Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho

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DEMOCRACY TODAY
of democracy? I suggest that the twains of political philosophy and
political science need to (re)meet. Alone, neither normative political
philosophy nor empirical political science can succeed because both
approaches make a series of assumptions about the nature of politics.
While we should not pursue morally desirable but culturally or socially
unacceptable goals, we should also not uphold a morally undesirable
political conception solely because it is acceptable (and achievable).
The methodological bifurcation in the study of democracy has been
to its detriment since each version grasps only partially the central
feature of democracy, namely participation.
Although both the (pseudo-)scientific and normative approaches
recognise political equality and popular control as democracy’s fundamental
characteristics, neither seems to tell the full or indeed accurate
picture of democracy today. Of course, not all scholars of democracy
are trying to provide the full or accurate picture of democracy today:
some (particularly the deliberative democrats) offer purely normative
arguments as to what they think democracy ought to be or become. I
think that both sides neglect another value of participation, perhaps
even the primary one: that democracy provides the opportunity for
facilitating human fulfillment irrespective of its benefits for creating
legitimate, accountable and responsive government [1] .
That is ultimately my task: to posit another value of participation,
what I term its ‘categorical’ value, or the justification of participation
on moral grounds rather than (purely) political ones. This conception
of participation is not meant to replace the instrumentalist conceptions
but rather, signal a shift in emphasis. I want to argue that both
minimalist and deliberative accounts of democracy neglect the value
of participation as being about the development of agency in a collective
process. I think that the accounts by minimalists and deliberative
democrats are actually much more similar than either side recognises.
The essential difference between them is simply a practical one: they
offer opposing conceptions of what constitutes ‘equal participation’. In
essence, minimalist democrats argue that voting is the most egalitarian
form of participation, whereas deliberative (and other normative)
1
Supposedly achieved through simple aggregation (minimalist democrats) or extensive
deliberation (deliberative democrats).