‘Democracy’ is one of those concepts that we take for granted, and a word we use in capital-‘i’ Important conversations, but there is a crucial aspect of it that is often missed in the common usage. What we often think of when we think about democracy is the electoral aspect, and how decisions are made based on whichever option gets the most votes. This winning alternative reigns, no matter how bitter or resentful it leaves the losing factions.
This is what the deliberative conception of democracy addresses. Democracy is not, or should not be, just about the procedure of voting; it is also as much about the formative process of reaching a decision tolerable to the many, not just to the one winning camp. The goal—not always achievable—is a consensus. The winner might not be everyone’s first choice, but at least, through the deliberative democratic process, everyone gets a chance to air their reservations and disagreements, try to persuade the other teams, and potentially uncover a final alternative better than what was available at the start of the process.
It is easy to see how different this is from how democracy is actually practiced now. The elections of government officials are not carried out in a charitable and rational procedure, where the alternatives are carefully scrutinized in orderly debates where all sides are truly open to being persuaded. This latter point is critical: in the deliberative ideal version of democracy, there are no fanatics, there are no permanent factions or political parties. Everyone would be genuinely open to changing their votes. People would not go campaigning for a candidate while holding them sacred and infallible; there are no tribes, no cheering for one’s side while booing the others like sports fans in an arena.
Obviously, this ideal state of democracy remains that, an ideal. First among many reasons is that it is expensive. Deliberation and reasoning takes time, and time is a scarce resource. (To make things worse, time is disproportionately more scarce for the masses of people whom democratic governance is supposed to benefit, than to the elites who often end up dominating the flawed democracies.) Deliberation also assumes the strong presence of a shared reality, a common information environment: debates work only if the participants can point to the same, agreed-upon ecosystem of facts and experiences to support their claims. Unfortunately, the Internet did not democratize information, as its early proponents claimed. Instead, it created an anarchy.
Still, it is imperative to work towards a more deliberative democratic society, because there is no choice but to improve this form of society that we have good reason to believe is the best there is. As the famous Winston Churchill quote goes: “Democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried.”