Must Democracy Be Reasonable?

Democratic theorists stress the importance of free and equal discussion and debate in a well-functioning democratic process. In this process, citizens attempt to persuade each other to support legislation by appealing to considerations of justice, liberty or the common good and are open to changing their minds when hearing the arguments of others. They are concerned to ground policy and legislation on the most defensible considerations of morality and the best empirical evidence. To be sure, majority rule remains important in democratic decision making because of the persistence of disagreement. But many have argued that debates over legislation that appeal to moral considerations ought to be given a much larger place in our understanding of the ideals of democracy than theorists have given them in the past. This emphasis on the importance of moral debate and discussion in democracy is characteristic of what I call the wide view of deliberative democracy.

In addition to assigning importance to moral discussion and debate in a democracy, Joshua Cohen’s account of deliberative democracy adds the constraint that this discussion and debate ought to be framed by considerations that all reasonable citizens can sign on to. Debate in a well-functioning democracy ought to be limited to a shared basis of public reasons. The requirement that debate be limited to considerations on which there is reasonable consensus imposes severe constraints on a legitimate process of moral discussion and debate in democracy. Indeed, I would venture to say that most people in most contemporary democracies do not satisfy these constraints. I call the conception of deliberative democracy that includes this constraint, the narrow conception of deliberative democracy.

My purpose in this paper is to examine the narrow conception of deliberative democracy and to explore the reasons given for thinking that it is the best account of a well-ordered deliberative democracy. In my view, the reasons offered do not support the thesis that the narrow conception of deliberative democracy is superior to the wide conception and I think that there are some disadvantages to accepting the narrow conception. While I applaud the recent tendency to include moral discussion and debate in an account of a well-ordered democracy, I think we should resist the additional thesis of the narrow conception of deliberative democracy.

The basic principle that distinguishes the narrow account of deliberative democracy is the principle of reasonableness. Cohen gives three basic arguments for this principle: an epistemological argument, a moral argument and an argument from democratic values. In this paper, I articulate the narrow conception of deliberative democracy. Then I explain and critique the three arguments Cohen offers for holding the principle of reasonableness. Along the way, I argue that the chief considerations employed to defend the principle of reasonableness actually argue against the principle. Not only is the principle not defended, it ought to be rejected.¹

I Cohen’s Account of Deliberative Democracy

Cohen gives an account of the ideal deliberative procedure, which provides ‘a model characterization of free reasoning among equals, which can in turn serve as a model for arrangements of collective decision making that are to establish a framework of free reasoning among equals.’² The ideal deliberative procedure is a model of genuinely democratic institutions. I will understand this idea to mean that democratic institutions ought to emulate the model as closely as possible.³

Participants in the ideal deliberative procedure are free in the sense that adherence to any particular comprehensive view of life is not a condition of citizenship or of any of the rights, liberties, and powers of citizenship. Citizens are bound only by the results of their free deliberation among equals. Citizens are equal since each citizen has an equal right to participate in politics at each of the stages of the democratic process and furthermore their abilities to participate are not affected by the distribution of power or wealth. Citizens provide arguments for their proposals to each other grounded in their conceptions of the common good and justice and are ready to accept the better argument. These first three elements are shared by the...