Between Decision and Deliberation: Political Paradox in Democratic Theory

Deliberative democratic theorists (in this essay, Seyla Benhabib and Jurgen Habermas) seek to resolve, manage, or transcend paradoxes of democratic legitimation or constitutional democracy. Other democratic theorists, such as Chantal Mouffe, embrace such paradoxes and affirm their irreducibility. De...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American political science review 2007-02, Vol.101 (1), p.1-17
Main Author: HONIG, BONNIE
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Conflicts
Constitutionalism
Decision making
Democracy
Democratic theory
Equal rights
Equality
Essays
Ethical Instruction
General will
Habermas, Jurgen
Hegemony
Human rights
Law
Legal systems
Legitimacy
Legitimation
Liberalism
Logic
Logical Thinking
Paradoxes
Philosophy of law
Political Attitudes
Political conflict
Political ideas
Political parties
Political philosophy
Political revolutions
Political science
Political Science Theories
Political sociology
Political theory
Politics
Pragmatics
Principles
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
Semiotics
Social Contract
Sovereignty
Teaching Methods
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Summary:Deliberative democratic theorists (in this essay, Seyla Benhabib and Jurgen Habermas) seek to resolve, manage, or transcend paradoxes of democratic legitimation or constitutional democracy. Other democratic theorists, such as Chantal Mouffe, embrace such paradoxes and affirm their irreducibility. Deliberativists call that position “decisionism.” This essay examines the promise and limits of these various efforts by way of a third paradox: Rousseau's paradox of politics, whose many workings are traced through Book II, Chapter 7 of the Social Contract. This last paradox cannot be resolved, transcended, managed, or even affirmed as an irreducible binary conflict. The paradox of politics names not a clash between two logics or norms but a vicious circle of chicken-and-egg (which comes first—good people or good law?). It has the happy effect of reorienting democratic theory: toward the material conditions of political practice, the unavoidable will of the people who are also always a multitude, and the not only regulative but also productive powers of law.
ISSN:0003-0554
1537-5943
DOI:10.1017/S0003055407070098