Abstract
John Dewey’s belief in democratic deliberation rested on a “faith in the capacity of human beings for intelligent judgment and action if proper conditions are furnished” (Later Works 227). The stipulation of “proper conditions” is an essential feature, then, of participatory democracy, and Dewey spent considerable time concerned with these conditions, especially in The Public and Its Problems. This essay argues that the structures and ecologies within which we live make certain kinds of argumentation possible or likely, and that when we alter those structures we alter the possibilities for argumentation. Democratic forms of argumentation are made possible by structures that promote collaborative communication practices. This means that practical, public argument is not just a matter of making valid claims, but also a matter of effective contexts that can improve the quality of argumentation.
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Notes
In this essay, I define the word "democracy" (from a Deweyan perspective) as both a method of conducting government and making laws by means of popular suffrage and elected officials and the broad participation of all people in egalitarian relationships and communication that help in the formation of the values we use to regulate our lives together. Democracy as a way of life indicates the importance of quality relationships between strangers.
Much has already been written about the relationship between structure and agency, especially from the perspective of sociology. For an initial foray into the broader issues of structure/agency see: Hays (1994).
For a general contemporary account of how groups function, see: Gastil (2007).
For a more detailed description of “learning organizations,” see Argyris and Schön (1992).
Consensus is likely a rare occurrence in democratic life. Compromise is probably more likely given that two parties may agree temporarily on an imperfect solution. From the view of both rhetoric and pragmatism, democratic life involves different parties with legitimately different claims, and reconciling that difference is never a permanent of perfect process.
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Danisch, R. Rhetorical Structures, Deliberative Ecologies, and the Conditions for Democratic Argumentation. Argumentation 34, 339–353 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-019-09496-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-019-09496-w