Deliberation in an Age of (Un)Civil Resistance

Abstract

There is currently a global wave of protest movements whose militant tactics cannot be subsumed under the category of nonviolent civil disobedience. There has, concurrently, been a surge of interest among political philosophers in the idea of ‘uncivil disobedience’, with a range of theorists converging on the view that there is often no compelling rationale for limiting dissent to the nonviolent repertoire associated with civil disobedience. This discussion piece reconsiders deliberative democratic approaches to activism and protest in light of these political and philosophical developments. It argues that the tendency to frame protest through the catch-all category of ‘non-deliberative’ behaviour elides the distinction between civil and uncivil disobedience, treating as analogous forms of conduct that are quite different in terms of their potential consequences and their ethical complexion. The paper focuses in particular on the difficult case of violence, exploring the normative scope for deliberative theorists to treat it as a potentially legitimate mode of uncivil resistance.