Argumentation in Political Deliberation Edited by Marcin Lewiński Dima Mohammed Universidade Nova de Lisboa John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia Table of contents Introduction Argumentation in political deliberation Marcin Lewiński and Dima Mohammed 1 Articles Strategic maneuvering in argumentative discourse in political deliberation Frans H. van Eemeren Strategic maneuvering in European Parliamentary Debate Bart Garssen Pursuing multiple goals in European Parliamentary Debates: EU immigration policies as a case in point Dima Mohammed he place of counter discourse in two methods of public deliberation: he conférence de citoyens and the débat public on nanotechnologies in France Marianne Doury and Assimakis Tseronis Deliberation digitized: Designing disagreement space through communication-information services Mark Aakhus (How) do participants in online discussion forums create ‘echo chambers’? he inclusion and exclusion of dissenting voices in an online forum about climate change Arthur Edwards 11 33 47 75 101 127 Debating multiple positions in multi-party online deliberation: Sides, positions, and cases Marcin Lewiński 151 Subject index 177 Introduction Argumentation in political deliberation Marcin Lewiński and Dima Mohammed ArgLab, Nova Institute of Philosophy (IFILNOVA-FCSH) / Universidade Nova de Lisboa 1. Argumentation theory and political deliberation As famously declared by Aristotle, both the dialectical and rhetorical study of argumentation “belong to no separately deined science” (Rhetoric: 1354a), since “neither of them is identiiable with knowledge of the contents of any speciic subject, but they are distinct abilities of supplying arguments” (Rhetoric: 1356a). Indeed, one can argue in various contexts about all sorts of matters, from cooking to philosophy and from medicine to politics. herefore, the function of the rhetorical study of argumentation is “to see [theōrēsai] available means of persuasion” (Rhetoric: 1355b) in all such contexts, rather than to investigate one particular subject, as is characteristic of other arts and sciences such as politics, medicine, or law. All the same, rhetoric is primarily an art of public argumentation. Hence, it most properly, if not exclusively (see Garver 1994: Ch. 2), applies to the three typical contexts of public speaking: deliberative, judicial, and epideictic. hus, besides being a counterpart of a dialectical method (Rhetoric: 1354a), rhetoric is closely associated with ethics and politics and requires some insight into virtues and basic political issues such as “inances, war and peace, national defense, imports and exports, and the framing of laws” (Rhetoric: 1359b). While a “full examination” of them should be let “to political science” (Rhetoric: 1359b), “the result is that rhetoric is like some ofshoot of dialectic and ethical studies (which is rightly called politics)” (Rhetoric: 1356a). In sum, Aristotle’s message is this — the dialectical and rhetorical study of argumentation concern the methods of reasoning and persuasion about all kinds of subjects in all kinds of circumstances (other than those with established certainty and knowledge where logic applies). Still, while in principle context-independent, argument analysis is particularly pertinent to forms of argumentation in public contexts. Political deliberation is the irst among such contexts to investigate: “although the method of deliberative and judicial speaking doi 10.1075/bct.76.00int 2015 © John Benjamins Publishing Company 2 Marcin Lewiński and Dima Mohammed is the same […] deliberative subjects are iner and more important to the state than private transactions [in courts — ML&DM]” (Rhetoric: 1354b). he link between argumentation studies and collective deliberation in a political context was thus established in antiquity and calls for a continuous inquiry. Deliberation, in both a more traditional, strict understanding and in a recently advocated looser sense, has been consistently seen as a prime venue for public reasoning and argument. In a strict sense, collective deliberation is typically deined as a public argumentative discussion, usually taking place in formalized settings such as parliaments and councils, over the most prudent or expedient courses of action that a given group should take. Contemporary scholars, following the lead of Habermas (1989, 1996), characteristically add a normative dimension to deliberation — it should in fact rely upon publicly accountable forms of reasonable argumentation taking place under conditions of equality and inclusiveness. So conceived, deliberation is a central element of a normatively preferred democratic system. Some scholars extend this strict notion of deliberation and embrace various forms of “everyday [political] talk” as belonging to “the deliberative system” (e.g., Mansbridge 1999). In this loose sense, deliberation takes place whenever citizens discuss publicly relevant issues in a back and forth of argumentative exchanges aimed at forming and critically testing political opinions, rather than directly deciding on a course of action. Such informal public deliberations in fact constitute a vibrant public sphere indispensable in a healthy democratic polity. Acknowledging the centrality of both formal and informal deliberative practices in a democracy, political theorists even speak of “the deliberative turn” in democratic theory and stress that “argument always has to be central to deliberative democracy” (Dryzek 2000: 71). Similarly, the proponents of “the argumentative turn” in policy studies maintain that “it is argumentation that constitutes the primary consideration in the world of policy making” (Fischer and Gottweis 2012: 14). Yet, the study of the pivotal argumentative aspect of deliberation is still underdeveloped. he goal of this volume is to further the examination of the role, shape, and quality of argumentation in political deliberation from the perspective of argumentation theory. Well-articulated theories of argumentation, such as pragma-dialectics (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004; van Eemeren 2010) or Walton’s New Dialectic (1998), are in a good position to signiicantly contribute to the study of public deliberation by revealing the inner workings of argumentative interactions that constitute deliberative discourse. he basic theoretical assumption underlying investigations in the chapters comprising this volume is most fully elaborated in the current pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation (van Eemeren 2010; van Eemeren, Houtlosser, Ihnen, and Lewiński 2010): in order to properly understand and evaluate ordinary argumentation, one has to undertake a detailed study of Argumentation in political deliberation varied contexts for argumentation, including political deliberation. herefore, it is in the contextual analysis of more or less institutionalized practices of argumentation where the focal theoretical and empirical interests of argumentation studies converge. (As mentioned below, a similar ‘contextual assumption’ is gaining prominence in the political analysis of deliberative practices within the deliberative theory of democracy.) Accordingly, the chapters in this volume investigate a variety of theoretical and empirical questions: How can we best theorize, analyze, and evaluate argumentation in the context of political deliberation? What is the impact of the contextual conditions in diferent deliberative activities on the shape and quality of public argument? What are the typical forms of deliberative argument and counterargument? To what extent is the “virtual public sphere” transforming the way we engage in public argument? Does it allow for inclusive participation and genuine argumentative debate between advocates of various political views? By addressing these questions, the volume hopes to provide a focused account of the multifaceted argumentative practices across the various deliberative arenas. Before introducing the contributions to this volume, we would like to engage in a brief discussion regarding the interplay between argumentation theory and political theory (or perhaps between argumentation theory and any other theory that examines subjects which constitute contexts for argumentation, such as legal theory, health communication, business communication, philosophy of science, etc.). As mentioned above, this was a major concern in the classical work of Aristotle. His solution follows a well-known distinction between koina and idia, oten interpreted, respectively, as forms of argument common to all disciplines and as material premises belonging to a speciic ield of inquiry. Ideally, the study of argumentation in context requires a mutual insight into both the methods and contents of argument. his, by extension, calls for a scholar to be an expert in both the (logical, dialectical, rhetorical) methods of argumentation and in the respective subject theory (such as political theory, law, or medicine). As is clear in Aristotle’s work, this requirement is rather hard to achieve, but the analysis of political deliberation comes closest to the satisfactory equilibrium due to the intricate interrelations between public argument and public policies. Today, one can distinguish at least three levels of examination of political deliberation within argumentation studies: 1. At a minimum, argumentation scholars illustrate their largely theoretical investigations into forms of argumentation with examples drawn from political discourse, oten with an implicit assumption that it is here where one inds the most relevant or representative instantiations of argumentative phenomena such as fallacies (e.g., Aikin and Casey 2011). In a diferent vein, rhetorical case studies (e.g., Zarefsky 2014) move towards an Aristotelian practice of examining the details of political argumentation which is treated as the chief 3 4 Marcin Lewiński and Dima Mohammed element of civic engagement. However, despite crucial insights, no systematic attempts at a theoretical integration between argumentation and political theory are made. 2. A closer integration can take a largely top-down or bottom-up direction. Some advanced theories of argumentation start by providing a theoretical background for a systematic study of argumentative contexts, including political deliberation. Rather than being used chiely for illustrative purposes, deliberative discourse becomes an object of consistent inquiry into the conditions it creates for argumentative exchanges. As a result, models of argumentation in deliberative context are proposed, whether principally on descriptive (van Eemeren 2010: Ch. 5) or normative (Walton 1998: Ch. 6; McBurney, Hitchcock, and Parsons 2007) grounds. By contrast, empirically-oriented researchers originating in discourse analysis (Tracy 2010) or rhetorical studies (Asen 2010), use (qualitative) methods of argument analysis and evaluation to systematically investigate the intricacies of actual deliberations. heir results allow them to engage in a broader debate over the role of public argumentation in democratic policy making. Contributions to this volume largely fall under these two categories. hey employ concepts and methods developed within argumentation theory to analyze, evaluate, and theorize deliberative activities in a way that can not only directly further argumentation studies but also importantly complement both theoretical and empirical accounts of deliberation ofered by political philosophers and political scientists. 3. However, one may hope that such studies, while signiicant in themselves, also pave the way for a fuller integration between argumentation theory and a given subject theory, in this case political theory. As with Aristotle, the students of argumentation in the political context seem to face a feasible task — as proven in the recent work of Fairclough and Fairclough (2012, 2013) who inquire into “the nature of the political” by analyzing practical argumentation in various forms of political discourse. Similarly, theorists of deliberative democracy and policy analysts who put argument at the very center of their conceptual apparatus begin employing tools of argumentation theory (e.g. Rehg 2005) — but a broader integration is still pending. One obvious avenue for scrutinizing commonalities between argumentation and political studies is conceptual work dealing with fundamental notions such as the rationality of political argument and political action, especially in the context of the deliberative theory of democracy. Early moves taken in this direction by Habermas (1984: Ch.1) and Wenzel (1979) require a revisited inquiry that would incorporate recent developments in both ields (see Rehg 2005). However, such conceptual work can hugely beneit from a close examination of particular Argumentation in political deliberation contexts for political deliberation. Not surprisingly, it is in the contextual study of practices that are both argumentative and political where argumentation and political research can converge, mutually beneitting both ields. Argumentation theory seems to be undergoing a “contextual turn” which channels scholarly interest into examination of argumentation as it happens in a wide array of everyday contexts. Such contextual studies, of course, build upon previous theoretical eforts to deine argumentative rationality and construct ideal models that would embody it. Actual argumentative contexts can be grasped through a method of comparing and contrasting them with the ideal models. Quite interestingly, a similar development has been taking place in the theory of deliberative democracy. A number of scholars (e.g., Bächtiger et al. 2010; Chambers 2009; Dryzek and Hendriks 2012) have recently contributed to, or observed, the shit of focus from the stipulation of the normative conditions of possibility for reasoned and legitimate deliberation to the analysis of actual conditions of performance in diferent deliberative settings. Hence argumentation research and political research in the tradition of the deliberative theory of democracy converge in their step from ideal theoretical models towards a systematic study of concrete contexts of argumentation. he chapters collected in this volume employ concepts and methodologies developed within argumentation theory to investigate the speciics of particular deliberative venues, whether formal or informal. By doing so, we hope, they contribute to obtaining a more comprehensive insight into what argumentative exchanges in deliberative contexts actually are. his should be of interest to students of deliberation and argumentation alike. In addition, they problematize and theorize some vital issues related to the study of situated argumentation, thus contributing to the study of argumentation in context at large. 2. Overview of the volume Following the more inclusive notion of deliberation mentioned above, the volume is divided into two basic parts dealing either with largely formal or informal deliberative contexts. Each part opens with a more theoretical contribution, providing a conceptual background for analyzing and evaluating argumentation in deliberative contexts (van Eemeren, Aakhus). Formally institutionalized deliberation is oten associated with parliamentary discussions, and such is the case here where argumentation in the European Parliament is taken into scrutiny (Garssen, Mohammed). Besides, some newer forms of public deliberation — consensus conferences and public hearings — are analyzed (Doury and Tseronis). he study of informal deliberations focuses on discussions in the virtual public sphere — whether in Internet groups (Edwards) or online newspapers (Lewiński). 5 6 Marcin Lewiński and Dima Mohammed Frans van Eemeren, in “Strategic maneuvering in argumentative discourse in political deliberation,” lays theoretical foundations for the study of argumentation in political deliberation from the perspective of the pragma-dialectical theory developed at the University of Amsterdam over the last 30 years. Pragma-dialectics is arguably the only argumentation theory today with a comprehensive and consistent research program. Van Eemeren expounds the theory in its latest version, where dialectical and rhetorical concerns are integrated in the notion of strategic maneuvering. He proposes to treat contexts for argumentation as communicative activity types belonging to the larger genres of communicative activity. Public deliberation is analyzed as one of such crucial genres. It creates particular conditions for strategic maneuvering in argumentative discourse that can be systematically characterized using the ideal model of a critical discussion as a conceptual template. Van Eemeren illustrates his points with examples of ongoing pragma-dialectical research on argumentation in political deliberation. In “Strategic maneuvering in European Parliamentary debate” Bart Garssen applies the framework developed by van Eemeren to analyze legislative debates in the European Parliament (EP). Garssen builds on previous work in which this particular type of debate is characterized as a distinct argumentative activity type in which the possibilities for strategic maneuvering are predetermined. hrough the analyses of a series of examples, he shows that the preconditions for strategic maneuvering in this type of debate are not only to be found in institutional regulations and conventions, but also in the fact that the discussions take place in a complex context in which many parties with many diferent political interests act. Dima Mohammed, in “Pursuing multiple goals in European Parliamentary debates: EU immigration policies as a case in point,” also examines the complex context of EP debates and how it shapes argumentative exchanges. Mohammed focuses on the multi-purposive nature of these debates. On the basis of an argumentative analysis of a debate on immigration, she identiies diferent institutional goals that are pursued by Members of the EP and characterizes the ways in which these goals shape the argumentative exchanges. he goals she identiies relate to the occasion of the debate, to the powers of the EP, as well as to the diferent identities Members of the EP assume in the Parliament. Mohammed suggests that while the occasion-related and powers-related goals give rise to multiple discussions that are developed simultaneously, the identity-related goals guide the MEPs’ choices and formulations in these discussions. In “he place of counter discourse in two methods of public deliberation: he conférence de citoyens and the débat public on nanotechnologies in France,” Marianne Doury and Assimakis Tseronis study the way arguers manage the institutional constraints in two methods of public deliberation: consensus conference and public hearing. heir analysis of two concrete deliberation processes, where Argumentation in political deliberation the development of nanotechnology in France is discussed, focuses on the production of counter-discourse. Interestingly, the argumentative analysis of the discourse produced in each of these events shows that despite signiicant diferences in the available opportunities to express counter-discourse within the two distinct methods of public deliberation, in each case the participants found ways to express such counter-discourse. In view of their indings, Doury and Tseronis emphasize that the literature in the political and social sciences can help argumentation theorists gain a more reined understanding of the deliberative reality. Mark Aakhus opens the investigation of argumentation in the context of computer-mediated deliberation with “Deliberation digitized: Designing disagreement space through communication-information services.” Aakhus’s largely theoretical contribution extends the conversational approach to argumentation developed by Jacobs and Jackson and makes a case for treating Information and Communication Technologies that facilitate deliberation these days as speciic designs for managing disagreement through argumentative interactions. hey are thus much more than mere settings, or conduits, for otherwise ordinary deliberations. Rather, Aakhus argues, various designs for deliberation shape the content, direction, and outcomes of argumentation and the practical activity from which argumentation arises. Importantly, technological designs can be analyzed and evaluated as taking diferent levels of responsibility for the unfolding deliberative interactions, a claim Aakhus illustrates with examples stretching on a continuum from simple online chats and threaded discussions to complex Web and Social Media strategies that circulate data and arguments for others to use. Arthur Edwards, in “(How) do participants in online discussion forums create ‘echo chambers’? he inclusion and exclusion of dissenting voices in an online forum about climate change,” takes into scrutiny discussions on Climategate.nl (a skeptical Dutch online forum on climate change) to critically assess Sunstein’s claim that political online forums tend to be characterized by in-group homogeneity and easily slide towards group polarization. Edwards argues that political online forums can be treated as argumentative communities, with their own established rules and practices. Further, he observes that the argumentative community of Climategate.nl, through the discursive processes of inclusion and exclusion, gradually moved in the direction of an ‘echo chamber’ but was never completely homogeneous. Edwards concludes by suggesting ‘a counter-steering moderation policy’ as a remedy to deliberation limited to a homogenous in-group. Finally, in “Debating multiple positions in multi-party online deliberation: Sides, positions, and cases,” Marcin Lewiński takes readers’ discussions on Osama bin Laden’s killing in online editions of two British newspapers, he Guardian and he Telegraph, as a starting point to examine the complexities of multi-party deliberations in which many competing positions are debated. Lewiński argues that 7 8 Marcin Lewiński and Dima Mohammed such deliberations are challenging to argument analysis that typically approaches argumentative discussions in terms of dyadic encounters, for instance between a proponent and an opponent, or a speaker and an audience. He proposes a distinction between sides, positions, and cases as a useful addition to argument analysis in the context of multi-party deliberation. Acknowledgements Chapters comprising this volume originated in talks presented at the International Colloquium “Argumentation in Political Deliberation” organized by the Argumentation Lab, Nova Institute of Philosophy (IFILNOVA), FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2 September 2011. he colloquium and the volume are part of a project “Argumentation, Communication, and Context” sponsored by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT: PTDC/FIL– FIL/10117/2009) and carried out at the ArgLab. 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