Political Theory

H12(a) - Deliberation, Representation and the City

Date: Jun 3 | Time: 02:00pm to 03:30pm | Location:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Thilo Schaefer (University of Toronto)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Paul Gray (Brock University)

The Fragmentation of the Representative System: Daniel Hutton Ferris (University of Toronto)
Abstract: Political representation is performed by an expansive system of elected and unelected actors in formal and informal contexts (Mansbridge 2018). Politicians represent with the help of bureaucrats, experts, NGOs, activists, public figures, and normal citizens assembled in minipublics (Montanaro 2012; 2017; Saward 2009; 2010). Political theorists tend to celebrate the multiplication of representative, claims, actors and institutions. They argue that policy makers should consult with “citizen representatives” deliberating together in minipublics (Bohman 2012; Dryzek and Niemeyer 2008), or that a freer market in representative claims would improve political judgement and spawn new and more authentic political identities (Disch 2011; Saward 2009). But the fragmentation of the representative system threatens democracy. Actors with substantial resources can use them to navigate institutional complexity while normal people get lost in a maze of veto-points. This creates incentives for empowered representatives to collude with each other, to roll over when powerful organizations try to capture them, and to shirk their duty to represent everyone else. And discursive complexity can make public justifications seem opaque, irrelevant and unprincipled. Ordinary citizens would benefit a democratic simplification: – a change that makes it easier for ordinary people to interpret and intervene in political decisions. Democrats should promote centripetal representation and create institutional incentives that pushe power from the margins to the middle of the representative system. I illustrate these arguments by proposing a series of reforms to political parties and by suggesting new ways to link minipublics up with the media, civil society, and wider policy networks.

What Role for Political Parties in the Multicultural City?: Benoît Morissette (Université du Québec à Montréal)
Abstract: In this paper, I argue that rivalries between political parties at the municipal level can promote the political inclusion of immigrants. I first underline the fact that cities are now considered to be host societies in most liberal democracies. Building on the theory of partisanship developed by Nancy Rosenblum, I then show that identification of individuals with political parties is the main vehicle leading to the development of the moral dispositions generally associated with citizenship, such as a demonstrated interest in politics, the desire to contribute to the public good, and respect for the ‘rules of the game’. It is therefore through partisan identification that immigrants come to adopt behaviours that allow them to be recognized as full citizens by the other members of their host society. However, as I explain, the public culture of liberal democracies conveys a representation of cities as ‘apolitical’ social groups, or as communities essentially foreign to partisan oppositions. This representation is perpetuated in mainstream as well as critical political discourses that promote the exercise of local power through institutions usually associated with direct, participatory or associative democracy. Hence, this representation of the urban community hampers the development or consolidation of practices allowing immigrants to be recognized as citizens. In this perspective, I argue that liberal democracies should foster the formation of partisan systems at the municipal level, rather than seek to stem them, as most contemporary urban citizenship theories suggest.

Intramural Deliberation and the Public Sphere: Michael DeMoor (The King's University)
Abstract: Intramural deliberation -- deliberation within institutions or communities in civil society focused on the question of how those communities should take up a position on a public issue and/or how they should conduct their internal affairs in the light of public controversies -- plays an crucial, but largely overlooked role in the "deliberative system" of modern democracies. This paper begins by specifying what intramural deliberation is by distinguishing it from related concepts and then unpacking some examples of it. It then identifies three crucial contributions this form of deliberation makes to public deliberation as a whole: (1) harmonizing group interest with conceptions of the common good; (2) providing a locus for the "uptake" of public arguments; and (3) proving a context for what Dryzek calls "discursive representation." Put more generally, intramural deliberation (and the communities it takes place in) provides a context for what Mansbridge calls "deliberative neo-pluralism." The paper concludes by considering what recognizing the importance of intramural deliberation means for how we conceive of the "public sphere" and the role of the state therein.