Deliberative Democracy: On Reason and Politics

Author: Boman
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-09-01
Features: This complete decentralization of sovereignty is not even reflected in the minds of the united members. On the contrary, if one can still speak of "reflection," then sovereignty would be found in those subjectless forms of communication, which regulate the process of rational opinion and will formation by assuming that practical reason supports itself in the way of easily mistaken results. The subjectless, personalityless, inter-subjectively dissolved democratic sovereignty enters into the stringent communicative presuppositions of democratic procedures and their implementation. It is elevated into a mysterious interactive relationship between culturally mobilized public spheres and the will formation according to the rule of law. Through the establishment of communicative flows, sovereignty discovers its existence in the power of public discourse. Although this power arises from the autonomous public sphere, it must be concretized in the decisions of democratic opinion and will formation, because the responsibility for major decisions requires clear, institutionalized accountability. The communicative power operates by besieging the castle. It influences the premises of decision-making and judgment within the political system without seeking to conquer the system itself. Therefore, its purpose is to issue its commands in the only language that the besieged castle can understand: due to its judicial structure, it holds accountability for the various reasons that managerial power can address instrumentally but cannot ignore.
Naturally, without the support of a corresponding political culture, without the fundamental attitude of the people accustomed to political freedom through tradition and socialization mediation, even this procedural "popular sovereignty" cannot function: unless a rationalized life world achieves its partial goals, rational political will formation will not emerge. As for the spiritual characteristics of the citizen republic, and its virtue expectations that have long weighed heavily on the citizens, this thesis may merely be a pretext. To dispel this doubt, we must finally endorse something that has infiltrated the "spiritual characteristics" concept into neoplatonic political theory: we must explain how the congruence between civic virtues and self-interest can become possible in principle. If the political behavior required by normative expectations is reasonable, then the moral substance of self-legislation—which Rousseau condensed into a single act—must be divided into several stages: the procedural formation of opinion and will must be broken down into smaller parts. It must be pointed out that political morality is only needed in small increments. I can only offer a brief explanation of this.
Why would the legislator, as we assume here, base its decisions on reasoned judgments rather than merely using the provision of legitimate reasons as an excuse?
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