IEP 511: Environmental Decision Making

AWAYMAVE - The Distance Mode of MA in Values and the Environment at Lancaster University

Week 7, Deliberative Democracy and Environmental Value

Introduction

In this block and the next we will examine deliberative alternatives to the main economic approaches to decision making.

Look back at the first block. In that block we considered four criticisms of monetary valuation of environmental goods.

• constitutive incommensurability – that there are certain social relations and evaluative commitments that are constituted by a refusal to put a price on them
• property rights – monetary valuation makes assumptions about property rights that are contested
• equity ‘the poor sell cheap’, - in the cost benefit analysis used to justify the Narmada valley project, the ‘cost’ to the displaced was computed at two years family income multiplied by a factor of 1.5.
• the reason-blindness of market exchanges - the reasons for the valuation of environmental goods are absent.

The deliberative theorist can be understood in part as responding in particular to the last two of these criticisms.
A useful starting point is to contrast to contrasting models of the nature and purpose of democratic politics.

Please read the two chapters available on the discussion site for this week: Chapter 9 'Deliberation, power and voice' and Chapter 12 'The political economy of deliberation'.

I. Two models of democratic politics: the market and the forum

A. Economic model of democracy:

Democracy is a procedure for aggregating and effectively meeting the given preferences of individuals. Through votes individuals are able to record their preferences.
Monetary valuation on this account can be understood as a form of qualitative democracy. Individuals are able not simply to 'vote' for a good by expressing support for it, but are able to express through their response to a willingness to pay question their degree of concern for it. A clear expression of this view is to be found in Pearce et. al. Blueprint for a Green Economy

[T]he attraction of placing money values on these preferences is that they measure the degree of concern. The way in which this is done is using, as the means of 'monetization', the willingness of individuals to pay for the environment. At it simplest, what we seek is the expression of how much people are willing to pay to preserve or improve the environment. Such measures automatically express not just the fact of a preference for the environment, but also the intensity of that preference. Instead of 'one man one vote', then, monetization quite explicitly reflects the depth of feeling contained in each vote. [Pearce et. al. Blueprint for a Green Economy p.55].

Questions:

Do you think that a standard 'one person one vote' model is inadequate because it cannot record the intensity of feeling felt by votes? Does monetary valuation provide an adequate responses to that concern?

2 Problems for this view:

1. Equity:

A person's willingness to pay is income-dependent. How much you are willing to pay at the margin for some good is dependent on one's budget. This entails that, given unequal distribution of income, some, the rich, have a larger voice than others, the poor. It should be noted there are ways of dealing with this within economic theory by giving more weight to the preferences of the poor.

2. Reason-blindness of willingness to pay and qualitative democracy:

Willingness to pay records the intensity of individuals' preferences. It does not record the soundness of the preferences – that is whether they are the kind of reasons that could survive public deliberations.

B. Deliberative model democracy:

Democracy is a forum through which judgements and preferences are transformed through reasoned dialogue between free and equal citizens.

Deliberative democracy as a solution to some of the problems of the market model

1. Equity:

Citizens are formally equal. The distribution of resources and property rights is not presupposed as it is in market methods, but can itself be an object of public deliberation.

2. Reason-sensitivity:

Preferences are not given, but open to transformation through reasoned dialogue. Environmental conflicts are open to reasoned debate and judgement which aim to change preferences not record them, it follows that different institutional forms are required for their resolution. Since conflict is open to reasoned adjudication, discursive institutions are the appropriate form for conflict resolution. The forum, not the market, becomes the proper institutional form.

Policy practice:

Formal policy practice has seen the development of a variety of 'new' formal deliberative institutions which have been introduced alongside 'older' democratic institutions and which are often presented as experiments in deliberative democracy. These include citizens' juries, citizens' panels, consensus conferences, mediation panels, focus groups, in depth discussion groups and round tables.

For a discussion see G. Smith; C. Wales 'Citizens' Juries and Deliberative Democracy' Political Studies, 2000, 48, pp. 51-65 available on-line via the library

How adequate is this solution?

II. The theory of deliberative democracy.

There are two main theoretical philosophical sources: Aristotle and Kant.

1. Kant

In most of the recent writing Kant has been the dominant influence. Both Rawls and Habermas appeal to Kantian theories. Perhaps the best place to start is with Kant's essay 'An Answer to the Question "What is enlightenment?"'.

Read Kan't essay now, it is available form here

Exercise:

After reading the essay give your own answers to the following questions before reading on:
What does Kant take to define the enlightenment project?
What is the role of the 'public use of reason' in that project?

Enlightenment and the public use of reason

Kant ‘What is enlightenment?’

Enlightenment ‘Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. The immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of the enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding...For enlightenment of this kind, all that is needed is freedom. And the freedom in question is the most innocuous form of all - freedom to make public use of one's reason in all matters.’

What is autonomy?

The ideal of maturity is closely related to that of autonomy. The heteronomous character is one who lacks maturity, who is willing to let his own judgement and understanding be guided by others and who lacks the capacity, desire or courage to exercise them for himself. To be autonomous is to have maturity and courage in using one's own understanding and judgement. For Kant to be autonomous is to be guided by reason:

For reason has no dictatorial authority; its verdict is always simply the agreement of free citizens, of whom each one must be permitted to express, without let or hindrance, his objections or even his veto. (Kant (1933) A738/B766.)

Enlightenment requires institutions that embody free public dialogue.

2. Habermas

The influence of Kant is most evident in the work of Habermas.
For a useful website with links to Haberms's work online see:
http://www.cas.sc.edu/socy/faculty/deflem/HabermasOnline/default.html

available from here

You can find a detailed discussion of Habermasian's views in MAVE 404 block 4.

The central concept in Habermas's account of deliberative institutions is that of communicative rationality.

Communicative rationality clearly obtains to the degree social action is free from domination (the exercise of power), strategizing by the actors involved, and (self-) deception. Further, all actors should be equally and fully capably of making and questioning arguments (communicatively competent). There should be no restrictions on the participation of these competent actors. Under such conditions, the only remaining authority is that of a good argument, which can be advanced on behalf of the veracity of empirical description, the understanding, and, equally important, the validity of normative judgements. [J. Dryzek Discursive Democracy p.15]

To engage in reasoned dialogue is to aim not at compromise but on convergence in judgements - ‘the agreement of free citizens’. The activity of argument presupposes an ideal of free agreement in judgement founded on good reason: in ideal discourse ‘no force except that of the better argument is exercised’.

Public deliberation is legitimate to the extent it meets those conditions of communicative rationality.

For an interesting example of how such procedures might operate in practice see the following case study about the siting of a waste disposal site in Switzerland:
http://www.piercelaw.edu/risk/vol7/spring/renn.htm

available from here

III. Problems for the deliberative theories of democracy

A. Practice

1. The distribution of voice:

Within deliberative fora voice can be unevenly distributed.
The capacity and confidence to speak and to be heard, differs across class, gender and ethnicity.

2. Nature of deliberative process:

Who controls?

• the space in which deliberation takes place;
• the constituency of deliberation - who is included;
• the agenda on which participants are brought together;
• the opening and closure of conversation;
• the identities which participants are ascribed;
• the afterlife of the results of deliberation and their effects on policy making.

3. Strategic use of deliberative institutions.

• Political use of focus groups to anticipate and close public deliberation;
• Corporate use of stakeholder engagement to disaggregate the different actors in communities, to create local alliances and to use local alliances against larger environmental regulation.

Deliberative response:

These are internal problems in practice that the deliberative theory of democracy is able to itself to make.

While "the actual course of the debates deviates from the ideal procedures of deliberative politics...presuppositions of rational discourse have a steering effect on the course of the debates" (Habermas 1996 p.540).

B. Problems for deliberative theory

1. Equity

Deliberation requires both formal and substantive equality. The latter is taken to be present if internal dialogue is unaffected by external distributions of power and resources:

‘The participants are substantially equal in that the existing distribution of power and resources does not shape their chances to contribute to deliberation, nor does that distribution play authoritative role in their deliberation’ (Cohen, 1989, p.23).

The liberal ideal is one in which autonomous deliberative institutions protected from patterns of power in the economy. Where large inequalities in economic and social power exist how far is that liberal ideal tenable on its own terms becomes an important issue.

2. Rationality and communication

What forms of communication are included and precluded in proper deliberation?

• 
  Does the Kantian model have an overly intellectualist account of deliberation? – where only thing that is exchanged is arguments? What of other forms of communication - narrative, poetry, etc? Do they have a role?
• Do the forms of communication that are central to this Kantian account privilege some groups over others?
• Can all values be adequately expressed in formal deliberation? (See expressive rationality.)
• What role if any can or should the appeal to the emotions have in public life?
• Can the model deal adequately with the role of testimony in public life. In the environmental sphere where scientific expertise is called upon for the identification and assessment of risk, many of the central questions of deliberation are not a matter directly assessing evidence and argument, but more a matter of ascertaining whose testimony is credible and trustworthy – of deciding who to believe in what institutional conditions.

3. The voice of nature

Whose voice is present at deliberation, under what representation and with what forms of accountability? How can non-humans and future generations be included?

Think

Consider these questions and write some initial thoughts on them. In the following weeks we will consider them in more detail.

Web notes by John O'Neill February 2005