Free and fair deliberation is key to the foundation of democracy. Explain. (UPSC CSE Mains 2021 - Political Science and International Relations, Paper 1)
Proponents of deliberative democracy like Joshua Cohen and David Miller believe that people’s preferences are formed during the political process and not prior to it.
Rather than thinking of political decisions as the aggregate of citizens’ preferences, deliberative democracy claims that citizens should arrive at political decisions through reason and the collection of competing arguments and viewpoints. Democracy, then, is a process of arriving upon judgement or a consensus.
Such an agreement is an outcome of deliberation, i.e. a process where people try to persuade each other through the give and take of rational arguments. in this way, people become aware of information and perspectives that they are previously unaware of and then they can question each other’s views. In this process, preferences or interests get transformed to reflect a common agreement.
Deliberation, thus, reinvents a participatory model of democracy and key idea is that of a dialogue. Through open participation and unlimited discourse, a better argument emerges.
Two of the early influences on deliberative democratic theory are the philosophers John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas. Rawls advocated the use of reason in securing the framework for a just political society. For Rawls, reason curtails self-interest to justify the structure of a political society that is fair for all participants in that society and secures equal rights for all members of that society. These conditions secure the possibility for fair citizen participation in the future.
Habermas claimed that fair procedures and clear communication can produce legitimate and consensual decisions by citizens. These fair procedures governing the deliberative process are what legitimates the outcomes.
When seen critically, deliberative democracy requires a consensus, which is difficult, if not impossible to achieve in diverse and complex societies.
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