Deliberation and the Constitution

This dissertation is about political deliberation. The increasing recognition of deliberation as a central concept for the practice and promise of democracy has prompted many students of politics to bring public deliberation front and center in the evaluation of American democracy. Despite a virtual explosion of recent writings respecting deliberation, the concept is still in a formative stage, chiefly because theorists and empirical political scientists have worked in insulation from one another. As a result, absent from the literature is an account of how the empirical boundaries of what is institutionally viable give form to the normative aspirations of deliberation.; This dissertation brings political reality to bear upon theory, placing the concept of deliberation with an actual regime by addressing the question, how should we conceive of deliberation as best operating in the American Constitutional democracy. A Constitutional perspective better allows the scholar to recognize that, as only one of several constitutive elements of the American regime, deliberation is a qualified good, checked by other aspirations. Critical to this understanding is an account of the conditions under which common political practices, such as cue-taking or voting, may be conceived as legitimate alternatives or additions to deliberation.; The dissertation moves from a negation, through a reconstruction, to an application. The negation stage disposes of several particularly influential models of idealized deliberation, critiquing them both on grounds of incoherence and lack of utility for understanding how regimes can plausibly operate. The reconstructive stage has two phases: (a) an articulation of constitutionalism that allows for deliberation but avoids the abuses detailed in the first part, and (b) a further specification of deliberation in the American Constitution. Lastly, the application stage demonstrates that to the degree the Constitution is worthy, the limits it places on deliberation are worthy of respecting. This argument shifts the normative focus of political theory from asking how deliberative a regime can be to asking whether the practice of deliberation in the American regime satisfies its own standards.