Viés Dryzek
De manhã, os gatos que eram pardos na noite anterior, se revelam brancos (constitucionalismo liberal) e pretos (democracia discursiva)...
For better or for worse, the theory of democracy came in the 1990s to be dominated by a deliberative approach, as is confirmed by the attention paid to deliberation in the other chapters of this volume. This swift conquest is remarkable given the question mark that still hangs over deliberation when it comes to perhaps the central question of democracy: how do collective decisions get made? I shall argue that in the breathless rush to advance deliberation, a key distinction has been lost. There are in fact two different views of democracy that have been subsumed and intermingled under the deliberative heading.
O sucesso da teoria deliberativa da democracia teve um preço a pagar -- há quem diga que alto demais, pois há quem a acuse de simpatia envergonhada para com o neoliberalismo...
* Part of the reason for the rapid advance of deliberative democracy lies in its accommodation with key aspects of liberal constitutionalism – which, in this liberal era, makes deliberative democracy safe for dominant forms of politics.
Antes de proceder a distinção, JSD procede uma caracterização do modelo deliberativo
* "Deliberation has informational, argumentative, reflective, and social dimensions. The informational component involves bringing new facts, interpretations and perspectives to the awareness of others. The argumentative component enables questioning of the logical consistency of the positions of others, uncovering of premises and assumptions, clarification whether disagreement is a matter of conflicting interpretations of facts or values, and elucidation of the interdependence of issues. The reflective component arises inasmuch as individuals are induced to think about their own positions by listening to others, in the knowledge that these positions must be justified in terms that others can accept. The social component arises because deliberation creates a situation in which people talk and listen to others, and so may come to recognize their common membership of a social group (...). These four dimensions indicate that though deliberation involves argument, it can also admit other kinds of communication – and this, I will show, is helpful when it comes to replying to at least some of its critics." [79]
Note-se que também em Dryzek, a "reflexividade" escorrega para uma definição mais comportamentalista que pragmatista, sendo concebida como inclinação subjetiva para incorporar as perspectivas alternativas de interactantes empiricamente disponíveis. Outra vez, a teorização deliberativa tende a perder o pé da universalidade ampla que é pressuposta à teoria do agir comunicativo habermasiana e à lógica crítica peirceana (na qual a TAC busca arrimo metafísico). Isto observado, é nítida a decepção de JSD com o encaminhamento institucional conservador da teoria deliberativa de democracia, menos interessada em inovações de design institucionais do que no esforço de identificação de potenciais regenerativos dos sistemas democráticos realmente existentes - algo que beira perigosamente uma narrativa laudatória das democracias liberais do ocidente.
* "The standard formulation is that in a deliberative democracy, collective decisions are legitimate to the extent that individuals have the right or capacity to participate in deliberation in decisions that affect them, such that these decisions must be justified in terms that these individuals are capable of accepting on reflection (see, for example, Cohen 1989). It should be stressed that there is no compulsion to deliberate: it is only the right and capacity that is at issue// here, which individuals may choose not to exercise. Still, framed in this way, there seem to be obvious affinities between deliberative democracy and participatory democracy. In this light, it is perhaps surprising that by the late 1990s deliberative democracy had been for the most part taken under the wing of liberal constitutionalism, in which democracy is indirect and representative (this is one aspect of what Bohman 1998, terms ‘the coming of age of deliberative democracy’). This development is more surprising still given that liberal democracy by definition deals in the aggregation of preferences defined prior to political interaction, while deliberative democracy requires the transformation of preferences in interaction (see the distinctions drawn by Miller 1993a and Warren 1992)." [79]
Nas seções seguintes, retomando objeções de Saward, JSD aponta a perda de compromisso da teoria deliberativa com sua origem crítica:
* "How could this reconciliation with liberal constitutionalism happen? How could what began as a radical challenge to existing forms of democracy end up being assimilated to these forms (and so add further proof that liberalism is the most effective vacuum cleaner in the history of political thought)?" [79]
JSD cita três tipos de motivos, todos ligados à plasticidade dos sistemas políticos liberais. Mas o que mais nos interessa - para efeitos de demarcação de posições sobre o sentido da absorção da Teoria do Agir Comunicativo na ciência política - é exposto em seguida:
* "What is wrong with the assimilation of deliberative democracy to liberal constitutionalism? First, the incompleteness problem, concerning how collective decisions get made, that motivates a search for some authoritative institutional structure in which to house deliberation is only a problem to the extent democratic theorists are expected to provide complete models of democracy. Elsewhere, I have argued that democratic theorists should forget models of democracy, and emphasize instead processes of democratization (Dryzek 1996). Realistically, no real-world political system is ever going to adopt a theorist’s model wholesale; far better, then, for theorists, including deliberative theorists, to locate and interrogate the spaces for democratization that really do exist."
* "A second reason to reject assimilation is liberal constitutionalism’s implicit assumption that constitutional structure fully or primarily determines the kind of politics that occurs. This assumption is manifestly false. Liberal states all operate within capitalist political economies, which are home to both material and discursive forces that can determine policy outcomes irrespective of the constitutional structure. When, for example, it comes to maintaining the confidence of financial and capitalist markets, all states must produce policies of pretty much the same sort – otherwise they will be punished by disinvestment and capital flight. Other agents of distortion include the instability and arbitrariness associated with aggregative conceptions of democracy, highlighted by social choice theorists (though deliberation can curb these problems; see Dryzek and List 1999), and the effective suppression of alternative voices by supposedly neutral liberal norms of dialogue. The latter possibility is highlighted by difference democrats, addressed in this collection in the chapters by Squires and Meier. Finally, the de facto policy-making process may bear little resemblance to what is specified in the constitution; for example, corporatist systems that have set up mechanisms for policy formulation and implementation that bypass both parliament and the public bureaucracy." [80-1]
* "It is important to resist the assimilation of deliberative democracy to liberal constitutionalism, and to recover discursive democracy as an alternative that is more insistently critical not just of liberal constitutions but, more importantly, the state structures and political economy of which these constitutions are just a part. Discursive democracy does not take constitutional structure at face value. It is, in addition, aware of the need for deliberation within a public sphere that may find itself in confrontation with the state, as well as within state structures. Beyond its critical orientation to the liberal state, discursive democracy is expansive in the kind of communication it allows and promotes, refusing confinement to reasoned, measured, gentlemanly argument. Elsewhere (Dryzek 2000), I argue that discursive democracy should also be pluralistic in promoting communication across difference without dismantling difference, questioning in its attitude to established traditions, transnational in its extension beyond state boundaries to a system where there is no constitutional framework, green in its openness to communication with non-human nature (...), and flexible in its responsiveness to the changing limits upon and opportunities for further democratization." [80]
* "This discursive approach was once associated with the main non-liberal theoretical root of discursive democracy, critical theory, and in particular Habermas’s (1984; 1987) account of communicative action. In these terms, communicative rationality describes the extent to which social and political interaction is free from domination, coercion, manipulation, and strategizing, and engaged in by competent actors. The connection to the conditions of authentic deliberation is straightforward. Those influenced by this account (for example,Benhabib 1996a; Bohman 1996; Chambers 1996; Dryzek 1990a) were careful not to locate the main potential for authentic deliberation within the institutions of the liberal state, but rather in a public sphere that may encompass state actors, but may also be constituted in large part by social movements and actors in confrontation with the state. (...)." [81]
JSD lamenta a atenuação da teoria pelo próprio Habermas - muito embora seja em Entre Fatos e Normas que observamos o uso mais extensivo do referencial peirceano, o que traduziria uma adesão a critérios normativos especialmente exigentes - e críticos.
* "This connection has been weakened by the recent defection of Habermas himself and Habermasians such as Bohman (1998). Now, Habermas is not yet a liberal constitutionalist in the American mould. He retains an emphasis on the public sphere as the main site for the generation of public opinion, which is in turn central to democratic authenticity. (...) Aside from the continued emphasis on the public sphere, in Between Facts and Norms we see a model of democracy that is otherwise quite consistent with the liberal constitutionalist model, in particular because a liberal constitution is regarded as necessary to protect and nurture the opinion-formation capacities of the public sphere. What happens next is that ‘Informal public opinion-formation generates “influence”; influence is transformed into “communicative power” through the channels of political elections; and communicative power is again transformed into “administrative power” through legislation’ . This is actually a very conventional model of democracy; not so distant from a cardboard cut-out, civics-textbook version of how democratic government should work."
* "Habermas justifies this model in part through acceptance of the facts of complex, differentiated societies in which face-to-face direct democracy is no longer a possibility. But there are other facts about the contemporary world that he now downplays: in particular, the fact that states are in large measure defined by the imperatives that they must follow, which in turn flow from the political-economic structure in which they are embedded. He has turned his back on extra-constitutional agents of distortion of democracy – but also upon extra-constitutional agents of democratic influence which, I would argue, are central to discursive democracy. Ouch!"
JSD volta a sublinhar que há uma enorme diferença entre pesquisar deliberação nas condições atuais e tomar a noção crítica de discurso para insistir em transformá-las, mantendo-se apegado ao projeto de democratização:
* "(...) the key difference [between liberal constitucionalists and discursive democrats] is that discursive democracy problematizes the democratic potential of the state in the way liberal constitutionalism does not. So discursive democracy accepts that sometimes authentic deliberation within state structures may be possible; but that often, perhaps most of the time, it is not." [82]
* "Perhaps the key feature that sets discursive democracy apart from liberal constitutionalism is a sense in which the former is in the end truer to the democratic project. Central to the very idea of democracy is insistent search for more and better democracy (formally, this can be on any one of three dimensions: the extent of effective franchise; the scope of the issues under popular control; and the authenticity of that control)."
* "An expansive definition of deliberation would therefore allow not only argument in varied terms, but also rhetoric, humour, emotion, testimony or story-telling, even gossip. The stipulation that communication be non-coercive excludes domination through the imposition of power, manipulation, indoctrination, propaganda, deception, threats (of the kind that define bargaining), and the imposition of ideological conformity. Mere expressions of self-interest are unlikely to pass the test of inducing reflection in others – but they could, if tied to more general (but not necessarily universal) principles." [85]
* "models of democracy, still less models of democracy with quantitative requirements for the amount of deliberation that must occur for a decision to be legitimate, are less interesting than processes of democratization." [86]
Sobre o papel da esfera pública na democracia, JDS defende que
* "...public opinion in the public sphere is generated in the contestation of discourses, and both the content and outcomes of that contestation can be transmitted to the state in a variety of ways. (...) Now, the mere fact of contestation does not signify democracy, least of all deliberative democracy. It can be engaged in unequally, manipulated by spin doctors, public relations experts and propagandists, and prove vulnerable to the imposition of religious and ideological orthodoxies. So the key question from the point of view of deliberative democracy is: who controls the terms of this discourse, and on what basis?" [87]
Responder essa questão é, portanto, decisivo para uma teoria discursiva da democracia, ou seja, para uma teoria crítica que busca potenciais de democratização. Vamos ver que uma das questões mais decisivas é a da reflexividade - não compreendida como antecipação da argumentação, mas como prefiguração política ou "poética de criação de mundos" através de modos de endereçamento específicos (vide Warner, 2002). Nesse sentido, JDS conclui que...
* "...the key issue is not whether to embrace or reject deliberation: in fact, it is hard to imagine democracy of any sort without some deliberation, somewhere. Rather, we should ask who gets to deliberate, where they should do it, what kinds of communications are admissible, what kinds of institutions – including informal ones such as networks – are conducive to authentic deliberation, and what kinds of connections can be made between deliberation and collective decision. (...) discursive democracy does not remain confined to the constitutional surface of political life, adopting instead a more critical approach to the liberal state and its political economy. This escape enables discursive democracy to further the democratic project in ways unavailable to liberal constitutionalism – in a variety of locations, and in a variety of modes of communication."
A expressão ciberaudiovisual é aquela menos pesquisada, pela falta de ferramenta apropriadas, e também pela modelização racionalista das pesquisas. Isto discrepa completamente da sua importância como meio de expressão de intenções, representação de eventos públicos e -- o que preciso demonstrar através da fenomenologia da tomada de imagens -- da proposição de relações interactanciais entre os actantes políticos.