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The Deliberative Model of Democracy: Two Critical Remarks
Author(s) -
GEENENS RAF
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
ratio juris
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.344
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1467-9337
pISSN - 0952-1917
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9337.2007.00365.x
Subject(s) - judgement , normative , democracy , deliberative democracy , epistemology , politics , voting , political science , normative model of decision making , sociology , philosophy , law and economics , law
. The deliberative model of democracy, as presented by Jürgen Habermas and others, claims to reconstruct the normative content of the idea of democracy. However, since it overemphasises the epistemic facet of decision‐making, the model is unable to take into account other valuable aspects of democracy. This is shown in reference to two concrete phenomena from political reality: majority voting and the problem of the dissenter. In each case, the deliberative model inevitably fails to account for several normatively desirable features of democracy, such as formal political equality and proper respect for the judgement of each citizen.