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Radical Democracy, Personal Freedom, and the Transformative Potential of Politics*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2009
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In recent years, theorists of radical democracy have criticized the liberal pluralist model of politics, a model which views the political forum primarily as a space for bargaining and the aggregation of individual preferences. While conceding that some measure of bargaining and preference aggregation is probably an ineliminable feature of democratic politics, radical democrats have charged that this model underestimates or ignores the transformative effects of democratic political interaction. In particular, liberal pluralism does not allow for the possibility that democratic politics can generate new forms of solidarity, enhance personal freedom, and inculcate virtue.
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References
1 Writers associated with the liberal pluralist model of politics include empirical political scientists like Dahl, Robert A., A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959)Google Scholar; and Truman, David, The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion, 2d ed. (Berkeley: Institute of Governmental Studies, 1993)Google Scholar; as well as economic theorists of democracy like Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957)Google Scholar; Riker, William, Liberalism against Populism: A Confrontation between the Theory of Social Choice and Democracy (San Francisco: William Freeman Co., 1982)Google Scholar; and Buchanan, James, “Politics without Romance: A Sketch of Positive Public Choice Theory and Its Normative Implications,” in The Theory of Public Choice, vol. 2, ed. Buchanan, James and Tollison, R. D. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 See Barber, Benjamin, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Pateman, Carole, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Michelman, Frank, “The Supreme Court, 1985 Term – Forward: Traces of Self-Government,” Harvard Law Review 100 (1986): 4–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sunstein, Cass, “Beyond the Republican Revival,” Yale Law Journal 97 (1988): 1539–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Habermas, Jürgen, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. Rehg, William (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996)Google Scholar; and Benhabib, Seyla, Critique, Norm, and Utopia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986)Google Scholar. Other radical democrats include Dryzek, John, Discursive Democracy: Politics, Policy, and Political Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Young, Iris Marion, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Mouffe, Chantal, The Return of the Political (London: Verso, 1993)Google Scholar; Gould, Carol, Rethinking Democracy: Freedom and Social Cooperation in Politics, Economics, and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Pitkin, Hannah, “Justice: On Relating Private and Public,” Political Theory 9, no. 3 (1981): 327–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Warren, Mark, “The Self in Discursive Democracy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Habermas, ed. White, Stephen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; and Warren, , “What Should We Expect from More Democracy? Radical Democratic Responses to Politics,” Political Theory 24, no. 2 (1996): 241–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 See Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970)Google Scholar; and MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984).Google Scholar
4 It is important to stress that, given this limitation of scope, this essay does not purport to reach a general verdict on radical democracy or on any particular radical democratic theory. The point is not to affirm or reject radical democracy, but to examine and explore one important line of argument that radical democrats have advanced.
5 Few radical democrats accept Rousseau's ideal of community outright, but identifications with it crop up from time to time in radical democratic writings. See esp. Barber, , Strong DemocracyGoogle Scholar, and Pateman, , Participation and Democratic TheoryGoogle Scholar. In discussing this view, I will speak of citizens collectively identifying with the authorization of political power in their political community. I will do this to avoid having to confront the interpretive question of how to understand Rousseau's notion of the general will.
6 This view has sometimes been attributed to Habermas. See Warren, , “The Self in Discursive Democracy,” 172–79.Google Scholar
7 For discussion and defense of this view, see Skinner, Quentin, “The Idea of Negative Liberty: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives,” in Philosophy in History, ed. Rorty, Richard, Schneewind, Jerome, and Skinner, Quentin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).Google Scholar
8 This is pretty much conceded by the most prominent contemporary proponent of claim (D). Quentin Skinner makes it plain that the writers he draws on in his work all accept a liberal understanding of personal freedom. Their disagreement with liberal writers concerns how this shared understanding of personal freedom can best be promoted and safeguarded. See also Taylor, Charles's discussion of this issue in his Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 302 n. 15.Google Scholar
9 For discussion, see Michelman, , “The Supreme Court”Google Scholar; Sunstein, Cass, “Preferences and Politics,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 20, no. 3 (1991)Google Scholar; and Benhabib, , Critique, Norm, and Utopia, 313–14.Google Scholar
10 See, for example, Habermas, Jürgen, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Benhabib, , Critique, Norm, and UtopiaGoogle Scholar; and Sunstein, , “Beyond the Republican Revival.”Google Scholar
11 There are different accounts of what constitutes fair conditions. Different radical democrats have specified them in different ways, but here we need not concern ourselves with these differences.
12 This qualification is important. Civic autonomy requires active engagement with and endorsement of the relevant decision-making procedures. It is not achieved when citizens acquiesce in political outcomes that follow from procedures they have not participated in.
13 As Rousseau famously put it, the ideal is to find a form of political association in which each associate “while uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only himself…” (Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, On the Social Contract [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1988], 148).Google Scholar
14 By “modern conditions” I mean to refer to certain uncontroversial facts about modern political communities, namely, that they are relatively large, have modern economies, and contain a diversity of social groups.
15 Barber, , Strong Democracy, 171.Google Scholar
16 Consider this example. The owner of a domestic factory might be in favor of protectionist legislation because such legislation would likely increase his profits. However, in arguing for the legislation in public debate, he could “repackage” his views by appealing to public values such as the need to protect local jobs from foreign competition.
17 See, among others, Cohen, Joshua, “Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy,” in The Good Polity, ed. Hamlin, Alan and Pettit, Philip (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989)Google Scholar; and Benhabib, Seyla, “Liberal Dialogue versus a Critical Theory of Discursive Legitimacy,” in Benhabib, Situating the Self (New York: Routledge, 1992).Google Scholar
18 See John Mackie's discussion of what he terms the “third stage of universalization in moral thought”: Mackie, John L., Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), 93.Google Scholar
19 This point is a natural extension of what Michael Walzer has termed the problem of particularism:
Even if [persons] are committed to impartiality, the question most likely to arise in the minds of members of a political community is not, What would rational individuals choose under universalizing conditions of such and such a sort? But rather, What would individuals like us choose, who are situated as we are, who share a culture and are determined to go on sharing it?
See Walzer, Michael, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 5Google Scholar. See also Warnake, Georgia, “Communicative Rationality and Cultural Values,” in The Cambridge Companion to Habermas, ed. White, where Warnake critically discusses Habermas's views on this issue.Google Scholar
20 Habermas criticizes civic republican writers on this point; see his Between Facts and Norms, 278–79Google Scholar. But the point may cut against Habermas as well, for if disagreements run deep it may not be possible, as he seems to believe, for people to reach agreement on the procedures for resolving them.
21 Sunstein, , “Beyond the Republican Revival,” 1554.Google Scholar
22 For further discussion of this understanding of mediation, see Benhabib, Seyla's discussion of Arendt in “Judgment and the Moral Foundations of Politics in Hannah Arendt's Thought,”Google Scholar in Benhabib, , Situating the Self.Google Scholar
23 See, for example, Sunstein, , “Beyond the Republican Revival,” 1156.Google Scholar
24 Pitkin, , “Justice: On Relating Private and Public,” 347.Google Scholar
25 Sunstein, , “Preferences and Politics,” 17.Google Scholar
26 Sunstein, , “Beyond the Republican Revival,” 1555.Google Scholar
27 As a reading of Hobbes makes plain, in the early modern period, one of the central arguments against widespread civic participation was that it tended to divide and polarize a society. See Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. Flathman, Richard and Johnston, David (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1997), 118–19Google Scholar. More recently, one could point to the divisiveness and tumult that went hand-in-hand with increased political participation in the 1960s in the United States.
28 The distinction has been drawn by others. See, in particular, Walzer, Michael, “Civility and Civic Virtue in Contemporary America,” in Radical Principles (New York: Basic Books, 1980).Google Scholar
29 For a particularly clear example of this, see Barber, , Strong Democracy, 223.Google Scholar
30 It is possible that a person might come to think that some of his interests were implanted in him when this was, in fact, false. In such a case, an autonomous transformation might result (ironically) in the person's becoming less autonomous. Discussing this complication, however, would needlessly complicate my argument. I mention it here just to put it to one side.
31 It is possible that people could be mistaken in thinking this. We might want to distinguish a genuine progressive transformation from a merely perceived progressive transformation. But again I shall ignore this complication.
32 Benhabib, , Critique, Norm, and Utopia, 314.Google Scholar
33 See Habermas, Jürgen, “Three Normative Models of Democracy,” in Democracy and Difference, ed. Benhabib, Seyla (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 24–25.Google Scholar
34 The alert reader will notice that I have not refuted the ideal that motivates claim (A). That ideal, for all that I have said, may be sound. Instead, I have tried to show that there is no good explanation for how this ideal could be realized under modern conditions, and I have suggested that if it cannot be realized under modern conditions, then it is not a valid guide for political action for modern societies. It is open for someone to accept this and argue that the political problem we face is how to change modern conditions so that the ideal motivating claim (A) can be realized. But my focus in this essay is on those who have made peace with modernity, and this argumentative option is not open to them.
35 For the views of radical democrats who explicitly distance themselves from Rousseau's ideal of democratic community, see Warren, , “What Should We Expect from More Democracy?” 242–43Google Scholar; and Young, , Justice and the Politics of DifferenceGoogle Scholar. See also Habermas's criticisms of civic republicanism in Between Facts and Norms, 100–103.Google Scholar
36 The term “adaptive preference” comes from Jon Elster; he discusses this phenomenon in Sour Grapes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).Google Scholar
37 As the title of Elster's book suggests, the person who suffers from adaptive preferences is like the fox in Aesop's fable who comes not to desire the grapes he cannot have.
38 Elster is careful to distinguish this type of preference adaptation from self-conscious strategies of preference change; see Sour Grapes, 117.Google Scholar
39 By “rational political discussion” I mean political discussion under fairly good conditions, however these might be spelled out. The suggestion that participation in rational political discussion is the remedy for adaptive preferences is made by Elster, , Sour Grapes, 33, 140Google Scholar. However, Elster makes it plain that he does not believe that overcoming adaptive preferences (or achieving other beneficial transformative effects) could be the primary point of political participation; see ibid., 91–100. See also Sunstein, Cass, “Legal Interference with Private Preferences,” University of Chicago Law Review 53 (1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
40 For more on this point, see Young, Iris Marion, “Communication and the Other: Beyond Deliberative Democracy,” in Democracy and Difference, ed. Benhabib, 126–28.Google Scholar
41 Proponents of this account include Habermas, , Moral Consciousness and Communicative ActionGoogle Scholar, and Benhabib, , Critique, Norm, and Utopia.Google Scholar
42 The phrase is taken from Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 36.Google Scholar
43 Habermas, , Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, 67.Google Scholar
44 It is true that Habermas distinguishes ethical discourses (discourses which concern cultural values and need-interpretations) from moral and political discourses. And he contends that the former, unlike the latter, take place within the horizon of particular forms of life. This suggests that participation in these discourses is not universal, but limited to those who participate in the way of life in question. Still, within this limited horizon, Habermas insists that all members must be allowed to take part in the discourse on equal terms (Between Facts and Norms, 182).Google Scholar
45 Is this is too strong? Strictly speaking, even if this argument were correct, it might still be the case that some people who did not participate in rational political discussion would, by good fortune, not be subject to manipulation. If so, participation in rational political discussion would not be a necessary component of personal freedom for them. Even so, it could still be argued that such people would lack self-knowledge by not participating in these discussions. They would not know or would not have warrant for believing that their need-interpretations were not manipulated. And the acquisition of this self-knowledge could, without too much of a stretch, be depicted as a gain in freedom.
46 The very activity of articulating and debating a commitment in public may change its nature; and it is a mistake to suppose that this will always be for the better. Leaving aside the obvious cases of love and loyalty, consider a phenomenon described by Elster. He observes that the successful completion of many goals depends upon a false estimation of their importance, “the belief that one will achieve much is a causal condition for achieving anything at all” (Sour Grapes, 158Google Scholar). If Elster is right, then one cost of self-examination is that one will become more aware of one's own limitations and, as a result, will lose the motivation to accomplish even what one is capable of accomplishing.
47 I am not claiming that to be free one must be rational. I am claiming only that freedom should not require one to act irrationally.
48 This point has its roots in Aristotle's attempt (in the Politics) to distinguish political relationships from relationships of mastery and dominance.
49 For discussion of this point see Warren, , “What Should We Expect from More Democracy?” 244–50.Google Scholar
50 While hints of this argument are present in the writings of a number of radical democrats, it is most carefully set out by Mark Warren. See his “The Self in Discursive Democracy” and “What Should We Expect from More Democracy?”
51 “Reflexive,” as it is used by proponents of this argument, refers to the activity of reflecting critically back on oneself.
52 Warren, , “The Self in Discursive Democracy,” 173.Google Scholar
53 Benhabib, , Critique, Norm, and Utopia, 338.Google Scholar
54 For good accounts of autonomy understood along these lines, see Raz, Joseph, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 369–78Google Scholar; and Benn, Stanley, A Theory of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I defend a similar account of autonomy in Liberalism, Perfectionism, and Restraint (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 127–61.Google Scholar
55 Arendt, Hannah, On Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), 280.Google Scholar
56 I have not, for example, sought to deny that active participation in politics and political discussion might bring about other (non-freedom-related) transformations in people that are valuable. Such participation may, as many radical democrats believe, promote virtue, tolerance, and the development of intelligence.
57 It remains true that for some people, given their projects and goals, active participation in political life will be bound up with their personal freedom. For them, but only for them, will it be correct to say that the political domain is a domain of personal freedom.