Over the last few months, reading websites on European Union policy, the concept of deliberative democracy has begun to crop up with some regularity. This has acquired increased interest from the Commission after the negative referenda results in France and the Netherlands.
Deliberative democracy is a trend that is encouraged within the traditional structures of liberal democracy. It builds upon the franchise by including citizens within the policymaking process, deliberating their foundations and effects of policies. The following benefits have been claimed, according to the Deliberative Democracy Consortium:
Public deliberation can have many benefits within society. Among the most common claims are that public deliberation results in better policies, superior public education, increased public trust, and reduced conflict when policy moves to implementation.
The Consortium belongs to a movement that emphasizes how deliberative polling and discourse can reduce conflict and promote a greater understanding of policy impacts. Yet, Wikipedia also looks at how deliberative democracy has been adopted by left-wing activists as an alternative to representative systems. George Monbiot provides an example of how this approach has been adopted by the greens as a critique of our current democracy, in his attack on the Iraqi constitution:
When the US constitution was drafted, representative democracy was a
radical and thrilling idea. Now it is an object of suspicion and even
contempt, as people all over the world recognise that it allows us to
change the management but not the firm. And one of the factors that
have done most to engender public scepticism is the meaninglessness of
the only questions we are ever asked. I read Labour’s manifesto before
the last election, and found both good and bad in it. But whether I
voted for or against, I had no means of explaining what I liked and
what I didn’t.....
Deliberative democracy is not a panacea. You can have fake
participatory processes just as you can have fake representative
ones. But it is hard to see why representation cannot be tempered by
participation. Why should we be forbidden to choose policies, rather
than just parties or entire texts? Can we not be trusted? If not, then
what is the point of elections? The age of purely representative
democracy is surely over. It is time the people had their say.
When the European Union starts to investigate the benefits of this approach, this bears further investigation.