James Bohman

Survey Article: The Coming of Age of Deliberative Democracy

roposed as a reformist and sometimes even as a radical political ideal,deliberative democracy begins with the critique of the standard practices ofliberal democracy. Although the idea can be traced to Dewey and Arendt andthen further back to Rousseau and even Aristotle, in its recent incarnation theterm stems from Joseph Bessette, who explicitly coined it to oppose the elitist or‘‘aristocratic’’ interpretation of the American Constitution.

International Regimes and Democratic Governance: Political Equality and Influence in Global Institutions

Proponents of cosmopolitan democracy rely primarily on institutional design to make their case for the feasibility of democratic governance at this level. Another strategy seems more plausible: proposing a ‘non-ideal’ theory in Rawls’s sense that examines the social forces and conditions currently promoting democracy at the international level. The strongest forces operating now are various transnational associations that help to produce and monitor regime formation and compliance. Such a highly decentralized form of governance suggests that democratization is thereby promoted by a dense network of associations in international civil society, a global public sphere, and responsive political organizations. However much these forces disperse power through the normative principle of equal access to political influence, they could also fall well short of realizing desirable ideals such as free and open deliberation. In order not to devolve into an interest group pluralism, the decentralized strategy requires that a richer democracy be realized through the legal institutionalization of free and equal access to the global public sphere.

Theories, Practices, and Pluralism A Pragmatic Interpretation of Critical Social Science

A hallmark of recent critical social science has been the commitment to methodological and theoretical pluralism. Habermas and others have argued that diverse theoretical and empirical approaches are needed to support informed social criticism. However, an unresolved tension remains in the epistemology of critical social science: the tension between the epistemic advantages of a single comprehensive theoretical framework and those of methodological and theoretical pluralism. By shifting the grounds of the debate in a way suggested by Dewey’s pragmatism, the author argues that a thoroughgoing pluralism strengthens, rather than weakens, both the social scientific and political aims of critical social science. Not only does pragmatism offer a plausible interpretation of the epistemic pluralism of the social sciences, but it also provides a way of thinking about their fundamentally practical and political character. With a better normative vocabulary with which to discuss the epistemological issues of such a pluralistic mode of inquiry, the democratic role of critical inquiry and its specifically “practical” form of verification can be clarified.

Constitution Making and Democratic Innovation The European Union and Transnational Governance

The European Union stands before a constitutional moment. While some deny the need for a constitution and others want a familiar federal form, I argue that one of the main goals of the constitutional convention ought to be to make the European Union more democratic. The central question is: what sort of democracy is suggested by some of the more novel aspects of European integration? This question demands a normative standard by which to evaluate the realization of democracy in transnational polities. Along republican lines, the proper standard is nondomination. With this normative framework in mind, the problem that the constitution has to solve is juridification, or the possibility of legal domination where there is no unified sovereignty. The solution to this problem of legal domination requires that the constitution institute a reflexive legal order best realized in a deliberative federalism appropriate to a polycentric and diverse polity. Finally, the institutions of this federalism ought also to be characterized through their distinctive form of inquiry, which, borrowing from Gerald Ruggie, I call ‘multiperspectival’. In a transnational polity with multiple demoi, such a democracy is best realized through dispersed and plural forms of authority and in a differentiated institutional structure anchored in a reflexive constitution.

Beyond Distributive Justice and Struggles for Recognition: Freedom, Democracy, and Critical Theory

This article argues that a theory of recognition cannot provide the comprehensive basis for a critical theory or a conception of social justice. In this respect, I agree with Frasers impulse to include more in such a theory, such as distributive justice and participatory parity. Fraser does not go far enough, to the extent that methodologically she seeks a theory of the same sort as Honneths. Both Honneths and Frasers comprehensive theories cannot account for a central phenomenon of contemporary societies: domination as structural exclusion rather than tyranny or the lack of parity. This phenomenon shows that at the very least freedom (rather than merely justice or recognition) ought to remain central to any critical theory of globalization. Most of all, both theories fail to provide a way to decide whether democratic practices can produce justice. A pluralist and pragmatic form of critical theory is thus superior to any comprehensive normative theory.

Reflexive public deliberation: Democracy and the limits of pluralism

Deliberative democracy defends an ideal of equality as political efficacy. Jorge Valadez offers a defense of such an ideal given cultural pluralism of ethnopolitical groups. He develops an epistemological account of the fact of pluralism as entailing incommensurable conceptual frameworks. While his account goes a long way towards identifying the problems with neutrality and many other liberal solutions to the problem of pluralism, it is still too liberal in certain ways. First, he draws the limits of deliberation and political inclusion too narrowly, giving little role for the toleration of non-liberal groups and too great a role to autonomy in deliberation. Second, incommensurability overemphasizes the theoretical nature of cultural conflicts and the need for background agreements on certain political values and thus also underappreciates practical solutions that leave disagreements intact. Finally, the contemporary fact of pluralism is not limited to relations among distinct cultures in this way, but is far more multidimensional, given multiple political memberships and the mutual interdependence and intense interaction among widely dispersed groups.

Living without Freedom Cosmopolitanism at Home and the Rule of Law

For Kant and many modern cosmopolitans, establishing the rule of law provides the chief mechanism for achieving a just global order. Yet, as Hart and Rawls have argued, the rule of law, as it is commonly understood, is quite consistent with “great iniquities.” This criticism does not apply to a sufficiently robust, republican conception of the rule of law, which attributes a basic legal status to all persons. Accordingly, the pervasiveness of dominated persons without legal status is a a fundamental violation of the rule of law. This legal status can be understood in Kants sense as an original “right to freedom,” one that is not derived from or acquired by membership in a community or from citizenship. The realization of this kind of legal status can already be found in the “cosmopolitan constitutions” of many democracies, which include rights of persons (and not just citizens) to habeas corpus and other statuses that protect those vulnerable to domination. In order that all persons have the appropriate institutional space within which to exercise the powers of persons to address and make claims, institutions such as human rights courts to which those who lack legal status can appeal and be recognized are necessary for a form of the rule of law that is adequate to current circumstances.

Children and the Rights of Citizens: Nondomination and Intergenerational Justice

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) emphasizes the importance of the temporal dimension of childhood and children’s need for special protection. Such protection is necessary because of their susceptibility to domination, especially intergenerational domination. The same is true for past and future generations, where such domination includes the domination of and by the current generation of children, especially around intergenerational, public goods important for a good human life. Such an account of intergenerational justice captures the focus of the CRC’s Preamble on improving the quality of the lives of children.

system and "lifeworld": habermas and the problem of holism

more controversy than his distinction between &dquo;system&dquo; and &dquo;lifeworld.&dquo; In this paper, I will defend the distinction from some of its critics. At the same time, I will criticize Habermas’s formulation of it for a number of inconsistencies arising from the way he links the distinction to a theory of social reification. Taking Habermas’s discussion of the holistic character of the lifeworld as my model, I will develop a similar, non-totalizing interpretation of the proper use of the concept of systems in critical social theory. Despite the long tradition of the use of the concept of totality by critical theorists, I will argue that &dquo;totalizing&dquo; uses of both system and lifeworld require dubious ontological and epistemological claims; in contrast, &dquo;holistic&dquo; uses require only weaker empirical and methodological claims, some version of which is necessary for any critical social theory.

Domination, Epistemic Injustice and Republican Epistemology

With her conception of epistemic injustice, Miranda Fricker has opened up new normative dimensions for epistemology; that is, the injustice of denying one’s status as a knower. While her analysis of the remedies for such injustices focuses on the epistemic virtues of agents, I argue for the normative superiority of adapting a broadly republican conception of epistemic injustice. This argument for a republican epistemology has three steps. First, I focus on methodological and explanatory issues of identifying epistemic injustice and argue, against Fricker, that identity prejudice fails to provide a sufficient explanatory basis for the spread and maintenance of such systematic epistemic injustice. Second, this systemic basis can be found not so much in the psychological attitudes of individual knowers, but in the relations of domination among groups and individuals in a society. Third, if such a presence of domination plays a primary explanatory role in all forms of epistemic injustice, it is likely that those who suffer from epistemic injustice will also suffer other forms of injustice and loss of status via the exercise of other forms of power and exclusion.