Emancipation or Reaction: How Conservative is Deliberative Democracy?

Is deliberative democracy a conservative model? Is it based on mechanisms that systematically undermine its emancipatory claim? Drawing on the work of critics of deliberative democracy, this essay answers those questions by considering three distinct dimensions of the problem. First, with regard to the temporal dimension, it examines the extent to which the deliberative model tends to uphold the status quo. Then, as far as the material dimension is concerned, it considers whether deliberative democracy encourages depoliticization. Finally, the essay investigates the social dimension: Are certain social groups and their perspectives potentially excluded from the deliberation process. By examing relevant approaches taken both by theorists of deliberative democracy and empirical research on its actual implementations, the authors reach some nuanced conclusions. While it is true that potentially conservative tendencies can be identified in deliberative democracy, those tendencies can be avoided in two ways. First, the genuinely critical potential of deliberative practice must be emphasized in preference to other elements of the model. Second, we must bear in mind that deliberative processes should be embedded institutionally in the procedures of representative democracy.