Guest seminar | Alfred Moore

The CDP will be hosting a seminar by Alfred Moore, a guest from the University of York. Alfred's paper offers a fresh perspective on the nature of competition in deliberative democracy, arguing that competition is a fundamental part of deliberative democracy. The abstract is included below:

Deliberative democracy is often framed as the opposite of competitive democracy, and deliberation as a mechanism is often thought to be inherently consensual or cooperative and contrasted with competitive mechanisms, such as party competition or agonistic contestation. In this paper I argue that competition is in fact a fundamental and essential aspect of deliberative politics. I show two ways in which deliberation is essentially competitive. The first is adversarial debate, on the model put forward by J. S. Mill. The second is competition as parallel striving for a prize in the hands of a third party or audience, a competition of ‘all for all’, on the model put forward by sociologist Georg Simmel. Deliberation as competition in this second sense emphasises creativity and dynamism in articulating values and interests that are not yet crystallised. This analysis offers a new way of framing the core argument of deliberative democracy. Politics is conflictual, and the deliberative response is not to wish away such conflict, but to conduct the conflict by restricted means, the means of persuasion. Deliberative responses to politics can can be cooperative but they can also be competitive. The paper concludes with a plea for separating the discussion of the values and functions of democratic competition from the particular mechanism of parties and the stylised ‘competitive’ model of democracy.

This is a free event hosted by the Centre for Democratic Politics. Refreshments will be provided.