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Consensus, Legitimacy, And The Exercise Of Judgement In Political Deliberation, Cillian Mcbride

Cillian McBride

Deliberative Democrats have been criticised for promoting an overly consensual style of politics. Agonistic democrats argue that this is because they allow justice to displace ‘the political’ while others make the opposite charge: deliberative democrats pay insufficient attention to justice and the confrontational style of politics which may be necessary to secure social justice. I argue that the deliberative model aims at strengthening democratic legitimacy, not at producing consensus and that it is centrally concerned with stimulating the exercise of citizens’ capacity for judgement. The duty of civility should be regarded as a duty to make impartial judgements, not as …