Defending democracy against technocracy and populism

Any account of liberal representative democracy will more or less explicitly address the following three conditions for democracy to work.11 This paper is the result of a most enjoyable and inspiring collaboration. It has been presented on several occasions and we have received helpful comments from many colleagues, in particular, André Bächtiger, Dirk Jörke and Regina Kreide. We are saddened that Rainer did not live to see its publication and greatly miss his intelligence, humor and friendship. D.G. & C.L. First, the legitimacy of democracy depends on some real link between the public will and the public policies and office holders selected. Yet this ideal is severely undermined when the will of the people is in large part manufactured by political elites (Fishkin & Mansbridge, 2017, p. 7). In this case, the causal arrow goes in the wrong direction—to the extent that large minorities or sometimes majorities of existing liberal democracies are dissatisfied with, and feel left out or alienated from, the democratic practices and routines they experience (Offe, 2017, p. 15). We may safely infer that this concern to a large degree fuels populist anger, protest, and contestation. A second condition, however, is meant to provide an answer to the question how to best make collectively binding decisions that from an anticipated future standpoint we have no reason to regret. You may call this the concern for the epistemic dimension (or the epistemic properties and characteristics) of the process, rules and procedures of political decision-making and its modalities, a concern that feeds into another symptom of the malaise of democratic government and governance, that is, technocratic rule. Third, democracies should be regarded as self-scrutinizing and self-correcting political systems that can respond to externally induced as well as internal deviations from its normative ideals. This is why they face notorious and ongoing controversial demands for their own revision, development, and improvement—the challenge here consists in “a tricky recursive logic" (Offe, 2017, p. 14). Offering an attractive account of how these conditions are to be fulfilled in modern representative democracies, deliberative democracy has become a dominant school within democratic theory. Yet at the same time, and perhaps surprisingly, it has also become the culprit in a peculiar trial: Does deliberative democracy offer justifications for institutional reforms that effectively depoliticize decision-making and erect an elitist, technocratic, "postdemocratic" order? And does it, in consequence, also bear responsibility for populist reactions against this elitist order that insulates decision-making processes from "ordinary people"? In this paper, we want to show that this assumption is baseless. Neither does deliberative democracy justify depoliticization or technocratic rule, nor do technocratic and populistic approaches present viable alternatives to the conceived shortcomings of liberal representative democracy—they rather miss the democratic core of collective action altogether. Thus, seeking to correct some notorious misunderstandings about the goals of deliberative democracy, we will, in what follows, begin by showing that the contrasting juxtaposition between elitism or technocracy on the one hand and populism on the other is misleading. In essence, both elitist and populist thinking are antipluralist and lead to the rejection of any form of mediation, reconciliation, and pluralistic interest representation and their institutionalization. We continue by arguing that deliberative democracy is by no means an elitist or antipluralist school of thought. On the contrary, it centers on the values of pluralism and respect for difference. Although deliberative democratic theory stresses the epistemic dimension of democracy, this epistemic quality is neither dependent on consensual decision-making nor presupposes some kind of prepolitical standard for the quality or “truth” of political decisions. Importantly, it also does not imply a requirement for the societal claims and views fed into the democratic process to fulfill specific quality criteria, for example, to be impartial, well considered, or rational. What deliberative democracy instead points out is that the normative core of representative democracy consists in an open and inclusive process of will formation and decision-making, the epistemic quality of which is ultimately based on its orientation toward reaching understanding, even if in practice, hardly any decision is made consensually. Adopting a Habermasian, systemic account of deliberative democracy, the final section of the paper thus concludes that the ultimate challenge for deliberative democracy lies in defending the procedural consensus on which representative democracy rests against populism and technocracy—while at the same conceptualizing and informing metadeliberative processes that enable the renewal of this procedural core in the ongoing transformations toward new forms of democracy. In the last three decades, we have witnessed three parallel developments: the rise of nonmajoritarian expert institutions, in particular in the context of European integration; the rise of theories of deliberative democracy as the now dominant strand in democratic theory; and, more recently, the rise of right-wing populist parties in Europe and beyond. Does this mean the three developments are causally related? Several authors make respective arguments. Peter Mair, for example, drew a connection between the increasingly technocratic character of EU institutions and political theories that justify expert rule as deliberative (Mair, 2013). In a similar line of thought, Buchstein and Jörke (2007) have criticized theories of deliberative democracy and even the practice of deliberation as such as inherently elitist. In a more recent contribution, Jörke and Selk (2017) explain the rise of populism as a democratic reaction to a neoliberal, postdemocratic order, in which the link between the public will and public policy is effectively lost. At a first glance, the diagnosis might make sense: technocracy is in essence elitism, and populism is characterized by antielitist sentiments and mobilization. By accepting this reading, however, we effectively buy into the populists’ false dichotomy between a “real people” and the “corrupt elites.” Although criticism of unequal voice in democratic politics is surely warranted, it is impossible to clearly define and circumscribe “the elite,” let alone “the people.” Any attempt to divide the demos into homogenous opposing groups (workers/capitalists, natives/immigrants, citizens/elite) is not only doomed to fail analytically but also dangerous to the ideal of liberal democracy itself. Moreover, and more importantly, the juxtaposition of elitism/technocracy on the one hand and populism on the other blinds out important commonalities between the two. Urbinati (2014) identifies the two currents of technocracy and populism as disfigurements of democracy that break down the diarchy of will and opinion that procedural democracy depends on. Technocracy ultimately reduces democracy to the search for truth (assessment of opinions), while populism subjects the pluralism of opinions to a putative “popular will.” In both cases, the justification of democracy is ultimately an instrumental one. In epistemic theories of democracy and technocratic institutions, democracy is an instrument in the quest for truth. In populist thinking, democracy serves to enable the rule of a homogenous “will of the people.” What both justify and label as “democracy,” however, is not the liberal democracy we are thinking about. Instead, technocracy and populism, respectively, envision political orders that deviate from the normative ideals of liberal democracy because they do not share them. [P]opulist and technocratic forms of discourse can be considered as two sides of the same coin, the coin being the critique of party democracy. [...] the idea of contemporary political life being restructured around a new cleavage between populism and technocracy actually masks a deeper dimension of political opposition – between party democracy and its critics – in terms of which both populism and technocracy find themselves on the same side. (Bickerton & Accetti, 2017, p. 201, emphasis in original) Bickerton and Accetti point out that the central commonality between technocracy and populism consists in the negation of interest pluralism and mediation through political parties. Populist and technocratic discourses thus center on the criticism of a specific form of democracy: that of representative party democracy. This form rests on the assumption that political legitimacy is provided by democratic procedures and the reconciliation of conflicting interests and not by the substance of political decisions alone (Bickerton & Accetti, 2017, p. 188). Both [populism and technocracy] are examples of ‘unmediated politics’ [emphasis added] dispensing with intermediate structures such as parties and representative institutions between a supposedly unitary and common interest of society [emphasis added] on the one hand and elites on the other.[...] populism stressing the centrality of a putative will of the people in guiding political action and technocracy stressing the centrality of rational speculation in identifying both the goals of a society and the means to implement them. (Caramani, 2017, p. 54) To summarize, populism and technocracy are united by the fiction of an objective or unitary will of the people or common good that is to be implemented against any opposition or conflicting interests. This leads to the devaluation of institutions and practices of mediation, representation, and interest reconciliation. Understanding the antipluralist momentum behind both populism and technocracy makes it clear that the juxtaposition of the two is inappropriate. Moreover, it becomes clearer what we have to defend against populist and technocratic currents: a proceduralism that recognizes the intrinsic rather than merely instrumental value of democratic procedures. This proceduralism is realized in the institutions of representative democracy, but also and more generally by linking formal and informal practices of mediation, coordination and communicative conflict management to collective decision-making in democratic institutions—that is, a deliberative-democratic system of will formation and decision-making. To understand how the theory of deliberative democracy not only allows us to explicate the deliberative and inclusive qualities of democratic procedures, but can also inform their adaptation and reform in the face of large-scale societal transformations and the challenges of populism and technocracy, however, it is important to get the theory and its intentions right. Arguing that deliberative democratic theory can provide guidance in providing an account of liberal representative democracy that addresses the contemporary challenges of technocracy and populism as well as the societal transformations that drive them, we need to clarify the theory's fundamental normative principles and assumptions. There are obviously numerous elaborate accounts of deliberative democracy that differ in how they conceptualize and locate deliberation and in the institutional implications they derive from the idea that democratic legitimacy is based on inclusive and deliberative procedures.22 For an overview of pluralism in deliberative theory, see Bächtiger, Niemeyer, Neblo, Steenbergen, and Steiner (2010). However, we believe that a majority of deliberative theorists do share the fundamental normative principles we outline here and will at least in part be persuaded by implications we derive from them. Although we concede that our systemic, Habermasian account of deliberative democracy is only one possible account of the theory, we also hope that some of the clarifications of its aims, principles, and assumptions that we offer here will seem relevant to other variants of the theory as well—and in particular, to the theory's critics. If we review the broad lines of criticism the model of deliberative democracy has been exposed to in recent years, one concern is paramount: that it is ridden with and potentially finally unraveled by the internal tensions that exist between its commitment to both the principle of equality and its insistence on the necessary epistemic dimension of collectively autonomous will formation. These concerns have triggered severe doubts about the very possibility to redeem the promises of a deliberative outlook within the structural and institutional conditions and social foundations of modern mass democracies. To a significant degree, these doubts counter the expectations that 20 years ago, James Bohman invested into the “coming of age of deliberative democracy“ (Bohman, 1998, p. 423). Although Bohman's hope was that the idea of deliberative democracy would enhance a civic reclamation and transformation of politics, this hope was in conflict with the maturation of the theory that entailed taking seriously the complexity and inherent plurality of modern societies and depended on the reference to the basic institutions of liberal democracy. Similarly, Mansbridge and a number of other authors have argued that any concept of democracy must have an irreducible and constitutive reference to the plurality of interests and the fact of power (Mansbridge et al., 2010; see also Martí, 2017; Rostbøll, 2017; Weinstock, 2017). This implies that the rationality assumptions of deliberative democracy as well as the central idea of reaching understanding have to be complemented with a normative concept of democratic respect and political compromise. It is in this sense that realism in deliberative democracy has improved by taking up Habermas’ outline of democracy's procedural core in Between Facts and Norms, considering also other than purely discursive orientations and modes of interaction, such as negotiation and compromise (Habermas, 1996). To Habermas, a strictly procedural interpretation of the democratic processes enables us to bring the norms and principles of discourse ethics to bear on politics—but through the legal structuration of procedures rather than the sanctioning of individual citizens’ interaction orientations. Nonetheless, a tension between the egalitarian and the epistemic pole of deliberative democratic legitimacy remains. This tension, however, is no deficit but a productive tension that democratic legitimacy rests upon and that establishes democratic practice as an ongoing and open process of self-scrutinizing. In this sense, it is true that, according to Habermas, democratic legitimacy is ultimately dependent on the cognitive content of reasons. It is also true, however, that the content and validity of reasons on the one hand and the inclusive practice of equal individual political autonomy on the other hand are connected (see Habermas, 2013, p. 68). According to a more or less uncontroversial understanding, the idea of democratic legitimacy requires that the addressees of political decisions at the same time need to be able to view themselves as authors of the very same decisions that bind them. This requirement has an internal reference to the deliberative form of will formation in that the connection between democratic legitimacy and public preference formation can only take place in the light of general and transferable reasons with which citizens can justify the reciprocal force they exert upon one another through political decisions (Forst, 2007). At the same time, the conditions under which public deliberation can take on a legitimizing function are rather demanding, given that permissible reasons have to fulfill at least two requirements. On the one hand, they must consider the interests and ideas of all affected, while on the other hand, reasons only qualify as reasons (rather than force, manipulation or pure self-interest) if public deliberation remains sensitive to the quality of reasons to which a justifying function and effect is assigned (see Lafont, 2015, p. 46). It is rather obvious that these demanding requirements of deliberative “preference laundering” (Goodin, 1986) cannot be met by any individual citizen, not even by an (elite) group of citizens alone, but must be based on some all-inclusive input, mediation, and accountability mechanism. Against the background of these conceptual clarifications, we should stop seeing the various turns deliberative theory is said to have taken (i.e., the institutional, the empirical, and the systemic) as a sequence of well-bounded generations of theories but should instead regard them as mutually dependent and supportive components of a common project (see Dryzek, 2017, p. 611). In the light of external and internal criticism it becomes clear that this project derives its strengths, its normative attractiveness and political meaning from a comprehensive outlook integrating all these dimensions into a conceptual frame that prevents us from privileging one perspective over the other and thus, for example, from considering deliberative democracy as a toolkit for insular democratic innovations at the level of the forum (Dryzek, 2017, p. 612). Taking this more general lesson seriously, we can also see why, according to the deliberative account, the high demands of reflection and justification required for the generation of democratic legitimacy cannot be met within single forums. Similarly, we cannot restrict the systemic view to considering (and improving) the internal connections between institutions and discourses but also need to realize that a deliberative system remains embedded in different institutional configurations that modern mass democracies have acquired over time.33 For this important point, see the instructive functional and context-sensitive accounts by Bächtiger and Beste (2017) or Warren (2017). Deliberative and nondeliberative sites in the democratic system necessarily remain tied to the dynamics of a more anarchic use of communicative freedom in the broader public sphere, in civil society, social movements, and political protest (Habermas, 1996; Lafont, 2020). These considerations suggest that the challenge for deliberative democracy is not to succumb to complexity and to preserve its critical force. In accordance with its fundamental normative commitments, this critical force can be upheld only when we acknowledge the role of inclusion required for democratic reflection and justification. To the criterion of inclusion, not only the discursive representation of all relevant arguments, stories, and subjective stances (see Dryzek, 2017, pp. 619–620) matters but also the boundaries of the demos and the representation of persons. It matters and must matter because in the end, it is the individual person as a subject of claims to justice that deliberative democracy must give reasons to (see Forst, 2011, p. 15). most systemic in deliberative democracy, by the publication of a now by Mansbridge, and & Mansbridge, is in a sense a to its in Habermas’ and a of some connected with its interpretation in and of To it very the deliberative system perspective that legitimacy claims should be at the political system at large and not at single within the deliberation can be or and take place in a of different different of p. In out the system as the for legitimacy the systemic perspective a that is more in with the intentions behind Habermas’ of a deliberative democracy in Between Facts and (Habermas, 1996). and of the systemic are perhaps best with the that democracies are in which a of institutions, and sites of the political of societal interests under the of inclusion and integrating them into political decisions based on general and transferable reasons. What is that no single forum or alone the democratic to the decisions and policies that democracies (Mansbridge et al., p. What is a political system be as deliberative and democratic even if no single forum within it is both at the same If we Mansbridge et we have to the idea of and it as a of the institutional or democracy can and does take under conditions of At the same time, the systemic perspective allows us to the deliberative of the idea of democratic and in a that allows us to of it in large-scale societal Moreover, the systems perspective makes it possible to the of of a system and finally us to large and broad systemic that the of into the (Mansbridge et al., p. value of the systemic perspective becomes even more upon of three basic of democracy that Mansbridge et take to be In what they to as the epistemic function of a democratic system they to the fact that we want a system of democratic will formation and decision-making to and decisions that are by and and are the of and of relevant (Mansbridge et al., p. function of such a system is to respect and most importantly, the egalitarian function requires the inclusion of and concerns and claims on the of equality because equality is the central of what makes democratic processes democratic (Mansbridge et al., p. If we and in that the deliberative systems perspective becomes a functional of and practices that do not with even the requirements of respect that all theorists consider central to deliberation & 2015, p. we might miss the point of a account of the deliberative Although the of the theory to justify and decision-making processes is its real should be to and why democratic institutions fulfill their deliberative egalitarian and and a critical however, means first and to if and how a particular a function necessary to the democratic in the productive tension between the egalitarian and the epistemic pole of democracy. Any critical of an thus has to be an and as such requires a normative that allows us to the of a democratic system with reference to and inclusion (Dryzek, 2017, p. systemic perspective of deliberative democratic theory by to provide such a by of the procedural that rule in modern democracies. between accounts that provide a normative justification of democratic legitimacy and democratic theory is that the to a for why people under democratic rule as while the to explain the fact that, of modern representative mass democracies actually have representative democracy as that fact that, at first glance, it does not seem to fulfill the demanding of However, this does not imply that accounts are or justify the with all its To the contrary, only understanding the reasons for why citizens of mass societies do with political decisions as of allows for a critical of when and why societal and institutional leads to of the conditions of democratic legitimacy and enables us to viable for democracies to In this sense, of democracy with a requires a of democratic legitimacy 2013, Habermasian systemic perspective on deliberative democracy to the and two central First, it deliberation other inclusive as to the generation of democratic legitimacy in given the complexity of modern mass it that only a of between an core and a informal public can a democratic system that political decisions the of individual citizens while individual Both claims will be What is the function of deliberation in in mass societies the following On the one hand, seeking consensus about “truth” or of political decisions is given societal On the other hand, the principle of to any individual views in decision-making. Thus, consensus or the only epistemic quality that can make decisions is some of mutually justification that with In particular, this justification will have to address views it counter It obvious that can be no such justification. Any form of proceduralism such as democratic or pure merely the with the of political is that political equality in democratic or pure is to the equal formal of to inform a decision with their as a matter of it is not the that to a decision will effectively have And the individual to do in the future are based on pure given societal majority the perspective of the societal views the decision counter accepting respective political decisions thus becomes to neither has their view the decision nor is any reason to that this will be different in future decisions. Yet at the same time, deliberation does not political decisions democratic In technocratic expert rule, for example, decisions may be based on while the views of of citizens are What is that in societies technocratic deliberation all-inclusive proceduralism and all-inclusive proceduralism of at least some citizens and thus the principle of the same reasons. to this is that deliberation in democracy has a normative for example, deliberation in decisions by the search for truth or in a democracy is an but not the only function of deliberation pp. In order to the and democratic function of deliberation is to all citizens that they can with a decision because are good reasons for them to with it on their own This epistemic dimension of democratic deliberation is to the principle of it does not for but at other citizens with opposing views to a policy decision on its own deliberative means to do are but they differ from based on alone, which might be to is to democratic deliberation and respective are in a deliberative may be required to inform of a political matter that can be However, in democratic decision-making, must be into that address opposing societal views and that are to these opposing the perspective of the democratic ideal of public deliberation to democratic legitimacy by citizens to the and policies to

Deliberative democracy · Democracy · Law and economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Populism · Sociology · Technocracy · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Law · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Public Administration · Social Media and Politics

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