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3 - Institutionalising Deliberative Democracy through Secondary Associations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2012

Stephen Elstub
Affiliation:
University of the West of Scotland
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Summary

INTRODUCTION

The book so far has presented the case that decision-making should be structured in such a way that it enhances, as much as and as equally as possible, the autonomy of all. It was further suggested that deliberatively democratic decision-making is well placed to achieve this. However, principles of autonomy, deliberation and democracy need ‘devices’ or institutions to ‘enact’ them (Saward 2003). Deliberative democracy needs institutions to ‘bring it down to earth’, to ‘give it practical import’ and to ‘make it something real’ (Blaug 1996: 49). Moreover, it was noted in Chapter 2 that the institutional context was key to decreasing the domain, and thereby avoiding transitive and ambiguous decisions, ensuring that subordinate social groups are genuinely included and to provide grounding for the essential deliberative obligations. As the book title suggests, the belief here is that an associational democracy can make important contributions to these factors, make a deliberative democracy ‘real’ and therefore contribute to the cultivation of citizens' autonomy. The remaining four chapters of the book will deal with this argument. Overall, following the initial, mildly perfectionist argument in Chapter 1, a perfectionist justification of associational democracy is advocated. In constructing a model it is important to refrain from designing a blueprint for the institutionalisation, as the participants themselves should decide the precise details of such a model in relation to their specific context (Gutmann and Thompson 1996: 358).

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Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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