{"id":4218,"date":"2003-06-10T15:25:40","date_gmt":"2003-06-10T15:25:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4218"},"modified":"2003-06-10T15:25:40","modified_gmt":"2003-06-10T15:25:40","slug":"deliberation-and-the-scope-of-the-public-sphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4218","title":{"rendered":"deliberation and the scope of the public sphere"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spent the day at the semi-annual meeting of the Deliberative<\/p>\n

Democracy Consortium<\/a>‘s steering committee. We were brainstorming about what<\/p>\n

would compose the infrastructure of a deliberative democracy <\/b>in the United<\/p>\n

States—everything from physical meeting spaces, to networks of trained facilitators,<\/p>\n

to formal mechanisms for injecting the results of citizen deliberations into government<\/p>\n

decision-making. An interesting philosophical question arose at one point. Assume<\/p>\n

that you want a fully deliberative democracy. Which path seems better?<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Make governmental institutions more deliberative. They alone represent everyone,\n

    and they are already committed to egalitarian deliberation (a form of "voice")<\/p>\n

    as a method of decision-making. Allow the market to remain mostly non-deliberative,<\/p>\n

    because it reflects other values (such as efficiency and freedom of "exit.")<\/p>\n

    However, remove any arbitrary constraints that would prevent the state from regulating<\/p>\n

    the market if<\/i> that’s what people want. They may choose market solutions,<\/p>\n

    and that’s fine. But we should consider democratic institutions to be plenipotentiary,<\/p>\n

    and leave it up to the public to decide how to use the state.<\/li>\n

  2. Try to make\n

    market institutions as well as the state more deliberative. Perhaps even seek<\/p>\n

    to reform other institutions too, such as families, religious congregations, and<\/p>\n

    nonprofits. Do not consider the state to be sovereign or plenipotentiary. Imagine,<\/p>\n

    instead, that power ought to be divided into several distinct sectors (state,<\/p>\n

    market, and civil society), none of which rightly rules the others. But make all<\/p>\n

    these sectors as deliberative and democratic as possible. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In my view,<\/p>\n

    this is really a difficult choice, and there are numerous reasons for and against<\/p>\n

    each option.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I spent the day at the semi-annual meeting of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium‘s steering committee. We were brainstorming about what would compose the infrastructure of a deliberative democracy in the United States—everything from physical meeting spaces, to networks of trained facilitators, to formal mechanisms for injecting the results of citizen deliberations into government decision-making. An […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deliberation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}