The Limits and Possibilities of Communicative Ethics for Democratic Theory

Abstract

ROUSSEAU'S BELIEF THAT political rationality requires democratic participation appears quaint by the lights of contemporary rational choice theory. Democracy, we are told, seldom if ever generates rational outcomes or uniquely consistent, maximal rank orderings of preferences of the sort required by a volont6 gdnerale.' Against this view it may be objected that democratic rationality resides elsewhere, namely, in its salubrious effects on the development of rational faculties foundational for social choice generally. Arguments for extending democracy to all levels of life, including the workplace, have usually followed this line of reasoning. Yet as Jon Elster notes, it is unlikely that the development of rational faculties could be the primary aim of political action, which, if it is oriented toward anything at all, is oriented to the efficient pursuit of more mundane goals.2 Compounding the problem is the penchant of democratic socialists schooled in the Marxist tradition to stress labor as the vehicle of self-development.3 The appeal to labor plays into the hands of rational choice critics of democracy by presuming an instrumentalism that privileges scientific management over democratic decision making and neglects the peculiar rationale authorizing political rights.4 I argue below that self-realization can function as the primary rationale underlying democratic participation so long as policy goals can be pursued in an minimally effective way. To see how this is possible, I propose that we turn to Habermas's use of communication theory in articulating the dynamics of moral self-development. Communication ethics is said to embody an idea