Deliberative Democracy and the Case for Depoliticising Government

The ideal of deliberative democracy now makes an appearance in almost every forum of discussion about government. Perhaps it is the alliteration that accounts for the success, perhaps the vague note of profundity that the idea strikes. Or perhaps the reason is that encoded in the notion of deliberative democracy is a very important value that none of the other formulae of government appraisal not, for example, the language of rights, or justice, or efficiency, or freedom capture quite so well. I tend to this more optimistic reading and I hope that I can do something in this paper to display the critical importance and utility of the idea. The main thesis I want to defend, and it explains the title of my paper, is that the ideal of deliberative democracy requires a serious commitment, paradoxically, to greater depoliticisation in government. The claim is paradoxical because the usual assumption is that deliberative democrats are focussed on the need to raise the level of politics by having it become more deliberative, and at the same time to expand the domain of popular and political control active, hands-on control by the people and their elected representatives. I do think that the ideal has to do with making public decision-making more deliberative, but I do not believe that it argues for expanding the domain of control that politics as such exercises. The paper is organised into three sections. In the first, I outline the idea of deliberative democracy, remedying an indeterminacy that figures in many presentations. In the second, I present what I see as the most persuasive case in its support the ‘republican’ approach. And then in the third, I try to show some