Democratic Deliberation And Legitimacy

The article explores what the relationship between democratic deliberation and legitimacy ought to be,explain why is democratic deliberation necesity for the realization of legitimacy in the background of pluralism.Legitimacy in this article refers to the voluntary consent and recognition of the power object to the power subject in the exercise of public power. The realization of legitimacy needs both rationality and democracy,the use of human rationality in the democratic legislation provides basis for the realization of legitimacy.The legitimacy of the results of democratic legislation and decision-making should be recognized by citizen and have reasonableness and acceptability that worth to consent and obey.The results of democratic legislation and decision-making should reflect the reasonable public opinion if we expect its legitimacy.The reality of pluralism challenges the realization of legitimacy——to deal with the differences of multiple public opinion and to prevent the negative impact of instrumental rationality in democratic legislation and decision-making. In the background of pluralism,the rational basis of public opinion required for the realization of legitimacy should not be instrumental rationality,because the self-serving and utilitarian motives of instrumental rationality can not solve the the conflict of multiple interest and value justly and reasonably,can not correspond the multiple public opinion and make it acceptable publicly, so the realization of legitimacy needs new basis of rationality, emphasize the inter-subjectivity of rationality ,not the subjectivity of rationality, emphasize the priority of communicative rationality to instrumental rationality,the concept of communicative rationality emphasize that the rationality of each person is bounded,no one can claim that he possess the absolute truth,we should respect each person's rationality, the truth comes not in subjectivity but in intersubjectivity,it should be promoted that different subjects communicative equally and provide reason to each other,persuade each other,then realize the understanding of each other ,achieve reasonable consense that can be accepted by all,the use of communicative rationality is the basis of the formulation of public reason,public reason is the kind the reason that can be reasonably accepted by all,it is also public,the use of communicative rationality and the formulation of public reason provide the possibility of coordination of multiple public opinion and find the commonly accepted opinion.The public opinion that based on public reason should be the basis of democratic legislation and decision-making,so that the results of the legislation and decision-making can get the qualification to gain the consent and obedience of citizen, realize legitimacy.Electing a democratic representative body and the government through democratic vote has been regarded as the appropriate way to express the consent of citizen and realize legitimacy. This is the viewpoint of aggregative democracy, aggregative democracy consider that the aggregation of opinion and will of individual citizen is the basis of democracy and legitimacy. This article holds that democratic vote can not promote the realization of legitimacy in the background of pluralism,because that, on the one hand, democratic vote can not provide the basis of public reason for the democratic legislation and decision-making,the results of democratic vote was easily dominated by instrumental rationality and private reason,and interrupted by non-rational factors inevitably,democratic vote can not provide conditions of the formation of public reason, on the other hand,democratic vote can not guarantee the realization of democracy,first of all, although the democratic vote can aggregate the public opinion,but it can not provide sufficient condition for the expression,and even restrict the expression of public opinion,the results of democratic vote are production of the voting system rathan than expression of the opinion and will of voters,secondly,social choice theory has argued that because of the limitations of the democratic vote itself,the results of democratic vote could not reflect the opinion and will of voters, finally,the existed system of democratic vote is the combination of vote and representative participation,it restricted the participation of citizens,and therefore had no way to guarantee the realization of democracy.The theory of deliberative democracy argues that to deal with the challenges of pluralism on the the realization of legitimacy,we need to carry out democratic deliberation.Democratic deliberation is the democratic practice and democratic procedure that was advocated by deliberative democracy.The substantive nature of democratic deliberation is the rational communicative action between citizen subject that guided by the discourse ethics,aims at the mutual understanding of subjects and the reasonable consenses, emphasizes that the communicative subjects should claim and justify the validity of their opinion through the provision of reasons to look forward to the acceptability of other subjects.Communicative action should be guided by discourse ethics,each subject who has the capacity of speech can enter and participate the dialogue, subjects are equal,before dialogue,there should be no exclusion of any person in entering the dialogue process, in the process of dialogue, participants should communicate equally and give mutual respect to each other, attach importance to only the power of reason and argument,the process of dialogue is open to all the opinion,reason, evidence, criticism, argument,although that the process of dialogue can be suspended,but it should never terminate,rational communication means the use of communicative rationality rather than instrumental rationality,based on public reason rather than private reason,the use of communicative rationaliy is the precondition of formulation of public reason.Democratic deliberation means that equal citizens communicate freely,using communicative rationaliy,hope to achieve the reasonable consensus that based of public reason,then do a democratic decision-making that has the public acceptability and consented by all citizens.How to carry out democratic deliberation?Firstly,What to deliberate?What should be the content of democratic deliberation,some consider that it should deliberate the conflict moral rules,some consider that it should deliberate the constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice,some consider that it should deliberate all these public issues,the article argue that democratic deliberation should solve the comprehensive public issues in the pluralistic democratic society, we shouldn't set too many restrictions on the content.Secondly,Who deliberate?Who should be the subjects of the democratic deliberation?Some consider that the ordinary public should be the subjects,some consider that when we face the large-scale and large number of people of democratic countries,the direct participation in deliberation is difficult,if we want to make the democratic deliberation feasible,it need to elect representatives,the subjects of deliberation should not be ordinary people, in this view, scholars also expressed doubts and worries about the capacity of ordinary people,they think that the subjects of deliberation should be restricted in order to ensure the quality of deliberation, the subjects of democratic deliberation should be the judges, legislators, officer and other intellectuals.The article argue that the subjects of democratic deliberation should be all the ordinary people,the ordinary citizens should have equal right to participate democratic deliberation, which is considered the embodiment of democracy,but it doesn't mean the exclusion of representative, the deliberation should be considered effective as long as the elected representative can represent the ordinary citizen adequately and effectively.Third,Where to deliberate?What should be the space of democratic deliberation?democratic deliberation should be carried out in political sphere(the political sphere can be expressed as the space of national system level,include the legislature institution,court and some of the administrative institution),public sphere and designed forums for deliberation,they should function together.Consider the function of the designed forums,it provides the space for the representative of citizens to express their opinios to the political deliberation and legislation in political sphere,have no power of legislation and decision-making, and the subjects of the designed forums are also from the ordinary citizens,so the desined forums can also be classified into the public sphere.Fourth,What should be the type of democratic deliberation?there should be the internal reflective deliberation and the face-to-face collective deliberation,the internal reflective deliberation is carried out in the mind of individual,consider the difficulties of carry out the external collective deliberation in large-scale society,we shouldn't require that everyone is on the scene actually,we should accept that the participants deliberate through the imagine of they are on the scene,the interest and opinion of those citizen that couldn't participants the deliberation on the scene or those who are unwilling of participate the deliberation can be considered through the internal-reflective deliberation.The external collective deliberation means to deliberate face-to-face between each other.The types of deliberation can also be expressed as substantive deliberation and conceived deliberation,the former means to deliberate face-to-face,the latter means that the participants of deliberation should consider the possible views and reasons of others,use the communicative rationality to conceive the communication. Fishkin distinct the face-to-face deliberation and the virtual deliberation,regard the latter type as deliberation through internet.Fifth,Thinking about the manner of communication used in the process of democratic deliberation,it should be flexible and diverse,and shouldn't be confined to rational and abstract reasoning,but whatever the manner is,the content it expressed must be supported by reason.Sixth,Democratic legislative procedure is the embodiment of democratic deliberation,the legislative procedure means the interactant between the public deliberation in public sphere and the political deliberation in political sphere,means the domination of the public deliberation over the political deliberation,the public opinion formed in the public discussion in public sphere should become the basis of legislature and decision-making in political sphere,the political deliberation should always open to the public deliberation,the public deliberation should dominate the political deliberation continuously.In addition,the realization of democratic deliberation also needs a kind of special political communication institution. In recent years,many scholars at home and abroad began to consider the importance of the transformation from the theory of democratic deliberation to its practice,designed the institution of democratic deliberation and made political experiment,so it is more and more convinced that democratic deliberation is feasible and possible in real political life.Why democratic deliberation provide necessary conditions for the realization of legitimacy?First of all,only democratic deliberation can adapt the demands needed for the realization of legitimacy in the background of pluralism,provide the basis of public reason for the realization of legitimacy. This is because:first,only democratic deliberation could promote the formation of public reason,public reason is not preexistent,it should be constructed in some way,public reason is constructed in the communictive action,the public reason can be checked and tested in the process of democratic deliberation,so it can be identified and then we can judge that if it can have the opportunity to apply for a democratic legislature and decision-making,democratic deliberation pursuit consensus of some extent through the construction and identification of public reason,the consensus should be the basis of the democratic legislation and decision-making,second,democratic democracy provide procedural conditions for the use of public reason,the communicative power that based on public reason should dominate the law making power and administrative power,so that the public reason can be used in the exercise of public power, promote the realization of legitimacy,third,the normative principle of democratic deliberation provide substantive guarantee for the formation and use of public reason,the principle includes:public,political equality,freedom and autonomy.Next,democratic deliberation is conducive to the realization of democracy.Firstly, the unique meaning of democratic deliberation lies in that it promote the formation of reasonable public opinion,secondly,the formation of public opinion should be the basis and prerequisite of the for aggregation of public opinion,to promote the realization of democracy,democratic deliberation should be considered the supplement of democratic vote,the article didn't deny the necessity and importance of democratic vote when it emphasize the necessity and importance of democratic deliberation,democratic deliberation can not bring about full consensus in all the situations,so that democratic vote should be needed after democratic deliberation inevitably,democratic vote should not be replaced by democratic deliberation,democratic deliberation should be the necessary complement to democratic vote,thirdly,the combination of democratic deliberation and representative participation is conducive to the promotion of civic participation and the full expression of public opinion.The article also responded some queries that aimed at the democratic deliberation,they are mainly about the validity of democratic democracy when the passion and capability of citizens are not abundant,the possible exclusion and manipulation during the process of democratic deliberation,the non-necessity of the use of public reason in democratic deliberation,the possible exacerbation of differences,rational choice theory's challenge,these queries are not sufficient to deny the necessary of democratic deliberation to promote the legitimacy.