Public reasoning

Public reasoning

The two routes proposed above to overcome the disruptive influences of inequality on democratic decision-making are based on the fundamental assumption that, at the core of the democratic process, lies public reasoning. Decisions are reached not through force of violence, but through the force of argument and debate in the public space. For the human development and capability approach, democracy is first and foremost ‘government by discussion’ (Drèze and Sen 2002, p379).

Seeing public reasoning as central to the democratic experience requires that one pay particular attention to the way and the context in which this public debate takes place. This has been one of the major contributions of the literature on deliberative democracy. In a book on Public Reasoning, Henry Richardson (2002) argues that deliberation is the essence of democracy, because democracy is nothing else but an exercise in reasoning about what ought to be done in the public space, which policies should be undertaken, and what priorities should be pursued. The ends of policy-making are not given, neither are the means to achieve them, and policies have thus to be decided by the citizens themselves. Because decisions are not made following

a pre-established rule or by ‘flipping a coin’ (2002, p76), but following a search for the ‘best’ decisions according to what ought to be done given a certain conception of truth and what is good, Richardson argues that reasoning is the mechanism in a democracy through which people rule themselves.

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Understanding democracy as ‘self-rule by reasoning’ allows us to under- stand better why the idea of political equality is closely connected to social and economic equality, for economically and socially disadvantaged people often lack the reasoning and persuasive skills to participate fully as citizens. This point has been made strongly by deliberative democracy theorist James Bohman (1996, 1997). He introduces the concept of ‘political functioning’ to convey the idea that political equality requires economic and social conditions. In order for the democratic process to be fair, those who participate in the process need the capability to function politically, that is, they need to have the capability to participate in public reasoning. This requires that people have certain cognitive and communication skills in order to engage in the public debate. Among the skills required for effective political functioning are: the skill of initiating public dialogue or making proposals about an issue; the ability to engage in argument and counter-argument; skills in framing and reframing a debate, and finding ways to harmonize proposals and deal with conflicting views; and an ability for persuasive but not manipulative rhetoric (Bohman, 1996).

A just and legitimate democratic process is one in which citizens are endowed with a certain threshold level of adequate political functioning. If citizens are below the threshold, they lack the cognitive and communication skills necessary to engage in public deliberation, and will therefore not be able to participate and influence the outcome of these deliberations. They are in a situation of what Bohman describes as ‘political poverty’, which he defines simply as ‘the inability of groups of citizens to participate effectively in the democratic process’ (Bohman, 1997, p332). Conversely, if some citizens are above the threshold, they will have too much power in influencing the outcome of deliberations.

In other words, full political participation entails not only including every- one in a discussion but ensuring that every person included is equipped with an adequate level of political functioning and adequate cognitive and communication skills to advance her claims, so that ‘the silence [of the uneducated] is [not] turned into consent by the more powerful deliberators who are able to ignore them’ (Bohman, 1997, p333). This requires a strong educational system guaranteeing equal educational opportunities, with adequate public spending. Education is crucial for a healthy democracy, a point that will be developed more extensively in the next chapter. Those who lack these skills, even though they are formally and physically included in the democratic process, will most likely remain excluded from it.