Emily Hauptmann

Can less be more? Leftist deliberative democrats' critique of participatory democracy

Many contemporary democratic theorists now base their conceptions of democracy not on the value of citizen participation but on deliberation instead. This apparently slight shift in emphasis marks an important change in the critical project of democratic theory. Although participatory and deliberative democratic theory are in some ways similar, close readings of the recent work of a number of leftist deliberative democrats reveal not only fundamental criticisms of their participatory predecessors but a strikingly different assessment of the political world as well. Deliberative democrats strive to avoid the charge of utopianism so often leveled against participatory theorists; in doing so, however, they lose the power to distinguish critically between the potential for democracy and its realization. Deliberative democratic theory, therefore, should not be understood as a revision of the participatory project, but rather as an independent and, for now, underdeveloped theory of democracy.

A Local History of “The Political”

This essay interprets changes in how “the political” was employed by a group of political theorists connected to the University of California, Berkeley, from the late 1950s up to the present. Initially, the political names both what students of politics ought to study and invokes a way of studying meant to have broad appeal. In later uses, however, the political takes on an evanescent quality compared to the solid realm of generality represented in earlier work. Also, only from the 1970s on is the political explicitly identified with democracy. Finally, later uses of the political no longer invoke a mode of study with broad appeal but one that even most self-described political theorists fail to practice. Though the changes the author analyzes in how the political was conceived are specific to the work of a small group of theorists, they suggest a more general story about the late twentieth-century development of political theory in the American academy.

The Ford Foundation and the Rise of Behavioralism in Political Science

How did behavioralism, one of the most influential approaches to the academic study of politics in the twentieth century, become so prominent so quickly? I argue that many political scientists have either understated or ignored how the Ford Foundations Behavioral Sciences Program gave form to behavioralism, accelerated its rise, and helped root it in political science. I then draw on archived documents from Ford as well as one of its major grantees, U. C. Berkeley, to present several examples of how Ford used its funds to encourage the behavioral approach at a time when it had few adherents among political scientists.

From Opposition to Accommodation: How Rockefeller Foundation Grants Redefined Relations between Political Theory and Social Science in the 1950s

In this essay, I rely primarily on unpublished documents from the Rockefeller Foundation Archives as well as the annual reports of the Ford Foundation and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) to show that rather than being in a torpor, political theory in the 1950s was a large and eclectic field, marked by contest and rapid change. I focus on the Rockefeller Foundations policy making for its program in Legal and Political Philosophy (LAPP), the largest grant program for political theory in the 1950s, both to see how the Foundation justified the creation of the program and how it defined its scope. I argue that when faced with the task of settling on a working definition of “political theory” for the purpose of awarding grants, the Foundations officers and the academics who assisted them opted, after prolonged debate, for an eclectic definition of political theory. I read the emergence of this eclectic definition of political theory, however, not as evidence of pacific pluralism but as an attempt to contain some of the new challenges to the field by incorporating them into it, albeit in a subordinate position.

“PROPAGANDISTS FOR THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES”: THE OVERLOOKED PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN THE CARNEGIE CORPORATION AND SSRC IN THE MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY

The Carnegie Corporations role as a patron of the behavioral sciences has been overlooked; its support for the behavioral sciences not only began earlier than the Ford Foundations but was also at least equally important to their success. I show how the close postwar collaboration between the Carnegie Corporation and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) to promote the behavioral sciences emerged after a struggle between Carnegie and the Rockefeller Foundation over the direction and leadership of the SSRC. I then focus on three postwar projects Carnegie helped conceive and fund that were publicized as the work of the SSRC: Chases The Proper Study of Mankind (1948), Stouffer et al.s The American Soldier (), and the Michigans Survey Research Center 1952 election study. In each of these projects, Carnegie deliberately muted its own role and promoted the remade SSRC as a major advocate for the behavioral sciences.

Deliberation Day; Deliberative Democracy in America: A Proposal for a Popular Branch of Government; and Democratic Autonomy: Public Reasoning about the Ends of Policy

Deliberation Day. By Bruce Ackerman and James S. Fishkin. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. 288p.

Deliberation = Legitimacy = Democracy

30.00. Deliberative Democracy in America: A Proposal for a Popular Branch of Government. By Ethan J. Leib. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. 156p.

Putting Choice before Democracy: A Critique of Rational Choice Theory

27.50. Democratic Autonomy: Public Reasoning about the Ends of Policy. By Henry S. Richardson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 328p.

The Reasonable and the Rational Capacities in Political Analysis

45.00 cloth,

Adcock: Liberalism and Political Science

19.95 paper. Compelling theories of politics invite us to see the world differently. But once we see political life in different terms, what will we be moved to do? Redesign our political institutions? Or revise our reasons for supporting those that currently exist? As the authors of the three books reviewed here illustrate, those who have taken up deliberative theories of democracy are moved to engage in profoundly different kinds of projects, marked either by redesign or revision. Bruce Ackerman, James Fishkin, and Ethan Leib believe their commitments to theories of deliberative democracy require them to focus on drafting extensive plans for institutional redesign. By contrast, Henry Richardson, while endorsing institutional reforms, ranging from changing electoral law to opening administrative rule making to greater citizen participation (pp. 200–202, 219–22), devotes the majority of his book to showing how the ideals of his theory of deliberative democracy can make better and more complete sense of political life as it is. The deep contrast between how these authors understand what one ought to do with a commitment to deliberative democracy prompts us to consider whether they are simply committed to different things or are striking out on different paths from substantially similar starting points instead.