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Bridging Promises and (Dis)Illusions: Deliberative Democracy in an Evolutionary Perspective

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Evolutionary Governance Theory

Abstract

The participatory, and especially deliberative, turn is a major political phenomenon of last decades. Deliberative democracy has spread quickly, regardless of differences in institutional layouts and traditions. An equally fast-evolving debate has addressed its virtues and problems, gradually shifting from theory to practice and from a focus on deliberative arenas to a concern for their policy and institutional context, the latter being implicitly or explicitly referred to the emergence of new governance styles. More recently a different critical literature has emerged, which adopts a governmentality perspective to argue about the inclusion of participatory democracy in neoliberal forms of regulation. The chapter illustrates major points of contention between these two literatures and considers some attempts at merging them, with related problems. Finally, it addresses the potentials of evolutionary governance theory as a framework for bridging diverse approaches to the promises and perils of participation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Some parts of this chapter are reworked from Pellizzoni (2013).

  2. 2.

    Apart from the European Union’s growing commitment to ‘partnership’ and participation (of which the 2007 Lisbon Treaty describes no less than four types: expression and exchange of views, dialogue, consultation, and citizens’ right of initiative), one should mention at least the French 1995 law on the débat public (Revel et al. 2007) and the cross-country diffusion of participatory budgeting (Sintomer and Allegretti 2009).

  3. 3.

    Differences, for example, between those who understand deliberative processes as a means to build and express in a ‘better’, more ‘reflective’, way the public opinion (hence random selection of participants is advisable), and those who understand them in a Deweyan fashion, as a means to perform public inquiries into collective problems (hence ‘reasoned’ choice among the involved parties is preferable).

  4. 4.

    According to Besson and Martí (2006), authors like Mansbridge and Dryzek seek to accommodate deliberative democracy with radical approaches. However, recognizing the need for deliberative theory to take in consideration the reality of conflict and self-interest does not amount to joining a Marxian, Schmittian or Foucauldian understanding of the political as based on, rather than affected by, conflict. On this point cf. also Silver et al. (2010).

  5. 5.

    The ETM technique seeks to combine the advantages of small-group debate with those deriving from the involvement of a larger number of citizens. A group of people varying from some hundreds to some thousands are divided into subgroups of about ten to discuss an agenda of issues at separate tables. By means of network-connected computers, the results of individual discussions are collected, aggregated and reported to all participants, who then have to vote on questions related to the issues discussed.

  6. 6.

    The law has been subsequently passed on 27 December 2007 (Regional Law No. 69/2007). A renewed version has been passed on 24 July 2013 (Regional Law No. 46/2013).

  7. 7.

    Cities play a growing role in managing the interface between local economy and global flows, local sustainability and international competitiveness, social exclusion and global polarization (Jessop 2002). Hence, it comes as no surprise if it is at urban level that the instrumentality of participatory processes to the stabilization, deepening and strengthening of neoliberalism is most frequently assessed.

  8. 8.

    Think, in this sense, of the way neoliberalism ‘overcomes’ liberalism. The former maintains the need to extend economic rationality to all social fields—rather than ensuring a space for economy free from political or religious influences. It maintains as well that markets are artificial institutions which have to be purposefully constructed, steered and policed in order to promote humans’ natural tendency to compete—against the liberal understanding of the market as a self-regulating institution, under the assumption of human natural tendency to exchange (Tickell and Peck 2003; Dardot and Laval 2009).

  9. 9.

    From this perspective, the criticisms that deliberative democrats (and governance scholarship) address to the cognitive deficits of representative institutions and traditional bureaucracies can be read as a clue to the hegemonic status of neoliberalism, its basic tenets about the state’s limited capacity of steering getting support from ostensibly opposed quarters.

  10. 10.

    For example the original law put much emphasis on a deliberative model inspired to the French débat public, yet no such process took place. The new formulation includes more binding dispositions on this point. Information and materials on the Tuscany laws and experiences (mostly but not exclusively in Italian) can be found at the website of the Tuscany Regional Administration: http://www.regione.toscana.it/regione/istituzioni/partecipazione. An overall assessment is provided by Lewanski (2013). Cf. also Floridia (2008), Bobbio (2013).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political and Social Science, University of Trieste, Piazza Europa 1, 34127, Trieste, Italy

    Luigi Pellizzoni

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  1. Faculty of Management, Science and Technology, Open University, Heerlen, The Netherlands

    Raoul Beunen

  2. Faculty of Extension, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

    Kristof Van Assche

  3. Cultural Geography Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Martijn Duineveld

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Pellizzoni, L. (2015). Bridging Promises and (Dis)Illusions: Deliberative Democracy in an Evolutionary Perspective. In: Beunen, R., Van Assche, K., Duineveld, M. (eds) Evolutionary Governance Theory. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12274-8_15

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