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Habermas and Foucault: Deliberative Democracy and Strategic State Analysis

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Abstract

The paper explores ways to bring the approaches of J. Habermas and M. Foucault into a productive dialogue. In particular, it argues that Habermas's concept of deliberative democracy can and should be complemented by a strategic analysis of the state as it is found in Foucault's studies of governmentality. While deliberative democracy is a critical theory of democracy that provides normative knowledge about the legitimacy of a given system, it is not well equipped to generate knowledge that could inform the choice of strategies employed by (collective) actors from civil society — especially deliberative democrats — vis-à-vis the state to pursue their goals. This kind of strategic knowledge about strengths and vulnerabilities of a given state is provided by Foucault's reading of the state as driven by varying governing rationalities. Since, particularly in his later works, Habermas finds strategic action normatively acceptable under certain circumstances, I argue that societal actors could profit from an integrated approach that incorporates Foucault's strategic analysis into the framework of deliberative democracy. This approach would yield critical knowledge of both a normative and strategic, action-guiding nature.

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Notes

  1. 2 I cannot address all of the many issues that are at stake between the two authors here. Ranging from the status of the subject to the relation between power, reason and discourse, to the tasks of science, philosophy and literature and their respective views on history, there are many points of contestation between them.

  2. 3 See Biebricher, 2005b for a similar but more rudimentary version of the argument made in the context of a general comparison of the works of Habermas and Foucault.

  3. 4 For a defence of Foucault against the overly dismissive criticisms of Habermas and an analysis of the underlying misunderstandings that fuel these attacks, see Biebricher (2005a).

  4. 5 For a self-critique of this earlier account of the public sphere, see Habermas (1992).

  5. 6 In the ‘official’ circulation of power communicative power generated in the public sphere prevails over the social power of corporate actors and is fed into the political system that converts it into administrative power in the form of outputs. For systems theorists such as Luhmann, this is the self-description of the political system but not the way it actually functions.

  6. 7 For the notion of ‘state project’ that closely resembles that of governmentality, see Jessop (1990, 351–353).

  7. 8 On Foucault's notion of law and norm see Biebricher, 2006.

  8. 9 It is important to note, though, that Foucault considers his analyses as nothing more than analytical offers to resisting actors that they may use them if they find them appealing or discard them if they find them implausible. In other words, Foucault raises very limited truth claims with his analyses, sometimes explicitly admitting to their almost fictional character (Foucault, 1994c, 242). The following quote captures his position quite well: ‘It is absolutely true that when I write a book I refuse to take a prophetic stance, that is, the one of saying to people: here is what you must do – and also: this is good and this is not. I say to them: roughly speaking, it seems to me that things have gone this way; but I describe those things in such a way that the possible paths of attack are delineated’ (Foucault, 1989a, 262).

  9. 10 See instead Jessop (1990, 220–248), Biebricher (2005b, 293–305) and particularly Lemke (1999) for an account of the changed assumptions (methodological and other) of governmentality in contrast to genealogy.

  10. 11 For an account of Foucault's explicit self-critique of the micro-analytics of power along the lines of ‘Nietzsche's Hypothesis’, see his lectures Society must be Defended from 1975 to 1976.

  11. 12 See Young (2001) for a critical examination of such an approach to political action.

  12. 13 One must not overestimate the novelty of this idea within the Habermasian framework. As early as in the Theory of Communicative Action he is aware of the fact that ‘the subject of civil law can feel himself justified in acting, within legal bounds, purely with an orientation to success’ (Habermas, 1984, 257). However, it is only in Between Facts and Norms that Habermas explicitly acknowledges that these actions are not only legal but may also be legitimate.

  13. 14 The same goes for Arato and Cohen (1992) and Dryzek (2000), who discuss non-communicative political action within the general framework of deliberative democracy. See also Habermas (1962 Chapters V and VI).

  14. 15 Again, this is not to say that Foucault's thinking about the state is entirely void of normative intuitions. As will be shown further below, Foucault at times invokes notions of legitimacy, right and democracy. For an insightful elaboration on Foucault as a proponent of ‘radicalized liberal democratic theory’ see Simons (1995, 117–118).

  15. 16 A systematic comparison of Habermas and Foucault is yet to be published in the English speaking world. Kelly (1994), McCarthy and Hoy (1994) and Ashenden and Owen (1999) come closest to this task. See Biebricher (2005b) for an attempt to provide a comprehensive comparative analysis.

  16. 17 Even if one were to argue that Foucault's claim to rights is always tactical and ‘the product of a perpetual battle of representations’, I wonder if that ultimately separates him from Habermas (who, incidentally, introduces a new, deliberative paradigm of law and rights beyond ‘liberal’ and ‘social’ paradigms that are the ones at which Foucault's criticisms seem to be directed): ‘All rights talk, whether singular or natural, is to some extent tactical, for it is always a case of using it to pre-empt and/or facilitate a possible action or rage of actions’ (Ivison, 1998, 143 and 142).

  17. 18 Consider Foucault's own critical thoughts on ‘polemics’ in contrast to ‘dialogue’: ‘Has anyone ever seen a new idea come out of a polemic? And how could it be otherwise, given that here the interlocutors are incited not to advance, not to take more and more risks in what they say but to fall back continually […] on the affirmation of their innocence’ (Foucault, 1994h, 112–113).

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1The author would like to thank Leslie Thiele, Margaret Kohn and two anonymous reviewers of Contemporary Political Theory for their insightful comments and criticisms

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Biebricher, T. Habermas and Foucault: Deliberative Democracy and Strategic State Analysis. Contemp Polit Theory 6, 218–245 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300280

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