PHIL 296 Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Deliberative Democracy, Liberal Democracy, Exaggeration
4 Apr 2016
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Liberal democracy vs. deliberative democracy: liberal democracy. Aggregation of individual preferences into a collective choice. Problems: arbitrary decision rules, strategic manipulation, individual self- interest, bad preferences: deliberative democracy. Key features that distinguish deliberative democracy from liberal democracy: Collective deliberation deliberation is central to collective decision-making. Individual preferences are less important than people"s sincere and informed judgments. Reject the assumption that preferences do not change in the process of social/political interaction. Deliberation results in the transformation of preferences to informed (ethical) judgements. Citizens work towards an agreement for the common good. It"s about reason-giving not the mere aggregation of preferences. Appeal to public reason guidelines for public political debate, which places constraints on the kinds of reasons that can be given in deliberation. Different account of human nature: it assumes that people have the capacity (and desire) to set aside their particular interests and think about what is good for the collective.
