Toward a Democracy of the Emotions

Political theories often begin with (or tacitly assume) an account of the problem to which they are intended to provide a solution. Today this problem is often framed in terms of the degree of difference, diversity or pluralism to be found in contemporary societies. The forces of enmity aroused by such diversity threaten to create situations in which some groups oppress, attack and marginalize others, and to lead to conflicts justified by reference to ideas of ethnicity, nationality or race. How, then, can contemporary political regimes avoid these dangers? To put matters in terms of top-down state-centered criteria, the aim is to secure a polity’s legitimacy and stability in a world of reasonable (and unreasonable) pluralism. Given that the citizens of the contemporary nation-state differ widely in their values, how can this state be organized in such a way that it secures their general support and so underpins its continuing stability? To put things in terms of bottom-up civil societycentered criteria, the task is for people to learn to take fair decisions for themselves despite their differences, or to learn to use their differences as a way of creating a better world together. How can citizens treat their differences as a resource as they seek to join with one another in a union that does not silence any of their distinct voices? What kind of political processes, if any, could facilitate this? A number of political theorists have recently proposed deliberative democracy as a solution to this problem. For our purposes, this aspect of the political system can be defined as a series of interlinked public spaces in which all citizens can participate in an ongoing free and fair debate leading to reasonable agreement – or even rational consensus – on matters of public concern . The key idea is that, if all citizens have the opportunity to come together in public forums in order to engage in structured discussion under certain specified conditions, the results will be political outputs to which they will all freely consent. Although citizens may not agree with all the specific details of every political output of this system, they will support them since they have emerged from a deliberative process in which they have played a full and active part. For Seyla Benhabib, for example, the “legitimacy and rationality” of a political system results from “the free and unconstrained public deliberation of all about matters of public concern.” 1 Such deliberative processes can assume a variety of forms. At the local level, for instance, these could include the various means by which public agencies responsible for health, housing, and education seek to involve local citizens in decisionmaking regarding the planning and delivery of services. Local citizens may also