[David’s response to Harry on chap. 9 is now below this post, so don’t miss it — SCM]
Summary
In this chapter, Estlund seeks to identify the correct role played by an ideal deliberative situation in democratic theory. He argues that while in practice, democratic communication should not aim to resemble ideal deliberation, nonetheless the idea has an important function as a template through which to examine real-life instances of democratic communication and identify deviations from the ideal. Real deliberative practices and institutions should not aim to mirror the model deliberative situation because when epistemic distortions arise as a result of deviations from the ideal, it may be justified to employ further deviations to remedy these. This leads him to defend a model of wide civility for the informal political sphere, which makes room for sharp, disruptive and even suppressive forms of participation under certain circumstances. This wide version of civility is appropriate only for the informal public sphere, however. In formal political institutions such as the courts and legislatures the norms of narrow civility still apply. In summary then, it seems that there are three main arguments at work in this chapter: (1) that the appropriate way to think of the ideal deliberative situation is not as a set of prescriptions for citizens to aim at, but rather as an analytical tool for diagnosing and remedying failures; (2) that there might be good epistemic reasons to reject the narrow civility inherent in model deliberation in favour of a wider version; and (3) that while the use of countervailing deviations from the ideal might be appropriate in the informal political sphere, formal instances of political deliberation ought still to be governed by the requirements of narrow civility.
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