Deliberation, Unjust Exclusion, and the Rhetorical Turn

Theories of deliberative democracy have faced the charge of leading to the unjust exclusion of voices from public deliberation. The recent rhetorical turn in deliberative theory aims to respond to this charge. I distinguish between two variants of this response: the supplementing approach and the systemic approach. On the supplementing approach, rhetorical modes of political speech may legitimately supplement the deliberative process, for the sake of those excluded from the latter. On the systemic approach, rhetorical modes of political speech are legitimate within public deliberation, just so long as they result in net benefits to the deliberative system. I argue that neither of these two approaches adequately meets the unjust exclusion charge. Whereas the supplementing approach does not go far enough to incorporate rhetorical speech into public deliberation, the systemic approach goes too far by legitimizing forms of rhetoric that risk only exacerbating the problem of unjust exclusion. More constructively, I draw on Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric, as an art (technē) that is a counterpart to dialectic, to argue for a constitutive approach to rhetoric. I show how this approach provides a more expansive notion of deliberation that remains normatively orientated

Unpacking Populism: Using Correlational Class Analysis to Understand How People Interrelate Populist, Pluralist, and Elitist Attitudes

Populist attitudes are generally considered to consist of three types of beliefs, viz. people-centrist, anti-elitist, and Manichean beliefs. There is less agreement, however, on how populist attitudes are related to liberal democratic attitudes. Some argue that populist attitudes are incompatible with liberal democratic attitudes (e.g., pluralism and elitism). Others assert that these attitudes are compatible. Starting off from the concept of belief systems, we analyze the different ways in which people interrelate populist, pluralist, and elitist attitudes. Using correlational class analysis, we uncover four belief systems that differ in (a) how consistently people support populist beliefs and (b) the direction of the relationship between populist and pluralist beliefs. We also find that the differences between belief systems are related to people's support for populism. People holding populist beliefs tend to associate populist attitudes with pluralist attitudes, while people who do not hold populist beliefs associate populist attitudes with anti-pluralist attitudes