Rational Choice, Deliberative Democracy, And Preference Transformation

Within democratic theory, rational choice theories have for some time been challenged by approaches of ‘deliberative democracy’. I argue that the central analytical contrast between these theories consists in their differing focus on preferences: while rational choice takes them to be stable for the time frame in question and exogenous to the decision process to be analysed, deliberative theory is concerned with their formation and transformation. The latter tends to reduce preferences to beliefs, disregarding the impact of stable and exogenous interests, while the former devotes too little attention to the formation and revision of preferences within decision processes. Where decision processes display features both of bargaining and of deliberation, a concept of preferences accomodating both stability and transformation seems to be required. I propose such a concept which regards preferences as derived and relatively stable. The concept suspends the classical distinction between desire-based and value-based preferences and incoporates both utility-maximising and argumentative rationality, claiming that we need both in every decision the former to choose the relevant dimension and the latter to assess the options within it.