Abstract
Deliberative democracy advances an emancipatory project of equality and freedom. It envisions a discursive exchange of reasons that overcomes power asymmetries both in deliberative forums and in the wider public sphere (Chambers, 1996; Dryzek, 2000; Landemore, 2020). Its emancipatory potential lies in its explicit attempt to challenge taken-for-granted asymmetries and long-lasting forms of oppression through critical reflection and discursive contestation. Yet these ideals have been produced in a particular economic and cultural context. Emerging from the humanist Enlightenment tradition, embedded within capitalist societies, and inspired by linguistic and critical theories, deliberative democracy is deeply rooted in Western thought. Despite its emancipatory impetus, therefore, deliberative theory is grounded on assumptions and concepts that are strongly related to the colonial history of slavery, exploitation, and oppression.
In this article, we argue that, if deliberative democracy is to unfold its full emancipatory potential, it needs to face the colonial legacies it carries. Rather than on the practical applications of deliberative democracy as realized in mini-publics or other formats, this article is focused on decolonizing deliberative democratic theory. This, however, does not mean that we understand decolonizing as a purely intellectual or metaphoric endeavor (Yang & Wayne, 2012). A project of decolonizing deliberative democracy requires redefining terms, developing new vocabularies, and remaking the patterns that govern political institutions and our everyday lives (Maldonado-Torres, 2011). Theories have real-world impact. Hence, decolonizing deliberative democracy means focusing on concrete claims for generating conditions for self-determination, dismantling racist power structures, and confronting global economic inequalities.
While deliberative democracy has been relatively silent about decolonization until now, recent voices in deliberative scholarship have articulated a critique of narrow conceptions of democracy for which “to blame is, especially, colonialism and Western imperialism” (Gagnon et al., 2021, p. 13). It follows that “core norms of deliberative democracy will need to be critically rethought and revised” (Deveaux, 2018, p. 158). To this end, the article proposes six moves toward decolonizing deliberative democracy. In proposing these moves, we do not suggest that decolonizing is a task that can be fully accomplished, or worse, a check box that can be ticked. Rather we understand decolonizing as an ethos that needs to be situated at the heart of the deliberative democratic project and function as a driving force. The first three moves are deconstructive and aimed at dismantling colonial thinking, while the following three moves are reconstructive and outlining a potential pathway toward a decolonial deliberative democracy. Hence, we seek to avoid the mainly negative impetus that drives some decolonization efforts. Here, we agree with Getachew and Mantena (2021, p. 361) who argue that “it might be useful to think of anticolonial thought as having two connected aims—one critical and another reconstructive.”
On the deconstructive side: 1. deliberative democracy needs to acknowledge the colonial violence of exploitation, racism, and xenophobia hidden by the narrative of modernity, 2. recognize the epistemic injustices of geographical, racial and gender divides that are cutting across the knowledge production of deliberative democracy, and 3. critique the colonial drive of new deliberative institutions, such as mini-publics, which are often seen as technologies that can be exported to any cultural context.
Building on the initial deconstruction of deliberative democracy, we suggest three reconstructive moves: 4. Rebuilding deliberative democracy needs to start from the bottom up by inductively theorizing with social movements, Indigenous communities, and marginalized groups, 5. Deliberative democracy needs to enter into a genuine dialogue with scholars from the Global South 1 , rather than extracting knowledge of exoticized cases, 6. Finally, decolonial deliberative democracy needs to center on emancipation, which lies at the origins of deliberative democratic theory and needs to be re-read through decolonial, Indigenous, and Global South perspectives.
Recent endeavors to decolonize deliberative democracy have come to negative conclusions. They claim that deliberative democracy is so entangled with modernity that attempts at decolonizing it are bound to fail (Banerjee, 2021; Fuji Johnson, 2022b). While we see value in this argument, we also recognize the emancipatory potential at the center of the deliberative democratic project. By this, we mean that deliberative democracy advances social and epistemic justice through critical (self-)reflection and challenging of diverse forms of oppression, even if the practical realization of deliberative democracy—in particular in its commercialized and technocratic forms of democratic innovations—has often failed to do so. Recognizing this emancipatory core, James Tully sees deliberative dialogue not as opposed to, but as a tool for, decolonizing. Characterized by “openness and receptivity to the otherness of others … it is dialogue itself that deparochializes” (Tully, 2020, pp. 52 and 56). What we present here is not a decolonized version of deliberative democracy but the moves a decolonizing project of deliberative democracy may entail. We are convinced that the emancipatory potential of deliberative democracy is worth making this effort.
This belief derives from our position in this debate. In contrast to other scholars who read deliberative democracy from the standpoint of decolonial thinking (such as Banerjee, 2021), we are both rooted in the field of democratic theory and are critically sympathetic to deliberative democracy. Our backgrounds are in critical communication, social movements, feminist, queer, whiteness and masculinity studies. From this standpoint, we engage with decolonial scholarship in order to critically reflect on our field. While sharing this position, we are also differently situated in this field. One of us was born and is based in the Global South, while the other was born and remains based in the Global North. These different perspectives enable us to reflect on experiences of marginalization and complicity. We see this encounter as an expression of our belief in the need to establish bridges that allow the development of the critical and emancipatory intents of deliberative democracy.
To develop a decolonizing approach to deliberative democracy, this article first reviews critical and multicultural approaches to deliberative democracy, which despite their emancipatory intentions, remain deeply entangled in the colonial logics of modernity. We then introduce a framework of six moves toward decolonizing deliberative democracy drawing on decolonial scholarship. We conclude by arguing that, even if some of the necessary moves are underway, the path toward decolonizing deliberative democracy is long, and academics need to work together with activists, practitioners, and societies across the globe.
Deliberative democracy: Critical and multicultural perspectives
Deliberative democracy constitutes an ideal articulated in normative democratic theory emerging in Western academia, in particular in the USA and Germany, in the 1980s. Instead of aggregating political preferences through voting procedures, it conceptualizes democracy as a common good-oriented yet diverse exchange of reasons among competent actors who aim to legitimize and justify their arguments in an inclusive and egalitarian manner. Through listening, opinions may change and eventually converge toward some solution to shared problems (Bessette, 1980; Cohen, 1989; Dryzek, 1990). In the words of the authors of the
The ideal of deliberative democracy is constantly evolving and proves to be responsive to criticism. In particular, the notion of consensus has been the target of pronounced feminist critique due to its tendency to suppress minority voices (Biroli, 2017; Pajnik, 2006; Sanders, 1997; Young, 1987) and has since been substantively refined to allow for more self-interested forms of communication (Karpowitz & Mansbridge, 2005; Mansbridge et al., 2010). Nevertheless, the convergence of opinions remains a central element of the deliberative imaginary (O’Flynn, 2022, pp. 36–42), even though this does not imply an opposition to agonistic forms of politics (Mendonça & Ercan, 2015).
There are various concepts including legitimacy and rationality which illustrate the distinct Western rootedness of deliberative democracy. Deliberative democratic theory needs to be read in a particular European-American context and is profoundly shaped by Western liberal, progressive thinking. This has led decolonial scholars to discard the possibility of decolonizing deliberative democracy. According to Banerjee (2021, p. 2), deliberative democracy is bound to fail to rid itself of its “patterns of internal colonialism that reinforce colonial modes of extraction.” Claims about the impossibility of decolonizing have also been made regarding deliberative democracy's “sibling,” agonistic democracy (Singh, 2019; Zembylas, 2022).
Despite these criticisms, we outline a framework for decolonizing deliberative democracy. This endeavor needs to start from the emancipatory potential of existing deliberative democratic theory, which links democratic ideals to social and epistemic justice. In particular, it should explore deliberative concepts related to colonialism and racial oppression. While liberal Rawlsian theory inspires one branch of deliberative democratic theory, the other branch is rooted in critical theory with its focus on confronting and overcoming structural oppression (Dryzek, 1990; Fraser, 1990; Habermas, 1992; Young, 2000). The emancipatory potential of deliberative democracy lies in its core assumption of the fundamental equality of all humans, which, in the face of capitalist, racist, patriarchal, heterosexist, and other forms of domination, requires critical reflection and deconstruction of such power asymmetries. With its roots in the Critical Theory of post-Marxist Frankfurt School and constructivist thinking, emancipation as the core value of deliberative democracy sees the democratic subject as an agent empowered by its inquisitive, reflective, and deconstructive capacities.
Observing a current revival of critical deliberative democracy (Curato et al., 2019; Hammond, 2019; Rostboll, 2008), Ercan and Dryzek (2015, p. 224) contend “that deliberative democracy should be a more radical emancipatory and transformative project.” Hammond (2019, p. 5) understands deliberative democracy as an activist political theory whose purpose is “to fight domination in all its forms.” She builds on the work of Dryzek (1990, p. 30) who claims that critical theories of deliberative democracy “are most confidently directed against particular repressive or exploitative social relations based on class, gender, race, spatial location, dominant kinds of rationality, and so forth.” In
Critical deliberative democrats are aware that while deliberative democracy is striving for emancipation, it always at the same time (re)creates domination (Curato et al., 2019, pp. 1–2). This is because the very act of reconfiguring power relations to empower marginalized and oppressed groups inherently requires force (Mansbridge, 1996). Proclaiming a normative ideal inspires but also forestalls and limits thought and action. This is a central lesson learned from feminist and multicultural strands of deliberative democratic theory. Feminist deliberative democrats observe how deliberative settings often disadvantage marginalized groups because of their requirements of rationality and impartiality. They advocate including a wider range of communicative modes such as greeting, storytelling, and rhetoric (Young, 2000) as well as self-interested negotiation (Mansbridge, 1990), embodied performance (Machin, 2015), and non-verbal communication (Curato, 2019; Mendonça et al., 2022).
The critique of rational, impartial deliberation is also at the heart of multicultural debates about deliberative democracy. Deliberative procedures are often structured in a way that alienates non-Western and Indigenous participants: “Some ethnocultural minorities and Indigenous peoples talk at the requirement that they ‘translate’ their claims into terms demanded by idealized models of moral dialogue” (Deveaux, 2018, p. 158). The multicultural analysis is, however, not restricted to deliberative forums but faces the challenges of systemic global patterns of oppression: “Many have been deprived of lands and livelihoods by colonial and post-colonial systems of appropriation and exploitation, and have been driven into poverty … Many of these peoples claim a right of self-determination as a means to throw off the yoke of cultural imperialism” (Young, 2000, p. 253). Young contends that, instead of imagining a world of nations, deliberative democrats need to imagine a world of peoples who have a right to self-determination. From a deliberative perspective, “the refusal of Indigenous peoples and ethnonationalist groups to be assimilated into the larger political community is understandable and in many cases morally justifiable” (Valadez, 2001, p. 54). Hence deliberative democracy needs to provide Indigenous peoples with the options to self-govern within the given institutional arrangements or to secede.
Despite some promising steps of self-criticism within the field of deliberative scholarship, deliberative democracy's blind spots and silences about contemporary forms of oppression need to be addressed. In a recent analysis of the Black Lives Matter movement in the USA from a deliberative systems perspective, Drake concludes: “The pervasiveness of racism, sexism, colonialism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and many other injustices is not comprehensively addressed by deliberative systems, even though such oppression is at odds with the principles of deliberative democracy” (Drake, 2021, p. 10). The deliberative blind spots become most evident in debates about deliberative global governance which discuss international and transnational deliberative politics in depth but fall short of addressing post-colonialism. A recent volume on this topic does not even contain “colonialism” or any related term (Dryzek et al., 2019). In short, deliberative democracy has come a long way. It has proven to be open to learn and adapt. But it still has a long way to go toward its decolonization.
Six moves toward decolonizing deliberative democracy
The scholarship on decolonialization is broad, diverse, and transdisciplinary. Decolonizing should not, therefore, be seen as a coherent approach, but as a dynamic, contentious movement of critique and action. It needs to be noted that the term has its baggage and has been criticized for its rootedness in and interrelations with Western thinking as well as its focus on critique, and negligence of developing alternatives (Getachew & Mantena, 2021). Moreover, decolonizing needs to be differentiated from alternatives, such as deparochializing and postcolonialism, which describe partially overlapping yet distinct approaches.
First developed in Latin America as a shift from
Central to this perspective is the acknowledgment that colonialism is an integral part of modernity and the ground that nurtures capitalism. Decolonial approaches, proposed by Latin American scholars, articulate a need to “extricate oneself from the linkages between rationality/modernity and coloniality, first of all, and definitely from all power which is not constituted by free decisions made by free people” (Quijano, 2007, p. 177). Colonial power historically organizes societies into deep racial, gender, and economic divisions, classifying populations according to Eurocentrist schemes (Ballestrin, 2013; Quijano, 2007; Banerjee, 2021; Lugones, 2014). Theoretical approaches that refuse the taken-for-granted frameworks of modern thinking and shed critical light on them contribute to the decolonizing movement. Its central goal is to challenge the many implications of colonialism in the distribution of power (Ballestrin, 2013).
Walter Mignolo (2011, p. 46), as one originator of the broader idea of decolonizing, points to its inherently contentious nature: Decoloniality is […] the energy that does not allow the operation of the logic of coloniality nor believes the fairy tales of the rhetoric of modernity. […] [D]ecolonial thinking is, then, thinking that de-links and opens […] to the possibilities hidden (colonized and discredited, such as the traditional, barbarian, primitive, mystic, etc.) by the modern rationality.
Decolonial approaches are also broader than current claims for deparochializing theory (Williams, 2020). Although deparochialization is a central dimension of decolonizing efforts, the latter cannot be reduced to the former. The parochialization of knowledge is just one of the many layers through which the legacy of coloniality remains, feeding diverse forms of oppression. While deparochializing may break down boundaries and diversify perspectives, it does not explicitly challenge colonial legacies and their interrelations with capitalist exploitation.
A detailed and nuanced elaboration of decolonial thinking is beyond the scope of this article. More modestly, our aim is to argue that the key assumptions of decolonial thinking can provide grounds for a set of moves relevant to decolonizing deliberative democracy. The six proposed moves take the inclusive and empowering premises of deliberative theory seriously by using decolonial lenses to critically deconstruct and reconstruct deliberative democracy.
Move 1: Acknowledging the violence of modernity
A project of decolonizing deliberative democracy needs to break with the narrative of modernity as an age of reason and needs, instead, to explicitly acknowledge the violence inherent to modernity. Modernity is generally conceived as the age of Enlightenment, critical thinking, science, and reason. This is reflected in Habermas’ concept of a public sphere realized through the intellectual exchange of the European bourgeoisie in cafés and social clubs that is foundational to theories of deliberative democracy (Habermas, 1992 (1962)).
Deliberative democracy, with its focus on rationality and civility, is rooted in the Western Enlightenment tradition. Habermas contends that “[j]ust those action norms are valid to which all possibly affected persons could agree as participants in rational discourses” (Habermas, 1996, p. 107). Although the rationality sought by deliberative democrats should not be taken as a restrictive/cognitive definition of reason, the defining status of rationality in the present scholarship of deliberative democracy is undeniable and marks the types of agency that should be considered in a democracy. Public reasoning as an attempt to make oneself intersubjectively comprehensible and jointly seek the best solution to a political problem builds the foundation for other deliberative ideals such as equality and freedom. Drawing on Immanuel Kant, Chambers elaborates: “If I am an end by virtue of my rational capacity to direct my life, then all other rational agents are ends by virtue of their rational capacity to direct their lives. Thus, we are not only free but also equal in this freedom” (Chambers, 1996, p. 4). What is overlooked is that the Western requirement of reasoned argumentation shapes violent boundaries, often expelling those unable or unwilling to articulate themselves in what is considered rational terms from a Western perspective.
By criticizing the modern concept of rationality as a central element of deliberative democracy, we do not claim that reason is inherently Western. Rather, diverse cultures around the globe have developed concepts of reasoning and mutual agreement (e.g., Ani, 2014). Our claim is that deliberative democrats often support a particular kind of these concepts without reflecting on its Western particularity. The universal and hegemonic status acquired by Western rationality, and the centrality of the notion of consensus in some of the founding texts of the tradition, in spite of future revisions, impose a particular protocol of doing democracy that conceals its violence.
The violence inherent to an unreflected idealization of Western rationality is exacerbated by requirements of civility. Deliberative democrats’ “discussion of civic matters is enhanced by courteous turn-taking in speaking and well-mannered demeanor” (Papacharissi, 2004, p. 266). Even agonistic democrats argue that “what is required is to accept a specific language of civil intercourse” (Mouffe, 1992, p. 30). Colonial violence, then, is inscribed in deliberative approaches that seek to discipline participants into following a protocol that is deeply rooted in Western modernity.
As decolonial scholars argue, modernity, along with its humanist Enlightenment principles, is deeply dependent on colonial exploitation, slavery, racism, and xenophobia. In this sense, Mignolo (1998) points out that the unfinished project of modernity is the unfinished project of many forms of colonialism. For Enrique Dussel (2000, p. 30), it is crucial to expose the myth of modernity to reveal its hidden face in order to generate a project of trans-modernity. Al negar la inocencia de la “Modernidad” y al afirmar la Alteridad de “el Otro”, negado antes como víctima culpable, permite “des-cubrir” por primera vez la “otra-cara” oculta y esencial a la “Modernidad": el mundo periférico colonial, el indio sacrificado, el negro esclavizado, la mujer oprimida, el niño y la cultura popular alienadas, etcétera (las “víctimas” de la “Modernidad”) como víctimas de un acto irracional (como contradicción del ideal racional de la misma Modernidad).
2
Colonial violence takes many forms. First, colonialism depends on physical violence of torture, rape, and murder. It justifies this type of violence by framing local peoples as barbarians who need to be civilized. Violence is seen as an inevitable means to submit Indigenous populations, enslave racialized others, occupy land, and exploit nature. Modernity frames this type of violence as the liberation of “barbarians” through civilization and progress. While deliberative democrats oppose physically violent civilization, they often uphold Western standards of civility which have served as a justification for colonial violence in the past and present. When restricted to politeness, civility may even constrain the discursive exchanges that deliberative democrats cherish. Politeness is problematic for deliberation because reasoned arguments are often fuelled by indignation, while the denial to open oneself to deliberation is often wrapped in politeness. The physical form of colonial violence that persists today and structures global inequalities has yet to be acknowledged by deliberative democratic theory. The recently published
Colonialism is, second, characterized by discursive violence that disciplines subjects into submission and creates societal hierarchies. Quijano (2000, p. 342) defines the La colonialidad es uno de los elementos constitutivos y específicos del patrón mundial de poder capitalista. Se funda en la imposición de una clasificación racial / étnica de la población del mundo como piedra angular de dicho patrón de poder, y opera en cada uno de los planos, ámbitos y dimensiones, materiales y subjetivas, de la existencia cotidiana y a escala societal.
3
Power naturalizes the categories that justify relationships of exploitation and domination. In his decolonial critique of deliberative democracy, Banerjee (2021, p. 9) highlights that the deep racialization generated by colonial violence ensures and legitimizes the occupation of land by white settlers. Colonial race and gender hierarchies structure capitalism whose logic of market expansion is deeply linked to the history of colonial trade. According to Dussel (2000, p. 29), what is unique about modernity is the way Europe projects its centrality in relation to the rest of the world which is constructed as peripheral: “aunque toda cultura es etnocéntrica, el etnocentrismo europeo moderno es el único que puede pretender identificarse con la ‘universalidad-mundialidad’.” 4 It is this universality that runs deep in deliberative claims for rationality and civility.
Although guided by normative ideals of equality, deliberative democrats are often silent about the roots of inequalities and forms of oppression in current Western societies. They are blind to the colonial legacies that entrench global economic inequalities. While deliberative democracy has developed a deep sensitivity for gendered hierarchies (Mansbridge, 1998; Young, 2000), the same is not true for the distinct dynamics of racism and xenophobia (Drake, 2021). Decolonizing deliberative democracy requires a critical analysis of modernity. It also requires taking seriously the criticisms about the acquiescence of the deliberative approach. A project of decolonizing deliberative democracy ought to be incisive in pointing to economic, ethnic, and gender asymmetries both within and across national borders.
Move 2: Recognizing epistemic injustices
The second deconstructive move entails a clear recognition of the epistemic injustices cutting across the field of deliberative democracy research. Decolonial thinking emphasizes the epistemic dimension of the reproduction of power asymmetries (Ballestrin, 2013) and points to several layers of epistemic injustice that a project to decolonize deliberative democracy needs to face.
The epistemic injustices fostered by modern academia are evident in the status differentials within deliberative democracy scholarship. The epistemic community of deliberative democrats reflects the inequalities that are at work in most academic fields. It is overwhelmingly led by European and North American scholars, often neglecting scholarly contributions of the Global South, which is virtually absent from the literature canon on deliberative democracy. Scholars from the Global South are not only cited less but also face steeper hurdles in entering academic networks. They are confronted with barriers that range from racial discrimination to language obstacles and financial and travel limitations to participation in international academic forums. These obstacles also point to differences among those who speak on behalf of the Global South, as most recognized Global South scholars are based at renowned Global North institutions.
This is not to essentialize the Global South or to deny its many internal cleavages and hierarchies. There are obviously positions of privilege and epistemic forms of violence cutting across the Global South (Ballestrin, 2020). Class, for instance, establishes a relevant layer of epistemic injustices within the Global South. Despite this fact, one need not overlook the geopolitical layer of the problem. Gender, to give another example, is an identity dimension which despite its intersection with many other identity dimensions that signify power differentials, remains relevant to the comprehension of many injustices, as feminists have long shown.
Other epistemic injustices criticized by decolonial scholars concern the neglect of non-academic sources of knowledge such as everyday knowledge, traditional Indigenous wisdom (in its various forms), and social movement theorizing. Alternative forms of knowledge are, however, often seen as discardable. The rootedness of theories of deliberative democracy in Western academia results in “the exclusion of considerable bodies of knowledge that exist in postcolonial societies about the conceptualisation, practice and struggle for democracy … by ordinary citizens” (Brooks et al., 2020, p. 18)
Epistemic injustice is also evident in the way the Global South is sometimes exoticized by deliberative democracy research. Global South countries are often looked at with anthropological curiosity (Bhambra, 2010) as objects of research, rather than as places of critical knowledge production (Mignolo, 1998). Rather than respecting particularity, the Global South serves as a resource for extractive universalization. Deliberative democracy scholarship often treats deliberation in non-Western cultures as exotic cases, which are deductively studied from a Western perspective and whose knowledge is extracted to feed into the universal deliberative approach.
Move 3: Criticizing the colonial drive of deliberative institutions
The third deconstructive move calls for a critique of the colonial impetus of deliberative institutions also called democratic innovations. A growing push to reinvent democracy has sought to address contemporary challenges to democracy, such as the lack of trust in political institutions and declining rates of traditional modes of political participation. New deliberative institutions such as deliberative polls, citizens’ assemblies, and consensus conferences try to improve democratic governance by providing new channels of participation. In studying and promoting this new “deliberative wave” (OECD, 2020), deliberative democracy research overlooks its colonial impetus.
The literature on deliberative institutions sometimes treats particular and context-based practices as technologies that can travel to the most diverse culturally and historically specific contexts. At their core, deliberative institutions try to control the messy elements of everyday life by proposing meticulous designs which include invitation mechanisms, facilitation styles, participatory activities, and decision-making procedures to pre-structure human interaction (Asenbaum, 2022a). Fishkin's patented deliberative polling® is a case in point. Deliberative polling brings a randomly selected group of citizens together to deliberate under the guidance of expert input and professional facilitators. Polls are taken before and after deliberation to measure opinion change. Fishkin understands this procedure as a way of knowing public opinion as if citizens were informed and had the time and opportunity to deliberate. There is one universal procedure, he claims, that works in diverse cultural contexts. In an unreflectively colonial mission, deliberative polling has been replicated in non-Western contexts such as China (Fishkin et al., 2010). Such a mission must be understood within the broader frame of the United States’ alleged civilizing project. It is worth mentioning that some deliberative polls have been funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for the purpose of global democracy promotion. 5
The project of diffusing deliberative polling around the globe resonates with liberal democratization efforts, which have often been used to spread Western values through colonial violence and war (Güven, 2015). This colonial impetus aligns with the capitalist logic of opening new markets and expanding sales opportunities. There is, as a matter of fact, a growing commodification of deliberative institutions, through the registration of participatory formats as trademarks (Hendriks & Carson, 2008). These designs are sometimes employed by governments to legitimize unpopular decisions or to justify inaction. Deliberative institutions may even bolster authoritarian rule by promoting a false sense of legitimacy in the population (He & Stig, 2010).
Move 4: Theorizing from the bottom up
If the three moves discussed so far critically deconstruct the colonial legacies within the deliberative scholarship, the next three moves emphasize a reconstructive dimension of a decolonial project. The first reconstructive move stresses the need to generate new starting points for deliberative democracy. This can best be accomplished, we argue, by theorizing deliberative democracy from the bottom up, thus grounding it in the life experiences of culturally diverse
To rebuild deliberative democracy inductively, an epistemologically pluralist approach is needed. This ecology of knowledges is enabled by
Indigenous writers systematically point to the need for radical dialogicity. Krenak (2020), for instance, claims that an ecology of knowledges integrates the ordinary collective experiences and practices of Indigenous communities to challenge the idea of a homogeneous humanity which is an abstraction that systematically denies the connections of many different entities, including land, plants, and nonhuman animals. The work of Kopenawa and Albert (2015), further discussed below, is a good example of this quest for productive dialogue pushing the boundaries of scientific knowledge.
Black feminists from the Global South illustrate how diverse sources of knowledge can inspire democratic theory. Abreu (2022) reconstructs the role of pop music in fostering deliberative reflexivity, innovative thinking, and dialogue about race in her investigation of Beyoncé, Emicida, and the Black Atlantic. She shows how music can play argumentative roles that deliberative democrats praise. De Almeida (2022) reveals how the everyday practices of women in
In light of the decolonial calls for an ecology of knowledges through radical dialogicity, deliberative democracy needs to be grounded in a diverse range of knowledges rooted in the everyday life perspectives from the Global South and in the experiences of marginalization of Indigenous peoples and diasporas in the Global North. Debates about Indigenous and decolonial grounded theory are instructive. By building theory from the bottom up, and taking Indigenous knowledge systems as a starting point to decode and reinterpret Western knowledges, grounded theory can disrupt the (post)colonial order (Denzin, 2007, p. 456). Indigenous and decolonial methods, with their openness to nonhuman participants, introduce a flat, non-discriminatory ontology (Rosiek et al., 2020). This flat ontology, which emphasizes the equality of participants, along with the participatory approach to theorizing that enhances the agency of participants, and the dialogical quality of this type of inquiry, deeply resonate with deliberative democratic values (Fuji Johnson, 2022a).
The openness of deliberative democracy to such decolonial methodologies is demonstrated by recent developments in the field. An agenda for participatory and inductive ways of theorizing is forming around the work of Fuji Johnson (2022a) and Ackerly et al. (2021) who recently formed the Engaged Theory Community (2022). In developing grounded normative theory they bring together decolonial, feminist, and pragmatist thinking to argue for a broad agenda of the empirical development of democratic theory. Brettschneider (2007) argues for academics developing democratic theory, together with social movements, in order to “articulat[e] an alternative democratic theory from the views, contributions and experiences of those historically on the margins of society as well as those with whom they stand in solidarity.” Asenbaum (2022b) introduces methodological steps for democratic theorizing, drawing on the experiences of theorizing democracy inductively with activists from the Black Lives Matter movement.
Move 5: Engaging in an open dialogue with the Global South scholarship
As a fifth move, we advocate an open engagement with the Global South scholarship on deliberative democracy. The Global South should neither be seen as a repository of exotic cases nor as a needy region deserving of compassion. Both these perspectives establish hierarchies and reinforce colonial dynamics. We are not, therefore, advocating a romanticization or blind celebration of Global South scholarship. What is required, instead, is an engagement on an equal footing and this requires attentive reading, openness, and criticism.
An example of the sort of cross-cultural dialogue needed is
Deliberative democracy values dialogue in itself. However, dialogue is frequently reduced to an object of study or something that can be promoted through appropriate designs in order to solve political problems. We claim that proper dialogue could reshape the relationships within the field of deliberative democracy, allowing not only broader scrutiny around concepts and research findings but also a pluralization of the theoretical instruments employed. Such a broader exchange can lead to a more nuanced approach to democracy, which is capable of grasping context-sensitive issues and avoiding attempts to universalize and reify democracy.
So, what could the result of an open and respectful cross-cultural dialogue about deliberative democracy look like? What can we learn from the Global South scholarship on deliberative democracy? The practices of deliberation around the world are necessarily as diverse as their cultural, historical, political, and economic contexts. For this reason and because of the limited scope of this article, we do not aspire to give a full answer. However, we will provide some impressions from the literature to surmise what a shift in the study of deliberative democracy toward Global South experiences could look like.
Decolonial lenses point to the particularity and historic and cultural groundedness of deliberative institutions. In Brazil, some deliberative spaces emerge through
Several instantiations of deliberative democracy in the Global South navigate between consensus and agonistic contestation. Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani, for example, discusses how many pre-colonial African societies were characterized by deeply consensual practices of rational deliberation. Competitiveness was imported and enforced through “the aggregative democracy of the colonial masters” (Ani, 2013, p. 207). Despite the central role of rational consensus in African philosophies, Ani argues, deliberative democracy requires agonistic inquiry. Deliberation demands a recursive back-and-forth between consensus seeking and agonistic contestation because “some political tension is always necessary to prevent complacency and conformism” (Ani, 2014, p. 357).
The navigation between consensus and contestation is also reflected in Indian experiences with
The contentious nature of deliberative democracy in the Global South also highlights another crucial feature: Rather than locating the deliberative ideal of equality at the input side of deliberation, deliberative institutions often function to enhance output equality. In other words, they serve as sites for contesting inequality. A study on the participation of women in panchayats contends that the female presence is “disturbing some identity-based power relations as well as delivering outcomes that enhance the welfare of marginalized communities” (Rai, 2007, p. 66).
In various Global South contexts deliberation becomes a tool of contestation by social movements who challenge state power (Mendonça & Ercan, 2015). In Malaysia, for example, civil society actors engage in deliberation to challenge the old consociational state structures that are ridden with corruption. Deliberation, at the same time, is employed by state actors to defend authoritarian rule. In China, the authoritarian regime facilitates deliberative forums in which partly genuine deliberation takes place. However, in this context “[c]onsultation and deliberation reduce social conflicts and the level of opposition, and facilitate compliance with and implementation of state policy” (He, 2006, p. 135). Deliberation, then, becomes an instrument that is employed both by state and civil society actors to vie for power. In Taiwan, “[s]ocial-movement organizations question whether government-initiated deliberative conferences are ways for the government to manipulate public opinion or are means for the politicians to manipulate politics” (Huang & Hsieh, 2013, p. 102).
Far from being complete, this brief review, however, indicates that centering the study of deliberative democracy on Global South scholarship shifts our attention toward contestation, power, economic redistribution, and a broader understanding of what counts as a deliberative institution.
Move 6: Focusing on emancipation
After inductive theorizing and engaging with deliberative experiences from the Global South, the final reconstructive move centers on refocusing deliberative democracy on equality and emancipation. Here, we suggest excavating the emancipatory dimensions of deliberative democracy by re-reading Western theories through decolonial lenses.
As an approach historically linked to critical theory, deliberative democracy is oriented by normative principles that seek to transform societies. Equality and emancipation have always been at the heart of deliberative democracy (Dryzek, 1990; Fraser, 1990; Habermas, 1992; Young, 2000), but deliberative democrats frequently approach these concepts in abstract and broad terms. They often overlook or shy away from addressing the structural economic inequalities and deeply entrenched societal hierarchies immanent to capitalist and colonial rule.
A decolonizing approach to deliberative democracy must face these issues head-on. This also entails questioning the Western constructions of the concepts of emancipation and equality themselves. Rooted in Western Enlightenment thinking, these concepts have much to learn from the Global South and colonial experiences. Social and economic inequalities need to be addressed as a central aspect restraining an inclusive public sphere. Such an approach requires significant attention to the political economy. Decolonial thinking acknowledges the centrality of capitalist economies in the creation and reproduction of asymmetries that forestall truly democratic self-governance. Hoy, la lucha contra la explotación / dominación implica, sin duda, en primer término, la lucha por la destrucción de la colonialidad del poder, no sólo para terminar con el racismo, sino por su condición de eje articulador del patrón universal del capitalismo eurocentrado. Esa lucha es parte de la destrucción del poder capitalista, por ser hoy la trama viva de todas las formas históricas de explotación, dominación, discriminación, materiales e intersubjetivas.
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(Quijano, 2007, pp. 324–5)
This decolonial critique of capitalism resonates with critical approaches to deliberative democracy which claim: “capitalist democracy is not an easy, happy, or perhaps even sustainable combination.” In the face of the alliance of the state with capitalist economies, “democratization is more readily thought against the state” (Dryzek, 1996, p. 3 and 4).
Inequalities related to gender, race, and sexuality must also be prioritized by deliberative democrats (Gonzalez, 2021). Democracies are made of real subjects, and paying attention to their attributes and identities is essential if one is to make sense of contemporary inequalities that hinder democracy. Dialogue is often impossible because of the way certain subjects are seen, perceived, and understood. The subjectless communication of deliberative democracy oversees many of these elements which are essential to the confrontation of existing injustices.
In addition, decolonial thinking draws attention to the oppression of nonhuman beings and entities, inviting a broader comprehension of many forms of asymmetries and their connections. Decolonial thinking criticizes the anthropocentric feature of modernity, advocating a more holistic approach that considers the relationships between humans and nonhumans. Decolonial approaches emphasize that the colonial exploitation of humans is deeply intertwined with the exploitation of “natural resources.” In his collection
Concluding remarks
This article is an invitation to a dialogue between deliberative democracy and decolonial scholarship. We recognize the emancipatory impetus in deliberative democracy which we claim can be advanced through a critical reflection grounded on decolonial premises. This does not mean, however, that we believe in a decolonized version of deliberative democracy, because decolonization should not be seen as an end state or fixed condition to be reached. We think of decolonization in terms of an ongoing process. A project of decolonizing deliberative democracy requires the permanent critical recognition that colonial violence is reflected in the academic field and in Western-centric theories of deliberative democracy.
Decolonial theories are not supposed to only deconstruct and critique existing deliberative theories but can have positive and reconstructive effects. We are convinced of the productivity of this endeavor because the emancipatory drive of deliberative democracy resonates with decolonial thinking. Deliberative democracy's concern with mutual respect, empathy 7 , and listening favors the displacing radical dialog that is necessary for a decolonizing project.
Some steps of this decolonizing endeavor are underway. As a lively and self-critical community, deliberative democrats have been open to many criticisms. There has been more attention to injustice, diverse forms of deliberative institutions, and the role played by power in deliberations (Curato et al., 2019; Drake, 2021). Relevant transnational projects, such as Participedia, are highlighting the need to engage with Global South scholarship (participedia.net). The existence of these steps should not, however, lead to complacency. There is a long way to go, and as we have previously argued, this way should be thought of as a continuous project with no endpoint. Decolonizing deliberative democracy should be thought of as a collective enterprise that requires more than academic texts such as the present one. Through radical dialogue across the globe and including social movements and people outside academia, a decolonizing project needs to continuously transform deliberative democracy.
Footnotes
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