Deliberative Democracy and Democratic Communication

Abstract

Since the 1980s there has been a ‘deliberative turn’ in the theorisation of both liberalism and democracy. As we saw earlier, Rawls has introduced a clear deliberative dimension to his liberal thought and this has been complemented in recent years by Jurgen Habermas who has developed his theory of communicative action to construct a distinctive discursive model of politics. In democratic theory more generally, we have also witnessed the growth of deliberative theories from, amongst others, feminist theorists of difference such as Iris Marion Young, ecologists such as John Dryzek and those associated with the concept of civil society such as Joshua Cohen.1 This chapter evaluates the growth of deliberative models of democracy and their potential implications for Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is a particularly interesting context in which to analyse deliberative democracy because there has been considerable dialogue there in recent years and there are continuing debates about where, when and with whom dialogue is appropriate. This demonstrates some of the difficulties of deliberative models of democracy and suggests that the practical implementation of these theories faces many obstacles. Nonetheless, it is clear that deliberative thinking has made a key contribution to contemporary politics in Northern Ireland especially in the build up to and aftermath of the Belfast Agreement.