This is a brief thought experiment serving as a precursor to considerations of the benefits and limits of liberal (that is, Enlightenment) autonomy and political order. From a legal standpoint, Richard Posner’s Pragmatism, Law, and Democracy contrasts two visions of democracy. His are useful generalizations. “Concept One” democracy is deliberative: voters and politicians are expected to be civic-minded, debating one another in a townhall meeting style with the public interest in mind instead of their own selfish ends. This is a rhetorical vision of democracy embodied in most idealized, and occasionally realized, social movements. Studying communication and rhetoric so as to improve “civic participation” is a common dream of academics (even as they tend leave out the necessity of high-trust, which tend to require, uncomfortably, homogeneity). Frequently, the strongly implied political value of argumentation is the avoidance of distortion and specious reasoning in public discourse. This, suggests Posner, is wholly unrealistic. It’s all very well to discuss deliberative democracy in the safe confines of academia, in which participants are highly gifted and agreement may be found on basic premises. But there is nothing whatsoever in the varied and intractable nature and capacities of humanity to suggest the birth of a new Athens. Thus, “Concept Two” democracy….
“Concept One” democrats who acknowledge this lamentable state of affairs may be forced, the author states, to substitute deliberation by elites – he mentions, unsurprisingly, judges – for popular deliberation. Yet this result is anti-democratic. For his alternative, Posner presents a brazenly unromantic vision of democracy – one that treats politics “as a competition among self-interested politicians, constituting a ruling class, for the support of the people, who assumed to be self-interested, and to be none too interested in or well informed about politics.”
It should not be surprising, as one of our leading libertarians, that his model of democracy here looks not to Athens but to the workings of economy. We see division between two classes: voters as consumers and as “sellers” – an elite class of elected officials and their appointees. These elites make their views to the voters and as such compete for electoral advantage. If Concept One is the dream, Concept Two is the modern American reality. Homosexual voters, for instance, have their “rights” in various public spheres “recognized” more because of their votes (and their pocketbooks as consumers) than any manner of inspiration to the democratic masses.
Not content to simply describe this reality, Posner lauds it. Concept Two, in his view, allows for voters to focus their energies more productively and to avoid being mired in tiresome and intractable debates. This vision also carves out an arena for the ambitious politicians that will move their energy, however imperfectly, to the broad outlines of public will. Who, he writes, wants to spend all their time on politics? There are more important things, most notably the family and capital creation. He seeks, then, a form of democracy that will blunt and soften ideological extremity, where the elites may guide – yet there are mechanisms in place to punish overstepping boundaries (i.e. power grabs or court-packing).
I think this is an argument that “deliberative democrats” must take seriously. The concepts are simplistic and “either/or,” but understandably so, and his breakdown does provide a means to criticize an academic ethos that needs more of it. (I hope to return to the meanings of “deliberative” and “liberal” with greater depth in the near future.)
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In