kingdom, citizens'juries and
panels have often been sponsored by government precisely to circumvent the
"usual suspects" in public consultation (Parkinson 2003). There is a thicket to
be negotiated in designing a consequential deliberative system under such cir
cumstances. Authentic deliberation may indeed be found more readily among
lay recruits than among interest-groupadvocates. Making thatdeliberation con
sequential when it comes to public policy decisions is enormously difficult.A
few cases do exist where it is possible to trace influence upon public policy, but
such influence is contingent on the configuration of partisan politics surround
ing an issue. Microexercises in deliberation such as theNational Issues Forum
are worth pursuing, but they could only ever constitute part of the puzzle.

Publics and Movements

Where else, then,might we seek deliberative publics? JudithGreen finds the

answer in one set of actors thatdesigners of lay-citizenmicrodesigns consciously
exclude: social movements. Green sees participatory democracy in action in
their internalworkings. Now, a great deal might be written about democracy
and social movements, but the connection is never a one. Some move
simple
ments may proceed on participatory lines. However, movement activists are
generally more concerned with the achievement of substantive goals, forwhich
internal democracy is irrelevant.Movements thatbegin with participatory ide
als often find theycannot sustain them.And ifwith time amovement's concerns
become accepted as legitimate by the state, then the consequence is internal
hierarchy and bureaucratization within themovement?if only to be able to
deal with a hierarchical and bureaucratic state (Dryzek et al. 2003, 81-102).
From the point of view of the deliberative democratization of collective deci
sion, social movements are furtherproblematic because (by definition) theydo
not produce binding collective decisions for the polity?at least if the polity is
defined by the state.
Yet deliberative democrats should not dismiss social movements as a "dead
dog." Sometimes?rarely?they can constitute relatively self-contained pub
lics, inwhich members can lead theirpolitical lives.At an extreme,movements
can constitute a "parallel polity" of the sort thatSolidarity constructed inPoland
in the 1980s. Paradoxically, such a polity can only be constructed in the pres
ence of an unresponsive and exclusive (but not excessively repressive) state.
Most of the time in liberal democracies, themost that can be expected from
movements is in terms of theircontribution to discourse in the public sphere at
a critical distance frompublic authority.But justwhat movements can or should
do in these terms is not a question amenable to theoretical specification. In

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 PRAGMATISM AND DEMOCRACY 77

stead, it is a matter for comparative historical inquiry that looks into particular
configurations ofmovement interests, the structuresof states and other institu
tions as they either exclude or integratemovements, and the system of priorities
thatdrives states and so helps determine their ability to either accommodate or
resistmovements (for a study of environmentalism in these terms, see Dryzek et
al. 2003).
The very term"movement" may actually be a hindrance in thinkingabout
the contributions of such political formations to democracy and democratiza
tion, because ithas the connotation of unified pursuit of a single idea towhich
Rorty (1998) objects. But this objection may apply to nineteenth-century social
movements very easily, to the "new social movements" of the 1970s and 1980s
less easily, to contemporary "movements" hardly at all. Thinking in termsof the
"public sphere" rather than "movements" is todaymore true to the plurality that
one findswith these social formations (Torgerson 1999). Consider, for example,
the environmental justice "movement" thathas flourished in theUnited States
in the last two decades. This movement has never had any central organization,
but instead evolved as networks in bottom-up fashion from a series of local
actions. People got involved due to theirnegative personal experiences of health
and environmental damage, not because of ideology, still less because of a com
mitment to participatory democracy. But together they constructed a public that
featured engagement across deep plurality, as activists from different ethnic
groups and social backgrounds took on interlinked threatsand common enemies
(Schlosberg 1999). Together they negotiated the verymeaning of environmen
tal justice, and eventually made itpart of thepublic policy agenda. This particu
larpublic exemplifies thekind of pluralism thatpragmatists such as Rorty ought
to value. But itwas much more than just a series of campaigns; it thoroughly
changed the terms of discourse on environmental issues.

Publics: Local, National, Global

Though the state looms large as both a location for public action and a targetfor
social movements and public spheres, itno longer has any exclusive claim to set
the terms for the definition of publics. Dewey in The Public and itsProblems
saw any particular public in terms of all those affected by some collective ac
tion.This definition also meshes with the idea of legitimacy in deliberative de
mocracy: it is in the eyes of those affected, who ought to have a chance to
participate indeliberation about the outcome. The sum of those affectedmay or
may not coincide with any particular political unit, such as a state.
Today's globalizing world at first sight looks decidedly problematic in
these terms. The decisions of theUnited States government acting as global
hegemon in economic and security affairs are enormously important for the rest

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 78 JOHNS. DRYZEK

of theworld. But those who are not U.S. citizens have little or no formal influ
ence on these decisions. Obviously they cannot vote inU.S. elections.
However, closer examination reveals thatpublics are constituting them
selves in the international system, quite self-consciously building a global civil
society. Sometimes, as in the case of the global public sphere constituted in
opposition to thewar on Iraq in 2003, the public takes shape in a form that
clearly opposes hegemony. At other times, such as in the global network orga
nized to try to ban landmines, the targets of the public are multiple, including
many governments as well as international organizations such as the United
Nations. Such developments are consistent with James Bohman's "decentered"
approach to the construction of publics (see also Dryzek 2000, 115-39 on tak
ing deliberative democracy into the international system). Such construction
can occur below the level of the states as well as across states and in association
with multistate political units like theEuropean Union. A positive interpretation
of these developments would highlight the fact that the international system is
actually a highly fruitfulplace to look for publics that constitute themselves in
deliberative and democratic fashion, precisely because it is short on formal in
stitutions capable ofmaking collectively binding decisions. States, even liberal
democratic ones, are much more rigid in these terms,and are as likely to block
the formation of publics as to foster them.
Any such transnational constellation of publics takes us still furtheraway
from the implicit ideal of face-to-face discussion producing binding collective
decision that still haunts much deliberative democratic theory.The example of
the environmental justice movement within the borders of the United States
shows that critical pluralism is often essential to both democratic deliberation
and problem-oriented success. Contemplation of the transnationalization of pub
lics drives home the point that deliberative democracy now has to be
"multiperspectival," as Bohman puts it,encompassing perspectives derived from
a radical variety of local experiences.

Conclusion

Democratic theory has been dominated for almost a decade and a half by the
deliberative orientation. Pragmatism, though not necessarily forgotten, is less in
evidence when it comes to thinking about democratic theory and practice. For
historical reasons, it is important to recall deliberative democracy's debt toprag
matism. But given that deliberative theory and practice currently seem to de
now
velop without much help from pragmatism, what exactly can pragmatism
contribute that could not be found elsewhere? On this question the jury is still
out. But at least when it comes to how publics can and should be defined and

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 PRAGMATISM AND DEMOCRACY 79

constituted, the relationship between expert inquiry and democratic inquiry,and

the role of experience in shaping theplurality of perspectives thatcan be brought
to bear in deliberation, pragmatism ought to have plenty to contribute.

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