The Journal of Political Philosophy: Volume 20, Number 1, 2012, pp.

2344

Staging Deliberation: The Role of Representative Institutions in the Deliberative Democratic Process*
Stefan Rummens
Political Theory, Radboud University Nijmegen

I. THE FORUM, THE STAGE OR THE NETWORK? HE proper institutionalization of the ideal of deliberative democracy remains a contested issue. Whereas discourse theory conjures up the ideal of democracy as based on face-to-face interactionsmodeled for instance in terms of an ideal speech situation which is inclusive, symmetrical and free from powerit is clear that this ideal cannot be realized in any straightforward manner in the complex, large-scale and increasingly globalized societies of today. Consequently, alternative ways of realizing in practice the promise of a more radical and deliberative democracy have to be devised. In this context, I propose to make an analytic distinction between three different modes of institutionalization that have been discussed in the literature. First, the forum refers to deliberative theories that promote the use of mini-publics such as citizens juries, participatory budgeting or deliberative opinion polls as essential elements of democratic decision-making.1 These mini-publics are actual but small fora of face-to-face deliberation that should ideally reconstruct the will of the general public concerning specic issues. How these fora connect to larger audiences and the extent to which they actually determine the nal decision remains to be further specied.2 Second, the stage refers to theories that retain the idea that traditional representative institutions, the members of which are chosen on the basis of general elections, play a crucial role in any adequate institutionalization of deliberative democracy. Here, Jrgen Habermass two-track model serves as an example.3 Inclusive deliberation is
*The research for this paper was conducted partly at the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Leuven and was completed at the Institute for Management Research of the Radboud University Nijmegen. I would like to thank Ronald Tinnevelt for providing me with an opportunity to present an earlier version of this paper at his VIDI-workshop on cosmopolitanism at the Faculty of Law of the Radboud University Nijmegen. I am very grateful to Roland Pierik and Bert van den Brink for providing extensive comments on earlier drafts as well as to Soa Nsstrm, Eva Erman, Bertjan Wolthuis and three anonymous referees of this journal for providing many helpful remarks. 1 For a brief survey and further references on mini-publics, see Goodin and Dryzek 2006, pp. 2214. 2 Goodin and Dryzek 2006. Hendriks 2006. Brown 2006. 3 Habermas 1996; 2008. 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9760.2010.00384.x

24

STEFAN RUMMENS

thereby essentially restricted to the informal public sphere in which arguments are generated and transformed by individuals and civil society organizations. The deliberative quality of the democratic process as a whole is guaranteed to the extent that these informal deliberations actually inuence deliberations in the formal public sphere constituted by the traditional representative institutions of parliament and government. The network, nally, refers to deliberative theories that assume that democratic deliberation should take place in a dispersed set of deliberative sites. In these sites face-to-face deliberation takes place on limited aspects of certain issues and/or between more local stakeholders. In order to cover all aspects of an issue and in order to include all people affected it is important that the different deliberative sites are connected and linked together in a network.4 As emphasized, the distinction between these three modes of institutionalization is an analytic distinction. This means that they are not mutually exclusive and that deliberative theories of democratic government can and often do combine different modes. For example, nodes of governance networks can and often do have some or most of the characteristics of fora or stages. Also, fora and networks are not always advocated as substitutes for parliamentary decisions but rather as providing additional inputs to the parliamentary process. As these examples illustrate, the intricate question of the proper institutionalization of deliberative democracy does not amount to an exclusive choice between modes of institutionalization but consists rather in a search for that specic conguration of fora, representative institutions and networks which maximizes the deliberative quality of the democratic process as a whole on the local, the national or the transnational level. This reformulation of the problem of institutionalization dovetails with a recent systemic turn in deliberative theory signaled by several authors. Academic debate increasingly focuses on the ways in which different deliberative actors and sites are connected and form an encompassing democratic system.5 The analysis of such a system is markedly different from an analysis of clearly delineated face-to-face micro-deliberations. Whereas, for instance, on the level of micro-analysis, deliberative actors in face-to-face situations are supposed to behave communicatively and strive for agreement, several authors recognize that, from a macro-perspective, the inclusiveness of the larger public debate can be strengthened if at least some actors behave strategically at least some of the time. We can think here, for instance, of the need for repeated and stubborn civil society action required to put new issues on the public agenda or the need for politicians to present their own ideas in a rhetorically persuasive manner to a more general audience.6 Examples such as these illustrate that a macro-analysis
Young 2006. Cohen and Sabel 1997. Bohman 2007. Dryzek 2010a, pp. 717. Mansbridge 1999. Goodin 2005. Parkinson 2006. Hendriks 2006. Warren 2007. 6 Mansbridge 1999. Young 2001. Mansbridge et al. 2010. Chambers 2009. Dryzek 2010b.
5 4

STAGING DELIBERATION

25

cannot simply retain the normative requirements on individual actors and interactions as analyzed, for instance, in the idea of an ideal speech situation. Instead, a more systemic approach requires a new normative measure for the macro-deliberative quality of the democratic process as a whole and an analysis of how the operations and combinations of different deliberative sites, institutions and actors contribute to sustain and improve this macro-deliberative quality.7 It is not my purpose to deal with this formidable task in any general manner and my focus will be much more limited. In this article, I present three related normative requirements which I argue should be part of a more encompassing measure of macro-deliberative quality and which are based on the need to sustain deliberation as an open-ended and ongoing process (section II). I show, additionally, that representative politics based on a general electoral mechanism (the stage) has certain characteristics which make it well suited to meet these normative requirements. My central claim is, more specically, that representative politics provides the democratic debate with a kind of visibility which allows representative institutions to play an ineliminable role in the connection of political power to public reason as well as in the generation of the epistemic resources and the sources of solidarity required to support ongoing and open-ended democratic deliberation (sections III and IV). As indicated, the present analysis of representative politics does not aim to discredit the use of fora or networks as such. It aims, rather, to provide a critical rejoinder to theorists who focus one-sidedly on fora and networks and downplay the role of representative institutions in their deliberative designs or dispense with them altogether. For instance, theorists working on the democratization of transnational levels of politics are often keen to embrace the possibilities offered by the network structure of transnational processes of governance. They argue that the decentralized and deterritorialized nature of deliberative networks implies that these could somehow mirror existing governance networks, hook onto them at the nodes and democratize them from the bottom up.8 The problem with these approaches is that they fail to accept that something would still be missing even if existing governance structures could be fully democratized in the ways suggested. The European Union provides a case in point. Whereas several discourse theorists have hailed current European governance practices as a promising example of deliberative democracy,9 this assessment contrasts sharply with the general perception of European citizens who continue to experience a
7 Parkinson and Bavister-Gould 2009. Mansbridge 1999. Parkinson 2006. Habermas 2008, pp. 14751. 8 The specic ways in which discursive networks should t with governance networks and democratize them can differ signicantly in the different models proposed. Think, here, of John Dryzeks work on global civil society, Josh Cohen and Charles Sabels model for a directly-deliberative polyarchy or James Bohmans order of dmoi. Dryzek 2006. Cohen and Sabel 1997. Bohman 2007. 9 Gerstenberg and Sabel 2002. Cohen and Sabel 2004. Bohman 2005, pp. 1125.

26

STEFAN RUMMENS

serious democratic decit in the workings of the EU. In the nal section of this article, I will briey argue that this perception is not misguided and that the limited visibility of European politics indeed generates a serious democratic decit that needs to be dealt with (section V). Before proceeding, two more remarks are in order. First, as already indicated, the notion of representative politics (the stage) as used here refers to politics centered around one or more representative institutions with nal decision-making powers the members of which are chosen on the basis of general elections. I accept, of course, that the notion of representation can be used in a much larger sense.10 For instance, researchers dealing with the design of deliberative mini-publics also have to face the problem of the representativeness of their mini-publics.11 Also, much attention is devoted nowadays to civil society actors as non-elected representatives in the absence of electoral mechanisms.12 Recently, debate has also started about the possibility or desirability of representing discourses.13 Although all of these issues are part and parcel of the wider debate on the proper design of an overall deliberative system, they are currently not my direct concern. Instead, I focus on representation as a relation between citizens and elected representatives, whereby the precise nature of this relationship will be further explained below. Second, the analysis presented here is much indebted to the growing literature on the fundamental connection between democracy and representation.14 Although I share the central belief that representative mechanisms are an ineliminable part of a genuinely democratic process, the present article differs from this literature in the sense that it strongly emphasizes the relation between representation and reason. It focuses on the cognitive nature of the democratic process by arguing that representative institutions play a crucial part in maintaining democratic deliberation as an open-ended and ongoing epistemic endeavor aimed at decisions which serve the pursuit of a more just society. II. THE NORMATIVE CHALLENGE OF OPEN-ENDED DELIBERATION The crucial importance of representative institutions for deliberative democracy derives from the necessarily open-ended character of democratic deliberation. Although many authors recognize that the outcomes of actual processes of deliberation are necessarily fallible and, therefore, always subject to possible future revisions, it is worthwhile to briey expand on the signicance and normative implications of this fallibility. In this section I argue, rst, that the open-ended nature of fallible deliberation serves human freedom and, second,
10 11

Urbinati and Warren 2008. Brown 2006. Fung 2003. 12 Saward 2009. Hendriks 2009. 13 Dryzek and Niemeyer 2008. 14 Lefort 1988. Plotke 1997. Ankersmit 2002. Urbinati 2006. Nsstrm 2006.

STAGING DELIBERATION

27

that the preservation of open-ended deliberation poses a threefold normative challenge for the institutionalization of democracy.15 First, the fallibility of actual deliberation derives from the fact that the ideal conditions of reasonable deliberationin whichever way you specify themcan never be fully realized in the real world. Because actual deliberations are, for instance, never entirely inclusive nor entirely free from power asymmetries, their outcomes are also always marred by unjustiable partialities. Importantly, the gap between actual and ideal discourse is not a supercial empirical gap that arises for lack of time or resources. Instead, the gap is ontological in the sense that the ineliminability of the gap is inherent in the ideal of reasonable deliberation itself.16 Although a full development of this idea is beyond present purposes,17 it should be pointed out that the argument essentially relies on the fact that democratic deliberation serves the realization of the autonomy of all citizens in an equal and impartial manner.18 The impartiality of democratic outcomes is thereby not determined from an objective third person perspective but conceived rather in terms of an inclusive we-perspective.19 This means that citizens are not regarded as abstract and essentially identical persons but rather as concrete others with specic values and needs which can and should be taken into account and which will, thus, have an impact on the specic content of actual legislation and policies.20 The desire to take citizens seriously as historically situated, concrete individuals also explains the need for actual processes of deliberation in which these citizens can participate. Indeed, inclusive deliberation serves a twofold epistemic role in the sense that it allows to track the specic concerns and needs of citizens, to which only they themselves have privileged epistemic access, and allows, moreover, for the transformation of these concerns and convictions in view of the legitimate concerns and convictions of other participants. Now, of course, if individuals should be respected as autonomous, concrete beings, their preferences and values cannot be assumed to be xed once and for all. The historical nature of our human condition implies that we are constantly faced with changing social, economic, cultural and natural circumstances and that we are constantly challenged and able to shape and reshape our preferences, values and convictions accordingly. Human freedom is a historical and necessarily open-ended endeavor. This, in turn, implies that the
15 Throughout the section, I assume that ideal deliberative theory is highly consensualistic. This assumption does not detract from the generality of the conclusions because less consensualistic approaches accept even more readily the point that the fallibility of actual discourse should be recognized and dealt with. 16 This distinction between an empirical and an ontological gap is found in Mouffe 2000, pp. 48, 88, 98, 137. Unlike Mouffe, however, I do not believe that the ontological nature of the gap between actual and ideal deliberation requires us to abandon the deliberative paradigm in favor of an agonistic model. Rummens 2009. 17 For a fuller elaboration, see Rummens 2006; 2007; 2008. 18 Gilabert 2005. Habermas 1996. 19 Habermas 2003. 20 Benhabib 1992, pp. 15870.

28

STEFAN RUMMENS

process of deliberation can never come to any nal closure. Every democratic decision, even if it takes all existing preferences into account, creates itself a new historical reality which elicits new reactions and new preferences which can be used to question, again, in a never-ending process, the previous decision. The dynamics of this ongoing process explain why the idea of autonomy is an idea which contains the impossibility of its own full realization and why every attempt at a premature closure of deliberation poses a threat to the ongoing realization of human freedom. Second, the presence of an ineliminable gap between actual and ideal deliberation poses three connected normative challenges for any attempt to institutionalize deliberative democracy. The macro-deliberative quality of a deliberative system partly depends on the extent to which it is able to meet these challenges. The three normative challenges I have in mind can be derived from three closely connected normative claims central to deliberative democracy as an ideal theory. In terms of reason, ideal theory stipulates that the outcomes of democratic deliberation should be impartial in the sense of giving equal concern to the interests and values of all people affected by them. In terms of power, ideal theory requires that all political decisions should be based on an agreement between all people concerned. Hence, no genuine coercive power is exercised in the imposition of political decisions and, thus, the autonomy of all citizens subjected to them remains fully intact. In terms of solidarity, ideal theory assumes that deliberation is a transformative process not only on the cognitive but also on the motivational level. A discursive change of preferences leads to a situation in which all citizens endorse political decisions precisely because they understand that they are impartial and, therefore, just and legitimate. The ineliminable gap between actual and ideal deliberation now gives rise to three related normative challenges in the sense that the gap implies that the three normative claims mentioned are also counterfactual in an ineliminable sense. As a result, the outcomes of actual deliberations are not fully impartial but always fail to do justice to the legitimate interests of at least some people affected (reason). This ineliminable partiality implies, in turn, that all actual political decisions contain a volitional moment21 and, thus, an ineliminable remainder of real, non-discursive power which is genuinely coercive for at least some of the citizens (power). As a consequence, there will always be at least some citizens who disapprove of the decisions taken and who have good reasons for their disagreement (solidarity). Meeting the challenges posed by the gap between actual and ideal deliberation requires that an adequate institutional design of a democratic system should not only try to devise and implement sites and moments of actual deliberation. It should, at the same time, provide the means to expose the partiality inherent in all political decisions; it should provide mechanisms which are able to check the
21

Habermas 1996, pp. 1557. Rummens 2008.

STAGING DELIBERATION

29

ineliminable remainder of real power; and it should be able to deal with the ineliminable dissent of some citizens. In the absence of such mechanisms, deliberative democracy runs the risk of simply assuming that the outcomes of actual deliberations instantiate a sufciently close approximation of ideal deliberation. This assumption would be dangerous because it would lead to the premature closure of deliberation and, thus, to the premature legitimization of the forms of exclusion in terms of reason, power and solidarity actual decisions necessarily engender. III. THE VISIBILITY OF REPRESENTATIVE POLITICS Before explaining how representative politics is able to deal with the normative challenge of open-ended deliberation, it is important to further clarify some of the main characteristics of representation as I wish to understand it here. In this article I subscribe, rst, to the two-track model of the representative system.22 Such a system consists of a core of formal representative institutions (paradigmatically parliament), which is surrounded by an informal public sphere constituted by civil society actors aiming to inuence decision-making in the center of the system. The presence of an elected assembly at the formal core thereby ensures that the representative system is characterized by a dynamic interplay between majorities and minorities in an organized struggle for access to power. The presence of a vibrant informal public sphere ensures that the debates in the formal institutions are inuenced by the concerns and interests of the citizens at large. Thereby, civil society organizations play a crucial role in feeding and structuring the informal debates, whereas political parties play a crucial role in connecting the informal public sphere with the debates and decisions in the formal decision-making forums. It should be clear that the two-track model implies a wide conception of the political stage. Although elected representatives and political parties are key players in the core of the system and therefore key actors on the political stage, the stage is much wider and also refers to the political actions of groups and individuals in the wider informal public sphere. To the extent that these actors give voice to the concerns of at least some groups in society they are part of the wider process of representation which is thus centered on but not limited to electoral forms of formalized representation. Similarly, the wide conception implies that the political stage should not merely or even primarily be located in the general assembly of parliament, but that it also refers to the performances of political actors in a much wider, dispersed and highly mediatized political public sphere. I assume, second, that representation is a constructive, responsive and transformative process. Although there is much truth in Hanna Pitkins inuential conception of the relation of representation as one in which the
22

Habermas 1996, pp. 3068, 3529; 2008.

30

STEFAN RUMMENS

representative substantively acts for the represented, Michael Saward amongst others has rightly argued that this approach remains rmly embedded in an academic tradition which conceives of representation in terms of the representation of interests or identities which are well dened prior to the process of representation itself.23 Instead, I subscribe to an alternative and increasingly inuential tradition which conceives of representation as an ongoing, dynamic process in which the identity and the will of the people are constantly under construction. Thereby, representatives play a crucial role in structuring and interpreting political events and processes and in providing citizens with a meaningful set of alternative political projects and propositions which allow them to understand political reality and to shape their political preferences. In this context, Frank Ankersmit for instance advocates an aesthetic theory of representation according to which political reality does not really exist in a meaningful way prior to the representative process itself.24 Similarly, John Parkinson and Maarten Hajer analyze the constructive nature of representation in terms of the theatrical characteristics of current day politics.25 According to Hajer, an analysis from a dramaturgical perspective reveals that the political process is a sequence of staged events in which actors interact over the meaning of events and over how to move on. Thereby, Hajer analyzes the performance of political actors in the dramaturgical vocabulary of scripting, setting and mise-en-scne.26 Michael Saward, nally, analyzes the performative and constructive nature of representation in terms of the representative claims made by political actors who claim to identify citizens as members of a particular audience, to provide an adequate image of these citizens and to legitimately speak and act on their behalf.27 Analyzing representation in terms of constructive performances staged for an audience should not mistakenly lead us to believe, however, that citizens are now conceived as a merely passive audience inuenced and shaped by political actors. As Saward emphasizes, representative claims only work, or even exist, if audiences acknowledge them in some way, and are able to absorb or reject or accept them or otherwise engage with them.28 Whereas, according to Hajer, the reception by audiences is sometimes measured directly by means of techniques such as opinion-polling or focus groups, the audience is also active in the sense that it frames and reframes [politics] claims, by readjusting its agenda and even by inserting counter scripts.29 Here again, the informal public sphere and the individual or collective actors of civil society play a crucial role in the to-and-fro communication between representatives and citizens. In this context, Mansbridge
23 24

Pitkin 1967. Saward 2006. Ankersmit 1996, pp. 2163; 2002, pp. 91132. Nsstrm 2006, pp. 3257. 25 Parkinson 2006, pp. 99123. Hajer 2009, p. 66. 26 Hajer 2009, p. 66. 27 Saward 2006, p. 303. 28 Ibid., p. 303. 29 Hajer 2009, p. 68.

STAGING DELIBERATION

31

talks about an overall process of ongoing representation whereby the quality of this mutual communication depends on the overall functioning of the democratic system, including political parties, political challengers, the media, interest groups, hearings, opinion surveys, and all other processes of communication.30 Although Mansbridge rightly emphasizes the systemic nature of representation, contrasting it with a too restricted focus on the dual relationship between the representative and the represented, the communicative to-and-fro she sketches also testies of the kernel of truth in the idea that representatives are substantively acting for the represented. Even if representatives play a constitutive role in framing the beliefs and preferences of their constituents, the acknowledgements of these constituents themselves remain a decisive point of reference in determining whether representation is adequately responsive to the (framed) preferences which are properly theirs.31 The same to-and-fro, nally, also demonstrates that representation remains a transformative process in which the beliefs and preferences of both representatives and voters can change on the basis of discursive learning-processes. Importantly, the goal of this transformation is not a full harmonization of interests and preferences. On the one hand, the impartiality of the we-perspective allows for the presence of particular interests as constituent parts of the common good.32 Additionally, the ineliminable gap between the particular preferences of individual citizens and the outcome of the democratic process, testies of the non-ideal nature of this outcome as an only temporary interpretation of the common good. Here again, the responsiveness of the representative process to the potentially changing preferences of autonomous citizens guarantees the historically open-ended character of the democratic process. A third and crucial feature of representative politics I wish to highlight is that it ensures the visibility of the public debate. The metaphor of the stage not only refers to the fact that the performance of political actors helps to frame political events and choices in meaningful ways, it also emphasizes that representative politics generates narrative structures which make political debate accessible and understandable for a large audience of citizens. In this regard, Habermass description of the informal public sphere as an anonymous network in which arguments are circulated and transformed is not entirely adequate. The public debate is not some amorphous, decentralized conversation but is generally structured around a limited number of topics at a time as well as around a limited number of identiable players and positions. Thereby, the informal public debate is, in its structure and its content, oriented towards what is or could be going on in the formal institutions it encircles. The fact that the informal debate is connected to actual, identiable and localizable decisions in the formal
30 31

Mansbridge 2003, pp. 5189. Plotke 1997, p. 30. 32 Mansbridge et al. 2010, p. 75.

32

STEFAN RUMMENS

decision-making institutions helps to give the informal debate its focus points and its urgency. Importantly, and this is a distinction which is not always adequately appreciated, visibility thus differs from the notion of transparency which is currently en vogue as a dening feature of the democratic legitimacy of governance institutions. Whereas transparency, as the ability of citizens to gain access to the proceedings of decision-making processes, might be a necessary prerequisite for visibility, it is, in itself, not sufcient. Indeed, even if the workings of mini-publics or governance institutions are transparent, the structure and content of the decision-making process can remain very hard or even impossible to read for citizens. In order to understand which decision has been made against which alternatives and which interest groups in society promoted which solution, it is not sufcient to check through the internet the minutes of some committee meeting somewhere. Only the visibility of the political stage, in which interests groups, civil society organizations and political parties publicly contest decisions, gives the wider public of citizens adequate access to what is at stake in the decision-making process. As a fourth and nal point, representative politics are played out in an increasingly mediatized political public sphere. Thereby, the media obviously do not simply function as a neutral transmission channel between representatives and the larger public. Instead, the media function according to their own proper constraints which shape to a large extent the content and form of the news that is being reported and, thus, to a signicant extent also the content and form of what counts as political reality. Although an analysis of the impact of market imperatives as external constraints on the functioning of highly commercialized media networks is crucial for a fuller assessment of the macro-deliberative quality of present day politics, this task is beyond our present means.33 More relevant in the present context is the fact that media constraints are also determined by more internal factors such as the communicative logic which characterizes the practice of reporting. In this regard, both Parkinson and Hajer emphasize that the media have a strong preference for dramaturgical modes of communication.34 Even when reporting political events, the media generally make use of the mechanism of narrative and story-telling. They thereby tend to focus on conict rather than agreement, they prefer colorful phrases and quick sound-bites over extensive argument and they are keen to personalize politics. Of course, politicians are not simply the victims of these mechanisms. Smart political actors, possibly assisted by their spin-doctors, are able to make use of them to their own advantage. Nevertheless, it should be clear that the workings of the media at least partly determine what can become visible in the public sphere. Although I will briey return to this issue in the nal section, it will already be clear that the dramaturgical nature of the stage implies that it is much more compatible with
33 34

See, e.g., Habermas 2008. Parkinson 2005, pp. 1789. Hajer 2009, pp. 3840.

STAGING DELIBERATION

33

the dramaturgical logic of the media than the forum or the network.35 As a result, representative politics have a unique capacity to reach, affect and mobilize larger audiences when compared to other modes of institutionalized deliberation. IV. FACING THE CHALLENGE The previous sketch of some general characteristics of representative politics allows us to explain how representative institutions play an important role in meeting the challenges posed by the gap between actual and ideal deliberation. A. REASON: WHATs YOUR STORY? As argued, an ideal, impartial consensus can never be fully realized through deliberation and, therefore, every actual political decision will necessarily remain partial towards the present or future preferences and values of at least some citizens. Dealing with the ineliminable presence of this epistemic gap between actual and ideal deliberation requires that we resist the urge to insist on reaching actual agreements in the real world because this might lead to the premature closure of deliberation. Instead, the deliberative system should be able to recognize the gap between the actual and the ideal and should strive to make this gap as tractable as possible. Here, I submit that the oppositional dynamics of representative politics play a crucial role because the disagreement of the minority with the majority decision precisely signies and represents the reservations that we should always have towards actual decisions. Importantly, representative politics thereby not only reveals that all actual decisions are necessarily partly partial and exclusionary, it also provide us with clues as to what these partialities and exclusions are and which alternatives might, perhaps, in the future, lead to better and more just results. The fact that representation allows us to reveal the epistemic structure of actual decisions is due to the narrative nature of representative politics which structures political debate both in the spatial and the temporal dimension. In the spatial dimension, political players on stage each provide a different perspective on the political story that is being told. The fact that there is a discrete set of civil society organizations and political parties which develop and express their own views on debated issues implies that the story never collapses into one single point. There is no privileged narrator, no privileged point of view and the story necessarily remains multi-facetted and fragmented. Epistemically, this means that opposition parties or organizations, by challenging majority decisions, are able to situate these decisions in a space of public political reasons. By pointing out the alternative policy options which have not been chosen, the opposition gives voice
35

Parkinson 2005. Hajer 2009, pp. 402, 17681.

34

STEFAN RUMMENS

to the preferences and values which, possibly, have not been sufciently taken into account and enables, thus, to disclose the more specic nature of the partialities inherent in the decisions made. This differs markedly from more consensus-oriented modes of institutionalized deliberation where, after the decision-making process is over, no trace is left of the routes that have not been chosen by the policy-makers. Since all participants are supposed to endorse the consensus reached, the excluded alternatives are no longer visible. Because the consensus leaves no traces and collapses the contestatory epistemic process into a single outcome, the epistemic partiality and thus the volitional moment of power contained in the outcome are obscured. If, however, this moment of power is to be checked by reason, it should be made visible, not simply in terms of who has decided what, but also in terms of the epistemic location of the decision made. In this regard, it is not surprising that empirical analysis reveals that plenary sessions in parliament have a limited discursive quality in the sense that no real transformative discussion takes place. The role of the plenary session is different and much more theatrical. Here, different parties expose to the larger public their perspective on a certain issue and thus take stock of the epistemic location of the decision made by the majority.36 In the temporal dimension, the narrative structure of representative politics provides temporal continuity to the public debate and allows to maintain the debate as an ongoing epistemic process. Present discussions are not merely about making future-oriented choices; the discussions are themselves couched in a common history. Although there is, importantly, also constant renewal, political parties and civil society organizations usually also carry with them a past and are able to refer to the reasons lying behind past decisions or point out how certain current issues are the result of concerns neglected in the past. Representative politics, even today when the public debate seems so eeting, provides politics with a memory as well as an orientation to the future. In this regard, oppositional parties and organizations function as epistemic reservoirs in a twofold sense. They represent and keep alive the memory of interests and values which have been excluded by majority decisions. By keeping these arguments and interests on stage, it remains at the same time possible to use them in the design of policy alternatives. By opposing the majority in the hope of a possible future access to power, the opposition plays a crucial role in maintaining the dynamics of the democratic process as an ongoing search for a better, more inclusive and less partial future society. Again, consensus-based approaches typically lack this kind of temporal continuity. In the absence of organized groups which function as the memory and the potential future of the public debate precisely because they refuse to subscribe to the consensus, political decisions in more direct forms of democracy appear as singular, a-historical and disconnected moments.37
36 37

Goodin 2005. Landwehr 2010, pp. 1123. Ankersmit 2002, p. 115. Urbinati 2006, p. 30.

STAGING DELIBERATION

35

B. POWER: WHODUNIT? As argued, the fact that an ideal consensus remains necessarily counterfactual implies that all actual decisions contain a genuine volitional moment in which real, partial and exclusionary power is being exercised. This implies, in turn, that the perennial political challenge of checking power is reintroduced in the deliberative framework. At this point, discourse theory could and should refer to the traditional checks and balances familiar from contemporary constitutional arrangements as appropriate means for checking power. At the same time, however, it should also emphasize that, in order to preserve the deliberative quality of the democratic process, actual political power should be maximally checked by the discursive power generated by the public debate. Here again, representative politics can play a crucial, twofold role. First of all, as already intimated, in order to check political power it is necessary that it is exercised in a visible manner and that it is clear who has decided what. In a consensus-oriented approach to the institutionalization of deliberation, the outcome of the deliberative procedure is supposed to be a jointly reached outcome, nobody or no group of persons is singled out as accountable for the result and nobody or no group has much incentive to systematically question the outcome in terms of the bias and partiality it might embody. In a representative system, in contrast, these tasks are clearly allocated. The majority gets to make the decisions but is, therefore, also always accountable. The minority, currently deprived of direct power, has a great incentive to challenge majority decisions it believes will not enjoy the approval of the wider public. In doing so, the minority is able to localize the exercise of non-discursive power and to bring to light all the partial inuences (by interest-groups or civil society organizations) which have contributed to the biased results. Second, visibility is not enough. Additionally, the majority in power should have real incentives to remain susceptible to the inuence of reasons generated in the informal public sphere and, thus, remain within the parameters for the spectrum of possible politics which could be considered legitimate.38 Here, the electoral mechanism and the to-and-fro communication between representatives and citizens proves crucial in guaranteeing this responsiveness.39 In this context, many authors now agree that two traditional accounts of representation are inadequate. On the promissory account, electoral representation should be understood (ex ante) in terms of the mandate given to parties by voters on the basis of the promises regarding future policies they make during election campaigns. On the accountability account, representation should be understood (ex post) in terms of the assessment of past policies made by voters at the time of election. More sophisticated accounts now talk about anticipatory
Habermas 2008, p. 172. Ibid. In this context, Eva Erman (forthcoming) discusses the requirement of political bindingness as a necessary condition of democracy.
39 38

36

STEFAN RUMMENS

representation40 or representation as receptivity41 and recognize the need, emphasized earlier, for a constant interplay between elected representatives on the one hand and the opinions of the represented voters on the other. Indeed, because representatives want to be reelected and parties want to win future elections, they have a big incentive to conduct their policies in a way that is receptive to the ongoing inuence of the informal public debate. By promoting the fear of a future loss of power or the hope of a future gain of power, the electoral mechanism enables the connection between political power and public reason. C. SOLIDARITY: STILL PART OF THE BAND As argued, the epistemic gap between actual and ideal decisions, resulting from a process of transformation of preferences which can never be completed, nds its correlate in a similar motivational gap. Given the ineliminable partiality of every actual outcome, there will always be members of society who feel excluded and wronged by particular political decisions. Here again, representative institutions play a crucial role in overcoming their disaffection and sustaining their ongoing commitment to the democratic project. In representative politics, the disaffection of outvoted minorities is overcome, or at least mitigated, by the actions of oppositional parties and movements which guarantee the ongoing presence on the political stage of the outvoted point of view. Even if some groups in society have lost the political struggle, their defeat does not imply that they, or their point of view, lose political legitimacy. Losers are not removed from the stage; they remain legitimate members of the political community and legitimate contributors to the democratic process. This means, amongst other things, that their defeat is not necessarily nal. The struggle is open-ended and issues can reappear on the political agenda. If outvoted groups manage to generate enough convincing reasons to support their position, there is no reason why their fate could not be reversed in the future. The temporal continuity of the political struggle and the ongoing visible presence of outvoted positions on stage provide all citizens with reasons to identify with the democratic process as a whole, if not necessarily with all particular decisions taken. In the absence of an ongoing oppositional presence with which to identify, people who fail to agree with the outcomes of supposedly consensual decision-making processes can turn against the decision-making system as a whole. In this regard it has been plausibly argued that the blurring of the left-right distinction by so-called third way politics has been a major contributor to the success of right-wing populist parties which present themselves as
40 41

Mansbridge 2003. Kuper 2004, pp. 906.

STAGING DELIBERATION

37

anti-establishment or even anti-system parties.42 Similarly, it has been argued that the Euro-skeptic attitudes amongst large sections of the European citizenry are caused by the fact that the only way to contest the allegedly consensualistic outcomes of European decision-making is to turn against the European Union as such.43 Both phenomena suggest that consensualistic approaches to politics are dangerous because they undermine the visibility of the democratic process. When people no longer know what is it stake, who is deciding what, what the alternative options are or who is giving voice to their own point of view, there is a serious risk of political disaffection. In terms of motivation and the ongoing solidarity amongst members of a democratic polity, representative institutions manage to avoid two pernicious situations. On the one hand, the representation of opposing points of view on the political stage avoids the need to conceive of the community as a harmonious unity and, thus, avoids the suppression of the ineliminable motivational gap between the individual preferences of citizens and the general will as temporarily interpreted by the current majority. On the other hand, representation also avoids the disintegration of society into a mere collection of individuals with potentially conicting values and interests. As convincingly argued by Claude Lefort, the staging of values and interests, enables us to transform conicts de facto into conicts de iure.44 This means that representative institutions provide society with a visible image of itself and allow the groups and individuals in that society to nd means of visibly relating to each other. Representation thus provides visible structure and orientation to the unity-in-diversity which characterizes democratic society as an ongoing political project. V. DEMOCRATIC DEFICITS As indicated at the beginning of the article, I assume that an adequate institutionalization of deliberative democracy will have to combine elements of the forum, the stage and the network in order to realize the promise of a more radical and inclusive democracy. Nevertheless, I believe that the argument presented here should make us more critical of one-sided approaches which assume that deliberative democracy should minimize the role of representative institutions. In the absence of such institutions, or of institutions which can be shown to have similar effects, the risk of a premature closure of deliberation threatens the overall quality of the democratic process. For instance, if the outcome of a forum discussion, such as in a citizens jury, is simply presented to the public as the policy proposal the participating citizens believe to be the best solution to the problem at hand and subsequently made the
42 43

Mouffe 2005, pp. 6476. Fllesdal and Hix 2006, p. 549. Mair 2007, p. 6. Neunreither 1998, p. 439. 44 Lefort 1988, pp. 1620.

38

STEFAN RUMMENS

topic of a nation-wide referendum, it should not surprise us that other citizens, who were left out of the discussion, are not always unconditionally enthusiastic about what is being proposed. To them, the forum remains to a large extent a black box process of which they can only see the outcome. They have no clue of the different arguments raised, they do not know over and against which alternatives and for which reasons the nal proposal has been chosen. Unlike the participating citizens, they have not been able to go through a transformative learning process and are, therefore, left in the dark as to possible partialities and exclusions the nal outcome might still contain. Consensus-oriented processes of this kind tend to collapse the political debate both in the temporal and the spatial dimension and make political decisions appear, especially for the larger audience, as a-historical, amorphous singular moments. There are, moreover, no easy solutions for improving the visibility of deliberative fora. As nicely illustrated by John Parkinsons case study of a deliberative poll on the future of the British National Health Service held at the Manchester Metropolitan University in July 1998, attempts to increase visibility by providing extensive media coverage are deeply problematic.45 In this case, media coverage of the event, in which lay participants spent at least twenty hours together over a span of three days, was provided by three one-hour television programs broadcast by Channel 4. A comparison of the actual event with the televised version of it, based for instance on a comparison of the relative talk time of participants, clearly demonstrates that the televised version followed the dramaturgical logic of media coverage. This means that the television program focused on individuals making points and on moments of conict rather than on processes of discussion or on instances of agreement. Signicant personalities, such as the politicians questioned during some plenary sessions by the lay participants or the well known reporter leading the plenary debates, took up most of the broadcasting time at the expense of the contributions of lay participants or invited experts. As a result, the television coverage of the poll failed to capture most of the actual deliberating, failed to convey the learning experience of actual participants to a larger audience and, thus, also failed to convince the larger audience of the quality of the conclusions to which the participants had come. It would be misguided, however, to blame the failure of this attempt to cover the proceedings of a deliberative forum simply on the media. The dramaturgical logic of the media is probably the only logic capable of grasping the attention of a large audience as an audience and, therefore, the very logic that is needed to sustain an ongoing public debate in large-scale democratic societies. Large-scale as opposed to micro-deliberation requires that the debate is visibly structured in space and time. This means that communication to and with a large scale audience can only proceed through a limited and identiable set of signicant personalities or actors who take on the tasks of organizing, developing
45

Parkinson 2005.

STAGING DELIBERATION

39

and defending different points of view, of making decisions in localizable and accountable ways and of keeping outvoted points of views present as future possibilities. The problem of limited visibility is not restricted to deliberative fora but similarly arises for deliberative networks.46 As argued, for instance, by Yannis Papadopoulos and Claus Offe, governance networks are characterized by a dilution of responsibility47 or an imputability of actions.48 Because networks are decentralized and consensus-oriented and because they lack the dynamic interplay between majorities and minorities, it is hard to identify actors who can take responsibility for the outcomes of decision-making processes that go on in these networks. The fact that network participants usually escape the threat of electoral sanction by citizens, thus undermines the ability of citizens to ensure the adequate responsiveness of these actors to their own interests and raises the probability that policy outcomes are unduly and imperceptibly inuenced by partial socio-economic or other interests.49 According to Papadopoulos, the current rise of governance structures generally leads to an unhealthy uncoupling of backstage policy making (politique des problmes) from the frontstage public debate (politique dopinions).50 As Offe, in turn, rightly emphasizes, this uncoupling works both ways and implies that citizens facing the workings of these opaque governance processes increasingly fail to understand, support or, if necessary, endure the policy decisions imposed upon them.51 When applied to the debate concerning the European Union, these observations should make us wary of the claim made by some deliberative theorists that current European governance structures hold the promise of realizing the ideal of deliberative democracy beyond the nation-state. Joshua Cohen, Charles Sabel and Oliver Gerstenberg, for instance, argue that the EU is best understood as a directly-deliberative polyarchy in the making.52 This means that European governance structures consist of a decentralized network with a fair amount of autonomy for more local decision-making units whereby processes of deliberation within and between these units enable mutual learning and adjustment.53 In this regard, the authors praise, for instance, the Open Method of Co-ordination and the more general comitological nature of European decision-making.54 On their account, such a polyarchical model allows for effective and democratic problem-solving because it empowers local agents to deal with the problems that affect them in a reexive and other-regarding manner
46 47

Papadopoulos 2007, p. 473. Hajer 2009, p. 176. Ankersmit 2002, pp. 18098. Papadopoulos 2007, p. 473. 48 Offe 2009, p. 550. 49 Ibid., p. 558. 50 Papadopoulos 2007, p. 475. 51 Offe 2009, pp. 5589. 52 Cohen and Sabel 2004. Gerstenberg and Sabel 2002. 53 Cohen and Sabel 1997, pp. 32633. 54 Cohen and Sabel 2004, pp. 1669. Gerstenberg and Sabel 2002, pp. 3278.

40

STEFAN RUMMENS

while stimulating mutual condence and solidarity.55 One of the major advantages of this new form of network democracy, they believe, is that it dispenses with the need for a general public or demos as the originating subject of democratic decision-making.56
[S]overeignty . . . is neither unitary nor personied, and politics is about addressing practical problems and not simply about principles, much less performance or identity. In this world, the public is simply an open group of actors . . . which constitutes itself as such in coming to address a common problem, and reconstitutes itself as efforts at problem-solving redene the task at hand. The polity is the public formed of these publics. . . .57

The claim, however, that the practical solidarity generated by the mutual capacitation of citizens temporarily cooperating in solving specic problems sufces to sustain the legitimacy of the European governance system,58 seems highly problematic in view of the general rise of Euro-skeptic attitudes amongst European citizens and the wide-spread sense of a European democratic decit. Of course, Cohen, Sabel and Gerstenberg recognize that the democratic credentials of the EU are not fully established and that the realization of its full democratic potential depends on whether its dispersed deliberative decision-making processes can be subjected to the full blast of diverse opinions and interests in society.59 In order to achieve this democratization, they argue, several conditions have to be met such as the transparency of deliberations, fair participation and the connection of deliberative decisions with wider public discussion.60 The problem is, however, that they fail to explain how this connection could be established in view of the fact, illustrated by Papadopoulos, that problem solving politics in governance networks in reality tend to un-couple from the wider public debate. Although transparency is, indeed, a necessary condition for connecting European politics with the public debate, it is not a sufcient condition. A political system which consists of a decentered network of local sites of deliberation connected to ad hoc publics dealing with specic problems as they arise, clearly lacks adequate coherence and visibility. In this context, Paul Magnette aptly quotes John Dewey, who argues that there can be too much public in the sense that a multitude of eeting publics focused on their own eeting problems fails to provide sufcient integration to the democratic debate and, thus, to democratic society.61 A true connection of politics with a larger audience requires, instead, a dramatization of politics through the performance of personalized political actors.62
55 56 57

Cohen and Sabel 1997, pp. 3334. Gerstenberg and Sabel 2002. Cohen and Sabel 2004, pp. 1645. 58 Ibid., p. 165. 59 Ibid., p. 169. 60 Ibid., pp. 16970. Gerstenberg and Sabel 2002, pp. 3278. 61 Magnette 2006, pp. 334. Dewey [1927] 1989, p. 137. 62 Magnette 2006, p. 35.

STAGING DELIBERATION

41

Indeed, many authors have argued that the absence of the drama of oppositional politics in the EU, with a real struggle for power positions between identiable political actors, engenders many of the problems we have associated with the gap between actual and ideal deliberation and, thus, explains the true origin of the perceived democratic decit. Because of the absence of oppositional politics, European citizens are simply presented with the outcome of network deliberations as the ofcial version of the truth but never with possible policy alternatives which have lost out or which could provide future alternatives.63 Because the network structure leads to a structure of shared irresponsibilities in which all political actors are able to distance themselves from the outcomes and blame undesired effects on others,64 citizens are dispossessed of the means to sanction political actors who have failed to act in sufciently responsive manners. Indeed, checking whether network deliberation actually serves the public interest rather than the particular interests of those with better access to the deliberative sites is very hard and several authors have expressed serious doubts about the often optimistically assumed inclusiveness of European decision-making.65 Finally, as already suggested, it is precisely the inability of citizens to sanction actual policies and to support an oppositional point of view within the European political system which strengthens the tendency of citizens to become Euro-skeptic and which turns policy-orientated opposition into systemic opposition.66 Although, again, these remarks do not aim to discredit the democratic possibilities of deliberative networks as such, they do aim to illustrate that network deliberation in itself is insufcient to guarantee the macrodeliberative quality of the democratic process. In the case of the European Union it seems, therefore, advisable to try and nd ways of strengthening the oppositional dynamics in its institutional architecture.67 VI. CONCLUSION This article has focused on the fallibility of actual discourse and the concomitant gap between actual and ideal deliberation. I have argued that this gap poses a threefold challenge for the institutionalization of deliberative democracy. It implies that in order to ensure the macro-deliberative quality of the democratic system we have to provide mechanisms which can reveal the partialities and exclusions involved in these actual outcomes; which can deal with the remainder of non-discursive power generated by these partialities; and which can help to guarantee the ongoing political commitment of citizens who feel, possibly rightly so, wronged by the decisions taken. I have argued, next, that representative
63 64

Neunreither 1998, p. 440. Fllesdal and Hix 2006, p. 548. Neunreither 1998, p. 437. Fllesdal and Hix 2006, p. 548. 65 Bellamy 2010, p. 10. Smismans 2008. 66 Fllesdal and Hix 2006, p. 549. Mair 2007, p. 6. Neunreither 1998, p. 439. 67 Hix 2008.

42

STEFAN RUMMENS

politics provide political debate with a narrative structure which makes the political process particularly visible and accessible to larger audiences. This visibility allows to deal in an adequate manner with the challenges identied. Representative politics are particularly well suited to reveal the epistemic location of decisions made; they are capable of identifying responsible political actors and holding them accountable; and they are able to maintain the commitment of those outvoted by holding out the promise of a possible future revision of the outcome. Although this article falls short of providing a more thorough comparison of the merits and shortcomings of the forum, the stage and the network, it aims to serve as a reminder. If discourse is always accompanied by a remainder of real power, then we should not let this power oat freely in black box mini-publics or anonymous networks where it can hide from sight and move unchecked. Instead we should try to make it visible and restrain its exclusionary and disaffecting impact. REFERENCES
Ankersmit, Frank R. 1996. Aesthetic Politics: Political Philosophy Beyond Fact and Value. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ankersmit, Frank R. 2002. Political Representation. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bellamy, Richard. 2010. Democracy without democracy? Can the EUs democratic outputs be separated from the democratic inputs provided by competitive parties and majority rule? Journal of European Public Policy, 17, 219. Benhabib, Seyla. 1992. Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bohman, James. 2005. The democratic minimum: democracy a means to global justice? Ethics and International Affairs, 19, 10116. Bohman, James. 2007. Democracy across Borders: from Dmos to Dmoi. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Brown, Mark B. 2006. Citizen panels and the concept of representation. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 14, 20325. Chambers, Simone. 2009. Rhetoric and the public sphere. Has deliberative democracy abandoned mass democracy? Political Theory, 37, 32350. Cohen, Joshua and Charles Sabel. 1997. Directly-deliberative polyarchy. European Law Journal, 3, 31342. Cohen, Joshua and Charles Sabel. 2004. Sovereignty and solidarity: EU and US. Pp. 15775 in Karl-Heinz Ladeur (ed.), Public Governance in the Age of Globalization. Aldershot: Ashgate. Dewey, John. [1927] 1989. The Public and Its Problems. Athens: Ohio University Press. Dryzek, John S. 2006. Deliberative Global Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Dryzek, John S. 2010a. Foundations and Frontiers of Deliberative Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dryzek, John S. 2010b. Rhetoric in democracy: a systemic appreciation. Political Theory, 38, 31939. Dryzek, John S. and Simon Niemeyer. 2008. Discursive representation. American Political Science Review, 102, 48193. Erman, Eva. Human rights do not make global democracy. Contemporary Political Theory (forthcoming). Fllesdal, Andreas and Simon Hix. 2006. Why there is a democratic decit in the EU: A response to Majone and Moravcsik. Journal of Common Market Studies, 44, 53362.

STAGING DELIBERATION

43

Fung, Archon. 2003. Recipes for public spheres: eight institutional design choices and their consequences. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 11, 33867. Gerstenberg, Oliver and Charles F. Sabel. 2002. Directly-deliberative polyarchy: an institutional ideal for Europe? Pp. 289341 in Christian Joerges and Renaud Dehousse (eds), Good Governance in Europes Integrated Market. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gilabert, Pablo. 2005. The substantive dimension of deliberative practical rationality. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 31, 185210. Goodin, Robert E. 2005. Sequencing deliberative moments. Acta Politica, 40, 18296. Goodin, Robert E. & John S. Dryzek. 2006. Deliberative impacts: the macro-political uptake of mini-publics. Politics & Society, 34, 21944. Habermas, Jrgen. 1996. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Cambridge: MIT Press. Habermas, Jrgen. 2003. Rightness versus truth: on the sense of normative validity in moral judgments and norms. Pp. 23778 in Truth and Justication. Cambridge: Polity Press. Habermas, Jrgen. 2008. Hat die Demokratie noch eine epistemische Dimension? Empirische Forschung und normative Theorie. Pp. 13891 in Ach, Europa: Kleine Politische Schriften XI. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Hajer, Maarten A. 2009. Authoritative Governance: Policy-making in the Age of Mediatization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hendriks, Carolyn M. 2006. Integrated deliberation: reconciling civil societys dual role in deliberative democracy. Political Studies, 54, 486508. Hendriks, Carolyn M. 2009. The democratic soup: mixed meanings of political representation in governance networks. Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, 22, 689715. Hix, Simon. 2008. Whats Wrong with the European Union & How to Fix it. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kuper, Andrew. 2004. Democracy Beyond Borders: Justice and Representation in Global Institutions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Landwehr, Claudia. 2010. Discourse and coordination: modes of interaction and their roles in political decision-making. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 18, 101 22. Lefort, Claude. 1988. Democracy and Political Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press. Magnette, Paul. 2006. Democracy in the European Union: why and how to combine representation and participation? Pp. 2341 in Stijn Smismans (ed.), Civil Society and Legitimate European Governance. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Mair, Peter. 2007. Political opposition and the European Union. Government and Opposition, 42, 117. Mansbridge, Jane. 1999. Everyday talk in the deliberative system. Pp. 21139 in S. Macedo (ed.), Deliberative Politics: Essays on Democracy and Disagreement. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mansbridge, Jane. 2003. Rethinking representation. American Political Science Review, 97, 51528. Mansbridge, Jane with James Bohman, Simone Chambers, David Estlund, Andreas Fllesdal, Archon Fung, Cristina Lafont, Bernard Manin and Jos Luis Mart. 2010. The place of self-interest and the role of power in deliberative democracy. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 18, 64100. Mouffe, Chantal. 2000. The Democratic Paradox. London: Verso. Mouffe, Chantal. 2005. On the Political. London: Routledge. Nsstrm, Soa. 2006. Representative democracy as tautology: Ankersmit and Lefort on representation. European Journal of Political Theory, 5, 32142. Neunreither, Karlheinz. 1998. Governance without opposition: the case of the European Union. Government and Opposition, 33, 41941. Offe, Claus. 2009. Governance: an empty signier? Constellations, 16, 55062.

44

STEFAN RUMMENS

Papadopoulos, Yannis. 2007. Problems of democratic accountability in network and multilevel governance. European Law Journal, 13, 46986. Parkinson, John. 2005. Rickety bridges: using the media in deliberative democracy. British Journal of Political Science, 36, 17583. Parkinson, John. 2006. Deliberating in the Real World. Problems of Legitimacy in Deliberative Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Parkinson, John and Alex Bavister-Gould. 2009. Judging macro-deliberative quality. Paper presented at the Democracy and the Deliberative Society Conference, University of York, June 2009. Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. 1967. The Concept of Representation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Plotke, David. 1997. Representation is democracy. Constellations, 4, 1934. Rummens, Stefan. 2006. Debate: the cooriginality of private and public autonomy in deliberative democracy. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 14, 46981. Rummens, Stefan. 2007. Democratic deliberation as the open-ended construction of justice. Ratio Juris, 20, 33554. Rummens, Stefan. 2008. Deliberation interrupted: confronting Jrgen Habermas with Claude Lefort. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 34, 383408. Rummens, Stefan. 2009. Democracy as a non-hegemonic struggle: disambiguating Chantal Mouffes agonistic model of politics. Constellations, 16, 37791. Saward, Michael. 2006. The representative claim. Contemporary Political Theory, 5, 297318. Saward, Michael. 2009. Authorisation and authenticity: representation and the unelected. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 17, 122. Smismans, Stijn. 2008. New modes of governance and the participatory myth. West European Politics, 31, 87495. Urbinati, Nadia. 2006. Representative Democracy: Principles & Genealogy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Urbinati, Nadia and Mark E. Warren. 2008. The concept of representation in contemporary democratic theory. Annual Review of Political Science, 11, 387412. Warren, Mark E. 2007. Institutionalizing deliberative democracy. Pp. 27288 in Shawn Rosenberg (ed.), Deliberation, Participation and Democracy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Young, Iris M. 2001. Activist challenges to deliberative democracy. Political Theory, 29, 67090. Young, Iris M. 2006. De-centering deliberative democracy. Kettering Review, 24, 4353.

Copyright of Journal of Political Philosophy is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.