The ends of deliberative democracy are as lofty as they are elusive. Democratic deliberation—premised on the give and take of reasons and the force of the better argument—is founded on, among others, the ideals of openness, reciprocity, equality, inclusiveness, empowerment and rational reasoning. Those who deliberate are invited to enter into a relationship in which they are asked to engage with one another, to exchange reasons for their preferences, to be open to discussion and to the revision of propositions, and to be open to developing a position rather than merely defending one. Are these ends, so noble in theory, possible in practice?
In Democratic Illusion Genevieve Fuji Johnson asks this question. She starts with the idea that deliberative democracy is a “rich ideal” (3). She conceives of the specific elements of this ideal as encompassing a radical rethinking of self-government. Embracing democratic deliberation as a way of governing thus involves structural changes to governing procedures, public and elite attitudes, and social and economic resources. In this volume she studies four contemporary cases of public policy development and implementation in Canada in which, explicitly or implicitly, deliberative mechanisms or procedures were employed. She seeks to discover if any or all reflect the ideals of democratic deliberation. She evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of each within its context, so that her analysis is not merely that of an abstract ideal evaluated against a rocky and monolithic reality of real-world politics; rather her analysis offers a contextualized understanding of how a practical theory intersects with the actors, interests and institutional idiosyncrasies we find in the democratic world.
Fuji Johnson studies four cases: participatory budgeting within the Toronto Community Housing Corporation; deliberative polling on energy policy for Nova Scotia Power Incorporated; national consultation on nuclear waste management for Canada's Nuclear Management Waste Organization; and policy consultations on Nunavut's official languages. In each case she concludes “elites framed their procedures as a significant step in reshaping relations with their affected public” (5). Her key finding is that, despite a genuine willingness on the part of many elites to engage with the public, and further, despite the public's capacity to generate quality outputs from deliberation, in each case there was a significant gap between the outputs from deliberation and policy outcomes.
Because of this gap the influence of democratic deliberation in each case was illusory, within it emerged the illusion of democracy. The illusion reflects the failure of elites to take up the good work done by citizens. In all four cases there is a point of disconnect between the stage at which the public generated reasonable policy proposals and the stage at which elites decided on which policies to implement, a point at which elites became disconnected from the public. So while the ideals of deliberation were approached during deliberation, the products of deliberation were generally lost as elites eventually settled on a course of action far removed from that recommended by the public.
In each case elites ultimately prevented any significant disruption of the status quo. In so doing they undermined the potential capacity for deliberative democracy to serve as a tool for the radical reshaping of democracy in Canada from the ground up. At best, these cases are instances of elite entrenchment; at worst they are examples of democracy washing, of cynical public relations exercises.
This study is an excellent assessment of the practice of deliberative democracy in Canada. And yet I would have liked to see the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform included; many would consider the assembly to be the premier instance of democratic deliberation in Canada. Also, at times, Fuji Johnson seems to pit deliberative democracy against representative democracy, as if the deliberative option was either/or. If she indeed believes this to be the case, she needs to say more about why this is so. If not, then the reader would benefit from a broader discussion about how deliberation in Canada fits into our system of liberal democracy. But perhaps that's for another volume—which I would happily read.
Notwithstanding these critiques, Fuji Johnson does a splendid job deconstructing the ideals of democratic deliberation and both placing and evaluating them within the context of her four cases. She reminds us that politics—deliberative, representative, elite-driven, and so on—is deeply political. She intimates that the cases she studies are both instructive and predictive, that they say something about how we have carried out deliberation in Canada and about how we are likely to do so again in the future unless something changes. She is clear about how these deliberative moments fell short of the ideals of deliberation and she has something to say about how we might do better going forward.
In this volume Fuji Johnson deftly navigates the choppy waters between cynicism and criticism, managing to avoid the former while staying close to the latter. This book is a valuable addition to both the literature on deliberative democracy and public policy and it should be read by any scholar concerned about the state of Canadian democracy.
