Epistemic Value and Deliberative Democracy

Abstract

In the discussions that dominated the initial debates, deliberative democracy first and foremost concerned the how question of democracy: how do the people rule themselves in a democratic manner? While there are certainly many different answers to this question, two have been particularly salient: the aggregative conception of democracy, which relies on electoral representation in legislation; and the deliberative conception that includes any one of a family of views, according to which the public deliberation of free and equal citizens is the core of legitimate political decision-making and self-rule. Beyond this fundamental agreement, however, each of the terms of this definition is hotly debated among deliberative democrats. Various institutional and non-institutional locations for deliberation have been proposed and debated, as have various attempts to determine their feasibility. At the core of deliberative democracy, in any of its forms, is the idea that deliberation essentially involves publicly giving reasons to justify decisions, policies or laws, all of which are the means by which citizens constitute and regulate their common life together. However, even as the debates stressed a sharp contrast between deliberation and aggregation, few deliberative democrats were willing to replace voting with deliberation, but rather sought to interpret it as a phase of deliberation and the important exercise of the decisional status of citizens. This solution points to a pattern for many of the future debates, in which this overly sharp contrast becomes mitigated by the fact that any theory must include both decision mecha