Minimally Deliberative Deliberative Systems? Problematisation and the Deliberative Democratic Effects of Poorly Deliberative Communication

Abstract

This article deals with the role of public communication in democratic decision-making, with a view to identifying communicative practices that can be expected to meet deliberative democratic standards. On the basis of two case studies, a mechanism is reconstructed through which public communication, although being poorly deliberative, can influence decision-making and achieve some of deliberative democracy’s most fundamental goals, namely, to attain mutually justified decisions, to secure the free and reasoned consent of citizens and to promote substantively correct decisions. This mechanism consists in the recurrent problematisation of a situation and the concomitant generation of political demands and proposals. This argument can at least be formulated if one adopts an institutional system perspective coupled with a concept of mutual justification understood along the lines of the ‘reasonable rejection test’.