Academic

Workshops in Political Theory
Seventh Annual Conference
Manchester Metropolitan University
1-3 September 2010

DEMOCRATIC PUBLIC REASON IN PRACTICE

Convenors:
Enrico Biale (University of Milano-Bicocca and University of Louvain)
Valeria Ottonelli (University of Genova)

What constraints and requirements should democratic public reason meet
in order to be both practically viable and normatively appealing?

Democratic public reason is subject to feasibility constraints. Some of
them are also common to non-democratic models of decision-making, like
the existence of time limits on the decision process and other material
and institutional restrictions on the actual implementation of the
choices to be made. Other constraints on the feasibility of democratic
public reason are peculiar to it, like those pertaining to the actual
knowledge, competence and engagement in politics that can be
realistically expected from the citizens of a democratic polity, and
those relating to the issues that members of a democratic society can
reasonably debate on.

At the same time, democratic public reason needs to respond to normative
requirements and ideals, like publicity and transparency in the
decision-making processes, respect for the rules of correct reasoning,
such as consistency and integrity, the rejection of status quo and
ideological biases, and the search for a sharable basis on which to
ground the debate.

This workshop aims to further explore this tension between the ideal and
the practice of democratic public reason, by addressing the underlying
theoretical and normative issues and by testing the answers that can be
offered to them through the analysis and discussion of case studies.
Papers analysing the tension within specific areas of application of the
ideal of democratic public reason (health care, social justice,
fundamental liberties) are especially welcome.

Those who wish to participate in the workshop are invited to send a 500
word abstract to vottonel@nous.unige.it by the 31st of May 2010.

Additional information about the venue and the workshop can be found at
http://www.hlss.mmu.ac.uk/politicaltheory.