Abstract
Although the idea of the public interest features prominently in many accounts of deliberative democracy, the relationship between deliberative democracy and the public interest is rarely spelt out with any degree of precision. In this article, I identify and defend one particular way of framing this relationship. I begin by arguing that people can deliberate about the public interest only if the public interest is, in principle, identifiable independently of their deliberations. Of course, some pluralists claim that the public interest is an implausible idea, which casts doubt on the idea that there might be something for people to deliberate about. Yet while, following Brian Barry, we can get around this problem by defining the public interest as an interest in which everyone shares qua member of the public, what still needs to be explained is why people should be prepared to privilege this particular capacity. I argue that the account of political equality with which deliberative democracy is bound up offers a compelling explanation of this sort, even if it also gives rise to some difficult questions of feasibility. I conclude by considering the charge that any political scheme that framed the relationship between deliberative democracy and the public interest in this way would be undesirable.
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Notes
For the purposes of this article, I take it that ‘the public interest’ is the same as ‘the common good’, ‘the public good’, ‘the general interest’, ‘the national interest’ etc. For of a discussion of the various distinctions that might be drawn between these concepts, see Douglass 1980; Barry 1990 [1965]. As I suggest in the main body of the text, as they are typically defined, the basic feature of these concepts is their describing a good that is common to an entire society. For a discussion of alternatives to this ‘common to all’ approach to the definition of ‘the public interest’, see Held 1970.
One might naturally wonder about the status of the claim that ‘our lives are intertwined’. The thought here appeals to a familiar ‘golden rule’: insofar as our decisions have implications for others, we should be careful not to treat them in ways that we ourselves would not like to be treated. Of course, this injunction can itself be understood in moral or prudential terms, which will colour how we understand the idea of the public interest (see Douglass 1980). The argument of this article is primarily moral, as should be clear from the main body of the text.
Deliberative democrats argue that preferences or wants should not be taken simply as given, but should instead be shaped through discussion and debate. Still, deliberative democrats typically define preferences as wants, even if they think that the only wants that are relevant to democratic decision-making are those that can be justified in open political debate (e.g., Sunstein 1993).
Brian Barry imputes this latter view to John Miller (Barry 1964, p. 2; ref. to Miller 1962, p. 40). Although Barry does not elaborate, this view seems to have been fuelled by the nefarious ideological purposes for which the notion of ‘real interests’ has been used. In particular, liberals (or economists of a liberal bent) are generally wary of separating interests and preferences too much, since that separations seem to ‘imply a decision-maker who stands outside and apart from the people whose interests he is assessing’ (Jones 1998, p. 18; for a general discussion, see Douglass 1980).
Even here, of course, there may be scope for disagreement: people may reasonably disagree in their over-arching role as members of the public about what is in the public interest. But the point remains that different interests attach to different roles, even if that in itself does not settle all disagreements (see Goodin 1996, p. 339).
As Robert Goodin puts it, ‘How extensive such shared concerns may be varies from place to place and waxes and wanes with time’ (Goodin 1996, p. 339).
Virginia Held argues that Barry’s ‘approach appears to have serious difficulties, as it assigns no role in evaluations of the public interest to anyone’s net interest, which would seem to be what any individual asserting his interests in a set of activities would actually and justifiably ground them upon’ (Held 1970, p. 118). This criticism is unjustified, since Barry clearly says that where our special interest outweighs our share of the public interest, the public interest may have to give way. What Barry fails to explain, however, is whether balancing acts of this sort need to be based on pragmatic considerations only, or whether normative considerations also come into play (and, if so, which ones).
Rehfeld offers a second defence of majority rule, based on the median voter thesis, which essentially says that in a two party system with many floating voters, candidates and parties will seek to please as many people as possible by moving to the middle of the political spectrum (Rehfeld 2008, pp. 226–227). Those conditions might obtain in the case on which Rehfeld focuses—the United States—but there are also many cases where they do not obtain. Even where they do hold, catering to the middle of the political spectrum might leave many minority interests unrepresented (i.e., parties might move closer together, but some sections of society might remain just as far apart as ever).
In concluding their defence of the place of self-interest within deliberative democracy, Mansbridge and her co-authors ask: ‘Will legitimating self-interest, even in constrained from, undermine the capacity of the democratic deliberative ideal to inspire transformations in the direction of the common good? In practice, perhaps yes’ (Mansbridge et al. 2010, p. 78). Ultimately, it seems that Mansbridge is more concerned with taking pluralism seriously than with advancing the public interest in a decision.
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Acknowledgments
Earlier drafts of this article were presented at conferences in Southampton and Glasgow. I learned a great deal from audience members on each occasion. For insightful written comments, I am indebted to Peter Jones, Stephen Elstub, David Russell, the editors of this journal and anonymous reviewers.
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O’Flynn, I. Deliberating About the Public Interest. Res Publica 16, 299–315 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-010-9127-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-010-9127-x