1

The paper ‘Beyond Demagogues and Deplorables: The Space for Deliberative Reason in Populist Rhetoric’ is an excerpt from a chapter in the forthcoming book Power in Deliberative Democracy: Norms, Forums, Systems (2019, Palgrave, co-authored with Marit Hammond and John Min). The full chapter is attached, but the conference presentation focuses on the second section (pp. 8-14). Nicole Curato Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance University of Canberra

Deliberative Democracy in Dark Times

The year 2016 will be remembered as ‘the year of voting dangerously’ (Dowd 2016).

Diagnosing what went wrong with democracy has become a global craze—from pundits

claiming to have long seen this coming to publishers producing ‘hot takes on the outrage

du jour’ (West 2016). Freedom House finds that countries witnessing decline in political

rights and civil liberties outnumber those with gains for eleven consecutive years in

2016 (Puddington and Roylance 2017). The Varieties of Democracy Project, similarly,

raise caution about the slight decline in the number of democracies worldwide from 100

in 2011 to 97 in 2016 (Mechokova, Lührmann and Linbderg 2017). A new lie from

Donald Trump, a fresh round of air strikes in Syria, a brand new white supremacist

party in Europe, another military takeover in the Pacific, a series of former presidents

in Latin America and Asia sent to jail—all these build the global narrative of democratic

backsliding.

In the book Democracy in Dark Times, Jeffrey C. Isaac argues that the prospects for

organised collective will ‘are very dim’ (Isaac 1994: 4). The best we can hope for is a

democracy defined by stasis—a ‘persistent and noxious immobilism,’ a culture ‘of

insecurity and meanness,’ an aspiration for organising political life without a utopian

charm (Isaac 1994: 3, 13). The book was written in the 1994, a couple of years after

Francis Fukuyama (1992) declared the triumph of liberal democracy. It was, indeed, a

sobering reflection of democracy’s limits and a prescient warning of what lies ahead.

We agree with the premise that we are in dark times. Despite claims that we are living

through the most peaceful and prosperous time in history (Pinker 2012), the lived

experience of the twenty-first century suggests that democracies have done little to put

an end to savage attacks against human dignity. Our future will look like our past,

warns Thomas Picketty (2014). We will remain stuck in the gilded age if democracies do

not get their act together.

It is in this backdrop of pessimism that deliberative democracy finds itself today. While

efforts like Participedia (https://participedia.net/) and Innovations for Latin America

(https://www.latinno.net/en/) serve as digital shrines for what democratic innovations

have accomplished in the past few decades, there are reasons to be pessimistic about

what these reforms can achieve.

2

Indeed, why has India—the country that boasts of the world’s largest deliberative

councils—elected the neo-nationalist Narendra Modi, a man who has stoked religious

violence and banned more than 11,000 NGOs? Why has Brazil—one of the trailblazers

in institutionalising participatory budgeting and national public policy conferences—

failed to rid the country of systemic corruption? Has deliberative democracy ended up

with the same fate as liberal democracy—a promising ideal overwhelmed by the

vagaries of realpolitik?

In the previous chapter we proposed to take a broader view of deliberative politics

beyond the forum. We offered a deliberative systems approach, which allows for a

diagnosis of the forms of power that are corrosive to democratic life and the institutional

and extra-institutional reforms needed for democratic renewal. In this final substantive

chapter, we extend this discussion by focusing on three topics that have shaped

contemporary thinking about the pathologies of democracy—post-truth, populism,

and illiberalism. We examine the character of power that unfolds in each of these

contexts, put forward illustrative examples, and examine their implications for

deliberative theory and practice.

We conclude the chapter with a question often raised but as yet unanswered in

deliberative theory: What is its account of change? How does it take power? We argue

for a humble version of deliberative theory, one that does not hoist a flag declaring

mission accomplished, but one that constantly evolves because it learns from its

mistakes.

DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY WITH NO TRUTHS

‘Post-truth’ is Oxford English Dictionary’s Word of the Year in 2016. It refers to

circumstances in which ‘objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion

than appeals to emotion and personal belief.’ In this era, ‘it is easy to cherry-pick data

and come to whatever conclusion you desire’ (Oxford English Dictionary, 2016).

In many ways, the features of the post-truth era are not entirely new. ‘Fact is precisely

what there is not, only interpretations,’ states Friedrich Nietzsche. What we can rely on

are perspectives based on people’s contingent world views (Nietzsche 1967: 481). Even

before postmodernism gained appeal, Plato, in Book 8 of the Republic, already flagged

people’s tendency to be drawn towards strategists and rhetoricians, while neglecting

those with knowledge and skill. Russell Muirhead cites an excerpt from the Republic,

featuring the story of the captain and the sailor.

The ship owner, though tall and strong, has bad hearing and sight and lacks the

strength to command. Sailors quarrel as each thinks he should be captain. If they

cannot persuade the pilot to turn over control, they kill him. And they praise as

great sailors those who scheme and fight successfully. Meanwhile, the one ‘true

sailor’ who takes no interest in the contest, who stares at the skies and who can

navigate by the stars, is neglected as a useless ‘stargazer’ [Republic 488a–489a]

(Muirhead 2014: 117)

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This is ‘the tragedy of democratic politics—perhaps all politics,’ Muirhead adds. To know

how to take power is not the same as knowing how to use power (Muirhead 2014: 117).

Why, then, would the populus be drawn to sailors who scheme and fight, instead of

those who can navigate the stars?

The field of cultural studies provides some insight to make sense of this puzzle. Part of

the reason, as Guy Debord puts it, is that we live in a ‘society of spectacle’ (Debord

1970). Classical Greece had its Olympics and poetry festivals. Ancient Rome had its

titanic political battles. Machiavelli advised the modern prince about the productive use

of spectacle for government control (Kellner 2003: 1). What we have come to know today

as techno-spectacles—those that have converted Facebook, Twitter and even Instagram

to political war rooms—have roots in the pre-modern times.

Similar but not the same

What sets post-truth politics apart, however, is the combination of (1) brazen denial of

objectively verifiable claims coupled with (2) the speed and scale in which these claims

are disseminated in the digital public sphere, (3) the consequence of which are inflamed

visceral reactions that shape the conduct of opinion formation.

It is empirically verifiable as incorrect that the crowd size during Mr Trump’s

inauguration surpassed that of Barack Obama’s. The same can be said about the claim

that Mr Trump won the most electoral votes for any Republican since Ronald Reagan.

The New York Times catalogued ‘nearly every outright lie’ Mr Trump has said in public

since he took his oath of office. They find that the President of the United States told lies

or falsehoods every day for his first forty days in power (Leonhardt and Thompson

2017).

That politicians lie is not particularly new (see Davis and Ferrantino 1994). What is

distinct in post-truth politics is how technologically-sophisticated spectacles provide a

hospitable space for deception and disinformation. First, the architecture of social media

prizes authenticity. Media anthropologists describe digital media as a storytelling

platform, where spontaneity, informality, cadence, truth stretching and exaggeration

are integral to the norms of performance. Trump has mastered this style long before he

entered politics. He starred in his own reality show which used ‘smoke and mirrors to

turn the mundane into the believable fantastic’ (MacGranahan 2017: 245). Trump is a

beneficiary of a hypermediated public sphere, where the political has become the

natural extension of the cultural spectacle of reality television.

Second, social media’s participatory character transforms citizens from audiences to

content creators. The rise of ‘homophilous online networks,’ coupled with declining trust

in media institutions, create conditions for ordinary citizens to bypass traditional

gatekeepers for information and deny expert knowledge (Milailidis and Viotty 2017:

441). The danger lies in ‘disinformation cascades’ that overwhelm fact checkers

(Milailidis and Viotty 2017: 448). ‘Lies spread faster than the truth’ is Soroush

Vosoughi, Deb Roy and Sinan Aral’s (2018) main finding in their study of rumour

cascades on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. Part of the reason, they argue, is the degree of

novelty and emotional reactions that falsehoods perpetuate. False stories ‘inspire fear,

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disgust, and surprise in replies,’ leading humans, rather than robots, to more likely

spread it.

This explains why being accused of lying means little for Trump as long as ‘many people

feel the same way that I do,’ as he said in an interview. Visceral reactions have more

currency that considered reasons in post-truth politics. Trump does not need to ‘hide his

pettiness, bury his petulance, or successfully distract us from his vulgarity and bigotry’

(Bruni 2018). What is on offer is not respect, but candour; spectacle, not the truth. To

give voice to pent up frustrations is more meaningful than diagnosing the source of

collective anxieties, which has been the approach of ‘out of touch’ political establishment

and experts. There is, as Oliver Hahl and his colleagues (2018) put it, an ‘authentic

appeal of the lying demagogue.’1

Dangers for deliberative democracy

There are clear dangers post-truth politics poses to deliberative democracy. Firstly, for

epistemic democrats, disinformation tarnishes deliberation’s ‘truth-tracking’ function.

Arendt’s distinction of truth and opinion is crucial here, for it is the latter rather than

the former that serves as a foundation for democratic life. Nonetheless, how opinions are

formed requires a certain level of adherence to shared facts. Deliberation requires at

least some degree of epistemic competence from its participants (Min and Wong 2017).

How can public deliberation take place if participants subscribe to vastly different truth

regimes? How can a dialogic exchange of reasons unfold if parties refuse to recognise the

basis of each other’s factual claims?

Debates on climate change is paradigmatic of this dilemma. The echo chamber among

climate sceptics amplified the denial machine’s messages to the American public

(Elsasser and Dunlap 2012). Mainstream media, for its part, ‘gratuitously covered these

outlier views,’ which created misleading debates among policy communities (Boykoff

2013: 796). Deliberating with no shared facts makes one wonder whether deliberative

democracy stands a chance in a post-truth world.

Secondly, post-truth politics undermines deliberative democracy’s commitment to

equality. There are some ‘truths’ deliberative democracy requires, and this truth, as

Hannah Arendt puts it, ‘peremptorily claims to be acknowledged and precludes debate’

(Arendt 1967: 302). She cites the example of the United States’ Declaration of

Independence, where Thomas Jefferson declared certain ‘truths to be self-evident.’ This

claim is portrayed as if it were beyond dispute, ‘like mathematical axioms’ that people’s

minds involuntarily follow. For deliberative democracy to function, some truths must be

‘necessarily domineering’ such as the self-evident truth of equality (Arendt 1967: 302).

In practice, the claim that all persons are equal is not self-evident. It stands ‘in need of

agreement and consent’ (Arendt 1967: 304). One can think of totalitarian regimes where

truth claims are upheld through coercion instead of consent. Jailing dissidents is an

example of despots ‘forcing their own will… on the conduct of others’ (Arendt in

Habermas 1983: 117). The result is not only a shutting down of spaces for contestation

but also the disempowerment of citizens as agents capable of shaping a polity’s collective

destiny.

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In liberal democracies, forcing one’s will onto others takes a subtler yet equally insidious

character. Trump’s political style has been compared to ‘gaslighting’ or psychologically

manipulating people to the point of questioning their own sanity. ‘At the hands of

Trump, facts have become interchangeable with opinions,’ argues Lena Duca (2016) in a

powerful opinion piece a month after Trump’s victory. Trump, she continues, ‘blinds us

into arguing amongst ourselves, as our very reality is called into question.’ This

observation echoes Arendt’s concern when lies are consistently substituted for factual

truth. In an interview with Roger Errera in 1973, Arendt argues:

You know, what really makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other kind of

dictatorship to rule is that the people are not informed. How can anyone have an

opinion who is not informed? On the other hand, if everyone always lies to you,

the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but that no one believes in

anything at all anymore—and rightly so, because lies, by their very nature, have

to be changed, to be ‘re-lied,’ so to speak… This means that people are deprived

not only of their capacity to act, but also to think and to judge. And with such a

people you can then do what you please. (Arendt 2018: 491-492)

At stake in the post-truth era, therefore, is the disempowerment of citizens from

interrogating hegemonic narratives of justification, leaving the task of truth-making to

the hands of the state. This, to use Habermas’s term, marks the ‘refeudalisation of the

public sphere’ where people are treated as subjects instead of co-equal collaborators in

determining the common good (Habermas 1991: 195; also see Murdock 2018)

Breaking free

The dangers of post-truth politics are here to stay but they are not insurmountable.

Fake news and disinformation are distortions in the public sphere, which could be

addressed by enhancing the functions of the deliberative system’s spaces of opinion-

formation. How can we create a deliberative system that celebrates both fact and

opinion?

Post-truth by indifference

Jean-Claude Monod’s (2017) distinction between two types of post-truth is helpful in this

regard. The first form is ‘post-truth by indifference.’ This refers the ‘conspicuous disdain

for verification or argument.’ Donald Trump’s claims of widescale voter fraud and

audiences uncritically accepting this claim is an example of indifference. Normatively,

media studies scholars envision a public capable of deconstructing the spectacle (Kellner

2009). To do this, the media need to create enabling conditions for deepening the critical

and contestatory character of the public sphere. For Silverman (2015), there is a need

for news websites to allocate time and resources to question false claims and debunk

rumours. On-the-spot fact checks and journalists calling out lies, collective strategies of

pressing for answers are practical examples that challenge the culture of indifference, at

least on the production side of news.

The status of experts or epistemic elites also needs a closer look in the post-truth era.

Chambers (2017) sums up the conflict between the twin demands of epistemic quality

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and equal participation in deliberative democracy. While the two are tightly linked, she

argues that equal participation can bring down the epistemic quality of deliberations.

Post-truth politics, we find, is a natural extension of this logic. As content creation gets

democratised in the digital public sphere, the quality of information from newsmakers

unaccountable to journalistic standards becomes suspect. How can deliberative

democracy respond to this tension?

One way is to clarify the division of labour between experts and citizens. A systemic

view suggests that ordinary citizens can set the polity’s values and broad aims while

experts deliberate on the precise mechanisms and policies that can realise these aims.

In other words, citizens can be empowered to set the agenda, while experts claim

noumenal power in putting forward technical fixes. This view thus emphasises the

specialisation as well as segregation between experts and ordinary citizens (Christiano

2012).

The problem goes deeper, however, when we begin to think about the underlying

rationale for the status accorded to expert claims. It is one thing to acknowledge that

expertise merits public scrutiny; it is another to say that that the epistemic status of

expert claims is of equal level to those of the rest of society. This, we find, is at the crux

of post-truth politics.

For some scholars, citizens can become experts in their own domain of lived experience,

as it relates to the evaluation of policies (Fischer 2009). For example, in some contexts,

indigenous knowledge is given equal status to the scientific discourse. Indigenous people

may not wear a lab coat or invoke the technical language of scientific knowledge, but

their experience with nature gives them the noumenal power to put forward a

persuasive case for their views and preferences (see Laurie, Andolina and Radcliffe

2005).

In other cases, citizens seek to overturn expert knowledge. The Vaccine-Autism

controversy is an example of where there is conclusive yet contested scientific evidence

that vaccines do not cause autism. Scepticism against vaccines has always been part of

public health, but the affordances of digital technologies have allowed sceptics to form

epistemic communities that disseminate conspiracy theories, rallying behind public

figures or celebrities that put forward dubious scientific claims (Smith and Graham

2017). The view that inoculations are risky has resulted to measles outbreaks in states

like California and Arizona, decades after the disease had been declared to have been

officially eradicated (Haberman 2015). What, then, should the status of these claims be

in the deliberative system?

One may argue that legislating against such forms of speech is a reasonable way

forward, but this runs contrary to democracy’s commitment to disagreement,

contestation, and autonomy not only in opinion-formation but also in controlling one’s

body (the choice not to be vaccinated). We argue that the gap between citizen and

expertise must be maintained but what needs strengthening is what Chambers refers to

as a the ‘feedback loop’ between epistemic elites and ordinary citizens to manage

epistemic quality and equal participation. Moore (2017) argues along similar lines,

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postulating that expert judgment should be open to problematisation and contestation

among ordinary citizens. It is openness to public scrutiny that democratises expert

claims.

Forging a critical relationship between citizens and (pseudo)-scientific claims thus often

falls on the purview of media literacy. Audiences need to have access to education and

skills that empower them to process the information they consume in a high-choice

media environment. For Paul Mihailidis and Samantha Viotty (2017), these efforts need

to be repositioned in the digital age to respond to the demands of the era of ‘spreadable

spectacle’ (Mihailidis and Viotty 2017: 451). Part of their proposal is to focus on

connecting publics and embracing difference by underscoring the relational approach to

media literacy instead of approaching it as an enterprise necessary for individuals to

sharpen their deliberative competence. Media literacies, they argue, need to be

organised as a form of active engagement that allows audiences to take part in local

issues that can ‘frame the critique and creation of messages as connected to one’s sense

of place, belonging and community’ (Mihailidis and Viotty 2017: 451). What beats

indifference is not capacity but meaning—a sense that taking part in critical discourse

formation is an activity worth pursuing.

Post-truth by active deception

Monod’s second type of post-truth politics is active deception or the ‘deliberate

production of false information.’ This kind of post-truth politics is hinged on the political

economy of disinformation, where companies from as ‘sophisticated’ as Cambridge

Analytica to fake news farms in Macedonia make profit from creating false information

(see Ong and Cabañes 2018). Ideally, the public should have the capacity to challenge

deception. We have witnessed how the noumenal power of despotic regimes and liberal

democracy’s spin doctors take a nosedive not only when lies are exposed but when

collective fictions cease to be persuasive.

The bigger challenge, however, is not with news that can be verified as empirically

accurate, but subtler forms of deception that bleed into everyday political discourse with

real-life consequences.2 These forms of deception have noumenal power not because of

outright coercion but because of persuasive power built not only on pre-existing

prejudices but also on democratic ideals themselves. Jason Stanley’s (2015) account of

propaganda provides insight into this matter. He characterises two kinds of propaganda.

Supporting propaganda. A contribution to public discourse that is presented as

an embodiment of certain ideals, yet is of a kind that tends to increase the

realisation of those very ideals by either emotional or other non-rational means.

Undermining propaganda. A contribution to public discourse that is presented as

an embodiment of certain ideals yet is of a kind that tends to erode those very

ideals (Stanley 2015: 53).

Political advertising is an example of supporting propaganda: it is presented as an

embodiment of certain ideals, but non-rational means—persuasive advertising rather

than honest deliberation—are utilised to realise those ideals. When a political candidate

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who was a former Army Officer salutes the American flag, it evokes an imagery of

patriotism and love of the country, both of which are ideals in the United States. People

have an emotional reaction to this gesture, bringing the voters to support the candidate.

Hence, this is likewise an instance of supporting propaganda.

While supporting propaganda is problematic, undermining propaganda has a more

virulent effect in that it undermines the ideals that it is supposed to serve. An

illustration brings this point to the fore. The neurosurgeon Carl Hart has shown that

the ‘War on Drugs’ is predicated on an idea that blacks have an exceptional reaction to a

certain type of drugs. The idea led to sentencing disparity between whites and blacks

who consume crack cocaine. The ‘War on Drugs’ intended to promote the rule of law and

justice, but the sentencing disparity between whites and blacks undermined the rule of

law and justice. The ‘War on Drugs’ thus uses the discourse of rule of law and justice in

the public sphere to undermine the rule of law and justice.

Both types of propaganda use irrational or a-rational means of persuasion. Despots use

non-rational or irrational means to manipulate the public; if that fails, then they use

violent coercive power. In liberal democratic societies, the government is authorised to

use force, but not violent coercive power. That is, it has to use persuasion. It is these

subtler forms of deception that are tougher to call out, but nevertheless can be subject of

public deliberation to redress epistemic injustice.

DELIBERATING WITH ‘DEPLORABLES’

There are many reasons to think that populism is the antithesis of deliberation.

Whereas deliberation prizes intellectual rigour and collective reflection, populism

specialises in ‘homespun common sense and emotional appeals’ (Canovan 1999: 15). Its

polarising speech style creates information silos. It builds walls rather than bridges,

effectively obstructing public reasoning as a way of determining the common good.

Inherent to the populist logic is the division of the ‘virtuous people’ versus the

‘dangerous other’ (Laclau 2005). This a clear break from deliberation’s commitment to

norms of reciprocity or giving reasons others could accept. As a result, populism, for

some, is ‘pathological.’ It is democracy’s ‘autoimmune disease.’ It inflames prejudices

and attacks the institutions of liberal democracy (Keane 2009).

We recognise the dangers that populism brings to democratic life, but we find the

normative bias against it problematic. Following Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser (2012), we

find that there are no grounds to use ‘medical metaphors and speak of populism as a

“pathology”’ (Kaltwasser 2012: 195). Nor are there good reasons to romanticise populism

as a purest articulation of democracy. Populism, Kaltwasser argues, has an ambivalent

relationship with democracy. How we assess populism’s relationship with democracy

has more to do with the version of democracy we subscribe to, rather than its inherent

normative character. A liberal democratic view finds populism corrosive for democracy

as it shrinks the space for public contestation. A radical democratic take, on the other

hand, finds the populist promise alluring in that it can foster inclusiveness, especially in

contexts of economic, political and social exclusion.

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How about a deliberative democratic take? This is where we find a medical metaphor

useful. Populism, as Simon Tormey (2017) puts it, is a pharmakon—‘a toxic substance

used to make someone better, but which might also kill them.’ Populism is both poison

and cure. ‘Whether it is one or the other depends on dosage, context, receptivity of the

body to the toxin, and so forth’ (Tormey 2017). Populism as a pharmakon underscores

the possibility of both life and death.

We find this metaphor useful because we recognise both the coercive and empowering

character of populism in the deliberative system. The analytical task is both empirical

and normative—to understand the precise context in which populism is practiced, not

only by the populist leader but also the ‘populist publics,’ and how the practice of

populism measures up to the ethical demands of inclusion and contestation (Curato

2017).

Visual representations of populism often evoke images of a charismatic leader making a

speech in front of an adoring crowd. When we limit our gaze of populism to this image,

then we are bound to see a one-way relationship between a demagogue manipulating ‘a

basket of deplorables,’ to use Hillary Clinton’s description of Trump supporters. A

deliberative systems analysis demands more than this. To judge populism as

manipulation presupposes an unproblematic hearer. It assumes that the public acts as a

passive audience rather than active citizens capable of reflection. This analysis misses

the noumenal character of populist power—that there are contested rationalities

underpinning the populist appeal. It also misses the two-way character of democratic

politics—that populists are not just producers of rhetoric, but are also responding to the

demands of their constituencies (Ostiguy 2017).

A deliberative take, we argue, views populism as a discursively negotiated and contested

political style. It is relational, not unidirectional. It is normatively ambivalent but

politically delicate. Populism’s transgressions of deliberative norms may result in

corrosive effects on democracy, but these effects may be necessary, albeit temporarily, to

rejuvenate democratic life.

What exactly, then, are populism’s functions in the deliberative system? How can its

transgression of deliberative norms be justified? We put forward three caveats that

provide democratic safeguards in the fragile populist moment. These three conditions,

we suggest, provide the balance for populism to be both the cure and the toxin.

Mobilising publics, setting an agenda

One of the headline-grabbing qualities of populist leaders is their rough political style.

Donald Trump calling Mexicans rapists, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi

declaring that the Italian left has no taste ‘even when it comes to women,’ and the

Netherlands’ Geert van Wilders declaring Muslims to be the Trojan Horse of the

European Union—all these are manifestations of what Pierre Ostiguy refers to as the

‘flaunting of the low’ (Ostiguy 2017: 73; Moffitt 2016). They disrupt the vocabulary of

‘high politics,’ defined by proceduralism, impersonal authority, composure, political

correctness and respectable behaviour. Instead, populists emphasise sincerity,

playfulness and disregard for hierarchy (Moffitt and Tormey 2014). Benjamin Arditi

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compares populists to a guest who ‘has had a drink too many.’ The guest disrupts table

manners and undermines the tacit rules of sociability. Hosts may try to downplay the

guest’s antics but the ‘disruptive noise’ has made an impact in saying what is unspoken

(Arditi 2007: 78). Populism’s vulgarity is the opposite of the ‘civilising force of hypocrisy’

(Elster 1998: 12). It breaks fragile relationships but thereby renders disagreements

visible.

This performative element of populism is important in creating political relations

between the populist leader and the people. Tabloid-style communication constructs an

affectual narrative which represents the ‘unpresentable Other’ that has been relegated

to the margins of the ‘civilised’ conduct of politics (Ostiguy 2017: 75; also see Canovan

1999). It fosters inclusiveness by forming new publics which may not have been formed

without a leader or a movement that gives voice to unarticulated views. As such,

populists may serve as effective discursive, and in some instances descriptive,

representatives.3 They render certain constituencies visible, thereby expanding the

scope of who counts as ‘the public’ in public deliberation. This is populism’s radical

democratic potential that Kaltwasser identified.

Populism’s noumenal power is derived from its capacity to give voice to anxieties and to

transform these anxieties into political agendas. It can raise taken for granted issues,

lay bare hidden injuries, and set in motion a series of discursive contestation. Dryzek’s

work on deliberation and rhetoric, for example, cites Pauline Hanson—the founder of

Australia’s One Nation Party—who appealed to white working-class Australians’

anxieties about multiculturalism, free trade and immigration.

At one level Hanson crystallized from these anxieties a previously marginalized

discourse, thus creating a possible ingredient for a deliberative system. At

another level her activities provoked countermobilization of liberal and

multicultural discourses. She had little in the way of commitment to any

categorical deliberative norms and was not averse to racial stereotyping. Yet the

net result of her activities was a more deliberative polity, at least in the sense

that a number of discourses that were either taken for granted or had yet to

crystallize or had been marginalized took shape in a way that could have allowed

for their engagement in the public sphere (though the actual interchange that

occurred was not always salutary). The general point here is that we cannot read

off the systemic effects of rhetoric from the intentions of the speaker (Dryzek

2010: 334).

For Hanson to be an effective discursive representative, must she really declare that

Australia is being ‘swamped by Asians’ and that Muslims ‘are prominent in organised

crime’ in her maiden speech to the Senate (Hanson 2016)? Was it essential for her to say

that she has had enough of tolerance, multiculturalism and political correctness? Are

there democratic gains in such impassioned speech?

This brings us to the limits of the populist style. Populism can perform an agenda-

setting function in the mode of distributed deliberation—and to that extent Hanson was

successful. But the democratic danger lies in populism’s simultaneous habit of exclusion.

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As populists invoke the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ the formation of populist

publics is hinged on characterising a dangerous other as unworthy of engagement. This

is particularly troubling if the populist rhetoric punches below than punches above. In

the previous chapter, we argued that non-deliberative acts can be normatively justified

if they comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. While Hanson was clear in

pinning blame on the government for bringing in high levels of immigration, her

constant stereotyping of Muslim immigrants as dangerous others furthers migrant

families’ vulnerable status in Australia’s multicultural society.

Normatively, Chantal Mouffe’s (2005) vision of agonism may point to a way out, such

that the other must be viewed not as an enemy to be eradicated but as an adversary

whose right to express those ideas is defended. The pharmakon metaphor works well

here, for this poses a delicate situation for democracies. Can the Manichean language

amplify voices of the afflicted without seeking to destroy the voice of the other?

Yielding to democratic procedure

It is for this reason that we consider it crucial for populism to yield to democratic

procedure once it takes power. Using a populist style in agenda-setting is normatively

different from using a populist style in governing. We argue that populism needs to shift

gears from confrontational politics to creating spaces for public deliberation, especially

when making decisions that reshape the polity. Changing a constitution, for example,

requires an inclusive and robust deliberation—even with ‘the enemy’ by virtue of them

being members of the polity—and a legitimating mechanism such as a referendum.

This, presumably, is where populism’s tension with democratic politics becomes most

pronounced. Populists are like ‘pyromaniac firefighters’ whose raison d'être it is to put

out crises but who also find it in their interest to keep the political fires ablaze; for it is

from these moments that they derive their perceived legitimacy (Ostiguy 2015). It is not

accidental that populism often deteriorates into illiberalism, for constantly invoking a

crisis legitimates the curtailment of freedoms to restore order. This has been the case in

Argentina’s Juan Domingo Perón who sought to organise a multiclass base but ended up

relying on authoritarian measures for political control (see Karush and Chamosa 2010),

or Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who fostered a ‘personal, sacred and almost erotic’

relationship with the people but rounded up journalists who were critical of his regime

(Turk 2018: 9).

Internal deliberation. Populist parties can be assessed based on the deliberative quality of their internal deliberations. Like advocacy campaigns and activist movements, populist parties put forward a strong and often uncompromising position, but these may be outcomes of a process of internal deliberations. The previous chapter discussed how political parties are important sites for sharpening the epistemic justifications for political arguments, the development of political capacities of its members, as well as creation of spaces for self-correction and accountability. For populism to secure its democratic future, political parties must not deteriorate to a cabal. Listening and pluralism in the public sphere

Finally, attention must be drawn to the dynamic of reasoning in the public sphere

during populist times. Ethnographic work on supporters of populist leaders highlights

the rationality underpinning their support. Arlie Hochschild’s (2016) five year

ethnography with Tea Party and Trump supporters has gained widespread attention for

its empathetic understanding of rustbelt voters’ frustrations (also see Isenberg 2017;

Vance 2016). Being good citizens ‘waiting in line’ has been a central part of their self-

image. This self-image is disparaged when immigrants ‘cut in line’ and educated

cosmopolitan liberals dismiss their sentiments as bigotry. The outcome is a sense that

12

they are ‘strangers in their own land,’ which gives politicians like Trump some leverage

to articulate their sentiments.

Meanwhile, in Thailand, Andrew Walker (2008) examines the rationalities of rural

voters who supported the populist leader Thaksin Shinawatra in 2001. Rural voters in

Northern Thailand are often disparaged for being parochial, uneducated and easily

seduced by money. What Walker’s ethnography uncovers, however, is the ‘rural

constitution’ of judgments about what counts as legitimate and illegitimate political

power in electoral contests. By observing the everyday politics of discussion, gossip and

debates about the personal attributes and administrative competence of political

leaders, he finds that support for Thaksin is embedded in local judgments about

leadership qualities that best match their values. Walker warns that supporters of the

Royalist coup and ‘constitutional alchemists’ that sought to delegitimate the popularly

elected Thaksin from power are a ‘much more fundamental threat to Thailand’s

democracy’ (Walker 2008: 103). Stereotyping rural voters as ‘failed citizens’ only serves

to fuel divisions in a class-divided Thailand.4

These two examples, among others, bring to the surface the importance of overcoming

what Hochschild calls the ‘empathy wall’ when examining the rationalities of populist

supporters. The accountability of populism’s pathologies does not squarely rest on

populist leaders and their supporters, but also with their critics’ failure to listen,

recognise, and engage with the views of citizens they belittle as deplorables. When we

closely examine the rationalities of populist publics, it remains clear that they are far

from unflinching fanatics captivated by a populist spell. They are citizens who have

rendered value judgments, with equal stakes in protecting value pluralism. It is crucial

to maintain this space for discourse formation and to create cultures of contestation,

instead of imposing a predetermined view of what populist supporters believe in.

Illustrative example

Venezuela offers an example of populism serving as pharmakon for democratic politics.

After the fall of the Marcos Pérez Jiménez’s dictatorship in 1958, Venezuela has been

celebrated as one of the most stable democracies in Latin America. Underpinning this

stability is an inter-elite consensus—an agreement between the parties Acción

Democrática and Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente to set aside

difficult and potentially explosive issues, focus on incremental reforms, and reject the

use of military to force a party out of power (see Myers 2004). Power-sharing agreements

were in place. Norms of civility and mutual guarantees provided the stability in what

used to be a fragile political system.

A consequence of this inter-elite consensus was the shrinking of democratic space for

contestatory politics. Political actors that challenge the parameters of the two-party

democracy were stigmatised as spoilers for democratic stability. Because the political

system was run as an enclave of two elite parties, political outbursts have become the

main expression of discontent. In 1989, Caracas witnessed a week of bloody riots

sparked by a sharp increase in transport fares. In 1992, a thirty-eight-year-old

lieutenant colonel by the name of Hugo Chávez launched a military coup, protesting

13

President Carlos Andres Perez’s treatment of his people like doormats. Six years later,

this paratrooper became the country’s first indigenous president (see O’Flynn and

Curato 2015).

Chávez is often described as the quintessential populist. To his critics he is an autocratic

clown prince, and to him his critics are escualidos—the Venezuelan slang for pathetic.

‘Hate against me has a lot to do with racism,’ he once said, ‘because of my big mouth,

because of my curly hair’ (see Hilleary 2014). In this statement, Chávez was establishing

his credentials as being one of the people, unlike the fair-skinned Ivy League-educated

elites that made Venezuela one of the most unequal societies in the region. The

antagonistic language against elites translated to actual policy, with Chávez

nationalising industries including oil, steel, agriculture and finance (see Reuters 2012).

Critics accuse Chávez for ‘refashioning authoritarianism for a democratic age’ (Corrales

2006). There may not desaparecidos or state-sponsored terror, but critics lament the

deterioration of accountability and limits of presidential power. We argue, however, that

Chávez’s democratic legacy is mixed. There have indeed been reforms that consolidate

presidential power, but there have also been reforms that institutionalise grassroots

participation. As Chávez declared representative democracy to have been a failure, he

presented an alternative model of democracy that ‘promotes participation, and that

moves toward [popular] decision-making’ (in de la Torre 2007: 386). Article 62 of the

1999 Constitution declares that ‘all citizens have the right to participate freely in public

matters,’ and considers it a state obligation ‘to facilitate the generation of more

favourable conditions for its practice’ (Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, 1999).

Bolivarian Circles, Health Committee Cooperatives, Urban Land Committees, and

Communal Councils are some of the key participatory initiatives emerging from this

provision (Hawkins 2010: 36).

These participatory institutions, of course, are not blameless. Some have become

vehicles for fostering relationships of patronage. Nonetheless, these programmes have

made an impact in creating spaces of village-level deliberations and grassroots

governance. Those who have traditionally been excluded from Venezuelan political life—

women, indigenous people, urban poor communities—participated in writing the

constitution, mastered the language of rights, and developed capacities to conceptualise

and implement projects for the community. Survey data suggest that participation in

these initiatives is ‘moderately high,’ comparable to the participation levels in Brazil’s

widely celebrated participatory budgeting (Hawkins 2010: 46). These initiatives are also

pluralistic, to the extent that the remain ‘fluid, heterogenous, and decentralised’

(Roberts 2006: 19). There is room for discursive contestation in these circles, where local

expressions and interpretations of Chavismo emerge. Couple this with a ‘vociferous

opposition’ and a ‘feisty press,’ Venezuela’s populist moment is far from a period of a

citizenry beguiled with charismatic authority. There was room for some deliberation in

the populist moment.

A few years after Chávez passed away, Venezuela underwent a major crisis. Under the

leadership of Nicolas Maduro, Chávez’s chosen successor, the country witnessed major

food shortage, a hyperinflation just about shy of 8,900 percent in 2017, over four million

14

leaving the country and a series of massive protests. There are many reasons for this

(see Dachevsky and Kornblihtt 2017; Buxton 2018). For the purposes of our discussion,

we emphasise the failure of the radical democratic project to transform antagonistic

politics to deliberative action.

Part of Chávez’s legacy is the failure to create discursive spaces that bridge opposing

political actors. Like the elite consensus before his regime that invoked ‘democratic

stability’ to shut down opponents, the language of a socialist revolution justified the

rejection of elites as counterrevolutionaries (Curato 2014). The result of participation

without deliberation is a deliberative system incapable of generating workable

agreements amidst political impasse. Venezuela’s case is an example of how easy

political stalemates, without spaces for deliberation, can descend to the routinisation of

uncivil action. It also demonstrates the dangers of political opposition taking an

intransigent position. As Barry Cannon observes:

Opposition strategies used so far have been radical: intensive media campaigns,

a coup, an indefinite general production stoppage, sustained campaigns of

popular mobilisation and repeated appeals to the military to intervene… all

elements pointing to an abandonment of dialogue in favour of outright

insurrection (Cannon 2004: 300).

The result is a diminished deliberative system unable to manage non-democratic

solutions to crisis. It is a case of how the pharmakon’s effect has tilted toward

democratic decay as opposed to democratic rejuvenation—at least for the moment.

THE NEED TO DEFEND EVERYTHING

‘From Peru to the Palestinian Authority, from Sierra Leone to Slovakia, from Pakistan

to the Philippines, we see the rise of a disturbing phenomenon in international life—

illiberal democracy’ (Zakaria 1997). Written in 1997 in the Winter issue of Foreign

Affairs, political commentator Fareed Zakaria raised alarm bells over what he describes

as a ‘growth industry’ in global politics. Illiberalism was once a pejorative term to

describe deficient democracies. Two decades after Zakaria published this piece,

illiberalism has become a viable alternative for nation states that reject ‘western-style’

democracy that idealises human rights, rule of law, free speech and free markets.

‘Authoritarian politicians have figured out how to achieve a balance between liberalism

and illiberalism that keeps people satisfied,’ Zakaria said in an interview (in Illing

2017). ‘We have to reckon with the possibility that this model might become the most

stable alternative to liberal democracy,’ he adds.

Indeed, the open defence to illiberal values has become part of mainstream political

conversations. Hungary’s President Viktor Orbán declared in a speech that he is

building ‘an illiberal state’ (Orbán 2014). By this he means ‘systems that are not

Western, not liberal, not liberal democracies, maybe not even democracies,’ yet that are

‘making nations successful.’ He considers Singapore, China, India, Russia and Turkey as

15

the ‘stars’ heralded by international commentators, and expressed suspicion against

‘paid political activists’ that advance foreign interests (see Rupnik 2012; Innes 2015).

Orbán is not without friends in Asia. In the Philippines—a nation renowned for having

one of the oldest democratic traditions in Southeast Asia—rejected six million euros

worth of aid from the European Union in 2017. ‘Forget it. We will survive,’ said

President Rodrigo Duterte as he rejected EU aid on the grounds of its conditionality tied

to human rights. ‘Just don’t fuck with my country about sovereignty,’ he added, in

defence of his murderous, if not genocidal drug war (Simangan 2018; Reyes 2016) . In

Indonesia, the rise of political Islam has caused concerns for global observers, where

‘conservative Islamic morality and reactionary hyper-nationalism’ have created threats

to religious pluralism and hard-won democratic gains (Hadiz 2018: 261). In Myanmar,

democracy icon and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s assumption of

power has done little to protect the thousands of Rohingya Muslims expelled from the

Rakhine state (see Barany 2018).

Zooming out of these specific examples is a bleak picture from Freedom House. In 2018,

Freedom House reports that ‘democracy faced its most serious crisis in decades in 2017,’

for free and fair elections, minority rights, press freedom, and rule of law came under

attack worldwide. Seventy-one countries experienced a net decline in political rights and

civil liberties, marking the twelfth consecutive year of decline in global freedom.

Stephen Hopgood (2013) declared that we are witnessing ‘the end times of human

rights.’ Together with the decline of American and European power and ascent of China

and Russia are nation-states—such as the examples we cited earlier—that renegotiate

the terms of global rules.

Where do these developments leave deliberative democracy? Are the prospects of

deliberative politics dimmed by emboldened autocrats and wavering democrats (see

Puddington and Roylance 2016)?

Our response to this is three-fold. First, while we express concern over the global decline

of political rights and civil liberties, we also find this moment an opportunity to take

stock of the corroding global consensus on human rights. We welcome the emerging

contestation on what used to be a hegemonic rights regime and seek to examine the

reasons, anxieties, and alternative visions various global actors put forward. This, we

find, is an opening to broaden the discourse of human rights that speaks to different

cultures and contexts.

Second, we propose a normative standard by which contestations on human rights take

place: through the lens of deliberative norms. A deliberative system on human rights

demands treatment of rights bearers as equal interlocutors deserving justifications,

instead of normative impositions. If there is one lesson that can be learned from the

‘democracy promotion’ literature, it is that military force, diplomatic pressure, and

economic sanctions are counterproductive for forging meaningful consensus on how a

state should treat its people. We follow Seyla Benhabib’s argument calling for a

correction of the ‘justification deficit’ in the human rights discourse (Benhabib 2013: 38).

This requires an emphasis on the communicative freedom of rights bearers who have

the capacity to accept or reject justifications in a space of reasons.

16

Finally, we examine the spaces and mechanisms in the deliberative system by which

discourses on human rights and liberalism can unfold. These may take place in formal

sites of deliberation at the global level, as in the case of the United Nations Human

Rights Council and, perhaps more importantly, in everyday sites of politics and

deliberation. We draw inspiration from post-colonial societies which have developed

their own versions of human rights agendas despite limitations on freedom of speech

and assembly. This, we find, sends an important message that the absence of formal

liberal rights does not have to curtail impulses for deliberative democratic politics.

Contesting the human rights regime

‘Democracy,’ argues Mark Bevir, does not stand ‘as a universally rational order based on

neutral reason.’ It is ‘a historical and mutable construct’ that must be defended using a

contingent set of concepts and strategies (Bevir 2006: 431). The language of liberalism,

particularly human rights, is an example of these mutable concepts. These are socially

constructed, in the sense that the ideas and practices associated with them are ‘created,

re-created, and instantiated by human actors in particular socio-historical settings and

conditions’ (Stammers 1999: 982). While their universality is often invoked in

international forums and popular press, their contingent character is manifest in how

they are practiced, and the meanings associated with how they are experienced.

The vocabulary of human rights is invoked to protect citizens from abuse and

oppression. Challenging the power of absolutist states, workers movements confronting

the unbridled exercises of economic power, anti-colonial movements demanding rights to

self-determination, and new social movements asserting identity and difference all

render power visible by laying claim to the rights discourse (Stammers 1999). Human

rights, as Amartya Sen puts it, are primarily an ‘ethical demand’ (Sen 2004: 319). They

are universal insofar as ‘they define the universal interests of the powerless—namely,

that power be exercised over them in ways that respect their autonomy as agents’

(Ignatieff 2001: 109).

In the global context, the language of rights gained prominence in response to the

Holocaust. The defeat of Nazi Germany ushered in the creation of the United Nations

and the formulation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is not a simple

feat. The Declaration represents a historic compromise ‘between the individualism of the

West and the collectivist orientation of the, then, Soviet bloc, and indirectly at least,

reflected the breaking away of colonies from European domination’ (Sjoberg, Gill and

Williams 2001: 13; also see Ishay 2004; Slotte and Halme-Tuomisaari 2015).

Sociologically, this international legal order bears little relation to everyday life in

nation states, but, as Arabella Lyon put it, the Declaration must be characterised as

‘deliberative rather than forensic,’ one that is concerned with the normalisation of

human rights and the setting of future norms (Lyon 2013: 119).

Yet as the human rights regime gains noumenal power from its normative justifications,

it also secures its status by constructing an ‘empire.’ That is to say, Human Rights—

with capital H and R—have created a

17

global structure of laws, courts, norms and organisation that raise money, write

reports, run international campaigns, open local offices, lobby governments, and

claim to speak with singular authority in the name of humanity as a whole

(Hopgood 2013: ix).

This view of human rights has been the subject of critique. Human rights for whom, one

may ask.5 Human rights laws are meant to equalise the status of citizens and non-

citizens across nation-states, but, as Kate Nash (2009) argues, ‘actually existing’

cosmopolitan citizenship results in an uneven application of human rights laws.

Depending on the material and moral resources of states that administer human rights,

citizens’ status is judged based on dangers associated to certain groups. Prisoners in

Guantánamo Bay are treated as un-citizens; those who have been assigned the status of

‘illegal combatants’ have no legal status in the international human rights regime.

Quasi-citizens, meanwhile, are those with precarious positions like asylum-seekers and

refugees, whose rights are administered through state-specific policies. What emerges

from the human rights regime are distinctions rather than universal protection of

citizens.

The list of failures of the Human Rights regime goes on. The failure to institutionalise

mechanisms to implement regime norms, the opportunity offered to despots for window

dressing their human rights record by ratifying treaties, the invocation of human rights

to invade countries and transplant democracies are some of the many reasons for the

growing scepticism against the human rights regime (see Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui

2005, 2007).

Viewed in this way, the narrative we presented earlier of Orbán’s project of building an

illiberal state is not particularly surprising. The human rights regime, while remaining

a powerful imaginary for many, has been confronted with rival normative

interpretations of what counts as a good polity (Benhabib 2007). Orbán’s vision is

reminiscent of the Asian values debate in the 1990s, when the doctrine of

developmentalism declared liberal rights an ‘unaffordable luxury’ (Thompson 2001:

155). This view has gained widespread resonance, especially before the Asian Financial

Crisis in 1998. Tiger economies including Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and South

Korea all secured prosperity without committing to international human rights

conventions. Hard work, frugality, teamwork, and discipline (not democracy) served as

legitimating traits for authoritarian rulers. The prominence of these justifications

continues today, this time with China as their main advocate. Asian values coupled with

performance-based legitimacy provide a counter-narrative to the liberal rights regime.

Two lessons can be gleaned from this discussion. First, the constructivist view of human

rights suggests that universal values are differently experienced. The intrinsic worth of

human rights is not self-explanatory, especially at a time when its discourse is used to

forge hierarchies and, in the case of invasion, to justify violence. Second, because human

rights are not self-explanatory, they must be defended, justified, and subjected to the

scrutiny of public deliberation. This is even more the case today when there are rival

ideas and practical manifestations of illiberalism.

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Rights bearers as interlocutors

How, then, must these discussions unfold? Michael Ignatieff argues that we must think

of the language of human rights as a ‘language that creates the basis for deliberation’

(Ignatieff 2001: 116). Human rights must not be deployed as a moral trump card that

dismisses other views. To do this is to use human rights as idolatry. This idolatry may

take an obvious form, as in the case of the United States failing to make a human rights

case for invading Iraq6—as if to invade to liberate is an unproblematic premise—or in

everyday talk of human rights activists that consider it unnecessary to explain why

defence of human rights should supersede other considerations. Sen shares a similar

view. While he recognises that invoking human rights sometimes becomes necessary to

respond to terrible deprivations around the world, these rights need to survive scrutiny

in an ‘unobstructed discussion.’ It is only through a discussion open to all persons across

national boundaries that dominant voices can be examined, whether it is from

repressive regimes or liberal rights groups (Sen 2004: 320). Without subjecting the

human rights discourse to the space of reasons, it latches on an ethically problematic

hegemonic position.

The conduct of discussions about human rights should adhere to the norms of

deliberation. First, it must uphold inclusiveness. Deliberations on human rights must

involve the demoi, for these issues travel beyond national borders (Bohman 2007). More

than this, however, the inclusiveness criterion also demands the treatment of rights

bearers as interlocutors. As Benhabib argues:

In order to be able to justify to why you and I ought to act in certain ways, I must

respect your capacity to agree or disagree with me on the basis of reasons the

validity of which you accept or reject. But respect your capacity to accept or reject

reasons the validity of which you may accept or dispute means for me to respect

your capacity for communicative freedom (Benhabib 2013: 39).

We find Benhabib’s discourse-theoretic model of human rights to be an important

intervention, for it identifies the conditions necessary for deliberations on rights to take

place—the condition of communicative freedom. Making rights claims is a dialogic

practice hinged on others’ capacities to accept or contest claims, and be ‘recognised as a

moral being worthy of equal concern and equally entitled to be protected as a legal

personality by his or her own polity, as well as the world community’ (Benhabib 2011:

62). It is this communicative freedom that human rights, in its legal form, seek to

protect (also see Bohman 2007: 92).7

Second, the virtue of reciprocity in reason-giving is necessary for human rights

deliberation to be fruitful. Lyon argues that experiences of human rights are not

universal. They need ‘local translation and cultural imprint to be enacted by citizens

who are agents, capable of navigating as well as resisting norms’ (Lyon 2013: 179).

Culture, in this sense, is not a barrier to human rights, but provides the context that

defines relationships and creates possibilities of action (Merry 2006: 9). The role of the

media and other translators matters in this regard. Ideally, the media helps citizens

19

‘bridge ethical divides’ across nations, transforming audiences from ‘spectators to

interlocutors’ and portraying complex narratives of other cultures (Lyon 2013: 105).

This task, of course, is easier said than done. The Fourth World Congress on Women

held in Beijing in 1995 is an example on how media coverage served to further create a

wedge between the United States and China’s understanding of each other’s take on

human rights. While this event is best remembered for Hillary Clinton’s ‘Women’s

Rights are Human Rights’ speech (Clinton 1996), the Summit was also considered

ground-breaking for producing the Beijing Declaration and Plan of Action. This, for UN

Women, is ‘the most progressive blueprint ever for advancing women’s rights’ (see UN

Women 1995). The Plan of Action was a product of weeks of political debates, with 189

country representatives ironing out commitments in critical areas of concern. This

includes violence against women, women and the environment, education, and decision-

making, among others. Firsthand accounts narrate a sense of achievement in getting a

global delegation to deliberate and agree on a plan ‘completely free of brackets’ even on

controversial issues (see Purcell 2014).

This productive discussion on rights discourse, however, failed to gain traction in the

mediated public sphere. Roya Akhavan-Majid & Jyotika Ramaprasad (1998) find that

American and Chinese journalists’ coverage went with ideologically-driven frames. The

bulk of American newspapers focused ‘not on the critical areas of concern about which

the Conference had hoped to raise global consciousness, but on criticism of China.’ They

find that majority of stories portrayed China as an ‘oppressive communist nation,’

characterised by ‘clumsiness’ and ‘ineptitude.’ Reports were filled with references to

China’s ‘loathsome human rights record’ unwilling to submit to the rule of law

(Akhavan-Majid and Ramaprasad 1998: 144). The coverage on a historic event for

women’s rights was not about women’s rights but about China.

The Chinese media’s coverage, on the other hand, placed strong focus on the theme of

‘cooperation to reach a solution.’ There was more coverage on delegates who ‘were doing

their best “to cooperate so that the Platform of Action will be adopted on the basis of

consensus’” (Akhavan-Majid and Ramaprasad 1998: 150). Journalists quote delegates

who share experiences of differences in opinion but nevertheless ‘work diligently and

harmoniously’ to secure an outcome. Akhavan-Majid and Ramaprasad find that the

‘propagandistic influence’ expected from China was ‘less direct,’ compared to the

manifestly sensationalistic approach from the US press (Akhavan-Majid and

Ramaprasad 1998: 150).

We raise this example not to make a point about which press had better coverage. From

a deliberative systems perspective, what we find to be a missed opportunity is the

event’s capacity to bridge cross-cultural understanding of human rights by learning

about the context of ‘the other.’ The antagonistic approach of the US coverage and the

consensual approach of the Chinese press both fell short of unpacking critical issues by

which rights bearers can become interlocutors in the global public sphere.

The final standard is a question of consequentiality. What should be the outcome of

deliberations on human rights? We agree with Charles Taylor that the best outcome is

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not a consensus on rights, but a Rawlsian ‘overlapping consensus’ where convergent

norms are justified in very different underlying spiritual and philosophical outlooks. The

legal forms of human rights regimes may look different in various contexts, and they

may be supported by different background justifications (Taylor 1999). There are also no

guarantees that deliberation across cultures guarantee liberal outcomes, but they stand

a chance of legitimacy based on a fair consideration of the views of all concerned

(Deveaux 2003). We think this is a robust outcome for the deliberative system, for it

leaves enough room for contestation while politically viable agreements are reached on

what can be done, albeit for different reasons.

Spaces for contestation

As the world witnesses a growing culture of illiberalism, one may wonder what spaces

are hospitable for contestations about human rights. International organisations

continue to be good spaces for these discussions. Karolina Milewicz and Robert Goodin

(2016), for example, find that the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic

Review results in cooperative responses even from countries with poor human rights

records. The system of peer-to-peer accountability, together with the inclusion of civil

society in consultation, demonstrates how continuous dialogue can result in

consequential action in global politics.

Beyond the forum, however, we argue that cultivating contestations on human rights

can also take root in informal spaces. As Monique Deveaux (2003) argues, ‘inchoate

democratic activity’ takes place in schools, homes, places of worship and social practices

(Deveaux 2003: 782). It is in the local, small-bore, quotidian spaces of political

communities that human rights take concrete form (Gregg 2012).8 We can look back at

how anti-colonial and anti-dictatorship movements all started as clandestine

organisations that, without guaranteed protections on their civil liberties, were able to

overcome the noumenal power of fear and generate counter-discourses of freedom.

Sometimes these discourses unfold in unexpected places. The Church, for example, has

played a role in forming the Solidarity Movement in Poland (Osa 1996) and generating

class consciousness in tin-mining communities in Bolivia (Nash 1996). For young

Muslims of the September 11 generation, the playful genre of hip-hop allowed them to

‘operationalise’ Islam’s cosmopolitan claims to human rights. Through street

performances and fund-raising concerts for Palestine, young Muslims are able to use

pop culture to forge transnational solidarities (Nasir 2013). Human rights and reason-

giving may take playful and localised versions, which hopefully bridge various

discourses about issues today.

A DEMOCRACY THAT LEARNS FROM ITS MISTAKES

There was a time when democratic triumphalism was all the rage. Books on democracy

and human rights often start with passages such as ‘Ours is an era in which democracy

is bent on proliferating itself with an energy that is breathtaking’ (Pangle 2009: 15), and

‘Democracy and human rights are coming close to being the Grundnorm which sustains

21

the very idea of law itself’ (Guilhot 2005: 1). This is evident in ‘the total exhaustion of

viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism’ (Fukuyama 1989: 1).

Much, of course, has happened since these statements were published. The post-truth

era, the global rise of populism, and the lurch to illiberalism demonstrate the fragility of

democratic politics. Observers now speak of the crisis of liberal democracy, reflect on

what democrats could have done differently, and imagine possible ways forward.

In this chapter, we hope to have demonstrated deliberative democracy’s responses to

power in dark times. We made a case for the relevance of deliberative virtues, while also

acknowledging their limits in managing deep divisions.

We conclude this chapter by reflecting on what kind of deliberative politics emerges at a

time of uncertainty. We argue that deliberative democracy, while seeking to deliver

epistemic, ethical, and democratic outcomes, will thrive in this moment as it embraces

the ethos of epistemic humility. We envision a deliberative politics that is comfortable

with uncertainty. Ambiguous moments open up opportunities to question taken-for-

granted assumptions, interrogate dominant paradigms of thought, and gain reflexive

knowledge. To celebrate epistemic humility is to recognise the fallibility of existing

consensus. It rejects epistemological vanities because it understands that these vanities

obstruct habits of listening, empathising, and engaging with differently-situated others.

It promotes a vision of democracy that is not ashamed to learn from its mistakes.

Empirically, this means rejecting ‘civilising missions’ in the name of deliberative values.

It recognises the difference between building deliberative capacities by engaging other

polities as co-equal interlocutors versus transplanting democracies in political cultures

deemed inferior. It celebrates various spaces in which deliberative cultures can take

root, whether it is in public squares, Reddit threads, or traditional political parties. It

takes monitory institutions seriously—those that ask questions and scrutinise power,

even when what is being interrogated are deliberative institutions themselves.

It means rejecting ‘disfigurements’ of democracy in the form of epistemic uses of

deliberative processes that serve to depoliticise collective decisions by invoking the

language of competence and impartial outcomes (Urbinati 2010; 2014). Humility,

however, must not be confused with meekness (Keane, forthcoming). Deliberative

democracy is committed to contestatory politics. It does not hold back in calling out

abuses of power. It is committed to innovative politics, with the goal of creating a

deliberative system in which coercion is the exception rather than the rule. To be

humble is not to self-flagellate, for deliberative democrats today must also recognise

that theirs is a real world political project with real achievements. Deliberative forums

and institutions may be imperfect but they have something to offer. Deliberative

democracy in dark times, to borrow a Gramscian phrase, lives without illusions without

being disillusioned.

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REFERENCES

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1 Oliver Hahl, Minjae Kim and Ezra W. Zuckerman Sivan conducted an experiment to

find out why ‘a lying demagogue may be viewed as more authentic than a candidate who

neither lies nor flagrantly violates publicly-endorsed norms.’ One of their main findings

relate to the motivation of aggrieved social categories—those who feel disparaged by

cultural elites—to view the demagogue as an authentic champion. Mr Trump’s flagrant

norm violation makes him a persona non-grata in the political establishment, which

makes him a champion during a legitimacy crisis to speak truth to power (Hahl, Kim

and Sivan 2018: 25). 2 Thanks to Jonathan Ong for this point. 3 For another, we also know that ordinary citizens are interested in charismatic and

empathetic politicians, not whether the politicians are representing (i.e., acting for) the

collective interests of a society. This explains why so many white Americans identify

with a white billionaire. Poor white Americans are born into relative poverty with no

meaningful opportunity of mobility or education. Donald Trump was born into privilege

and wealth, received an Ivy League education, and is a billionaire. Other than the colour

of their skin, there is no real similarity between the experience of the poor white

Americans and Donald Trump, a white billionaire. If anything unifies their ideological

view of the world, it is the sameness of the colour of their skins. This creates a us (the

whites) versus others (non-whites) ideology. This ideology binds them, unifies their

narrative (Stanley, forthcoming 2018; Stanley and Min forthcoming, 2018).

4 Frederick Schaffer (2002), Nicole Curato (2016), Wataru Kusaka (2017) share similar

observations in Thailand’s neighbouring country, the Philippines where populist leaders

appeal to urban poor communities due to the class politics of dignity, which middle class

constituencies often dismiss as nothing more than patronage politics preying on the

votes of uneducated voters. 5 It is worth pointing out, however, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights formally

abolished the hierarchical view of civilisations and cultures. Ignatieff’s explanation is

worth quoting at length: ‘As late as 1945, it was common to think of European

civilisation as inherently superior to civilisations it ruled. Today many Europeans

continue to believe this, but they know that they have no right to do so. More to the

point, many non-Western peoples also took the civilizational superiority of their rulers

for granted. They no longer have any reason to continue believing this. One reason of

that is the global diffusion of human rights talk—the language that most consistently

articulates the moral equality of all the individuals on the face of the earth. But to the

degree that it does this, it simultaneously increases the level of conflict over the

meaning, application, and legitimacy of rights claims’ (Ignatieff 2001: 115) 6 Thomas Cushman puts forward a human rights case for the war in Iraq. Using a

consequentialist view, he argues that there is ‘no legitimate reason to deny these people

[Iraqis] the right to assistance and rescue, and by way of that, the right to claim their

human status as free and autonomous agents (Cushman 2005: 103). He cites a 2004

survey data that Iraqis were on two minds about the war, with some 49.7% seeing it as

31

humiliation and 50.3% considering it as liberation. This, he argues, may be interpreted

as a part-feeling of relief that they have been freed from domination, and part suspicion

and resentment that a new regime is being imposed leaving them with little control. 7 We recognise that Benhabib’s approach to rights departs from Ignattief’s more

minimalist approach, where she demands the Arendtian notion of the ‘right to have

rights.’ 8 This insight brings us back to our discussion on the chapter on norms in chapter 2,

where we argued for the redefinition of the public sphere beyond on the Enlightenment

narrative. Deveaux finds that the distinction between family and social life as the

private realm and political life on the public realm is an oversimplification of the ways

in which democratic activity, including cultural dissent, is performed beyond formal

political practices.