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Is there any other Possibility of Deliberative Democracy?
導師：簡赫琳 教授 學生：郭仕旻 M976020008 Recently, the theory of deliberative democracy has been much more attractive than ever. The core of it is to claim that citizens are the subjective participants in the democratic system, and citizens should participate in the public affairs positively. Otherwise, it shouldn’t only be narrowed in vote, plead or social campaign when we talk about the political participation; participants should deliberate publicly with the public affairs in the condition that everyone has sufficient information, equal chance to make a statement and fair procedure of deciding. Then the participants could make some workable opinions. As a newly democratic governing instrument, western countries has developed over 20 ways in operating deliberative democracy, they have the same feature: it’s the complement of the representative democracy in the part of participation, not the substitute; it emphasizes the quality of deliberate, so this could assure the participants to get the sufficient information and the chance to deliberate fairly and rationally.
According to Cohen, the ideal deliberative procedure has five main features: 1. A deliberative democracy is an ongoing and independent association, whose
members expect it to continue into the indefinite future.
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2. The members of the association share the view that the appropriate terms of association provide a framework for or are the results of their deliberation. For them, free deliberation among equals is the basis of legitimacy.
3. A deliberative democracy is a pluralistic association. The members have diverse preferences, convictions, and ideals concerning the conduct of their own lives. 4. Because the members of a democratic association regard deliberative procedures
as the source of legitimacy, it is important to them that the terms of their
association not merely be the results of their deliberation, but also be manifest to them as such.
5. The members recognize one another as having deliberative capacities.
If we can attain the above, then we should consider how to practice the deliberation. There are three general aspects of deliberation:
1. A need to decide on an agenda.
2. To propose alternative solutions to the problems on the agenda, supporting those solutions with reasons.
3. To conclude by settling on an alternative.
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And we know that, if the situation fits the previous assumptions, rational and self-interest individuals will get together deliberating fairly and rationally about their own interests; finally, we expect that they will find their interests come to a convergence after their deliberation. We might think that everyone has already expressed his or her entirely opinion successfully, but there is a fact that, after all, everyone’s preference is not the same. And there is only one final solution through the deliberation, can it represent so many other preferences? Though the Rational Choice Theory shows that the preferences of individual could be ranked, individual will do his or her best to pursue the highest preference, but what if someone has only one preference? Even the final solution seems feasible (but it’s irrelevant to the preference of the individual), does the deliberation make sense for the individual who has only one preference? In the end, as long as we set up our preferences, the other possibilities are eliminated. It means that due to the limited preferences, the options we could choose are limited.
What interests me most is the problem of representative, does the final solution represent the majority? How many numbers do we need to be called “the majority”? If there are 51 of a hundred against 49, should we say the consequence is fair? Or there are 90 of a hundred against 10, is the obvious minority irrational? In other words, if the majority is irrational, is it fair for the rational minority to take the consequence?
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Secondly, what I’d like to know is the problem of final solution; is there any other possible except the outcome of deliberation? Finally, I’d like to analyze some
examples of deliberative democracy to find out whether there are some contradictions in these examples. I’ll start from the rational choice theory to the public choice theory to exam the reason of individuals and the reason of groups, I think this would help to figure out the differences between the individual preference and the collective preference; then turn to the part of legitimacy of deliberative democracy by checking the relative journals. I hope I could discover some useful and practical procedures of making decisions. Finally, I would exam some current issues to see whether these issues are suitable for deliberating or not.
