Distinguishing between deliberative and non-deliberative politics

In the wake of the systemic turn the divide between deliberative and non-deliberative politics has thinned although it has not disappeared. The systemic approach has fostered a ‘more capacious’ understanding of deliberation, which may be applied to discursive politics in contemporary societies beyond deliberative assemblies (Mansbridge, Reference Mansbridge2010; Chambers, Reference Chambers2012: 54–55). Nonetheless, deliberative democrats stress that deliberation should retain its specificity (e.g. Neblo, Reference Moore2005; Bächtiger et al., Reference Bächtiger, Niemeyer, Neblo, Steenbergen and Steiner2010) and avoid stretching the concept of deliberation to the point of uselessness (Steiner, Reference Steiner2008). Also, claiming that any sort of politics may eventually benefit deliberative systems would be misguided and would lead the systemic approach into ‘the blind spot of old style functionalism’ (Mansbridge et al., Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Estlund, Føllesdal, Fung, Lafont and Manin2012: 18).

The expansion of the concept of deliberation has developed in parallel with the arguments in support of a more systemic approach to deliberative democracy. Deliberative democrats have developed a more inclusive notion of deliberation conditionally open to different styles of communication (Dryzek, Reference Dryzek2000: 1). More recently, deliberative democrats have argued that practices previously dismissed as altogether non-deliberative actually include moments of deliberation or embed forms of communication consistent with deliberative democracy (Mansbridge et al., Reference Mansbridge2010; Chambers, Reference Chambers2012).

Contextual empirical analysis is crucial in informing distinctions between deliberative and non-deliberative politics.Footnote ² Assessing whether democratic deliberation occurs or not in a given political activity is not always straightforward. To begin with, deliberation is a regulatory ideal, never fully achievable, and the different components of the idea of deliberation can be approximated to different degrees (Steiner, Reference Steiner2012) and cannot be maximized all at once (Goodin, Reference Goodin2005). Furthermore, deliberative assessments are not set in stone. Societal debate plays a role in establishing and challenging judgments about deliberativeness of political actions. Rather than single-handedly determining whether a certain political activity is deliberative or not, deliberative democrats should aim at the more humble goal of setting the course of discussions about deliberativeness on the right track. This can be done by providing criteria that sufficiently distinguish between positive and negative features of political activities from a deliberative standpoint and by offering empirical evidence upon which assessments can be based.

Although there are plenty of definitions of deliberation, as of today there is reasonable clarity about the main characteristics that deliberative democratic processes should display (Mansbridge et al., Reference Mansbridge2010). Here, I adopt Dryzek’s (Reference Dryzek2009, Reference Dryzek2010) influential characterization of deliberation, which shares important features with other authoritative definitions (Habermas, Reference Habermas1996; Fishkin, Reference Fishkin2009; Parkinson and Mansbridge, Reference Parkinson and Mansbridge2012). Moreover, this ‘capacious’ definition of (democratic) deliberation can be aptly applied to discursive engagement in the context of public deliberation as well as to discursive processes in deliberative systems (see Stevenson and Dryzek, Reference Stevenson and Dryzek2012a, Reference Stevenson and Dryzekb).

Discursive processes should be authentically deliberative, inclusive, and consequential. For deliberation to occur discursive processes should not be affected by coercion, induce reflection about the preferences that individuals hold, display claims that are systematically connected to more general principles, and exhibit ‘reciprocity’ – that is, an effort to communicate in ways ‘that others can accept’. ‘Inclusivity’ is especially important in assessing the democratic qualities of a deliberative process. ‘Without inclusion there may be deliberation but not deliberative democracy’. ‘Inclusiveness applies to the range of interests and discourses present in a political setting’ (Dryzek, Reference Dryzek2009: 1382, 1385). Finally, consequentiality refers to the fact that deliberative processes ‘must have an impact’ or ‘somehow make a difference’ to collective decisions, or social and collective outcomes. ‘Impact need not be direct’ as in explicit policy decisions; instead, instances of consequential deliberation include ‘informal products of a network’, ‘influence on decision makers’, or ‘even cultural change’ (Dryzek, Reference Dryzek2010: 10, 137). Deliberative actors in a political system are such when they engage in at least a minimum of deliberative, inclusive and consequential discursive engagement in the above sense. In contrast, those actors that fall short on one or more of the three dimensions of democratic deliberation can be considered as non-deliberative.

Accounting for non-deliberative politics in a deliberative system

The above mentioned idea of authentic inclusive and consequential deliberation informs the first of two tests, which, according to Dryzek (Reference Dryzek2013: 343), we need to run to understand how different components of a system affect its deliberative quality. The first, ‘categorical test’ involves assessing whether a given component of a deliberative system is deliberative or not. The second, ‘systemic test’ asks whether a given component enhances or hinders the deliberativeness of the overall system. As already mentioned, it is possible for deliberative democrats that ‘the deliberative system may sometimes benefit from non-deliberative components: e.g. disruptive action that gets a hearing for a previously excluded group or discourse’, as it was the case with Seattle protest in 1999 that helped global justice to enter the political agenda (Dryzek, Reference Dryzek2013: 336). Thus, the systemic test provides a justification for accepting non-deliberative politics in a deliberative system.

A general problem with this instrumentalist justification is that non-deliberative politics may harm rather than contribute to the deliberativeness of a system (see Owen and Smith, Reference Owen and Smith2015: 13).Footnote ³ Furthermore, it is not always possible to observe whether a non-deliberative activity leads to positive, negative, or mixed consequences for the deliberative democratic quality of a system. Nor it is always possible to discern the extent to which the consequences of a political activity have to do with its own characteristics or with the complex circumstances of the environment surrounding them.Footnote ⁴ Moreover, no deliberative democrat would be any less sympathetic with the cause of civilians contesting governmental decisions, often with significant personal costs and even death, just because their protests did not improve the deliberativeness of their political system. Think for instance of many of the recent and not so recent protests against authoritarian and corrupted regimes. Finally, an activity under examination may be a component of several different systems at the same time. Even when it may be relatively easy to establish whether such an activity is deliberative or not, it is possible to think of it as being beneficial with respect to one or more deliberative systems and non-beneficial to another. One could think, for example, of the street protests in Ukraine, the referendum for the secession of Crimea, or the political and diplomatic activities characterizing the related international crisis. Ultimately, the ‘categorical test’ is fundamental to maintain the distinction between deliberative and non-deliberative politics. However, the ‘systemic test’ may put an excessive burden on our ability to assess the desirability of a political action from a deliberative standpoint. Thus, the ‘systemic test’ offers little guidance in determining the extent to which a deliberative system should be characterized by non-deliberative politics.

Another interesting view on non-deliberative politics in the deliberative system is articulated by Mansbridge et al. As they acknowledge, there may be times when democratic deliberation may simply not suffice to bring about a democratic decision. In those cases, resorting to other non-deliberative yet democratic means is the only way to guarantee the protection of the values of equality and freedom in decision making, which are fundamental in any democratic society (Mansbridge et al., Reference Mansbridge2010: 84–85). There may be mechanisms that despite being non-deliberative (in that they are characterized by coercion) remain the best option to guarantee the protection of key democratic values such as freedom and equality when deliberation is not possible. Following this logic, Mansbridge et al. further argue ‘for a complementary rather than antagonistic relation of deliberation to many democratic mechanisms that are not themselves deliberative’ (Mansbridge et al., Reference Mansbridge2010: 64; see also Mansbridge et al., Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Estlund, Føllesdal, Fung, Lafont and Manin2012).Footnote ⁵

Governmental or non-governmental institutions as well as arena of informal talk within a system should be assessed ‘according to how well they perform the functions necessary to promote the goals of the system’. These goals consist of the three overall functions of a deliberative system: epistemic, ethic, and democratic (Mansbridge et al. 2012: 13). Although the identification of the overall functions of a system represents a particularly interesting development, the arguments deployed by Mansbridge et al. justify non-deliberative politics in purely instrumental terms. Thus, the same problem mentioned with respect to the systemic test emerges.

As Owen and Smith (Reference Owen and Smith2014, Reference Owen and Smith2015) argue, deliberative theorists adopting a systemic view still need to provide criteria to assess to what extent it is possible to allow for non-deliberative politics in deliberative systems. To them: ‘In embracing the function of non-deliberative communicative acts, deliberative systems theorists often fail to recognize and account for the deliberative wrongs that such acts involve and the harm that they frequently cause’ (Owen and Smith, Reference Owen and Smith2015: 223). Indeed, it is hard to disagree with Owen and Smith when they remark that the accounts of non-deliberative politics offered in the wake of the systemic turn:

The systemic approach, nonetheless, offers a unique opportunity for the development of deliberative democracy and one could be sanguine about the possibility of tackling the above issues without rejecting the systemic approach. Owen and Smith’s (Reference Owen and Smith2014, Reference Owen and Smith2015) argument for a ‘deliberative stance’ or Smith’s (Reference Rawls2016) ‘deliberative action’, might take us back to a stage where the different roles of non-deliberative and deliberative politics are conflated.Footnote ⁶ Indeed, the very process of deliberation itself, far from being a monolithic overarching ideal form of engagement, is best understood as a process articulated in dynamic stages, featuring different virtues, and toward which we can have different expectations depending on the context (Curato, Reference Curato2012: 423). Rather than the spread of a deliberative stance through the system, what really matters is the overall level of systemic deliberation in complex societies (see Kuyper, Reference Konieczny2015). Indeed, Kuyper’s (Reference Kuyper2016) study of non-electoral representatives in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, convincingly shows that a meaningful assessment of the behavior of different actors needs to take into account the space that they occupy in the wider democratic system.

An important message involved in the systemic turn in deliberative democracy is the acknowledgment that deliberation of itself cannot perform all the work necessary to sustain a democratic process. Whilst this needs not to be understood as a failure of deliberative democracy, it is necessary to be clear on what role deliberation ought to have in a system and what non-deliberative forms of political engagement are to be tolerated or even welcomed. In thinking of the deliberative system deliberative democrats should retain a clear preference for deliberative engagement wherever possible. However, this preference should not stifle the already limited opportunities for political engagement of those already removed from the empowered space (Young, Reference Young2000). Rather, deliberative democrats should be increasingly firm in their demand that the activities of those actors that are closer to the institutional core of democratic politics are responsive to deliberative democratic values.

A way forward in clarifying the different roles of deliberative and non-deliberative politics in a system lies in earlier systemic work. The systemic turn is based on the idea that ‘it is important to recognize that deliberative democracy includes many kinds of political interactions other than deliberation’ and that ‘we can more clearly retain the connection to the central aim of deliberative theory if we treat these other activities as part of a larger democratic process, rather than as instances of deliberation per se’ (Thompson, Reference Talisse2008: 502). Opening deliberative democratic theory to engagement with non-deliberative politics does not interfere with the deliberative ideal. The intuition behind the systemic approach underlying, for instance, Goodin’s (Reference Goodin2005) sequential deliberative democracy and Mansbridge’s (Reference Mansbridge2010) distributed deliberation, is not a renunciation of the deliberative ideal. Rather, it is an effort to seek workable solutions to cope with a world where non-deliberative politics will and should continue to play a role.

Fung’s (Reference Fung2005) influential discussion on deliberative ethics is interesting in this respect (see also Owen and Smith, Reference Owen and Smith2015; Smith, Reference Rawls2016). In fact, despite he does not ground his argument explicitly in a systemic understanding of deliberative democracy, Fung clearly distinguishes between deliberative and non-deliberative politics and finds that both of them have an important role from a deliberative standpoint. In particular, to Fung, deliberative activists should strive to act consistently with deliberative democratic ideals, unless deliberative democratic engagement is not an option, for instance, because of major power imbalances between actors or unwillingness of one of the parts to engage in deliberative terms. Fung’s (Reference Fung2005: 399) proposal reminds us of the importance for deliberative actors to adapt their views and actions to a world where deliberation is but one of the forms of political engagement. The following section starts making way into presenting a deliberative democratic account of how the relationship between deliberative a non-deliberative politics could look like in a deliberative system.

The deliberative efficiency argument

Although the above arguments do not provide a fully-fledged account of the relationship between deliberative and non-deliberative politics in a deliberative system, they contribute to this objective. In the first place, it is important to notice that a consequentialist understanding underpins the justification of non-deliberative politics in deliberative systems according to Dryzek and Mansbridge et al.’s arguments. In particular, in allowing for non-deliberative politics in deliberative systems, these arguments share a fundamental concern with efficiency. The analysis of the content and relevance of this ‘deliberative efficiency argument’ represents a first step toward the development of an overall framework clarifying the role deliberative and non-deliberative politics should have in a system.

The ‘deliberative efficiency argument’ states that non-deliberative politics can replace deliberative ones as long as the former provide better means than the latter in pursuing objectives that are consistent with a deliberative democratic perspective. Of course, the range of objectives consistent with a deliberative democratic perspective can be disputed. Nonetheless, for the scope of this paper, the epistemic, ethical, and democratic functions as discussed by Mansbridge et al. (Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Estlund, Føllesdal, Fung, Lafont and Manin2012: 12–16) represent a satisfactory alternative. As Owen and Smith (Reference Owen and Smith2014) point out, these three functions are not discussed in great detail. However, the way these concepts are illustrated is general enough to be endorsed by a number of leading deliberative scholars and clear enough to allow for the critical use of the deliberative system idea to understand real world situations (Mansbridge et al., Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Estlund, Føllesdal, Fung, Lafont and Manin2012).

The fact that an instrumental concern underpins the above arguments means that they cannot provide much guidance in understanding what a desirable relationship between deliberative and non-deliberative politics in a system may look like, for these arguments share the already mentioned limitations of the consequentialist understanding of legitimacy. To better ground our reasoning about the role of non-deliberative politics in deliberative systems we need to place the deliberative efficiency principle within a wider framework where the relationship between deliberative and non-deliberative politics is conceived of as a discussion about the legitimacy of different types of politics within deliberative systems. Adopting a systemic approach to deliberative democracy requires that we take into account the role of non-deliberative politics and that in doing so we devise ways to give priority to the deliberative objectives of the system. Such framework features an idea of legitimacy concerned not only with the righteousness of procedures but also with the ends of politics (Cohen, Reference Cohen1997: 95; Parkinson, Reference Owen and Smith2003: 183). Whilst deliberation is not the only criteria of legitimacy in a democratic system, this paper focuses on deliberative legitimacy as the main criterion of justification in a deliberative system (see Owen and Smith, Reference Owen and Smith2015: 21).

Two spaces and three actors

The framework adopted to understand the relationship between deliberative and non-deliberative politics can be based on an edited version of the deliberative system model first conceived by Dryzek (Reference Dryzek2009, Reference Dryzek2010). This system is influenced by a critical tradition built upon the Habermasian notion of the public sphere (Habermas, Reference Habermas1989), and it is composed of just two parts, ‘empowered’ and ‘public’ spaces. The former is described as: ‘a deliberative space for actors, recognizably part of institutions producing collective decisions. … The institution need not be formally empowered; as such, a network producing collective outcomes would constitute one such space’. The public space, instead, is ‘a deliberative space (or spaces) with few restrictions on who can participate and with few legal restrictions on what participants can say … Such spaces may be found in connection with the media, social movements, activist associations, physical locations where people can gather and talk (cafés, classrooms, bars, public squares), the Internet, public hearings, and designed citizen-based forums of various sort’ (Dryzek, Reference Dryzek2009: 1385–1386). Empowered and public spaces in a system should be connected through ‘transmission’ and ‘accountability’ mechanisms and the system should possess meta-deliberation, that is, the capability to be reformed in deliberative ways. For the goal of this paper, I propose to focus on the actors that populate the deliberative system, rather than the spaces it is made of. This does not mean we should renounce to the distinction between public and empowered spaces. Rather, I claim that within the deliberative system (and its two spaces) there exist three different types of actors against which we can have different expectations in terms of their deliberativeness: political institutions, empowered agents, and public space actors.

Political institutions and public space actors, as seen, can be straightforwardly collocated within the two spaces of the Dryzekian deliberative system. The former actors belong in the empowered space and the latter in the public space. The third category that I introduce is that of ‘empowered agents’. This category is specific and relevant enough to deserve consideration in itself.

Empowered agents may be public space organizations that, like empowered space actors, have substantial influence in a deliberative system. They may also be organizations, quite unrelated from the public space, with substantial power over a system without, in any case, being political institutions. ‘Empowered agents’ in a given system may include, for instance, for-profit firms (spanning from influential local businesses to corporations – including media, finance, and industrial ones – depending on the system one is considering) and also non-government organizations that may have prominent roles in certain systems. As a way of illustration, it could be argued that in global deliberations about internet regulations – or for that matter education in developing countries – this category would include Microsoft Corporation and Wikimedia Commons.

There is no denying that the association of an emblem of corporate capitalism with an advanced form of public space organization (see Konieczny, Reference Habermas2009) in the same category may sound quite strident. This, however, should not be too surprising since in democratic societies political institutions may take forms as different as constitutional courts and parliaments, and ‘public space actors’ may get involved in activities spanning from street demonstrations to mini-publics. Most importantly, different types of empowered actors (be them, for instance, corporations or activists networks) should still be subjected to the same expectations in light of the roles they have in the deliberative system. In particular, as it will be argued, there seems to be ground to object to their involvement in formal deliberative processes if they do not display a degree of democratic deliberation within themselves.

The idea that in a working deliberative democracy the actors in the empowered space ought to be accountable to those in the public space is endorsed in this paper. However, the distinction between political institutions and organizations that are not eminently political emerges clearly. The basic idea behind this distinction is that in a democratic society, legitimate political institutions ought to be justified in democratic terms – deliberative democratic terms for deliberative democrats (Cohen, Reference Cohen1989, Reference Cohen1997; Chambers, Reference Chambers2003). This aspect distinguishes such institutions from organizations that are not constituted and developed on the basis of such democratic justification. Surely, organizations that are not political in the sense illustrated above are political in the sense of participating and determining the political life of a community (Young, Reference Thompson1985). Nonetheless, a crucial aspect exists in reflecting upon the claims that can be made for the deliberative democratization of political institutions, on the one hand, and that of empowered agents and public space actors, on the other. That is, the source of legitimacy specific to political institutions lies in their deliberative democratic justification, which is clearly not the case for empowered agents and public space actors. Providing a systematic way to reflect upon the way in which these three different actors should be understood in the systemic approach represents a much needed contribution to deliberative theory, which I further explore in the rest of the paper.

Three approaches toward non-deliberative politics

In order to envision to what extent non-deliberative politics could be justified in a deliberative system, this section defends the idea that three different approaches (‘intense’, ‘moderate’, and ‘free’) should be used to assess non-deliberative politics. Each of these approaches features important differences with regard to the intensity of the scrutiny that deliberative democrats ought to give to the deliberativeness of the different actors composing the deliberative system. This framework spans both empowered and public spaces and is sensitive to the different characteristics of the three actors of the deliberative system sketched above: political institutions, empowered agents, and public space actors. The three approaches proposed in this paper provide a defensible account of the relationship between deliberative and non-deliberative politics in deliberative systems. At the same time they offer a means to counter the risk that, as argued by Elstub et al. (Reference Elstub, Ercan and Mendonça2016: 146), the deliberative system turns into an ‘accommodation to reality’ rather than ‘a regulative ideal’.

The intense approach

The first approach concerns political institutions in the empowered space. According to this approach political institutions ought to be deliberative democratic unless an exception can be made on the basis of the deliberative efficiency argument. Those interested in building a more deliberative society ought to question political institutions that depart from deliberative norms and firmly criticize them in so far as such departure appears unjustifiable in view of the objectives of the deliberative system. This approach, however, is not to be ‘enforced’ in the sense that political institutions should be coerced into adopting deliberative democratic reforms. In fact, a system that values deliberation should, in general, resort to coercion with caution.

The force of the intense approach ultimately rests on discursive politics and on the ability of actors to mobilize and redress the problematic situations.Footnote ⁷ The intense approach is consistent with the commonly accepted claim that all political institutions in a deliberative system ‘can and must be justified deliberatively’ (Mansbridge et al., Reference Mansbridge2010: 64). Therefore, whether a given institution deviating from deliberative norms may still serve the functions of a deliberative system (see Mansbridge, Reference Mansbridge2010: 1–2) ought to in itself be subject to deliberation. The intense approach and the annexed deliberative efficiency clause to be adopted in assessing political institutions is also consistent with Mansbridge et al.’s (Reference Mansbridge2010: 84) remark that ‘Democracy is a practical form of decision-making that derives its normative legitimacy from the degree to which it approaches the ideals on which it is based. It derives its sociological legitimacy from the degree to which it works in practice’. In order to narrow the gap between the ideal of deliberative legitimacy and the practice of political institutions, it is fundamental that deliberative democrats closely scrutinize political institutions with regard to their responsiveness to deliberative concerns and firmly contest their unjustified departures from deliberative norms. The list of political institutions to be assessed against the standards of the intense approach is certainly a long one. However, obvious examples include, parliaments, ministries, and elective positions in general, be them at local, national, or transnational level. Of course, it is plausible that ‘One virtue of a deliberative system is that failures in one institution can be compensated for in another part’ (Mansbridge et al., Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Estlund, Føllesdal, Fung, Lafont and Manin2012: 31). However, given that the systemic approach (and the intense scrutiny approach likewise) allows for the possibility of justifying these failures in terms of deliberative legitimacy, it becomes important to claim that unjustifiable deviations be redressed. Deliberative democratic legitimacy of a political institution cannot be granted on the basis of an expectation that some other institutions may take care of its deliberative deficit.

Another argument that the intense scrutiny approach tries to address is Goodin’s (Reference Goodin2005: 193) fundamental remark that deliberative values cannot be constantly on display in decision making in a representative democracy. This insight is hard to refute and prima facie it seems in tension with the demanding nature of the intense approach. The tension, however, dissolves at closer investigation. First, as argued in this paper, in a representative democracy as in a deliberative system, departure from deliberative virtues is widely admissible in the public space and among empowered agents, which inform the deliberation of political institutions. Second, the deliberative efficiency argument makes room for departures from deliberative democracy in political institutions too. However, the intense approach maintains that we should still uphold the idea that legitimate political institutions are themselves deliberative, or at least deliberatively justifiable, and be critical when this does not occur. A strictly deliberative approach would still be accepting of, for instance, electoral competition, referendums, and majority rule, bargaining and rhetoric as long as political institutions resorting to them can do so in a way that is consistent with deliberative democracy or make an appeal to the deliberative efficiency argument. This operation may be relatively easy for some existing liberal institutions whilst it may represent an insurmountable obstacle for others, such as global financial or environmental institutions only marginally democratic, if at all.

A related issue is raised by Chambers (Reference Chambers2012: 7–8) who points out that thinking of deliberation as a characteristic of a single process ‘imposes an unrealistic and unnecessary burden’ on the object under consideration (see also Mansbridge et al., Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Estlund, Føllesdal, Fung, Lafont and Manin2012: 1). Buy suggesting that all institutions claiming democratic legitimacy display deliberative engagement, the intense scrutiny approach may lead to an unbearable deliberative ‘burden’ upon political institutions. However, this needs not be the case, as the deliberative efficiency argument allows for deviations from the norm when deliberative engagement starts to look counterproductive. Actually, the successful adoption of the intensive scrutiny approach may eventually ease the deliberative ‘burden’ of institutions. Actually, one may reasonably expect that single institutions may meet the deliberative expectations more easily in the context of a deliberative political landscape than in one that is inhospitable or repellent to deliberative democracy. Likewise, if there is good reason to doubt that a single deliberative forum may ‘generate sufficient legitimacy in the eyes of the public’ (Chambers, Reference Chambers2012: 8), there is also ground to believe that a set of deliberative institutions may do a better job in this respect.

However, it may make little sense to defend the intensive scrutiny approach simply on the presumption that it may deliver more ‘trustable’ political institutions, especially at a time when ‘trust in all sort of institutions is declining’ (Parkinson, Reference Parkinson2012: 160). The main defense for the intensive approach is that it seeks to provide a way forward toward more legitimate political institutions where public affairs ‘are governed by the public deliberation of its members’ (Cohen, Reference Cohen1989: 67 italics added). As argued by Mendonça (Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Christiano, Fung, Parkinson, Thompson and Warren2016) some of the main risks for the deliberative system approach are to reinforce political asymmetries between core actors, on the one hand, and the public, on the other, and to allow for greater discretionary power for decision makers. The intense approach with its emphasis on deliberative democratization of institutions provides a means to counter this risk.

Recent proposals conceiving of non-deliberative actions as simply falling beyond the boundaries of deliberative system (Smith, Reference Rawls2016), reduce the critical leverage of the systemic approach. For instance, if the US Congress was found to fall short of deliberative action, would it be more appropriate to dismiss it as something beyond the domain of deliberative system critique or to take it as a matter of concern from a systemic point of view? To Dryzek (Reference Dryzek2016: 216), who points out to the above issue in Smith’s approach, it seems reasonable to favor the latter view. The three regimes approach and the intense approach in particular, are intended exactly as conceptual means to support this type of critical effort. In this sense, empirical investigations are particularly valuable when, whilst pointing out to the need for deliberative reform of existing institutions, they are capable to critically reflect on how innovations themselves might be improved. An recent example of this approach emerges, for instance, in Prosser et al.’s (2017) analysis of devolution of governance in England, which critically reviews the efforts for fostering citizen participation.

Claiming more deliberative democratic politics for the institutions governing contemporary democracies does not imply that we should take the state as the ‘terminus’ of all deliberation (Mansbridge et al., Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Estlund, Føllesdal, Fung, Lafont and Manin2012: 9). Instead, it suggests that deliberative democrats need be highly critical of institutions that cannot be justified in deliberative democratic terms in more stringent ways than what may be the case with other actors in the empowered space.

The moderate approach

The second approach (‘moderate approach’) interests empowered agents. As seen, the latter are those organizations that may have substantial influence over a certain deliberative system despite their being neither genuinely political (like empowered space institutions) nor necessarily public space organizations. Following the tendency common in deliberative theory to focus on political institutions, on the one hand, and public space, on the other, empowered agents have been understood as either public space or institutional actors. Consequently, the specificity of empowered agents has been neglected. Therefore, it is especially important to illustrate how the relationship between deliberative and non-deliberative politics can be articulated in this case.

Empowered agents have particular importance because of their privileged role in deliberative systems and they should be subject to moderate scrutiny. Political institutions may develop incentives to favor the deliberative democratization of such organizations, but this operation would need to be undertaken with great care. Enforcing the deliberative democratization of these organizations is highly problematic from a deliberative democratic standpoint, as we will see below. Moreover, this would also be fraught with difficulties from a liberal perspective, in which, at least in the forecastable future, deliberative reforms will be embedded (Parkinson, Reference Owen and Smith2003: 191).

Whilst the deliberative democratization of empowered agents is desirable, such process should depend largely on the resolution of the actors themselves. A pragmatic consideration connected to the deliberative system is that ‘sometimes associations that are internally non-deliberative and homogeneous will, for that very reason, be able to assert a coherent public position and sharpen a public debate’ (Mansbridge et al., Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Estlund, Føllesdal, Fung, Lafont and Manin2012: 8–9). Forcing non-deliberative organizations toward an internally deliberative structure may thus risk bringing about detrimental effects.

Surely, having organizations willingly embracing internally deliberative and democratic forms of engagement seems a highly desirable and fortunate circumstance. Nonetheless, organizations displaying non-deliberative engagement in their internal working should not be put at disadvantage because of this characteristic. Imposing deliberative democratization on organizations that are not bound by a duty to justify their existence in terms of democratic legitimacy may ultimately constrain societal pluralism and infringe on civil and political liberties and rights. These aspects are not only at the heart of a liberal conception of justice (e.g. Rawls, Reference Prosser, Renwick, Giovannini, Sandford, Flinders, Jennings, Smith, Spada, Stoker and Ghose1993) but their safeguard is central to deliberative democrats too (see Gutmann and Thompson, Reference Gutmann and Thompson2009). Indeed, even when deliberative democrats disagree about the ability of liberal democracy to provide ground for a more deliberative democratic society, the argument does not concern the opportunity to disfranchise liberal rights or reduce pluralism.

The fundamental shift from illegitimate interference with the life of these organizations to the provision of a justifiable incentive for the deliberative democratization of empowered agents occurs when the latter is involved in formal deliberative processes with political institutions. In fact, there seems to be little reason why in a deliberative system empowered agents should be allowed to enter into formal deliberation with political institutions when they show no regard for the democratic nature of the society that the deliberation is going to affect. A case in point concerns the routine practice of inviting powerful organizations (in virtue, for instance, of their manifest relevance on a certain issue) to participate in the formal deliberation process that will lead to a political decision. As Dodge (Reference Dodge2015) shows in her study of hydraulic fracturing in New York, the deliberative potential of civil society organizations is rarely taken as a reference in decisions on who to include in official conversations. Studies focusing on subjects as different as climate change governance (Stevenson and Dryzek, Reference Stevenson and Dryzek2012a, Reference Stevenson and Dryzekb), fiscal policy (Collignon, Reference Collignon2007), sustainable development (Bäckstrand, Reference Bäckstrand2006), have expressed concern for the involvement of firms, civil society representatives, or private foundations with limited legitimacy seating next to political institutions in policy-making processes. The moderate approach claims that empowered agents may be granted the opportunity to participate in these processes provided that, at a minimum, these actors meet some standards of internal democratic deliberation. This can be justified because the decision-making process in which such organizations are given a privileged role is going to affect a democratic community to which the empowered space should strive to be connected and accountable.

The free approach

The last approach (‘free approach’) concerns actors in the public space. Such actors should be fully free in deciding in what ways they intend to participate in political life. The free approach suggests that there should be no restrictions on public space actors on the basis of their deliberativeness. Political institutions should adopt a non-perfectionist approach in this regard. Indeed, measures by political institutions aiming at correcting public space actors for deviations from deliberative norms or intending to enhance their deliberative qualities seem highly questionable from a deliberative democratic perspective. Similarly, deliberative democrats should be wary of criticizing non-deliberative engagement as a plurality of types of engagement in the public space seems necessary to pursue more deliberative and democratic systems.

Arguing that public space organizations should not be sanctioned for deviating from deliberative norms does not deny that public space political activities can ‘enhance or detract from the deliberative system’ (Mansbridge et al., Reference Mansbridge, Bohman, Chambers, Estlund, Føllesdal, Fung, Lafont and Manin2012: 18). Likewise, it would be incorrect to infer that deliberative democrats may not support deliberative politics and resist non-deliberative ones. The free approach does, however, contend that political institutions should not discriminate against or in favor of public space actors on the basis of their deliberativeness. Whilst political institutions may organize spaces of political engagement (through participation, deliberation or other means) they should not restrict the freedom of citizens to engage in alternative democratic forms. At this stage it should be made clear that, despite its commitment to a maximum of freedom for public sphere actors’ political engagement, the free approach would not grant (and for that matter neither the moderate nor the strict regime would) any space for political action aimed at contrasting the core values of a democratic system such as freedom and equality. For instance, racist organizations or hate speech practices would represent problems to be contrasted in the deliberative system and the free approach would not allow for them under any circumstance.Footnote ⁸

In order to better understand the free approach we can think of it as being largely similar to the moderate one, though the former more fully welcomes non-deliberative politics than the latter. At the same time, it is in stark opposition to the intensive approach. The free approach (and the overall framework proposed in this paper) is consistent with Parkinson’s (Reference Parkinson2012: 154) remark that a deliberative system ‘increases the pool of perspectives, claims, narratives, and reasons available to decision-makers’ and ‘whether those perspectives are generated deliberatively or not is neither here nor there so long as the decision-makers’ processes themselves are deliberative’.Footnote ⁹ The safeguard of the freedom of this space is embedded in the early developments of deliberative theory. In fact, as argued by Cohen:

The concerns mentioned with regard to the possible restrictions to political rights, civil liberties and pluralism that may follow from the forced deliberative democratization of empowered actors are all the more substantial when dealing with public space actors (see Mansbridge, Reference Kuyper1994). Indeed, from a democratic point of view, an approach aiming at enhancing the deliberativeness of public space actors would not just be flawed from a liberal standpoint. It would constrain democratic action, which is based on, among others, participatory (Pateman, Reference Pateman2012), republican (Pettit, Reference Pateman1997), and communitarian (Barber, Reference Barber2003) positions that concur with deliberative democracy in envisioning more democratic societies.

Deliberative systems that prize only those forms of engagement characterized by a deliberative stance (Smith Reference Rawls2016) or welcome non-deliberative politics in the hope that they may eventually bring about positive outcomes, place constraints that are both unrealistic and unnecessary upon democratic politics. Deliberative scholars may contend that all types of activism cannot be defended from a deliberative perspective (Talisse, Reference Stevenson and Dryzek2005). However, it remains the case that citizens and activists may be skeptical of deliberative democratic ideals, especially in societies characterized by major inequalities in most respects including political power (Young, Reference Young2000, Reference Young2001). This might be particularly true in those arenas where public space actors tend to be less involved in official deliberations (for instance, where conflict is structured along transnational lines). The voicing of dissent, also in non-deliberative fashion, is fundamental to claim more democratic politics (Crespy, Reference Crespy2014). When they intend to implement deliberative democracy in their organizations, activists may meet only partial success (della Porta and Rucht, Reference della Porta2013). For instance, studies on local environmentalist groups show that in some cases it is possible to observe only limited deliberative capacity, especially when these actors related to institutions that themselves display little deliberative engagement (Felicetti, Reference Felicetti2013, Reference Felicetti2016). Even activists who adhere to deliberative democratic ideas in pursuing their political actions, ‘have no particular moral obligations to organize themselves in internally deliberative or democratic ways’ when facing actors with which engagement in terms of fair and inclusive deliberation is impossible. This is the case, for instance, with international organizations regulating world trade and finance (Fung, Reference Fung2005: 412).Footnote ¹⁰ Indeed, the expectation that public space actors always engage in deliberative ways would be ironic in a system where political institutions may themselves be poorly (if at all) deliberative democratic. As Moore (Reference Mendonça2016: 200) illustrates, practices of contestation and confrontation by AIDS activists were instrumental in making discussions on this topic more deliberative and democratic. Another illustration can be drawn by the participatory practices of anti-austerity movements. In some cases, social movement activism, from the Pots and Pans revolution in Iceland to mass protests in Greece and Spain, have opened up space for critical debate and political action (della Porta, Reference della Porta and Rucht2015) to an extent that has hardly, if ever, been achieved through deliberative mini-publics. Far from being a step toward uncritically accepting any type of practice into the deliberative system, the free approach represents a much needed effort to properly allocate ‘the critical orientation’ at the core of the idea of deliberative democracy (Elstub et al., Reference Elstub, Ercan and Mendonça2016: 144).

Finally, an important consideration can be borrowed from Dryzek who remarks that ‘a public sphere is not a formal institution and so cannot be designed’ (Reference Dryzek2001: 665). Rather, ‘public spheres take shape in relation to other authority structures that can be designed or at least reconstituted at the margins. Foremost among these is the state’. This view is consistent with an approach that pursues more deliberative democratic engagement in political institutions, rather than deliberative engineering of the public space. Following Dryzek et al. (Reference Dryzek, Downes, Hunold and Schlosberg2003), one could argue that the possibility of safeguarding democratic engagement among the actors in the public space is tied to the ability for politically active citizens to work at a distance from political institutions. In fact, states that are particularly effective at including social movement organizations in their workings actually end up depleting the public sphere of its most dynamic actors. As these actors move from the public space to political institutions they often find themselves confined within contexts where they can deploy little in terms of inclusive and consequential democratic deliberation.

Deliberative theorists constantly remind us that deliberation should not be an activity only for political elites (Mansbridge, Reference Mansbridge1999) and deliberation in the public sphere is intrinsically important (Habermas, Reference Habermas1989). Actually, deliberation might be even more likely to occur in the public space rather than in institutions, burdened by structural imperatives: outside political institutions there exists great potential for authentic, inclusive, and consequential deliberation (Dryzek, Reference Dryzek2009, Felicetti Reference Felicetti2016). The free approach is not intended as a challenge to these arguments. Indeed, it may be hard to think about deliberative democracy at all without a deliberative public space. Taken together, the three approaches proposed in this paper contend that without constraining freedom to participate in political life, be it through deliberative or non-deliberative means, citizens can legitimately demand a more deliberative course for institutional politics.