A lot of what we understand to be trust is not trust; it is, instead, an active and conscious dec... more A lot of what we understand to be trust is not trust; it is, instead, an active and conscious decision to feign trust. We call this ‘as-if’ trust. If trust involves taking on risks and vulnerabilities, as-if trust involves taking on surplus risks and vulnerabilities. People may decide to act as if they trust in many situations, even when they do not have sufficient warrant to trust – which is to say even when they do not trust. Likewise, people might decide to act as if they trust even when they have good reasons to actively distrust. The surplus risks of as-if trust may be worth taking in a number of different contexts and for many reasons. We argue that as-if trust is a concept that should be added to our theoretical, practical, and political vocabularies of trust and distrust. In doing so, we discuss the main reasons for someone to act as if they trust. We then show that the practice of as-if trust has been recognized by other scholars but treated as trust. In response, we clarify how as-if trust differs from trust, and we discuss the utility and ubiquity of as-if trust, especially in politics.
Technocracy is a contested concept, but it is typically associated with the exercise of political... more Technocracy is a contested concept, but it is typically associated with the exercise of political power justified by claims to expertise, and is often contrasted with populist forms of politics. In Power Without Knowledge, Jeffrey Friedman reframes the concept of technocracy as a form of politics oriented to solving social and economic problems, and thereby extends it to cover not only epistemic elites but ordinary people. This move usefully challenges the simplistic framing of populism and technocracy as opposites, but at the expense of effacing other dimensions of democratic politics. Friedman also suggests that maximizing individuals’ exit opportunities will allow them to take advantage of their relatively reliable personal knowledge. The architecture of “exitocracy” would itself, however, be designed by experts who, as such, might be tempted to insulate the institutional architecture they design against democratic interference.
What can one say to the self-deceived? And-perhaps more importantly-who can say it? The attributi... more What can one say to the self-deceived? And-perhaps more importantly-who can say it? The attribution of self-deception depends heavily on the criteria for what is thought to be beyond dispute. For Galeotti, misperception of reality is a product of psychological and emotional pressure resulting in 'emotionally overloaded wishes', and her solution thus involves the construction of what an 'impartial' and 'dispassionate' observer would conclude when presented with the same evidence. Drawing on her examples of foreign policy decision-making, I discuss two objections. First, I ask whether being 'dispassionate' is enough get one off the hook from the sorts of value judgments that must be made in assessing evidence in complex situations. Second, I address the role of disagreement and dissent, and suggest that what is required are not actors with a lack of emotionally overloaded wishes, but actors with different goals and wishes. Thus, while Galeotti emphasises solutions drawing on ideals of impartiality, we might more productively look for solutions that engage multiple forms of partiality.
Alfred Moore and Michael K. MacKenzie argue that openness about disagreement among diverse sets o... more Alfred Moore and Michael K. MacKenzie argue that openness about disagreement among diverse sets of expert advisers can make it harder for political leaders to politicise expertise, and that we should reform expert advisory institutions so as to make public the reasons and rationales behind such disagreement.
How can expertise best be integrated within democratic systems? And how can such systems best ena... more How can expertise best be integrated within democratic systems? And how can such systems best enable lay judgment of expert claims? These questions are obscured by the common framing of democratic politics against an imagined system of pure and unmixed expert rule or “epistocracy.” Drawing on emerging research that attempts to think critically and institutionally about expertise, I distinguish three ways of democratically organizing relations between experts and non-experts: representative expertise, in which experts are taken to exercise limited and delegated power under the supervision of political representatives; participatory expertise, in which expertise is integrated with publics by means of directly participatory processes; and associative expertise, in which civil society groups, advocacy organizations, and social movements organize expert knowledge around the objectives of a self-organized association. Comparing these models according to the cognitive demands they make on lay citizens, the epistemic value of citizen contributions, and the ways in which they enable public scrutiny and contestation, I go on to explore how they can support and undermine one another, and how they can open up new questions about democracy, trust, and expertise in political science and political theory.
How do identity rules influence online deliberation? We address this question by drawing on a dat... more How do identity rules influence online deliberation? We address this question by drawing on a data set of 45 million comments on news articles on the Huffington Post from January 2013 to May 2015. At the beginning of this period, the site allowed commenting under what we call non-durable pseudonyms. In December 2013, Huffington Post moved to regulate its forum by requiring users to authenticate their accounts. And in June 2014, Huffington Post outsourced commenting to Facebook altogether, approximating a 'real-name' environment. We find a significant increase in the cognitive complexity of comments (a proxy for one aspect of deliberative quality) during the middle phase, followed by a decrease following the shift to real-name commenting through Facebook. Our findings challenge the terms of the apparently simple trade-off between the goods and bads of anonymous and real-name environments and point to the potential value of durable pseudonymity in the context of online discussion.
The idea that there might be democratic forms of non-participation has been largely overlooked in... more The idea that there might be democratic forms of non-participation has been largely overlooked in the theoretical and empirical literature on democracy. Non-participation has variously been seen as a threat to the proper functioning of democracy, as a rational choice, or (more rarely) as potentially beneficial at the systems level. We argue that there are forms of non-participation that may be justified on democratic grounds. Our main theoretical move is to distinguish between reflectivity (or thoughtfulness) and participation. We argue that the normative value of both participation and non-participation is conditioned by reflectivity, such that there may be democratically desirable forms of reflective non-participation. To support our claims, we provide examples of how non-participation can help support democratic goods-such as inclusion, influence, and legitimacy-that are normally associated only with democratic participation. P articipation is central to the modern democratic imagination. Yet non-participation is an unavoidable and important part of democratic life. It is unavoidable because there are so many ways of being active in democratic systems and so many collective decisions to be made. Voting is one of the most important forms of participation, but individuals and groups might also choose to petition their governments , initiate referendums, campaign for candidates, participate in public engagement processes, engage in online activism, or join street protests. Individuals might also enter the ranks of the political elite by, for example, joining the public This article has benefited from the thoughtful contributions of many people. We would first like to thank Polity's three anonymous reviewers for their feedback and suggestions. We would also like to thank the participants and discussants in several conference panels where the paper was presented, as well as Katheryn Hach for her diligent research assistance. A number of colleagues read early drafts of the paper and provided valuable feedback, including
The discussion of anonymity and deliberation has repeatedly circled around two contradictory nor-... more The discussion of anonymity and deliberation has repeatedly circled around two contradictory nor-mative positions. One is that anonymity is valuable because it enables expression free from fear of repercussions. The other is that anonymity is destructive because it enables expression free from fear of repercussions. The same feature that enables a teenager from a repressive religious community to talk freely about his sexuality without fear of exposure also enables cruel and abusive responses that may inhibit such expressions. This sort of trade off has become especially salient in the context of online political talk of the sort found in news commenting spaces. In lieu of costly moderation , some online news sites are shifting towards requiring real-name identification of com-menters in order to avoid the pitfalls of easy anonymity, increasingly outsourcing their commenting architecture to Facebook, whose spokespeople have argued that for safety's sake, 'anonymity on the internet has to go away'. The hope is that real-name environments would limit abusive behaviour 2 by binding users to discursive norms rooted in community. Would you talk like that in front of your mother? But real-name environments, in which people tend to know each other and share a broad set of perspectives, values and opinions, create their own problems of conformity and social pressure. This suggests a practically difficult but conceptually simple trade-off between the goods and dangers associated with anonymous and real-name architectures. If you want users to be able to express themselves without fear of retribution or pressures towards conformity, you have to accept that they may use that freedom to be cruel and abusive. And if you want to bind users to the norms of community, you have to accept the risk that users will censor themselves, seek to avoid conflict, and be subject to the pressures and expectations associated with their offline social identities.
Hayek’s social theory is resolutely anti-conspiratorial: He consistently rejects conceiving compl... more Hayek’s social theory is resolutely anti-conspiratorial: He consistently rejects conceiving complex orders as though they were designed or planned. His account of democratic politics, by contrast, treats it as conducive to conspiracy, orga- nized deception, and ultimately totalitarianism. His epistemology of spontaneous order and his radical suspicion of democratic politics are connected: The decay of democracy is itself a complex consequence of popular misunderstandings of social order. However, since Hayek is unable to account for self-correction within democratic structures, his argument has the unanticipated consequence of leading him to an implicitly authoritarian position.
The need for deference to well-grounded claims to expert authority often seems to conflict with d... more The need for deference to well-grounded claims to expert authority often seems to conflict with democratic ideals of equality and practices of contestation. In this essay I explore a parallel tension in Mill's work on authority. Against the reading of Mill's thought as contradictory, I argue that in both his early and later work he was very clear about the tension between the good of thinking for oneself, and the necessity of epistemic dependence, and in particular deference to a consensus of experts. He does not resolve this tension, but he makes it productive in the figure of the "competent observer", who exercises judgment in deferring to authorities. Mill's contribution is to focus on the process of questioning and scrutiny that underpins this sort of judgment. I conclude with some observations on the value and limitations of Mill's account of authority for understanding contemporary problems of expertise in democratic systems.
Hélène Landemore's Democratic Reason develops one important line of research in political epistem... more Hélène Landemore's Democratic Reason develops one important line of research in political epistemology, which we can define as the study of the ways in which distributed knowledge is put together for the purposes of making political decisions. Landemore argues for the epistemic benefits of cognitive diversity in political decision procedures in a condition of epistemic equality—where there are no experts. Given this omission, her approach has undeveloped potential for a second line of research in political epistemology, on the problem of aggregating asymmetrically distributed knowledge, i.e., integrating democratic reason with expertise.
Consent in deliberative theory is often construed either as the unanimous agreement to be bound b... more Consent in deliberative theory is often construed either as the unanimous agreement to be bound by the outcome of a procedure such as a vote, or as fully normative unanimity where all come to hold the same substantive position for the same reasons. Our contribution in this essay is to argue for a third option, a kind of tacit consent to let something stand as the position of the group.
This involves not full but partial normative unanimity, in which all participants agree to let something stand as the position of the group even if they do not personally share it. For such tacit consent to meet deliberative standards, we suggest, it must be actualized by the live possibility of refusing it. The normative potentials of such consent are realized to the extent that it is achieved in a context in which each participant has an effective veto. Furthermore, the absence of opposition or dissent must follow a process in which there were real opportunities to question, object, scrutinize and oppose. Our conditions are demanding in that we suggest that consent must be achieved in a context of deliberative equality, a diverse and fully clarified set of alternatives, and recognition by the participants themselves that their views were heard. Thus, while we recognize the danger that the absence of dissent may be a product of conformity, suppression and power effects within deliberating groups, we suggest that these dangers can be mitigated by careful structuring and facilitation of the deliberative process. In particular, we explore the use of voting as a communication device (and not just as a decision device) in the service of meeting these normative conditions.
There can be good reasons to doubt the authority of a group of scientists. But those reasons do n... more There can be good reasons to doubt the authority of a group of scientists. But those reasons do not include lack of unanimity among them. Indeed, holding science to a unanimity or near-unanimity standard has a pernicious effect on scientific deliberation, and on the transparency that is so crucial to the authority of science in a democracy. What authorizes a conclusion is the quality of the deliberation that produced it, which is enhanced by the presence of a non-dismissible minority. Scientists can speak as one in more ways than one. We recommend a different sort of consensus that is partly substantive and partly procedural. It is a version of what Margaret Gilbert calls “joint acceptance” – we call it “deliberative acceptance.” It capitalizes on there being a persistent minority, and thereby encourages accurate reporting of the state of agreement and disagreement among deliberators.
In the systemic turn, deliberative theory seems to have come full circle. After a phase of empiri... more In the systemic turn, deliberative theory seems to have come full circle. After a phase of empirically engaged research on practices of deliberation in various ‘natural’ settings, and experiments in the production of considered public opinions in ‘minipublics’ and other citizen panels, deliberative theory is returning to problems of locating deliberation within democratic systems. This paper explores the question of how expert authority might be integrated into a deliberative democracy, thereby addressing an important tension between the principle of democratic equality and the inequalities implied by expert knowledge. The problem of locating expertise within deliberative politics, I argue, is just a special case of a general problem in deliberative systems: How to locate the different deliberative ‘moments’ with respect to each other and to observing publics. In answering this question I emphasize the importance of ‘metadeliberation’ on the value and functions of divisions of deliberative labor. I describe deliberation among experts, contestation in the critical public sphere and deliberation in minipublics from the point of view of their capacity to support a wider context of public judgment of expertise. And I conclude with a discussion of the problem of ‘deliberative elitism’.
This paper discusses the place of facilitation in deliberative democratic theory, and elaborates ... more This paper discusses the place of facilitation in deliberative democratic theory, and elaborates some of the choices, dilemmas and problems involved in the facilitation of deliberation. The central dilemma of facilitation comes from having to ʻfollow from the front.ʼ The facilitator necessarily occupies a leadership position in the deliberating group, yet must follow the group as it unfolds its own discourse on the issue at hand. This paper will discuss the ways in which this tension is expressed through considerations of the framing of publics, the handling of expertise, the conduct of deliberation, and the crucial phase of bringing a deliberation to a conclusion. The various criticisms of deliberative practice in these dimensions are treated not as decisive objections, but rather as tensions to be negotiated at the level of practice, that is, as tensions that are felt - and should be felt - by those who organise and conduct deliberative public engagement. By framing the discussion in terms of the constitutive tension involved in ʻfollowing from the front,ʼ this paper aims to show the value of critical empirical work on deliberative practices as describing potential dangers, which can be set against the normative ideals and democratic potentials involved in attempts to generate deliberation in minipublics.
A lot of what we understand to be trust is not trust; it is, instead, an active and conscious dec... more A lot of what we understand to be trust is not trust; it is, instead, an active and conscious decision to feign trust. We call this ‘as-if’ trust. If trust involves taking on risks and vulnerabilities, as-if trust involves taking on surplus risks and vulnerabilities. People may decide to act as if they trust in many situations, even when they do not have sufficient warrant to trust – which is to say even when they do not trust. Likewise, people might decide to act as if they trust even when they have good reasons to actively distrust. The surplus risks of as-if trust may be worth taking in a number of different contexts and for many reasons. We argue that as-if trust is a concept that should be added to our theoretical, practical, and political vocabularies of trust and distrust. In doing so, we discuss the main reasons for someone to act as if they trust. We then show that the practice of as-if trust has been recognized by other scholars but treated as trust. In response, we clarify how as-if trust differs from trust, and we discuss the utility and ubiquity of as-if trust, especially in politics.
Technocracy is a contested concept, but it is typically associated with the exercise of political... more Technocracy is a contested concept, but it is typically associated with the exercise of political power justified by claims to expertise, and is often contrasted with populist forms of politics. In Power Without Knowledge, Jeffrey Friedman reframes the concept of technocracy as a form of politics oriented to solving social and economic problems, and thereby extends it to cover not only epistemic elites but ordinary people. This move usefully challenges the simplistic framing of populism and technocracy as opposites, but at the expense of effacing other dimensions of democratic politics. Friedman also suggests that maximizing individuals’ exit opportunities will allow them to take advantage of their relatively reliable personal knowledge. The architecture of “exitocracy” would itself, however, be designed by experts who, as such, might be tempted to insulate the institutional architecture they design against democratic interference.
What can one say to the self-deceived? And-perhaps more importantly-who can say it? The attributi... more What can one say to the self-deceived? And-perhaps more importantly-who can say it? The attribution of self-deception depends heavily on the criteria for what is thought to be beyond dispute. For Galeotti, misperception of reality is a product of psychological and emotional pressure resulting in 'emotionally overloaded wishes', and her solution thus involves the construction of what an 'impartial' and 'dispassionate' observer would conclude when presented with the same evidence. Drawing on her examples of foreign policy decision-making, I discuss two objections. First, I ask whether being 'dispassionate' is enough get one off the hook from the sorts of value judgments that must be made in assessing evidence in complex situations. Second, I address the role of disagreement and dissent, and suggest that what is required are not actors with a lack of emotionally overloaded wishes, but actors with different goals and wishes. Thus, while Galeotti emphasises solutions drawing on ideals of impartiality, we might more productively look for solutions that engage multiple forms of partiality.
Alfred Moore and Michael K. MacKenzie argue that openness about disagreement among diverse sets o... more Alfred Moore and Michael K. MacKenzie argue that openness about disagreement among diverse sets of expert advisers can make it harder for political leaders to politicise expertise, and that we should reform expert advisory institutions so as to make public the reasons and rationales behind such disagreement.
How can expertise best be integrated within democratic systems? And how can such systems best ena... more How can expertise best be integrated within democratic systems? And how can such systems best enable lay judgment of expert claims? These questions are obscured by the common framing of democratic politics against an imagined system of pure and unmixed expert rule or “epistocracy.” Drawing on emerging research that attempts to think critically and institutionally about expertise, I distinguish three ways of democratically organizing relations between experts and non-experts: representative expertise, in which experts are taken to exercise limited and delegated power under the supervision of political representatives; participatory expertise, in which expertise is integrated with publics by means of directly participatory processes; and associative expertise, in which civil society groups, advocacy organizations, and social movements organize expert knowledge around the objectives of a self-organized association. Comparing these models according to the cognitive demands they make on lay citizens, the epistemic value of citizen contributions, and the ways in which they enable public scrutiny and contestation, I go on to explore how they can support and undermine one another, and how they can open up new questions about democracy, trust, and expertise in political science and political theory.
How do identity rules influence online deliberation? We address this question by drawing on a dat... more How do identity rules influence online deliberation? We address this question by drawing on a data set of 45 million comments on news articles on the Huffington Post from January 2013 to May 2015. At the beginning of this period, the site allowed commenting under what we call non-durable pseudonyms. In December 2013, Huffington Post moved to regulate its forum by requiring users to authenticate their accounts. And in June 2014, Huffington Post outsourced commenting to Facebook altogether, approximating a 'real-name' environment. We find a significant increase in the cognitive complexity of comments (a proxy for one aspect of deliberative quality) during the middle phase, followed by a decrease following the shift to real-name commenting through Facebook. Our findings challenge the terms of the apparently simple trade-off between the goods and bads of anonymous and real-name environments and point to the potential value of durable pseudonymity in the context of online discussion.
The idea that there might be democratic forms of non-participation has been largely overlooked in... more The idea that there might be democratic forms of non-participation has been largely overlooked in the theoretical and empirical literature on democracy. Non-participation has variously been seen as a threat to the proper functioning of democracy, as a rational choice, or (more rarely) as potentially beneficial at the systems level. We argue that there are forms of non-participation that may be justified on democratic grounds. Our main theoretical move is to distinguish between reflectivity (or thoughtfulness) and participation. We argue that the normative value of both participation and non-participation is conditioned by reflectivity, such that there may be democratically desirable forms of reflective non-participation. To support our claims, we provide examples of how non-participation can help support democratic goods-such as inclusion, influence, and legitimacy-that are normally associated only with democratic participation. P articipation is central to the modern democratic imagination. Yet non-participation is an unavoidable and important part of democratic life. It is unavoidable because there are so many ways of being active in democratic systems and so many collective decisions to be made. Voting is one of the most important forms of participation, but individuals and groups might also choose to petition their governments , initiate referendums, campaign for candidates, participate in public engagement processes, engage in online activism, or join street protests. Individuals might also enter the ranks of the political elite by, for example, joining the public This article has benefited from the thoughtful contributions of many people. We would first like to thank Polity's three anonymous reviewers for their feedback and suggestions. We would also like to thank the participants and discussants in several conference panels where the paper was presented, as well as Katheryn Hach for her diligent research assistance. A number of colleagues read early drafts of the paper and provided valuable feedback, including
The discussion of anonymity and deliberation has repeatedly circled around two contradictory nor-... more The discussion of anonymity and deliberation has repeatedly circled around two contradictory nor-mative positions. One is that anonymity is valuable because it enables expression free from fear of repercussions. The other is that anonymity is destructive because it enables expression free from fear of repercussions. The same feature that enables a teenager from a repressive religious community to talk freely about his sexuality without fear of exposure also enables cruel and abusive responses that may inhibit such expressions. This sort of trade off has become especially salient in the context of online political talk of the sort found in news commenting spaces. In lieu of costly moderation , some online news sites are shifting towards requiring real-name identification of com-menters in order to avoid the pitfalls of easy anonymity, increasingly outsourcing their commenting architecture to Facebook, whose spokespeople have argued that for safety's sake, 'anonymity on the internet has to go away'. The hope is that real-name environments would limit abusive behaviour 2 by binding users to discursive norms rooted in community. Would you talk like that in front of your mother? But real-name environments, in which people tend to know each other and share a broad set of perspectives, values and opinions, create their own problems of conformity and social pressure. This suggests a practically difficult but conceptually simple trade-off between the goods and dangers associated with anonymous and real-name architectures. If you want users to be able to express themselves without fear of retribution or pressures towards conformity, you have to accept that they may use that freedom to be cruel and abusive. And if you want to bind users to the norms of community, you have to accept the risk that users will censor themselves, seek to avoid conflict, and be subject to the pressures and expectations associated with their offline social identities.
Hayek’s social theory is resolutely anti-conspiratorial: He consistently rejects conceiving compl... more Hayek’s social theory is resolutely anti-conspiratorial: He consistently rejects conceiving complex orders as though they were designed or planned. His account of democratic politics, by contrast, treats it as conducive to conspiracy, orga- nized deception, and ultimately totalitarianism. His epistemology of spontaneous order and his radical suspicion of democratic politics are connected: The decay of democracy is itself a complex consequence of popular misunderstandings of social order. However, since Hayek is unable to account for self-correction within democratic structures, his argument has the unanticipated consequence of leading him to an implicitly authoritarian position.
The need for deference to well-grounded claims to expert authority often seems to conflict with d... more The need for deference to well-grounded claims to expert authority often seems to conflict with democratic ideals of equality and practices of contestation. In this essay I explore a parallel tension in Mill's work on authority. Against the reading of Mill's thought as contradictory, I argue that in both his early and later work he was very clear about the tension between the good of thinking for oneself, and the necessity of epistemic dependence, and in particular deference to a consensus of experts. He does not resolve this tension, but he makes it productive in the figure of the "competent observer", who exercises judgment in deferring to authorities. Mill's contribution is to focus on the process of questioning and scrutiny that underpins this sort of judgment. I conclude with some observations on the value and limitations of Mill's account of authority for understanding contemporary problems of expertise in democratic systems.
Hélène Landemore's Democratic Reason develops one important line of research in political epistem... more Hélène Landemore's Democratic Reason develops one important line of research in political epistemology, which we can define as the study of the ways in which distributed knowledge is put together for the purposes of making political decisions. Landemore argues for the epistemic benefits of cognitive diversity in political decision procedures in a condition of epistemic equality—where there are no experts. Given this omission, her approach has undeveloped potential for a second line of research in political epistemology, on the problem of aggregating asymmetrically distributed knowledge, i.e., integrating democratic reason with expertise.
Consent in deliberative theory is often construed either as the unanimous agreement to be bound b... more Consent in deliberative theory is often construed either as the unanimous agreement to be bound by the outcome of a procedure such as a vote, or as fully normative unanimity where all come to hold the same substantive position for the same reasons. Our contribution in this essay is to argue for a third option, a kind of tacit consent to let something stand as the position of the group.
This involves not full but partial normative unanimity, in which all participants agree to let something stand as the position of the group even if they do not personally share it. For such tacit consent to meet deliberative standards, we suggest, it must be actualized by the live possibility of refusing it. The normative potentials of such consent are realized to the extent that it is achieved in a context in which each participant has an effective veto. Furthermore, the absence of opposition or dissent must follow a process in which there were real opportunities to question, object, scrutinize and oppose. Our conditions are demanding in that we suggest that consent must be achieved in a context of deliberative equality, a diverse and fully clarified set of alternatives, and recognition by the participants themselves that their views were heard. Thus, while we recognize the danger that the absence of dissent may be a product of conformity, suppression and power effects within deliberating groups, we suggest that these dangers can be mitigated by careful structuring and facilitation of the deliberative process. In particular, we explore the use of voting as a communication device (and not just as a decision device) in the service of meeting these normative conditions.
There can be good reasons to doubt the authority of a group of scientists. But those reasons do n... more There can be good reasons to doubt the authority of a group of scientists. But those reasons do not include lack of unanimity among them. Indeed, holding science to a unanimity or near-unanimity standard has a pernicious effect on scientific deliberation, and on the transparency that is so crucial to the authority of science in a democracy. What authorizes a conclusion is the quality of the deliberation that produced it, which is enhanced by the presence of a non-dismissible minority. Scientists can speak as one in more ways than one. We recommend a different sort of consensus that is partly substantive and partly procedural. It is a version of what Margaret Gilbert calls “joint acceptance” – we call it “deliberative acceptance.” It capitalizes on there being a persistent minority, and thereby encourages accurate reporting of the state of agreement and disagreement among deliberators.
In the systemic turn, deliberative theory seems to have come full circle. After a phase of empiri... more In the systemic turn, deliberative theory seems to have come full circle. After a phase of empirically engaged research on practices of deliberation in various ‘natural’ settings, and experiments in the production of considered public opinions in ‘minipublics’ and other citizen panels, deliberative theory is returning to problems of locating deliberation within democratic systems. This paper explores the question of how expert authority might be integrated into a deliberative democracy, thereby addressing an important tension between the principle of democratic equality and the inequalities implied by expert knowledge. The problem of locating expertise within deliberative politics, I argue, is just a special case of a general problem in deliberative systems: How to locate the different deliberative ‘moments’ with respect to each other and to observing publics. In answering this question I emphasize the importance of ‘metadeliberation’ on the value and functions of divisions of deliberative labor. I describe deliberation among experts, contestation in the critical public sphere and deliberation in minipublics from the point of view of their capacity to support a wider context of public judgment of expertise. And I conclude with a discussion of the problem of ‘deliberative elitism’.
This paper discusses the place of facilitation in deliberative democratic theory, and elaborates ... more This paper discusses the place of facilitation in deliberative democratic theory, and elaborates some of the choices, dilemmas and problems involved in the facilitation of deliberation. The central dilemma of facilitation comes from having to ʻfollow from the front.ʼ The facilitator necessarily occupies a leadership position in the deliberating group, yet must follow the group as it unfolds its own discourse on the issue at hand. This paper will discuss the ways in which this tension is expressed through considerations of the framing of publics, the handling of expertise, the conduct of deliberation, and the crucial phase of bringing a deliberation to a conclusion. The various criticisms of deliberative practice in these dimensions are treated not as decisive objections, but rather as tensions to be negotiated at the level of practice, that is, as tensions that are felt - and should be felt - by those who organise and conduct deliberative public engagement. By framing the discussion in terms of the constitutive tension involved in ʻfollowing from the front,ʼ this paper aims to show the value of critical empirical work on deliberative practices as describing potential dangers, which can be set against the normative ideals and democratic potentials involved in attempts to generate deliberation in minipublics.
Conspiracy theories are attracting increasing attention from political scientists, much of it neg... more Conspiracy theories are attracting increasing attention from political scientists, much of it negative. Three recent books, from the disciplines of political science, cultural history and social theory, provide a valuable critical corrective. Uscinski and Parent argue that conspiracy theories are connected to partisan distrust and are largely stable across the twentieth century. Michael Butter uses detailed historical cases from the Puritan witch trials to the Red Scare of the 1950s to show the central and influential role that conspiratorial beliefs have played in American history. Luc Boltanski focuses on conspiracy narratives in early detective and spy novels, but situates them in a broader account of the relation between the state, the social and political sciences, and popular representations of political power. Taken together, these books place the problem of conspiracy theory firmly in the context of democratic politics, opening important empirical and conceptual questions about partisanship, populism, publicity and secrecy.
What can one say to the self-deceived? And-perhaps more importantly-who can say it? The attributi... more What can one say to the self-deceived? And-perhaps more importantly-who can say it? The attribution of self-deception depends heavily on the criteria for what is thought to be beyond dispute. For Galeotti, misperception of reality is a product of psychological and emotional pressure resulting in 'emotionally overloaded wishes', and her solution is thus involves the construction of what an 'impartial' and 'dispassionate' observer would conclude when presented with the same evidence. Drawing on her examples of foreign policy decision-making, I discuss two objections. First, I ask whether being 'dispassionate' is enough get one off the hook from the sorts of value judgments that must be made in assessing evidence in complex situations. Second, I address the role of disagreement and dissent, and suggest that what is required are not actors with a lack of emotionally overloaded wishes, but actors with different goals and wishes. Thus, while Galeotti emphasises solutions drawing on ideals of impartiality, we might more productively look for solutions that engage multiple forms of partiality.
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Papers by Alfred Moore
This involves not full but partial normative unanimity, in which all participants agree to let something stand as the position of the group even if they do not personally share it. For such tacit consent to meet deliberative standards, we suggest, it must be actualized by the live possibility of refusing it. The normative potentials of such consent are realized to the extent that it is achieved in a context in which each participant has an effective veto. Furthermore, the absence of opposition or dissent must follow a process in which there were real opportunities to question, object, scrutinize and oppose. Our conditions are demanding in that we suggest that consent must be achieved in a context of deliberative equality, a diverse and fully clarified set of alternatives, and recognition by the participants themselves that their views were heard. Thus, while we recognize the danger that the absence of dissent may be a product of conformity, suppression and power effects within deliberating groups, we suggest that these dangers can be mitigated by careful structuring and facilitation of the deliberative process. In particular, we explore the use of voting as a communication device (and not just as a decision device) in the service of meeting these normative conditions.
This involves not full but partial normative unanimity, in which all participants agree to let something stand as the position of the group even if they do not personally share it. For such tacit consent to meet deliberative standards, we suggest, it must be actualized by the live possibility of refusing it. The normative potentials of such consent are realized to the extent that it is achieved in a context in which each participant has an effective veto. Furthermore, the absence of opposition or dissent must follow a process in which there were real opportunities to question, object, scrutinize and oppose. Our conditions are demanding in that we suggest that consent must be achieved in a context of deliberative equality, a diverse and fully clarified set of alternatives, and recognition by the participants themselves that their views were heard. Thus, while we recognize the danger that the absence of dissent may be a product of conformity, suppression and power effects within deliberating groups, we suggest that these dangers can be mitigated by careful structuring and facilitation of the deliberative process. In particular, we explore the use of voting as a communication device (and not just as a decision device) in the service of meeting these normative conditions.