La democrazia deliberativa e i partiti: un incontro impossibile?
Revistas
Teoria Politica
Teoria Politica 2015
La democrazia deliberativa e i partiti: un incontro impossibile?
La democrazia deliberativa e i partiti: un incontro impossibile?
Ficha técnica
In the theoretical debate on deliberative democracy, the subject of parties seems totally absent or, when it is evoked, this happens only in a negative sense. In general, it is believed that the same spread of new participatory and deliberative models is a symptom or an effect of the crisis of representative democracy and the traditional role of parties. Deliberative democracy, thus, is often presented as an ideal of democracy whose own assumptions make it suspicious of the very idea of «party» and hostile to partisanship. This essay will demonstrate that this view of deliberative democracy, despite being the prevailing one, is not the only possible one. The goal of this paper, therefore, is twofold. First, we try to come to an understanding of the theoretical roots of those positions which have lead a part of deliberative democratic theory to enact a kind of normative devaluation of parties. Second, we challenge this conclusion, and even establish some points that will allow us to better identify the role of parties, and above all a renewed role of political parties, while still following a deliberative conception of democracy. To this end, we will first indicate the reasons that led to a substantial eclipse of this theme in the development of mainstream deliberative democracy, and we will refer to some of the founding texts of deliberative democracy, in particular, the first works of Bernard Manin and Joshua Cohen, where the theme of the party was indeed present. Subsequently, we will analyze the first attempts that laid the theoretical foundations of a possible reconsideration of this issue, and we will present some more recent theoretical developments (i.e. a «systemic approach» to deliberative democracy) that, in our opinion, will allow us to break the silence on this front. Thereupon, we will inquire into what the parties were, with respect to what they are today, in the light of the deliberative theoretical paradigm and the analysis proposed by political scientists. Finally, we will propose some stimuli to foster further reflection on normative issues, looking in particular at the dual role of parties as deliberative agents and as deliberative spaces. In essence, our goal is to refute a widespread belief that a deliberative conception of democracy has little to say about parties.