Unveiling Disputes in Representation’s Constructivist Turn(s): Lisa Disch and Deliberative Democracy

Abstract

ABSTRACT The field of representation theory has reached a moment in which a wide variety of democratic theorists are now constructivists. But what does it mean for these theorists to be a constructivist? In answering this question, I sharpen the differences between two democratic traditions by way of an interrogation of Lisa Disch’s critique of deliberative democracy. First, I defend deliberative democracy against Disch’s attempts to exclude it from the constructivist turn. In response to Disch’s critique that deliberative democrats remove indeterminacy from processes of representation, I argue that deliberative democrats are more specifically interested in the more and less acceptable ways in which speech might influence the minds of constituents. It is true that deliberative democrats incorporate a normative commitment to autonomous judgment formation, but they do not thereby determine what the specific outcomes of judgment should be. Second, I directly critique Disch’s theory of radical democracy, arguing that Disch’s democratic system fails to deliver on important promises of the constructivist turn precisely because it cannot separate between the more and less legitimate ways of influencing minds. It fails to conceive of democratic representation as an activity that is meaningfully co-constitutive, and it cannot provide for the reasonable conditions of judgment.