Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy 3030185605, 9783030185602

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Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy Roberto Frega

Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy

Roberto Frega

Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy

Roberto Frega Centre Marc Bloch Berlin, Germany

ISBN 978-3-030-18560-2    ISBN 978-3-030-18561-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18561-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

It has been pointed out to me that one reaches a better grasp of what this book aims to do when one realizes that it has been written by an Italian scholar educated in the French academic system, with a taste for German “Problemgeschichte”, and a strong interest in the American intellectual tradition. And, indeed, the book incorporates different perspectives coming from the intellectual traditions with which I am acquainted: the Italian passion for historical accuracy, the French integration of social views in political theory, the German inclination for normative reconstruction, and the American experimentalist attitude toward political theorizing. This biographical remark is meant to warn the reader that the book has a somehow eclectic outlook that renders its classification in contemporary academic discourses somehow uneasy. While aiming to contribute to contemporary political theory, the book is rooted in the study of political thought, and open to the influence of the social sciences. Combining sociological analyses and the history of ideas with normative theorizing is a way of proceeding that goes against the grain of today’s established practice of separating the history of ideas from conceptual analysis, and both from more empirically oriented investigations. The assumed pluralism of this work is visible first of all in its three-partite organization: conceptual, historical, and normative strategies are combined together so as to provide a more encompassing account of the wide view of democracy I develop here. It is visible, secondly, in the wide range v

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of academic disciplines on which my arguments rely and, finally, in the attempt to integrate together three diverse politico-philosophical traditions: American pragmatism, German critical theory, and French Tocquevilleanism. Whatever the value of this particular piece of work, I am deeply persuaded that to tackle today’s social and political challenges, a thoroughly interdisciplinary and pluralistic approach such as this has become inescapable. The aim and focus of this book is to provide an account of contemporary political life that may help us make sense of the deep entanglements that weaves the growing deficits of democratic institutions together with the kind of inquietude and unrest that plagues contemporary social life, one that, however, resists all sorts of economic reductionism that once again are becoming fashionable. Such an account, in my view, requires that we put democracy center stage, but in a way that re-embeds its formal political institutions within the complex flux of social life. It requires, in other words, that we bracket our shared and insufficiently questioned understanding of democracy as a political regime, to open up the space for exploring new interpretation of the meaning and scope of the democratic project that in many different ways has set the normative horizon of our collective life during the past two centuries. This task is inextricably tied with a second one, which is to defend a viable pragmatist view of politics. Indeed, as this book explains, the most important legacy of pragmatism to political theory consists in reclaiming the priority of democracy before other normative categories such as justice and nondomination. The normative priority of democracy, in its turn, is inseparable from the intuition that democracy as a political category cannot be understood unless we recover its social roots. Working out these ideas, I soon discovered that many of pragmatism’s original intuitions were too fragmentary to provide a full blown theory, and that they needed significant updates if they wanted to keep up with theoretical views and cultural sensibilities that had changed in the century that separates us from them. For this reason, historical reconstruction had to be combined with theoretical reformulation and empirical explorations, so as to preserve the deepest and most important intuitions, while at the same time keeping up with contemporary issues.

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The wide view of democracy presented in this book aims at recovering this idea while reformulating it in ways that make it more attractive for contemporary political thought. After grappling with this notion for several years, I remain deeply convinced that while in itself the wide view of democracy can be treated as a self-standing political concept, its appraisal is greatly facilitated, and its understanding gains in insight and depth, when it is grasped from a historical perspective. The book has been long in the making. In its long course it has incurred several debt, that I am more than happy to acknowledge, with the usual proviso that I remain entirely responsible for the opinions expressed. Portions of the book have been presented at the following workshops, seminars, and conferences, and I warmly thank organizers and participants for their often challenging remarks and criticisms: the international conference “Pragmatism and the Political”, held at the EHESS on June 5–6th 2014; Axel Honneth’s Kolloquium on Social and Political Philosophy, Frankfurt University, July 10th 2014; the international conference “Pragmatism, Wittgenstein, and the Virtues: Three Heterodox Approaches to Ethics”, held at University College Dublin, 14–15 September 2015; the Global Governance Workshop at the WZB (Berlin Center for Social Sciences), January 2016; Villa Vigoni’s ateliers on “Pragmatism in the social sciences”, held in Bellagio (Italy) in 2014, 2015, and 2016; the 4th International Conference on Social Justice, held in Belgrade, 4–6th May 2016, the meeting of the Arbeitkreis “Demokratie als Lebensform”, Hannover 16–17th March 2017, and the workshop “Democracy and forms of life” held at the Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin, 24th April 2018. A special thanks goes to the participants to my post-­ graduate seminar on Pragmatism and radical democracy at the EHESS during the years 2014–2015, 2015–2016, and 2016–2017 and particularly to Simon Fouquet, Céline Henne, Missila Izza, Oscar Lorca, Camille Pascal, Christophe Point, Sébastien Shulz for their sustained and constructive criticism. Many friends and colleagues who have read in full or part the manuscript before it went into publication deserve mention: Andreas Antic, Roberto Brigati, Eva Debray, Claude Gautier, Carole Gayet, Roberto Gronda, Lisa Herzog, Brendan Hogan, Steven Levine, Yannig Luthra, Giulia Oskian, Emmanuel Renault, Claudia Ritzi, Matteo

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Santarelli, Just Serrano Zamora, Shannon Sullivan, Italo Testa, Tullio Viola, Jörg Volbers, Federico Zuolo. Finally, this work would have hardly been conceivable outside the privileged academic conditions offered by my home institution, the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS): extremely reduced duties, an almost unconstrained freedom to move, and generous material support have enabled and sustained the kind of intellectual, geographic, and disciplinary journeys that have nourished this book. Small portions of the book have appeared in similar form in previously published articles. The first section of Chap. 2 utilizes materials from Frega (2017d). Excerpts of Chap. 3 were previously published in Frega (2017a). The first section of Chap. 7 has appeared in Frega (2015c). A shorter version of Chap. 10 has appeared in Frega (2017b). Berlin, Germany December 2018

Roberto Frega

Contents

1 Introduction  1 1 Why Pragmatist Democracy?  10 2 Why a Wide View of Democracy?  12 3 Why Social Democracy?  14 4 Democratic Problem-Solving  18 5 Plan of the Book  23

Part I Theoretical Framework

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2 Enlarging Democracy 31 1 Localized Strategies for Enlarging Democracy  34 1.1 Democratic Ethos  34 1.2 Civic Associations  36 1.3 Democratic Institutionalism  38 1.4 Civil Society and the Public Sphere  40 1.5 Enlarged Representation  42 2 The Failed Attempt of Exceptionalist Approaches  44 2.1 Wolin’s ‘Fugitive Democracy’  45 2.2 Rancière’s Hatred of Democracy  48 ix

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3 Toward a Wide View of Democracy  51 3.1 Democracy as a ‘Form of Society’  52 3.2 Democracy as a ‘Form of Life’  56 4 Conclusion  59 3 The Normativity of Democracy 63 1 Two Senses of Normativity  65 2 Primitiveness and Rival Non-reducibility  69 3 Competing ‘Paradigm’ Normative Concepts  72 4 Democracy as a ‘Paradigm’ Normative Concept  75 5 The Micro-foundation of Democratic Theory and the Three Democratic Principles  78 6 Benefits of Taking Democracy as a ‘Paradigm’ Normative Concept 86 7 Introducing the Social Ontology of Democracy  89 8 The Forms and Practices of Political Democracy  92 9 Conclusion  98

Part II The Historical Background

 101

4 The Pragmatist Social Account of Democracy103 1 Enlarging Democracy 103 1.1 Changing Politics in a Changing Society 104 1.2 Democracy and the Persistence of Ancien Régime 107 2 Principles of the Pragmatist Social Theory of Democracy 113 3 The Democratic Method 117 4 The Priority of Action and of Self-fulfillment 122 5 The Social-Ontological Basis of Democracy 131 5.1 The Democratic Ethos 134 5.2 Democratic Patterns of Social Interaction 142 5.3 Democratic Forms of Organization 149 6 Conclusion 157

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5 The Politics of Democratic Collective Action159 1 Pragmatist Politics Between Groups and Interests 159 2 Bentley’s Interest-Based Theory of Group Politics 162 3 From Groups to Publics: Mary Parker Follett’s Pragmatist Theory of Democracy 166 4 Dewey’s Group-Based Theory of Politics 174 4.1 Continuity and Innovation in the Pragmatist Public-Based Theory of Politics 176 4.2 Publics, Consequences, Institutions, and Problem Solving186 4.3 From Public to Publics 196 5 Conclusion 205

Part III Political Pragmatism

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6 From Civic Virtues to Democratic Habits211 1 Understanding the Philosophical Grammar of Virtues and Habits 211 2 Civic Republicanism and the Political Function of Civic Virtues214 2.1 The Thin Character of Extrinsic Republicanism 224 3 The Concept of Habit 228 4 Democratic Habits 236 7 Democratic Patterns of Social Interaction239 1 The Normative Structure of the Ordinary 241 2 The Normative Constitution of the Democratic Order of Interaction248 3 From Associations to Associational Relations 256 4 Conclusion 268 8 A Democratic Experimentalist Theory of Institutions269 1 Steps to a Pragmatist Theory of Democratic Institutions 270 2 On the Very Idea of Democratic Experimentalism 275

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3 The Epistemic Component of Democratic Experimentalism282 4 An Experimentalist Model of Organizational Learning 286 5 How to Experiment: Combining Democratic Procedure with Experimental Problem Solving 293 6 Democratic Experimentalism and the Problem Solving State298 7 From Circles of Improvement to Utopian Pragmatism 304 8 Conclusion 317 9 Democratic Publics319 1 Publics, Communication, and the Public Sphere 321 1.1 From Communicative Power to the Democratic Method322 1.2 Publics Beyond the Public Sphere 327 1.3 Honneth’s Pragmatism and the Rehabilitation of Ethical Life 337 2 From the Public Sphere to the Commons 342 2.1 Democracy in the Commons 346 2.2 Democracy and Peer-Production 349 3 Conclusion 355 10 Pragmatism and Democracy in a Global World357 1 The Democratic Project Beyond Borders 357 2 Overcoming Methodological Nationalism 361 3 From People to Publics: Pragmatism and the PublicBased Theory of Politics 363 3.1 Neither Weak Publics Nor Strong Publics: Just Publics365 3.2 Completing the Pragmatist Model 368 4 In Search for Global Publics 370 4.1 Transnationalizing the Public Sphere 372 4.2 Globalizing Political Representation 374

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5 Global Publics and Norm Entrepreneurship 5.1 The Question of Normative Entrepreneurship 5.2 Certification Agencies as Norm Entrepreneurs 6 Conclusion

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379 379 388 391

Conclusion. A Research Agenda for Political Pragmatism395 References399 Index421

1 Introduction

Contemporary inhabitants of the western hemisphere are accustomed to the democratic landscape of their political institutions. Something they usually take for granted, often underestimating the richness and complexity of the social bases which sustain them, as well as the fragility that often accompanies complexity. Indeed, a wide-ranging democratic project has been at the heart of the Euro-Atlantic civilization for, at least, the last two centuries, in the aftermath of the twin political revolutions that took place on the two sides of the Atlantic Sea at the end of the eighteenth century. Since then, the quest for more democracy has constituted the core of the western emancipatory idea. For the unprivileged, have-­ nots, marginalized, and oppressed members of our societies, democracy has historically provided the most important resource upon which a claim to better living conditions could be asserted and pursued. The quest for political democracy largely corresponds to the struggle for the political and civil rights wrestled first by the liberal and then by the socialist traditions during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. More democracy has then meant more chances for each to share power and to have a say in the decisions that shape collective life. It is to this idea that it is usually referred when democracy is interpreted as a political regime, and © The Author(s) 2019 R. Frega, Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18561-9_1

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even when representative, deliberative, or participatory practices are exported outside formal politics to other areas of social life such as the workplace or other social institutions. As a political concept, democracy denotes a set of rules and institutions for managing power within a social unit. Yet during the same time span, democracy has also provided a second inspirational source for our civilizational values, delineating the normative ideal of a well-ordered society. In this second meaning, democracy offers a standard for social interactions even outside official, state, or legal power relations, it describe the most appropriate way in which human beings can live together. It is a social, rather than a political, ideal, whose object is neither decision-making nor conflict resolution but, rather, the entire gamut of social interactions. In terms that will be clarified in what follows, according to this wider view of democracy, political democracy is embedded in social democracy, and both comply with the same normative standards which are social in origin and whose extension to the political domain requires fine tuning and institutional innovation. Hence two ideals, rather than one, have been guiding the democratic project throughout its modern history. On the one hand, the idea of the self-governing community as a community within which each member has an equal say in the determination of the common fate. On the other hand, the idea of a social unit capable of promoting individual happiness and self-realization by fostering relations of mutual cooperation among free and equal individuals. Taken together, these two ideas have provided the two halves of a single full-blown normative ideal, the wide view of democracy that is at the heart of the modern democratic project. This wide view of democracy, and not its mere political counterpart, is the normative ideal which has driven the social and political struggles of the last two centuries in the quest for better conditions for individual and collective life. So conceived, democracy denotes a multi-dimensional norm of associated living, one that provides the standard against which the social, political, and economic arrangements of a given society can and should be assessed. The aim of this book is to provide an account of democracy based on this idea, an account of what democracy is and why it should matter to us. It is an account more in tune with our everyday experience and

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o­ rdinary intuitions and, to that extent, of broader application than mainstream political conceptions. Such an undertaking seems all the more urgent in the light of the growing number of disquieting political events having taken place in the last decades. It is not only that the four decade-­ long trend of worldwide democratizations has come to a sudden halt and in many cases there has occurred a reversal to anti-democratic governments, as democratization studies have begun to underline (Merkel, 2010). But even closer to us, in the most advanced democracies, political life has taken a turn that only a decade ago would have been considered utterly unlikely. One only has to think of events such as the Brexit referendum and ongoing debacle at the time of this writing, the election to the American presidency of a demagogue whose attitudes and values sharply contrast with the fundamental principles of democracy, the authoritarian bent of some Eastern European regimes, or the steady rise of right-wing populism in a growing number of EU countries. These events have laid bare that the democratic norm is losing grip, and that traditional democratic guardrails have been weakened (Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018). We seem to be only at the very beginning of a worrisome cycle of citizen disenchantments with politics and democratic regression whose implications are still difficult to predict. Yet democratic decline is far from being limited, as it is often assumed, to citizens’ and elites’ political behavior. Even more troubling is the degradation of the norms of associated living to which we assist with increasing frequency: the unquestioned acceptance of growing levels of poverty, the intolerance toward minorities and diversity, the impatience with the rule of law and legal protections, the assault to individual rights and autonomy within the workplace and other social institutions, or the resort to private violence to settle private disagreements. Throughout the world, walls are being raised among and within political communities, inclusive politics is shunned, solidarity degraded to philanthropy, authority preferred to autonomy, and equality systematically subordinated to competition at all levels of social life. These phenomena are not only weakening political institutions, but in addition they are deeply changing the patterns of social interaction, forms of organized coexistence, and social institutions which shape social life. These forms of democratic regression do not require the overturn of democratic legitimacy in order

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to be realized. An increased level of police intolerance, the exercise of judicial power against minorities, citizens’ tolerance of acts of everyday humiliation, employers’ sharpened exploitation of migrant workers can happen without a single law being passed, without a single change in formal politics being executed. And this is, indeed, what we see happening day after day within the premises of the oldest and best established world democracies. While regularly recorded and aptly stigmatized, these events are rarely taken for what they are, that is to say even more disquieting signs of a decreasing commitment toward the democratic project. Yet, how to describe these changes which, while loaded with powerful and long-lasting political meaning, do not even crisp the calm surface of formal politics? Should we denounce the degradation of moral customs? The corroding effects of the new media? The debasing consequences of neo-­ liberalist politics? Should we, in a word, decry the end of the democratic era? Or shall we, instead, look for a firmer and deeper ground to understand what is happening and to devise strategies to change it? My contention in this book is that a social account of democracy provides better resources to understand the present crisis and to devise new strategies to advance the democratic project. Indeed, seen from the vantage point of the wide view of democracy I develop in this book, these two series of phenomena—the political and the social crises of democracy—are the two sides of the same critical syndrome, which is the crisis into which the democratic project has presently sunk. While causal relations between the two may be difficult to trace, it is certain that the legitimation crisis of political democracy goes hand in hand with the weakening of its social counterpart. Democracy is ceasing to be seen as a normative ideal worth pursuing and deserving of our struggles in both domains, the formal political and the everyday. It has become a ‘bad name’ to connoting both opportunism and pragmatism in the management of public affairs, and also called out as a cover for élite privilege. With the same stroke, democracy loses its leading value as the most preferable political regime and as the norm which should orient social life. Something, in the end, for which it may not be worth struggling, not anymore a cherished good to preserve, especially in the face of other institutional solutions promising to better fulfill, no matter whether in more authoritarian ways, individuals’ expectations and desires. As the

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rise of right-wing populism is showing, this is exactly how an increasing size of western populations feels and thinks. We are today, perhaps, at the closest to Alexis de Tocqueville’s gloomy prediction about the coming of age of a soft despotism disguised in democratic clothes. A despotism not only dominating political institutions, but also pervading all the spheres of social life, determining regressions in gender relations, a backlash in religious tolerance, an increase in workplace exploitation and domination, and a general intolerance for diversity and autonomy. But there is more to be worried about. Indeed, far from being confined to the domain of everyday life, this state of mistrust in democracy has begun to plague critical reflection too. Indeed, as the record of academic publications increasingly shows, political theorists seem to be even less willing to defend the democratic project than ordinary citizens. Whereas, in the wake of the democratic political revolution of the late ’80s, the last two decades of the twentieth century had been characterized by the steady rise of normative theories of democracy celebrating the emancipatory potential of participation and deliberation and by the hope that the democratic norm would progressively establish its rule over the entire globe, since the dawn of the new century political theorists and scientists have succumbed to the same disillusionment that has caught hold of citizens. The most recent evolutions of democratic theory gloomily resonate with citizens’ discontent and make it even more worrisome, as popular disenchantment with politics is reinforced through academic skepticism toward democratic institutions’ capacity to renovate themselves. This climate has—perhaps too hastily—led to the conclusion that the democratic project is not merely undergoing a temporary crisis but is, more profoundly, doomed, and that a post-democratic order normatively incompatible with it is emerging today. By emphasizing the persistent failures of Western democracies and their gradual replacement by a post-­democracy (Crouch, 2004), an illiberal democracy or an undemocratic form of liberalism (Mounk, 2018), a disfigured democracy (Urbinati, 2014), a plebeian democracy (Green, 2016), a simulative democracy (Bluhdorn, 2013), a neo-liberal undemocratic order (Brown, 2015), or by legitimating populism as an alternative to traditional forms of democratic rule (Laclau, 2005), these discourses point implicitly toward—or explicitly decry—the end of the democratic project and the

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advent of a new era marked by the stigmas of failure and disillusion. According to these narratives, the past stability of democracy was based on conditions that are no longer in place. As a consequence, contemporary democracy merely retains a democratic façade (elections, plurality of parties, freedom of expression, separation of powers) while being emptied of its substance (privatization of power, exclusion of a growing part of the population from political participation, authoritarian temptations, explosion of inequalities, lack of justice). Scholars advancing this interpretation contend not only that the core political values celebrated by twentieth century democratic theory are now given mere lip service in political practice but, moreover, that they are not much more than pious ideals (Achen and Bartels, 2016). Neither truly democratic nor tyrannical, present-­day democracy would be, according to these discourses, a kind of in-between, characteristic of an unprecedented period characterized by a high degree of instability. And, in a not dissimilar vein, others have noted the contingent and episodic nature of the social-democratic golden age of the “thirty glorious years” (Streeck, 2014; Lavelle, 2008), implying that the socio-economic conditions upon which democracy has historically thrived will not occur again in the near future. Taking a different but related tack, other political scientists have emphasized the steady rise of democratic deficits (Norris, 2011) and the loss of significance of elections as an essential instrument for ensuring a genuine government of the people, by the people, for the people (Achen and Bartels, 2016; Schäfer, 2010). Others have contended that the individualization of western society has gone beyond a point of no-return, where only a ‘simulative democracy’ (Bluhdorn, 2013) remain possible, whereas others still build on the recent results of political psychology to contend that citizens are too incompetent to govern themselves, and that the answer to the democratic deficit is a more sustained devolution of decision power to experts (Brennan, 2016). While discourses about the crisis of democracy are somehow endemic to the history of democratic regimes (Jörke, 2011), what is unprecedented is the degree of convergence and breadth that characterizes contemporary arguments. Indeed, these academic discourses do not content themselves with diagnosing democratic deficits. Rather, they claim that this post-­ democratic scenario describes a structural and permanent condition of

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politics that seems to be destined to dominate not only our present but also our future. The list of works contending that the age of democracy is over is so long that the attempt to revitalize the democratic project may seem hopelessly naive. One of the contentions of this book is that to overcome this crisis in theory—and to devise new means to overcome the crisis in practice— we need to adopt a different theoretical perspective, one that abandons this one-sided focus on formal political institutions, in order to reach the deeper social roots of the democratic project. Such a view, in addition, will contend that to appreciate the depth and strength of the liberal project, we must enlarge our vision beyond the confines of what we usually call liberal democracy, that is to say the combination of institutions aiming at translating popular views into politics, with institutions aiming at protecting individual rights against the tyranny of the majority. Whilst democracy indeed encompasses both aspects, according to the wide view here defended it is much more than that. This is the reason why, as I will show throughout this book, to renew the democratic project it is not enough either to call for the reinforcement of its liberal protections—notably against populist threats, or to revitalize participatory mechanisms, as many left intellectuals contend. In a more encompassing way, what needs to be done is to plunge deeper into its social roots. Hence, departing from established academic habits, in this work democracy will be understood in a way that combines the political dimension of self-­government with the social ideational meaning highlighted above. So conceived, democracy denotes a norm whose fields of application are not only formal political institutions, but all the patterns of social interaction, the organizational forms, and the institutional arrangements that characterize a society from the micro level of primary associations to the macro level of its major social, economic, and political institutions. I will notably contend that democracy, rather than a political regime, denotes first and foremost a complex socio-culturalideological-organizational-economic syndrome, something that is well captured by Claude Lefort’s definition of democracy as a “form of society” (Lefort, 1986) or, in Marcel Mauss’s terminology, as a “total social fact”. As stated above, political democracy proper will turn out to be a phase of this larger social syndrome.

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My account of the democratic social syndrome is based on two distinct theoretical strategies. First, I will contend that, in its widest sense, the different manifestations of the democratic syndrome can be accounted for in the terms of a common social ontology. A social ontology articulates the basic facts which shape social life, identifying its main constituents and the relations among them. As I will explain in later chapters, social interactionism provides the most promising starting point to develop a social ontology of democracy. Reference to social ontology will allow me to reconstruct the democratic syndrome in terms of a set of habits, patterns of social interaction, and forms of institutional organization which operate at all levels of social life. This ontological framework is indispensable in providing theoretical and practical consistency to the otherwise elusive and imprecise idea of democracy as form of society. Secondly, I will analytically define the normative core of democracy in terms of three distinct and yet complementary normative principles: (a) relational parity, (b) inclusive authority, and (c) social involvement. These three normative principles, further explained in Chap. 3, are designed so as to capture the normative content of the concept of democracy in ways that allow its application to social as well as political realities. Together, these two strategies help substantiate the claim that democracy can be predicated not only of formal political institutions but, more broadly, of an entire form of life. Reference to these two complementary strategies will allow us to assess the democratic quality of any human association by examining the extent to which its habits, patterns, and forms are consistent with the three democratic normative principles stated above. This approach has two major advantages. The first is that only through such an enlarged view the critical ‘syndrome’ can be grasped and examined as a unified phenomenon, so that events apparently disconnected can be seen as being part of the same critical juncture. The second advantage is that only by reaching the social roots of such a crisis we can hope to address its wide-ranging consequences, including those that are affecting the functioning of formal political institutions. Such a perspective will help us perceive the extent to which the fate of formal political institutions is tied to that of the society within which they are embedded. Indeed, understanding and reinventing the democratic project requires that we begin by appreciating the multifarious achievements in many

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social spheres during a two-centuries-long series of struggles to democratize our societies. Achievements that permeate our entire form of life, and that have made it so unique and distinctive in the history of the human species. Such an approach will assist us in the difficult task of identifying the most dangerous threats the democratic project is facing today, threats that sometime operate at a distance from the formal political institutions political whose fate deeply concern us. Short of a widened view of democracy, our search for solutions will inevitably remain ineffective. If, as this book contends, democracy as a political ideal and practice takes its meaning and finds its condition of possibility in democracy as a social idea, what we need today is a deeper understanding of how democracy as a full-blown societal project has been advanced. Even more, there is a pressing need to grasp how this project must be adjusted and transformed in order to be further realized, including in ‘mature democracies’ where, as many contend, the democratic project would have substantially been achieved and would require, at most, small institutional adjustments. Deliberative and participatory approaches to democracy have notably followed this path, creating the illusion that improving the rules of political decision-making and expanding the opportunities for political participation were all that could (and should) be hoped to complete the democratic project. One can see today that these views, far from being misguided, were simply insufficiently radical, short of a more encompassing understanding of the nature and scope of the democratic project itself. Indeed, they have failed to understand that realizing this project requires a better understanding of its deeper social roots, of the concrete significance of democracy as an all-encompassing form of social life. As subsequent chapters will show, this implies that rekindling the patterns of social interaction, understanding how to improve a democratic ethos, promoting the democratization of social institutions such as the enterprise, the family, and the university, inventing new forms of peer cooperation, decommodifying social practices, or rethinking practices of institutional innovation may prove more rewarding and more effective for achieving the democratic project today than continuing to mourn the end of the participatory era, or to denounce the anti-democratic consequences of citizens’ apathy and populism. One of the aims of this book consists precisely in explaining why, and how, a political theory of

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­ emocracy cannot be self-standing, but must instead be inscribed in a d fuller account of democratic social life, and why such an articulation is a necessary rather than a merely contingent requirement if we wish to understand how the democratic project can be reinvented today. Secondly, in developing a wide account of democracy, I will make a case for the pragmatist method in political theory. The rest of this introduction provides a preliminary overview of the basic tenets of this approach, i.e. its being pragmatist, wide, and social, as well as an outline of the book.

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Why Pragmatist Democracy?

In charting a way in this often hinted at, but rarely conceptually articulated territory, I’ve found an extremely powerful and inspiring source in American pragmatism. It is indeed American pragmatism that, more than any other intellectual tradition, has articulated the basic tenets of this social conception of democracy. As I will contend in later chapters, the all-encompassing, wide, social account of democracy developed by American pragmatism at the turn of the last century provides the most promising framework for rethinking the democratic project. Writing at a place and time when pursuing the democratic project meant giving shape to a new form of society and to new patterns of social interaction among individuals at all levels of social life, these authors were in a privileged position for theorizing democracy as a social and not only as a political norm. While the specific view of democracy proposed by pragmatists cannot be resuscitated wholesale, their ideas still have much to teach us, particularly once integrated with views later developed by Frankfurt critical theory. Since its very inception, pragmatist thinkers have articulated a conception of democracy that strived to combine its political with its social soul. Pragmatism has indeed constantly resisted the temptation to reduce democracy either to a device for the legitimation of power, or to a form of government. Nor has it succumbed to the otherwise widespread temptation to dilute its significance to that of a mere epiphenomenon of economic or social forces. Rooted in the social experience of nineteenth

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century America, pragmatists saw in democracy the most revolutionary social idea of modernity, one capable of transforming the pre-existing forms of social order and of abolishing all antecedent forms of authority. Their view of democracy was certainly rooted in the historical circumstances in which they lived and wrote, characterized as they were by a lower degree of social conflict and freed from the most archaic forms of class cleavage that dominated European countries at that time. The new society to which they were contributing, the ‘promised land’ for the hundreds of thousand of European massively escaping misery and oppression may certainly have contributed to the socially more ambitious democratic theorization they achieved. And, indeed, their views about democracy were much more radical than those advocated since the first half of the nineteenth century by the most important European political movements, such as Chartism (Thompson, 1984) and socialism (Sassoon, 2010). Whilst these movements have played a major role in promoting universal suffrage and hence the achievement of political democracy, their political agendas devoted only minimal attention to the social dimension of democracy. Even when the social question emerged in all its powerfulness (Castel, 1995), it rarely went beyond the concern for better working and living conditions. And even when it did, this was on the concrete plane of improving workers’ way of life, rather than at the level of the theoretical articulation of a new idea of democracy. Among American pragmatist social and political theorists the question of social democracy enjoyed a theoretical priority unseen among European theorists,1 not as an alternative or a complement to political democracy but, rather, as its necessary presupposition and completion. Indeed, according to these theorists, political democracy had to be seen as a mere “phase”2 of a wider social revolution which at the time they were writing was still largely in the making, and that to a considerable extent is still far from having been achieved. This vision of democracy has been masterfully articulated in particular by Dewey, the “philosopher of democracy” par excellence, but also many other lesser known figures have contributed  On the sociological reasons explaining the diverse fate of political thought among European and American theorists, see Schubert (2011). 2  This is the technical term used by Dewey to describe democracy as a political regime. See Dewey (1927, lw2:327). 1

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to its development. One has to think for example to Dewey’s contemporaries Jane Addams, George Herbert Mead, Charles Horton Cooley, and Mary Parker Follett, as well as to later pragmatist theorists such as Harold Lasswell, Sidney Hook, Philip Selznick, Richard Rorty, and Roberto Mangabeira Unger. Indeed, since the beginning of the twentieth century, pragmatists gave democracy pride of place within their social and political philosophy, positioning it firmly at the core of their normative understanding of contemporary life. For them, democracy was the all-encompassing, paradigmatic, normative category capable of providing guidance in all walks of life. According to them, the predicate ‘democratic’, properly understood, could and should consistently be applied throughout all social spheres, from the state to the workplace, the neighborhood, the school, and even the family. Throughout their writings in philosophy, sociology, political science, organization theory and economy, they have systematically refused to reduce it to a form of government or to a procedure for the selection of ruling elites, exploring its descriptive and normative potential in the study of social interactions. The articulation of these two different injunctions has given birth to an original approach to the main theoretical questions of democratic theory, concerning in particular its scope, its normative content, and its present transformations. A pragmatist theory of democracy denotes, therefore, the attempt to revitalize this simple and yet profound theoretical intuition, articulating it in the terms of contemporary theoretical discourses. Yet in order to appreciate the relevance of pragmatism to contemporary political issues, a historical overview of their ideas is necessary, and will be undertaken in Chaps. 4 and 5.

2

Why a Wide View of Democracy?

Political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels have noted that “[i]n the conventional view, democracy begins with the voters. Ordinary people have preferences about what their government should do. They choose leaders who will do those things, or they enact their preferences directly in referendum. […] Democracy makes the people the rulers, and legitimacy derives from their consent. […] That way of thinking about

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13

democracy has passed into everyday wisdom, not just in the United States but in a great many other countries around the globe. It constitutes a kind of folk theory of democracy, a set of accessible, appealing ideas assuring people that they live under an ethically defensible form of government that has their interests at heart” (Achen and Bartels, 2016, 1). Indeed, among political scientists the most widespread view is that if any, “democracy was a political, not a social, revolution” (Przeworski, 2010, 67). This view is mainstream in Anglo-American political science, and receives a large share of political philosophy’s attention too. Such a view considers that the appropriate scope of the concept of democracy is provided by those mechanisms and procedures whereby a political body— preferably a political union of citizens—exercises self-rule. Democracy, in other words, denotes a political regime, and the task of democratic theory consists in defining the conditions under which the exercise of power within a political regime is legitimate. This book starts from the assumption that this definition of democracy is too narrow, not only in general terms but also as an appropriate basis for political theory. It aims, therefore, to wage a war against this folk theory of democracy, aiming to persuade readers that our theoretical edifices are built upon unwarranted basic intuitions we should now get rid of, and that new social foundations for democratic theory are needed. Enlarging the scope of the concept of democracy has important normative implications, as this move will inevitably transform our understanding not only of the object but also of the identity of political theory as a discipline. Two major consequences follow from this decision. On the one hand, in re-defining the scope of the concept of democracy, we take a major decision concerning which areas of social life should fall under its normative sway. The contention of this book is that the field of application of the democratic norm is much broader than that which is implied by current academic practices. On the other hand, this decision influences the normative content of the concept, its internal divisions and articulations. The two problems are largely interdependent, as the decision about the scope influences the normative content, and the normative content in turn determines the concept’s reach, hence its scope. Enlarging the scope of the concept of democracy to a larger set of social phenomena will invite us to reflexively reconsider, among other things,

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its normative content. This dialectical process of reciprocal adjustment between normative content and scope will prove very useful to reach a deeper understanding of the democratic project, and the kind of political pragmatism outlined in the third part of this book aims at this outcome.

3

Why Social Democracy?

The idea that any theory of democracy which does not take extra-political factors into account is incomplete is of course not new, and indeed it has even gained a certain currency. Yet strategies for widening the scope of democracy are unclear, extremely diverse in methodology, and different in scope. What then distinguishes the social view of democracy here presented from other, rival, proposals? We can identify four major strategies to which scholars have traditionally resorted in the attempt to enlarge the normative scope of the concept of democracy. Each of these strategies seeks to expand the scope of the concept of democracy by inscribing it within a broader context, the context of: (1) a broader view of politics; (2) morality; (3) economy, and (4) society. Each of these strategies contributes to a certain extent to the displacement of the boundaries between the political and the non-political upon which older theories of democracy rest, hence to the redefinition of the social space in which—or in relation to which—the political exists. Each of these strategies expresses a different understanding of why and how political categories should be defined in more encompassing terms. As a consequence, each one of them points toward a different understanding of what democracy is and why it should matter to us. (1) A first strategy consists in taking one or more key factors of formal democratic politics and extending their reach to practices and events outside the sphere of formal political institutions. The scope of democracy can notably be enlarged by contending that the main political categories such as representation, participation, deliberation, election, separation of powers etc. should not be restricted to the functioning of formal political institutions, but also applied to social spheres beyond formal politics, for example to the workplace, the family, voluntary associations, and other social institutions. This move is notably at work

1 Introduction 

15

in many political ­conceptions of participatory, associative, and industrial democracy developed during the 1960s and 1970s (Mansbridge, 1983; Pateman, 1970; Hirst, 1993), but can be found also in anthropological analysis of politics such as those developed by James Scott (Scott, 1979, 1998) or Asef Bayat (Bayat, 1997, 2010), or even in general theories of political representation such as that developed by Michael Saward (Saward, 2010). According to these views, democratizing a society means that the largest possible range of social spaces and institutions will have to be organized according to principles directly derived from the normative core of formal political institutions. Pragmatists have been generally eager to subscribe to such a view, which included projects of reform for democratizing the major social institutions of their time, such as, in particular, the workplace and educational institutions. As I explain in Chap. 2, while extremely valuable, such a strategy remains piecemeal and incomplete. (2) A second strategy for expanding the scope of democracy consists in defining its normative core in moral terms. That is, the normative just is the scope of the moral. This strategy has been prominent among liberal thinkers in the Kantian tradition, some of whom have proposed to ground political democratic institutions in a broader moral framework, often conceived in Kantian terms and dominated by the idea of ‘respect’. Perry (2010) and Larmore (1999) provide two examples of strategies that follow this logic. Here the basic intuition is that to understand the full blown meaning of political categories such as democracy, we need to reach to the roots of their fundamental ethical meaning. More than a method for taking decision, democracy denotes a set of values that social and political institutions should promote. Pragmatist philosophers such as Dewey too can be seen to defend the idea that democracy denotes, first and foremost, a moral rather than a political idea, and that the major traits of political democracy can be derived from its moral significance (Dewey, 1888). According to this view, the democratic quality of a society depends upon the sharing of a specific ethos by its participants. Yet, from the standpoint of the social ontology of democracy I develop in this book, democratic habits are but one ingredient of social democracy, so that even this strategy does not really help grasping the all-encompassing reach of the democratic norm.

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(3) A third strategy highlights the socio-economic basis of democratic regimes, as this is common, for example, in theories of social democracy (Meyer, 2007; Moschonas, 2002), and in some strands of socialism (Eley, 2002). As we know, Marx himself often used the expression ‘social democracy’ (Abensour, 2011; Grollios, 2011). Karl Polanyi’s theory of embedded capitalism is another source which social theories of democracy draw upon (Polanyi, 1944). In all cases, the concept of democracy refers to a complex socio-economic-political system in which political and economic factors are fused, either in the form of welfare capitalism or of collective ownership. These theories postulate a necessary connection between economics and politics and emphasize the necessary embedding and mutual interdependence of political institutions within the larger framework of economics. According to this view, the democratic quality of a society depends upon criteria such as economic equality, job security, welfare provision, workers’ rights. On this point, too, the consonance with pragmatist ideas is striking, as pragmatists have often militated in support of democratizing the workplace, extending the rights of workers, redistributing profits and, more broadly, embedding capitalism in a system of democratic norms (Stikkers and Skowroński, 2018). While praiseworthy, the main limitation of this strategy consists in limiting the theoretical contribution of non-political factors to their role as external presuppositions. (4) The fourth strategy, and the most relevant for our purposes, consists in adopting a social-theoretic approach to democracy. According to this view, democracy is the province of social, rather than political, theory, and the theory of democracy is a chapter of a larger theory of society. The basic intuition underpinning this view is that democracy denotes a norm regulating human interactions at all levels. As a consequence, its object cannot be limited to specific social spheres such as formal politics, nor to distinct dimensions of life such as decision-making (Mansbridge, 1983) or power-management (Shapiro, 1999). Broadly construed, democracy impregnates all human interactions and should be theorized accordingly. This conception is distinctly social, rather than moral or political, insofar as it describes the democratic norm in terms of the individual habits which are at play in everyday intercourse, of the patterns of social interaction that give shape to our encounters with others in all

1 Introduction 

17

walks of life, and to the organizational forms through which the democratic norm is realized anytime human beings come to interact on a regular basis as it happens within all types of social organizations and institutions. Understood in these terms, the category ‘social’ encompasses the political as well as the economic and the moral dimensions of associated living. The enlarging strategy is brought to its extreme. It should also be noted that, with respect to standard approaches to democracy in political theory, the conceptual order of explanation is reversed, as we begin with a non-political (social) definition of the democratic norm and proceed only at a later stage to assign it a distinctively political meaning. Hence, the very idea of a conceptual and functional autonomy of politics from society is set aside from the start. The ‘political’ does not have a distinct essence, something implicitly or explicitly assumed by many theorists as a necessary requirement to provide adequate foundations to democratic theory. The basic intuition is, rather, that political ideas may express and articulate intuitions that encompass the whole set of principles which organize a society, and which find in politics only a partial— albeit important—instantiation. According to this view, the democratic quality of a society depends upon a series of complex and multi-­ dimensional parameters covering the whole gamut of social interactions from primary groups to large formal institutions. While ethical and socio-economic views of democracy are certainly well attested within the pragmatist tradition, neither of them captures the radical novelty of the pragmatist conception of democracy. To grasp the deeper meaning of democracy, we need to investigate the intuition that democracy denotes a social, rather than a political, moral, or economic idea. In this richer sense, democracy refers to the different layers of a social ontology, including the multiple patterns of social interaction and forms of social organization a social unit displays. Understood as a social, rather than a moral or political category, democracy denotes a complex form of society whose successful functioning explicates itself in a plurality of patterns of social interaction, institutions, and practices spanning from the restricted core of formal politics to a range of heterogenous dimensions such as individual habits and social practices, and consistent with the normative core of democracy. This fact explains why pragmatism provides the most promising avenue to develop a social account of d ­ emocracy

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and why, therefore, the historical account offered in Part II of this book is a necessary step of the entire argumentation.

4

Democratic Problem-Solving

The final feature of the pragmatist wide social view of democracy I wish to emphasize concerns its understanding of the ultimate meaning of politics. Pragmatists have been accused of being overly concerned with practical tasks (MacGilvray, 2000) and of being naive and idealistic in their normative expectations (Achen and Bartels, 2016). Both criticisms stem from a failed understanding of what pragmatists mean by ‘problem-­ solving’. Usual misunderstanding consists in reducing problems either to material needs or to technical puzzles. Both ways, the intrinsically normative—i.e. moral, social, and political—dimension of problems is lost from sight, and political pragmatism is reduced either to naive idealism or to bread and butter realism. Once understood as a double-barreled notion, as it were, including an instrumental and a value-laden dimension, pragmatic problem-solving is rightly positioned in a middle ground between idealism and realism. On the one hand, pragmatists concur with political realists in acknowledging that justice or non-domination cannot be the first virtue of politics (Galston, 2010). They willingly admit that politics is, first of all, about the fulfillment of various types of collective interests. On the other hand, they resist the suppression of normative concerns or their reduction to material interests, as is currently proposed by realists. However, rather than engaging in a sterile quarrel between supporters of ‘justice first’ and supporters of ‘order first’, political pragmatists contend that the very idea of a just social order must include a joint reference to effective social coordination as well as to individual and collective self-realization. The concept of democratic problem-solving combines functional with expressive aspects of normativity, under the assumption that facts and values are inextricably entangled (Putnam, 2002; Habermas, 1996). Or, in critical theory’s terminology, it integrates the functional with the ethical dimension of normativity (Habermas, 1984; Honneth, 2014; Jaeggi, 2014). This entanglement implies that social and political problems c­ annot

1 Introduction 

19

be reduced either to ethical/moral dilemmas nor to merely technical puzzles, so that problem-solving presupposes always a normative orientation that is, however, rooted in social circumstances which include conflicting interests, opposed world views, contrasting normative frameworks, as well as material, technological, and natural constraints. As a consequence, problem-solving as a social and political activity refers always to collective processes of self-determination in which the setting of ends and the devising of means are inextricably intertwined. In other terms, issues of injustice, exclusion, domination, are central social problems that political pragmatism seeks to tackle (Serrano Zamora, 2017a). Emphasis on the pragmatic dimension of problem resolution points, on the other hand, to the functional need of keeping up with societal and natural constraints, which in turn limits individuals and groups’ freedom to choose. Pragmatism takes as its starting point a kind of social naturalism according to which the natural and social circumstances of human life impose upon us functional and organizational constraints. At the same time, by its orientation toward the satisfaction and educated formation of individual expectations, associated living imposes normative constraints upon society. As a steering mechanism, politics operates at the crossroad of these diverging demands. However, in contrast to social functionalism and systems theory that similarly emphasizes the political meaning of functional constraints, political pragmatism does not conceive functional differentiation as conducive to autonomous self-steering social spheres. Social naturalism implies that the specialization of functions—science with respect to intelligence, art with respect to creativity, politics with respect to collective problem-solving—does not lead to separate and autonomous social spheres but, rather, to an interrelated set of interdependencies. Hence functional differentiation is seen as conducive to the better fulfillment of goals conceived in terms of the successful integration of individual self-realization with the fulfillment of social tasks. Because in the end social institutions exist for the sake of promoting individual flourishing, the normative idea of a well-ordered society should take into consideration the combined effect of these two series of goals. In other words, rather than defining the goal of politics in terms of autonomy or self-rule, emphasis on cooperative problem-solving combines individual self-realization with societal functional integration.

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The upshot of this social naturalistic view is that politics refers simultaneously to a specialized steering system and to a broader social function whose fulfillment devolves to a plurality of highly distributed and strongly differentiated social practices. More precisely, political steering is accomplished by society in its totality. The continuity between social problem-­ solving and institutionalized political problem-solving explains why the concept of democracy must be defined using the wider terms introduced above, and why, therefore, its normative scope must include patterns of social interaction and forms of social organization. Indeed, democratic problem-solving must be at the same time highly specialized and thoroughly distributed, as the debate on democratic experimentalism has convincingly shown. The concept of democratic problem-solving also fulfills a second theoretical task, as it aims to reconcile two other dimensions that normative political theory tends to separate, that is, individual self-realization and social order. While the Enlightenment political ideal of collective self-­ determination sets the normative horizon of political pragmatism, social naturalism demands that the circumstances of natural and social reality be paid greater attention than is usual within Enlightenment, as political realists have aptly urged. According to such a view, the pragmatic or instrumental problem-solving capacity of political institutions cannot be separated from their classical political function of integrating a community. On the one hand, consonant with the interest-based conception of politics shared by a large spectrum of political realists, political pragmatism contends that the search for functionally viable solutions to shared problems is a central motivation of politics. In other words, the very idea of societal problem-solving must be part of the normative core of the concept of democracy. On the other hand, political pragmatism contends that our society is built on the normative intuition that the question of whose problem is as important as the question of which solution. Accordingly, the emphasis on problem-solving should not be seen as perverting but rather at perfecting the democratic project, inscribing it within a realistic view which, however, contrary to mainstream realism, fully integrates the normative core of the democratic project. Political pragmatism contends that our political disorientation is partly engendered by a lack of understanding of the realistic basis of politics, as this

1 Introduction 

21

tends to produce an idealistic drift whose main consequence is that popular aspirations and expectations tend to be ignored or criticized whenever they take forms or deliver results that do not match our normative expectations. An interpretation of new social movements, forms of political protest, and democratic deficits along these lines may deliver a more perspicuous view of the causes of the apparently endless crisis which seems to have befallen contemporary democracies. It would also help us better see the democratizing potential of new social and institutional experiments that blur conventional divides between state and market, private and public, politics and economics, as I attempt to show in later chapters. The task and the challenge of democracy as an historical project consists precisely in devising ways of achieving highly efficient problem-­ solving capacity—without which a complex society simply cannot exist—through patterns of social organization that promote individual self-realization. As later chapters will explain, a society organized according to the three normative principles of: (a) active involvement in the social practices under conditions of, (b) relational parity, and (c) inclusive authority is best placed to achieve this goal. It is indeed by being actively included in collective processes of problem-solving that human beings develop their personality and come (or may come) to the full realization of their potential (Frega, 2020, forthcoming). Hence instrumentality achieves an expressive function, a fact that contemporary political epistemologies generally fail to understand, torn as they are between the ideological opposites of instrumental and communicative rationality (Habermas, 1984), of reasonableness and rationality (Rawls, 1996), or of the competing logics of consequences and of appropriateness (March and Olsen, 2010). On the other hand, through practical involvement in problem-­oriented social practices, new potentialities for self-realization are opened, insofar as new creative resources for collective problem-solving are released by the active involvement of individuals within the largest spectrum of social practices. In this way, individual self-fulfillment can be rescued from the excesses of perfectionism and protected from the self-­referentiality of the quest for authenticity. The view I will defend in this book is that the relation between these two requirements—functional problem-solving and expressive self-­realization—should not be interpreted in the sense of a tension or

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opposition between democracy and efficacy. My claim is, rather, that democracy as a particular way of organizing human life defines the successful combination—or the satisfactory compromise—between the two competing factors of expressivity and functionality. In that sense, a political conception of democracy as problem solving—a theme common to most, if not all, epistemic theories of democracy— can fulfill its normative expectations only if it is inscribed within the theoretical framework of a social conception of democracy which specifies the conditions under which expressive expectations can be fulfilled. In other words, the functional dimension of problem-solving needs to be integrated within the expressive dimension of self-realization. While the two sources of this conception of democracy are inextricably interwoven in social life, it is, however, possible to analytically distinguish them so as to isolate and discuss each factor in relative independence. While overlapping to a significant extent, these two dimensions refer, however, to two different ways of conceiving the quest for a wide view of democracy (Chap. 3). In this book, and for the sake of simplicity, I will discuss the first approach under the heading of a ‘social conception of democracy’, and the second in the terms of a ‘group-based theory of politics’. On the one hand, we need to look at the basic patterns and forms through which social life is organized, in order to identify the conditions and the requirements under which the democratic norm can be realized. This will require the adoption of a sociologically informed standpoint, whose main pillar will be the social ontology of democracy introduced in Chap. 4 and developed in Chaps. 6, 7, and 8. On the other hand, forms and practices of collective goal-attainment will have to be singled out. This task will be first undertaken in Chap. 5, and pursued through Chaps. 8, 9, and 10. This second, and more directly political part of the theory will have to workout the descriptive as well as the normative implications of the idea that democracy denotes, first and foremost, the set of social conditions and the normative standards required (a) to promote the formation of autonomous and egalitarian publics (b) aimed at the control of the indirect consequences of action (c) through appropriate institutional arrangements capable of acting for the (d) resolution of the problems the publics have identified.

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23

In a preliminary way, and recombining these two strands, I propose to circumscribe the contribution of pragmatism to democratic theory3 through the following definition: democracy denotes a social and political arrangement of a human polity which through inclusive patterns of social interaction and cooperative forms of social organization empowers its publics in dealing with their own perceived problems in ways that are consistent with the principles of (a) relational parity, (b) inclusive authority, and (c) social involvement and which for that reasons are responsive to expressive as well as to functional normative standards.

5

Plan of the Book

The book is divided into three parts. Each of them will present the wide view of democracy from a different perspective. Part I examines the wide view of democracy in analytical terms, providing a conceptual account of the normative grammar of democracy that is theoretically independent from the historical sources mobilized in subsequent chapters. To that extent, it provides a self-standing account of the wide view of democracy, and an interpretation of the normativity of democracy. Part II presents the same argument, but couched in historical terms. It notably shows the wide view of democracy mirrors the historical experience of democratization in late-modern western societies. It then singles out American pragmatism as the intellectual tradition which, better than any other, has given a full blown philosophical articulation of this historical experience. Finally, Part III adopts another strategy, singling out contemporary debates that, according to the wide view, are of central importance to a theory of democracy, and giving concrete evidence of how the wide view of democracy can transform our way of tackling contemporary issues.  If taken as exhausting the normative core of democratic political institutions, this definition will appear as incomplete at best. Its focus upon equality rather than liberty and on collective rather than individual agency should, however, not be taken as implying a neglect of individual freedom as a political ideal. I believe that more traditional liberal concerns with individual freedom and subjective rights can easily be accommodated within a pragmatist theory of democracy, although I will not undertake this task here. 3

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Part I provides the theoretical background for the whole discussion. Chapter 2 offers an introductory overview of contemporary approaches in social and political theory that in one way or another anticipate mine. I critically examine theories of democracy stemming from a plurality of Continental and Anglo-American traditions. The chapter highlights the major historical contributions to the development of a wide view of democracy, while indicating the steps that are still to be accomplished. In that way, the ground is prepared for better understanding the added value of the pragmatist wide view of democracy developed in subsequent chapters. The theories I examine are organized into three main categories: (1) theories of democracy which have accomplished a significant advance in expanding the scope of democracy to one or another limited sphere of social reality, such as the family, the workplace, or the public sphere; (2) theories conceiving democracy as an event external to the functioning of political regimes, and (3) theories which conceive democracy as a global, or holistic, category of social thought. I contend that my approach is inscribed within this third category, and show the differences and similarities with other approaches. This critical review prepares the ground for the reconstructive work that will be done in Part II, in which the pragmatist conception of democracy is presented as a better candidate to fulfill the task of developing a social wide view of democracy. Chapter 3 focuses on the normative grammar of the concept of democracy and explains why democracy, rather than justice or nondomination, should provide the paradigmatic normative framework to understand and evaluate contemporary social and political life. It begins by problematizing the very concept of democracy and the normative function it has traditionally served in political philosophy and the political sciences. It then identifies two main conditions that a theory of democracy should fulfill if it is to play a more ambitious normative function than in the past, and it shows that only a wide view of democracy can comply with both. The last section deals more directly with the political phase of democracy and introduces the notion of ‘normative practices’, that will provide the conceptual background for the discussion of the public-based conception of politics undertaken in subsequent chapters. Part II provides a historical reconstruction of the wide view of democracy. First, a quick overview of debates in history and sociology is evoked

1 Introduction 

25

to provide a socio-historical background. Second, a history of political ideas focused on American pragmatism reconstructs the main tenets of this conception. While Dewey is the main protagonist in this historical reconstruction, the narrative is organized according to a deeply polyphonic plan in which a plurality of intellectual figures is evoked, several of whom made lasting contributions not only to philosophy but also to sociology and to political science. The historical reconstruction is organized around the two main pillars of my project, that is, a social theory of democracy and a group-based theory of politics. A major task of Part II consists in showing how these two themes are internally correlated, and defends the idea of political democracy as a ‘phase’ or ‘stage’ of social democracy. Chapter 4 provides the first historical underpinning to the wide view of democracy. It notably examines the social and political theories of democracy of a series of American thinkers either directly or more loosely connected with the pragmatist tradition. Along with Dewey, the works of George H. Mead, Charles H. Cooley, and Mary Parker Follett are examined with the aim of retracing the emergence of a social theory of democracy. Three main aspects of the wide view of democracy will be emphasized: the idea of democracy as method, the priority of involvement in joint action over autonomy, and the social-ontological structuration of democracy. Chapter 5 further pursues the historical exploration of the wide view of democracy through the examination of the pragmatist group-based theory of politics. It begins by reconstructing some tenets of the political debate of the age on democracy, and proceeds to discuss Arthur Bentley’s interest-based theory of democracy, Follett’s pluralist theory of democratic group formation, and Dewey’s theory of publics. It introduces and discusses some basic categories of the pragmatist group-based theory of politics, such as those of consequences, public, institutions, and problem-solving. Part III will take political pragmatism to task by putting its constitutive factors in the context of contemporary social and political theory. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 will deal with the three central pillars of the social ontology of democracy—habits, patterns of interaction, and forms of organization—whereas Chaps. 9 and 10 will concentrate on the properly political phase of democracy.

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Chapter 6 compares the philosophical grammar of democratic habits with one of the most consolidated contemporary attempts to revivify the personal dimension of politics—the republican theory of civic virtues. The chapter shows what is to be gained by dropping the notion of virtue and by replacing it with that of habits, that is, why democratic habits rather than civic virtues provide us with sharp conceptual tools to analyze how personal factors contribute to the democratic quality of a polity. Chapter 7 is devoted to the analysis of the sociological foundations of democracy, and in particular to the notion of democratic patterns of social interaction. The chapter examines three major contemporary contributions to the understanding of the social basis of democracy: social interactionism; sociological studies of civilities from Norbert Elias to contemporary French social theory, and theories of association from Tocqueville to Habermas, with a focus on the social-theoretical implications of functionalist approaches. The main goal of the chapter is to add sociological flesh to the concept of democratic patterns of social interaction previously introduced, showing what they consist of, how they can be studied empirically, and why they constitute an indispensable ingredient of the concept of democracy. Chapter 8 introduces ‘democratic experimentalism’ as the most significant contemporary attempt to revivify and re-actualize the pragmatist approach to the democratic relevance of social institutions. The chapter reviews the most relevant theories of democratic experimentalism in political sociology, political theory, constitutionalism, and organization theory with the aim of developing a distinctive approach, which emphasizes the two factors of social learning and distributed cooperation as the main pragmatist contributions to the problem of social innovation. In the last section I propose to read democratic experimentalism as a form of ‘realist utopia’. Chapter 9 situates the pragmatist-based theory of publics in the context of contemporary debates on the transformations of the public sphere, showing in particular that a pragmatist theory of democracy calls for a radical deconstruction of the Habermasian dualism of the state and the public sphere. Hannah Arendt’s notion of communicative power is discussed in relation to Follett’s theory of ‘power with’, and Habermas’ and Honneth’s theories of democracy are examined in turn. The chapter then

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engages contemporary economic and political theories of the commons, that I interpret as political theories of public activation particularly suited to grasp the political, and democratic, relevance of emerging economic practices such as peer-production and political consumerism. Chapter 10 discusses the advantages of a pragmatist theory of democracy for understanding how global phenomena such as private authority and transnational movements can become allies in the quest for democratic solutions to global issues. The chapter shows in particular that the pragmatist notion of publics offers promising insights and proves particularly useful for completing the transition from methodological nationalism to methodological cosmopolitanism required for understanding the emergence of potentially democratic normative orders and practices at the global level. The chapter discusses the contribution of political pragmatism to the critique of methodological nationalism and proceeds to examine and reject the three major alternative approaches to global politics—constitutional cosmopolitanism, transnational public sphere theory, and global representation theory—showing why they fail to overcome methodological nationalism. The last two sections explore private entrepreneurial authority in contexts of global governance and shows that pragmatism succeeds in explaining their political role, while the other three approaches fail. Finally, the conclusions recapitulate the main achievement of the book, pointing to some of the theoretical tasks that remain to be tackled.

Part I Theoretical Framework

2 Enlarging Democracy

Blinded by the steady rise of democratic theory which followed the end of the Cold War, we tend to forget that, during the first three quarters of the twentieth century, few political philosophers took democracy to be the central category of political thought, or if they did, it was at the price of a narrow understanding of democracy as a system of government. As Giovanni Sartori remarks, the history of twentieth century political thought was indeed dominated by other conceptual categories, and in particular by the polarized opposition between liberalism and socialism (Sartori, 1987). Under these circumstances, the political potential embedded in the idea of democracy has been overshadowed by the ideologically more powerful opposition between the socialist and the liberal alternatives. The most significant works in democratic theory produced until the 1970s confirms this. We have only to recall the writings of Hans Kelsen, Joseph Schumpeter, Karl Popper, Norberto Bobbio, Robert Dahl, Anthony Downs, and Giovanni Sartori. For all these thinkers, the term ‘democracy’ applies meaningfully only to the system of formal political institutions required to protect basic liberal values. Conceiving of democracy in terms of a theory of government has been, to a certain extent, expedient to keeping political theory consonant with © The Author(s) 2019 R. Frega, Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18561-9_2

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political history. The theory of democracy as a form of government was (and is) consistent with the prioritization of freedom over equality which characterizes liberal conceptions of politics. In addition, such thinking has been instrumental in the epistemic constitution of political theory as a scientific field, as historians of the discipline have largely documented (Gunnell, 2004). Whilst historically understandable, this theoretical reduction was in no way inevitable and has not gone without opposition. Especially in the last four decades, and with increasing force after 1989, attempts to overcome this reductionist interpretation of democracy as a form of government have multiplied, partly as a reaction against elitist conceptions of democracy, partly as an attempt to overcome the legitimation crisis that democratic regimes had to face (Habermas, 1976). Whilst achieving important results, these attempts remain unable to adequately provide an account of the democratic project. They are able to explain some important aspects, yet none of them succeeds in providing a comprehensive view. This chapter sets the stage for the ensuing historical and conceptual work by introducing and discussing some of the most promising attempts to enlarge the scope of the concept of democracy. This survey has no systematic end in view. The idea is, rather, to give a sense of the rich plurality of strategies whereby the scope of democracy can, and has, been enlarged. Passing these theories in review will provide an appropriate discursive context within which to inscribe the wide view of democracy developed in subsequent chapters, while making explicit and visible the connections between political pragmatism and a vast array of contemporary theories of democracy. I have organized the materials into three major sections, each providing examples of a distinct type of enlarging strategy. In Sect. 1, I review theories which focus upon precise but narrow strategies designed to enlarge the scope of the concept of democracy beyond the realm of governmental institutions. For each of these dimensions, I present existing empirical evidence, when available, as an additional support for the wide view of democracy. Each of these approaches singles out a specific dimension of democracy that goes beyond the functioning of formal political

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institutions. Each of them accomplishes a necessary but insufficient step toward a wide view of democracy, expanding the normative core of the concept in either one or another direction, but always failing to achieve an all-encompassing account of democracy as a social idea. Hence all these approaches are adequate as far as what they achieve but timid and inadequate once examined from the perspective of the requirements I pose. Passing them in review will help prepare the ground for my later presentation of the “wide view of democracy”. Section 2 discusses exceptionalist approaches—epitomized here by Sheldon Wolin’s idea of a ‘fugitive democracy’ and by Jacques Rancière’s idea of ‘post-democracy’—which have attempted to reframe democracy as an instantiation of ‘the political’ as opposed to the day-to-day functioning of governmental politics. These approaches have the symmetric defects of the first series. They point correctly toward an all-­encompassing definition of the scope of democracy but at the cost of losing the capacity to identify the social, cultural, and institutional details through which democracy can concretely be achieved. As a consequence, their idea of democracy remains hopelessly elusive. The concept of democracy is successfully emancipated from its confinement to the functioning of formal institutions, only to be reduced to the romanticized image of a permanent revolution which leaves institutions as they are, voiding the concept of democracy of its rich emancipatory potential. Confronting them will help grasp by contrast the distinctive quality of the “wide view of democracy”. Section 3 explores approaches which come closer to the idea of a wide view of democracy and which construct the concept of democracy to refer to wider societal processes extending beyond the realm of politics. Particularly with the ideas of democracy as a ‘form of life’ and democracy as a ‘form of society’, we get a glimpse of what an all-encompassing conception of democracy can really achieve, and why a social account is required if we wish to recover the full normative content of the concept of democracy. Yet these approaches merely gesture toward a wide view, without providing an adequate account of the socio-political details its construction requires. Their discussion will constitute the last step before entering into the heart of the book’s topic.

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L ocalized Strategies for Enlarging Democracy

In this section I review approaches which have focused upon specific and generally circumscribed strategies to enlarge the scope of the concept of democracy beyond the realm of governmental institutions. Rather than clearly identifiable theories, they denote conceptual strategies that have been used, sometimes in combination, to expand the normative reach of the concept of democracy. Each of these approaches proceeds from the assumption that democracy defines a positive norm whose full realization requires that it be applied to a domain of reality that includes, but is not limited to, formal political institutions. While retaining a purely political conception of democracy, these approaches contend that, to achieve democracy, we need to extend its reach to spheres, practices, and institutions which reside outside the formal domain of politics. These approaches tend generally to single out and confine themselves to a specific sphere or dimension of social life: (a) the cultivation of virtues (democracy as ethos); (b) the development of civic associations; (c) the reform of specific social institutions; (d) the constitution of the public sphere and the formation of a civil society, and (e) the diffusion of participatory and representational procedures. My assumption is that an all-encompassing theory of social democracy must identity the common denominator of all these approaches so as to be able to explain why they are all necessary for a democratic society to thrive and what their common denominator is. A wide view of democracy aims, among other things, to provide such a unified account, and the three principles identified in Chap. 3 and the social ontology presented in Chap. 4 will address this question.

1.1

Democratic Ethos

The first strategy through which the concept of democracy has been enlarged emphasizes its ethical dimension. The idea that a specific ethos is required for a democratic polity to thrive is as old as philosophy itself, as it was already a cornerstone of Aristotle’s political thought. In modern times, it has been defended by thinkers such as Alexis de Tocqueville and

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John Stuart Mill, and has been a constitutive cornerstone of the republican tradition. The basic intuition shared by these approaches is generally formulated in causal terms, that is, a democratic character is the precondition for the satisfactory functioning of a democratic society. This argument has been used more recently to criticize liberalism for its excessively thin assumptions concerning the non-political presuppositions of politics. Communitarians, in particular, have been more sympathetic to the idea that character and virtue play a decisive role in political life. The focus upon character is, however, not their exclusive concern. Similar arguments can be found among a heterogeneous plurality of contemporary political theorists. Participatory theorists such as C. B. Macpherson, Carole Pateman, or Carol G. Gould have rightly insisted on the internal connection between a thriving participatory democracy and the democratic character, whereas Pierre Rosanvallon, directly inspired by Claude Lefort’s conception of democracy as a form of society, has emphasized the democratic relevance of contestatory habits and virtues such as those of vigilance, contestation, denunciation and protest (Rosanvallon, 2008, Ch. 1). These and other interpretations emphasize the function of democratic habits in diffusing into the larger non-political social body the normative functions that purely political theories of democracy tend to confine to the realm of political institutions or extend at best to the public sphere. Each in its own way, these authors have emphasized the directly political function fulfilled by habits which operate as necessary preconditions for the flourishing of a democratic society. Within empirical political sciences, this idea has been put to test by ‘political culture’ studies. Since the seminal work of Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba (Almond and Verba, 1963),1 a number of empirical researchers have investigated the correlation that exists between a democratic ethos embodied in individual attitudes and the stability of democratic institutions. Harry Eckstein, one of the most prominent authors in this tradition, has notably contended democratic stability is related to the congruence between social and governmental authority patterns (Eckstein and Gurr 1975). Closer to us, authors such as Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel  See Almond (1993) for an overview of literature and Almond and Verba (1980) for an updated and revised restatement of the original thesis. 1

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(Inglehart and Welzel, 2005; Welzel, 2013) have contended that there exists a positive and strong empirical correlation between the spread of liberal habits and processes of democratization, whereas empirical research exploring the difficult road toward democracy in South-East Asia has conversely explained the failure of processes of democratization in terms of a failed attempt to develop the corresponding democratic habits (Wang, 2011; Zhenglai, 2011; Shin, 2011). On the other hand, studies of authoritarianism contend that a system tilted toward governmental power, as in a hierarchical system based on deference to political elites, basic values of democratic participation can be threatened (Berg-­ Schlosser and Rytlewski, 1993; Carter, 1979). While the diffusion of a democratic ethos is indisputably a necessary prerequisite for a democratic society, analyses based on the notion of values tend to obscure the exact nature of this relation, and criticisms have been leveled to these attempts to define and quantify the effective democratic meaning of individual attitudes. In particular, it has been contended that the relation between individual and structure lend itself to contradictory explanations: political participation can be seen at the same time as being the cause and the effect of responsive political institutions (Pateman, 1971). On its own, the notion of ethos fails to explain how individual orientations coalesce in shared patterns of interaction and sustain specific forms of social organization. To fulfill this task, as we shall see in the next chapter, a more complex social ontology is needed, in which patterns of interaction are added in-between habits and institutional forms.

1.2

Civic Associations

A second strategy to enlarge the scope of the concept of democracy beyond the boundaries of formal politics consists in extending it to include the existence and mode of functioning of a specific set of non-­ political associations. The forerunner of this approach is Alexis de Tocqueville and it is useful to recall here the rationale for his decision. Tocqueville was probably the first modern author to examine the sociological dimension of associations in connection with a theory of democracy. As he sees it, the advent of a society based on the principle of equality

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presupposes and requires new patterns of social interaction and new forms of social organization. Tocqueville saw in voluntary associations the solution to the problem of social integration and social cooperation within a society of equals. Indeed, voluntary associations made the replacement of hierarchical corporatist forms of organization with horizontal and voluntary patterns of social interaction possible. The voluntary dimension of these associations is an essential ingredient of the modern society, in antithesis to the unfree forms of social integration on which the ancien régime was based. Empirical evidence for this claim has notably been offered by Robert Putnam, whose theory of social capital contends that the frequency and intensity of associational life is a good predictor of the democratic quality of a society.2 Social capital refers to horizontal non-political social networks which integrate individuals within larger communities through face-to-face relations. Associational life is based upon and contributes to the reproduction of habits of cooperation and of attitudes of mutual trust, that he considers the backbone of democratic societies. The notion of social capital differs from that of democratic ethos as it refers to social practices of interpersonal association rather than to individual properties (habits). While not having directly political content—Putnam focuses explicitly upon non-political associations—voluntary associations create a link between the individual level of virtues and habits and the political level of citizenship, reinforcing patterns of social interaction throughout the whole spectrum of social life. This approach insists that the political regime of democracy can function satisfactorily provided it is embedded in a wider non-political network of forms of human association in which social intercourse follows the same principles which define democracy as a political regime. This claim has clear and straightforward normative implications, because a democratic society cannot really flourish in the absence of such a connecting social fabric.3 These and other approaches contend from different perspectives that the presence of a civil society composed of voluntary  Putnam (1994, 2000). See Norris (2011, 136–138) for a brief political discussion with reference to the relations between social capital and democratic deficits. 3  The normative implications of associations for democratic theory have been further explored in the works of Mark Warren (Warren, 2001), Paul Hirst (Hirst, 1993), Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers (Cohen and Rogers, 1992), and Nancy Rosenblum (Rosenblum, 1998). 2

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associations constitutes an important prerequisite of political democracy and can, for example, be used as a proxy for anticipating trends in democratization. Voluntary associations are sites where horizontal patterns of social solidarity among equals flourish, they are schools of democratic ethos, and provide opportunities to practice self-government. Yet as a single explanatory factor they fail to account for the democratic quality of a society, not only because the claim of a strong positive correlation between levels of associationism and quality of political democracy has been contested (Norris, 2011; Eliasoph, 1998), but more generally because the positive social integration provided by voluntary associations is in itself insufficient to guarantee the stability of a democratic society. As studies of the institutional dimension of democracy have shown, democratizing social institutions has proven a decisive and yet difficult goal, and the existence of voluntary associations is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for achieving it.

1.3

Democratic Institutionalism

By ‘institutional theories of democracy’, I refer to those theories of democracy that focus upon organizational models of social functioning and claim that democracy denotes a principle of social organization that can be (and indeed should be) also extended to non-political institutions such as educational settings and workplaces. These theories generally adopt a conception of democracy as a method of taking decisions or more generally for sharing power in asymmetric relations. Harry Eckstein’s ‘congruence theory’ is probably the most developed attempt to formulate a political theory which posits a direct and explicit correlation between the stability of a government and the congruence among patterns of authority that are found throughout society (Eckstein and Gurr, 1975). Indeed, Eckstein has provided compelling evidence that political institutions are embedded in a society through the patterns of authority that preside over social life. As he contends, any social unit has a model of governance: governance “is found in political parties, workplaces and businesses, professional societies, trade unions, voluntary associations, community associations, friendly societies, hospitals, churches, sports

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teams and leagues, schools and universities, teams that produce films or plays, and, not least, families” (Eckstein, 1997, 2). This approach contends that political regimes perform well to the extent that their authority patterns are congruent with the authority patterns of other units of society, and that government instability will occur if the authority pattern of the government institutions is significantly different from other social segments of the society. Applied to the theory of democracy, Eckstein’s congruence theory has two potential implications. The first is that a democratic regime can operate in effective ways only if society at large—and not only political institutions—is characterized by the predominance of democratic patterns of interaction. The second implication is that the social diffusion of democratic patterns of interaction constitutes a pre-­ condition for the spread of democracy as a political regime. Within institutional theories of democracy, the extension of the normative scope of democracy to the functioning of social institutions is generally justified on two grounds. The first is educational, and is based on empirical evidence and theoretical claims that working experience has a deep impact on human development and self-realization. Classical authors such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and G.  D. H. Cole and the pragmatists strongly emphasize the educational component of work experience and have insisted on its relevance for democratic theory based on its capacity to shape individual identity. The second is expressive, as living in a democratic setting supports autonomy and self-realization. On the one hand, participation helps develop civic virtues; on the other hand, it contributes to the development of a more complete personality. Whereas Rousseau and Mill ascribed this virtuous role essentially to participation in local government, authors such as Carole Pateman and Jane Mansbridge extend this function to other social institutions such as the workplace, and rightly contend that the experience of authority that takes place there can have a huge influence on individuals’ attitudes toward democracy. These approaches, therefore, provide a third and necessary building block to a wide view of democracy. While they correctly identify the external political benefits produced by congruence among social institutions, and while they usefully complement associational theories by highlighting the socially integrative function of the workplace, the school, and the other major social institutions, they do not go beyond the

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call for an expansion of participatory organizational forms in social and economic life. In that sense, their fall short of the expectations of a more ambitious, all-encompassing account of democracy like the one developed in this book.

1.4

Civil Society and the Public Sphere

One of the most important and successful attempts at enlarging the scope of democratic theory beyond the sphere of formal political institutions is provided by the combined results of Habermas’ analysis of the public sphere and the ensuing theories of civil society. These two attempts have successfully extended the scope of democratic politics to the functioning of non-formal political institutions and actors involved in the formation of political opinion. This is particularly true of Habermas’ “two-track” model of deliberative democracy (Habermas, 1996, Sect. 7.2.1), which explicitly defines democracy in terms of the combined operation of formal political institutions and of an informal public sphere. Consonant with Dewey’s theory of publics, Habermas explicitly assigns to the public sphere the indispensable democratic function of channelling demands and aspirations from society to the political system. By assigning to this sphere a distinctive form of rationality, Habermas clearly enlarges the scope of democracy so as to include all these formal and non-formal political forums in which citizens can exercise communicative rationality and engage in political practices such as discussion, deliberation, and protest. The same applies to the now vast research tradition that in the wake of Habermas conceives the advent of the public sphere and later of civil society as the most significant feature of modern democracy.4 Whereas theories of voluntary associations emphasize the indirect political effects obtained when large numbers of citizens join non-political associations, and whereas institutional theories insist on the indirect political benefits reaped when all major social institutions are organized according to  For a rich and articulated account of the democratic function of the public sphere and of the legacy of Dewey’s ideas in the tradition of critical theory from Habermas onwards, see Honneth (2014, Sect. III.3.a). 4

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democratic principles, theories of civil society underline the directly democratic function of a subset of informal associations and organizations which play a directly political role in society, such as social movements, political parties, media, and NGOs. These theories shed light on the democratic function played by this specific category of collective actor in processes of opinion- and will-formation, as well as in strategies of control, resistance, and counter-power. Particularly in the wake of movements of civil protest that emerged in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s in reaction to totalitarian regimes, theories of civil society have shown to what extent emancipatory resources and democratic potential are dispersed throughout society (Cohen and Arato, 1994; Seligman, 1995; Alexander, 2006; Ehrenberg, 1999). Together with studies on the political relevance of the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, these theories have given a powerful twist to social conceptions of democracy. As Andrew Arato and Jean Cohen note, the theory of civil society is part of the theory of democracy because every theory of democracy presupposes a model of society, and a theory of society without a theory of civil society is incomplete. Indeed, for these authors “the concept of civil society indicates a terrain in the West that is […] the primary locus for the potential expansion of democracy” (Cohen and Arato 1994, viii). Habermas’ move is particularly relevant in this context because he draws explicitly upon Dewey’s theory of the public to develop a deliberative conception of the public sphere and because it incorporates the problem-­solving orientation of democratic procedure which, as I will show in Part II, is an essential ingredient of a pragmatist theory of democracy. While expanding significantly beyond more traditional approaches, Habermas’ account nevertheless remains focused to a specific sub-system of society, which is the public sphere.5 Similarly, theories of civil society focus on specific social actors, and never achieve the level of a more encompassing view of democratic life.  Not surprisingly, Habermas’ laudatory praise of Dewey’s philosophy is strictly confined to the procedural dimension of Dewey’s theory of publics and is never extended to the whole of Dewey’s social theory of democracy. Bohman (2007) confirms on different grounds that the reception of Dewey’s theory of democracy within the tradition of critical theory has largely been dependent upon Habermas’ first move and has mainly revolved around the theory of the public sphere and of the civil society. I have explored at a greater length the implications of the reception of pragmatist themes in the Frankfurt School in Frega (2017c). 5

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Enlarged Representation

Another strategy for expanding the scope of the concept of democracy that is worth mentioning was pioneered by political theorists Nadia Urbinati and David Saward. Relying upon a classical theory of democracy at the heart of which resides the notion of ‘representative government’, both authors have proposed to expand the reach of the concept of representation beyond the realm of formal political institutions. The basic intuition is that if democracy is defined by the function of representation, then enlarging the reach of this concept so as to accommodate larger practices of ‘representativity’ will end up broadening the normative scope of democracy itself. Urbinati has proposed a wide view of representation very much in line with this strategy (Urbinati, 2006).6 Building on Condorcet’s seminal intuitions about the scope of representative democracy, Urbinati conceives of representation as the set of formal and non-­ formal practices that take place within the political system as well as in society through which the process of sovereignty takes place. Freeing the notion of representation from its narrow identification with electoral politics, Urbinati contends that representation broadly conceived plays a decisive role in creating the political body rather than merely giving it a voice. Representation is a discursive process of mediation through which a collection of unrelated sparse individuals is transformed into a public. It is the symbolic space in which: “individuals transcend the immediacy of their biographical experience and social and cultural belonging and interests, and educate and enlarge their political judgment on their own and others’ opinions” (Urbinati, 2014, 5). Daniel Saward radicalizes this enlarging strategy through the idea of a ‘representative claim’ which does not presuppose formal political institutions, as its instantiation takes place directly within society. While democratic institutions remain the paramount political device for institutionalizing the representative function, representative claims are constantly at work even in contexts in which no representative i­ nstitutions are to be found. Through this move, Saward proposes to enlarge the scope  The affinity between Urbinati’s “wide view of representation” and pragmatist approaches to democracy has been remarked by David Bray, who draws on her approach to develop his own pragmatist account of cosmopolitan democracy. See Bray (2011). 6

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of democratic politics to all those situations in which formal representative institutions are not present, such as global politics. Informing his proposal is the awareness that in many contexts formal political representation suffers declining participation, while at the same time new social and political claims emerge in the political arena which find voice through informal ‘representatives’. Accomplishing this task requires that a conventional conception of representation as delegation-through-vote be replaced by a wider understanding of representation as a complex social act which combines aesthetic, cultural, and political perspectives. At the heart of this view we find the notion of claim. While these attempts count as a coherent expansion of the normative core of democracy beyond the space of formal political institutions, their scope remains nevertheless too narrowly dependent upon a purely political conception of democracy. Indeed, the concept of representation proves too dependent upon its political use to be able to account for a significantly larger range of social phenomena. However, as I will later show, these and other enlarging strategies can acquire added relevance once they are integrated in the wider framework of the wide view of democracy. As challenging and stimulating as the enlarging strategies discussed in this section may appear, none of them is up to the task of offering an account capable of providing a credible ‘paradigmatic’ model of political normativity that is required if the concept of democracy is to provide the kind of normative guidance I expect it to play.7 Yet they offer invaluable insights into the nature of democracy, once this ceases to be seen as a mere formal political regime. What is missing, is a comprehensive view capable of explaining why, individually considered and collectively taken, each of them provides a necessary yet insufficient contribution to a fuller understanding of what I have called the democratic project. To fulfill this task, a plausible candidate should account for the entire plurality and heterogeneity of normative practices, institutions, and fora upon which the democratic quality of a society depends. As we shall see, heterogeneity here counts as much as plurality. Whereas contemporary theories tend to focus upon one single factor to the detriment of others, the view I am proposing  The idea of ‘paradigmatic’ normativity is explained in the next chapter.

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avoids taking sides with specific elements such as deliberation, participation, representation, sovereignty, or communication. By conceiving of democracy as a social fact or a form of society, the wide view provides a unified account which accommodates the largest possible dispersion of heterogeneous instances whereby a democratic form of life thrives. Hence, rather than overburdening a single dimension of democracy, my proposal distributes the democratic workload over a plurality of dimensions, under the assumption that the limits of one dimension—say deliberation—can be more easily overcome by adding other ingredients—say, participation—rather than insisting on adding more of the same.

2

 he Failed Attempt of Exceptionalist T Approaches

In this section I examine a second group of political theories which at first sight may appear as credible candidate for enlarging the scope of politics, hence democracy, beyond the domain of government. These strategies contend that politics, or rather ‘the political’, denotes a dimension or an ‘event’ that takes place outside and even in opposition to the functioning of formal political institutions, so that the ‘essence’ of politics has to be sought beyond their domain of operation. Alternative strategies consisting in reconceptualizing democracy as an event irreducible to the administrative operation of government,8 have certainly gone a long way in rejecting the paradigm of democracy as a form of government. In this and similar approaches, the attempt to enlarge the scope of politics is accomplished by introducing a distinction between ‘politics’ as the realm of ordinary administrative activity and the ‘political’ as a moment of eruption in which the deeper and most authentic nature of politics emerges. These strategies, as I intend to show, proceed in a way that is radically at odds with the enlarging strategy I favor.  Jacques Rancière, Alain Badiou, Andreas Kalyvas, Sheldon Wolin are the first names that come to mind. For an overview of approaches in this tradition, see Marchart (2007). 8

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Wolin’s ‘Fugitive Democracy’

Sheldon Wolin and Jacques Rancière’s reflections on democracy provide a paradigmatic instantiation of this idea. While both authors elaborate a view of politics that goes beyond the realm of formal political institutions, their understanding of democracy remains confined to an exceptionalist conception of ‘the political’ as opposed to ‘politics’ which fails to explain the distinctive character of democracy, precisely because they neglect its most peculiar feature, which is its capacity to shape a form of life. According to Wolin, the political is “an expression of the idea that a free society composed of diversities can nonetheless enjoy moments of commonality when, through public deliberations, collective power is used to promote or protect the well-being of the collectivity” (Wolin, 1994a, 11). Other theorists such as for example Andreas Kalyvas have expressed the same intuition relying on the classical distinction between ‘pouvoir constituant’ and ‘pouvoir constitué’ (Kalyvas, 2005). An essential aspect of this conception of politics concerns the forms and times of appearance of the political, prompting Wolin to describe democracy as a ‘fugitive event’, rather than a structured pattern of social organization. As Wolin notes “[p]olitics is continuous, ceaseless, and endless. In contrast, the political is episodic, rare”. Far from being ordinary, everyday, popular, democracy as a manifestation of the political can only be ‘fugitive’. It is somehow instructive that, for Wolin, rejecting the paradigm of democracy as a form of government requires that we also reject the idea of democracy as a form of politics, even when this form is described as ‘experimentalist’. Hence it is not by enlarging the range of places, practices, and methods of collective will-formation and decision-making that a renewed view of democracy can be attained. Indeed, Wolin believes that democracy can be associated with ordinary citizens only if it is taken out of the political arena and set in the rarefied space and time of the political. From ‘praxis’ it needs be converted into ‘event’. Unsurprisingly, Wolin sees the possibility of the emergence of democracy in revolutionary times, therefore assuming an irreducible tension between the revolutionary moment of rebellion and the constitutional gesture whereby a people gives itself a common law. The meaning of

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democracy is, therefore, captured by the dual tension between constitutional politics and revolutionary politics (Wolin, 1994b), which for Wolin means incompatibility between democracy as a principle and democracy as a regime bound by a constitution, to the point that “a constitution in setting limits to politics sets limits as well to democracy, constituting it in ways compatible with and legitimating of the dominant power groups in the society” (Wolin, 1994a, 14). On the other hand, “[r]evolutions activate the demos and destroy boundaries that bar access to political experience. … Thus revolutionary transgression is the means by which the demos makes itself political” (Wolin, 1994a, 18). The implication of this view is that “democracy … seems destined to be a moment rather than a form” (Wolin, 1994a, 19). Hence, because democracy cannot be instituted but can have only fugitive existence, the only hope for realizing it seems to reside in the multiplication of these fugitive moments, or in recalling their past existence. Wolin’s theory of democracy seems to be trapped in a deep contradiction. On the one hand, he insists that the very meaning of democracy is irreducible and even incompatible with any possible institutionalized form of government, and to that extent he emphasizes the occasional, fugitive, dimension as the only possible form in which democracy can manifest itself. On the other hand, when it comes to describing the content of democracy as fugitive, he is torn between two incompatible images. The first, to which he often resorts when he wishes to represent democracy, is that of revolution as opposed to constitution, or of the political as opposed to politics. Through these images, what is conveyed is the idea of rupture, of recreation of a collective will through acts of popular upsurge, those rare moments in which ‘the people speak’. To this extent, Wolin mobilizes the imaginary of ancient and modern political revolutions. The second image, to which he resorts when he wishes to exemplify cases of contemporary democracy, refers to the apparently incompatible situation of ordinary, everyday acts of political engagement which are neither rare nor disruptive. He exemplifies the emergence of democracy as follows: “individuals who concert their powers for low income housing, worker ownership of factories, better schools, better health care, safer water, controls over toxic waste disposal, and a thousand

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other common concerns of ordinary lives are experiencing a democratic moment and contributing to the discovery, care, and tending of a commonality of shared concerns” (Wolin, 1994a, 24). On the one hand, Wolin suggests to see constitutional democracy as “an ideological construction designed not to realize democracy but to reconstitute it and, as a consequence, repress it” (Wolin, 1994b, 32). On the other hand, the democratic practices he describes are possible only within the framework of a constitutional democracy. This conception is not only contradictory but in the end detrimental to the very ends he associates with democracy, insofar as it is inevitably committed to consider any attempt to reform institutions as hopeless at best, and misguided at worst. Indeed, if organization is, by definition, antidemocratic, and if democracy amounts to “the idea and practice of rational disorganization” (Wolin, 1994b, 37), then democracy itself can be realized only beyond formal structures of social organization. We are brought back to the ideal of a fugitive democracy that is always destined to give way to the administered logic of power distribution among elites or factions. The risk implicit in this romantic conception of democracy as rebellion is to remain blind to the emancipatory power of rules and institutions, and to content itself with the detached and nostalgic contemplation of those memorable events at which the people spoke. A misguided conception of the democratic potential of institutions and an ambiguous attitude toward the content and meaning of ordinary politics plague Wolin’s conception of democracy. As I will show, the ordinary conceptions of politics—the pragmatist variety included—will remove this contradiction by exploring in deeper ways the democratic potential of ordinary practices, and the pragmatist account will also show in detail why institutions matter in democracy, and how they should be reformed if we wish them to serve the democratic goals for which they were designed rather than be curbed by alien economic and political powers. It is indeed in the interstitial spaces of ordinary practices and social interactions, and in the more public domain of experimental social institutions which Wolin calls the “commonality of shared concerns”, that democracy is constantly renewed and achieved.

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Rancière’s Hatred of Democracy

Jacques Rancière sides with Wolin’s ideas and betrays the same defiance toward the democratic function of public and private institutions when he introduces the well-known distinction between the ‘police’ and ‘politics’. Like Wolin’s, Rancière’s theoretical framework is provided by a quasi-atemporal understanding of democracy as a universal tension that resurges constantly over the course of time, implicitly assuming that the usual distinction between the democracy of the Ancient—direct—and that of the Modern—representative—has to be rejected. But Rancière’s reflections on democracy also derive from the socialist tradition with which he shares his defiance of democracy, a system he suspects is a mere cover-up for class exploitation.9 Rancière seeks to make visible an irreducible tension between politics as the incessant rebellion of those that are exploited and claim universal equality, and politics as the reverse attempt to secure positions of privilege through command over institutions. As Wolin, Rancière too associates rebellion, rupture, and singularity with the authentic, and identifies any attempt to institutionalize social experience with the counter-revolutionary tendency to reinstall privilege. To articulate this basic intuition, Rancière develops a tripartite scheme which distinguishes between ‘le politique’ (the political), ‘la politique’ (politics), and ‘la police’ (police). Whereas ‘police’ refers to the administrative dimension of collective life and ‘politics’ to moments and conditions which enable egalitarian claims to emerge, the political defines the dialectical interplay among these two competing principles. Rancière introduces the term ‘police’ to name the administrative and distributive arrangements commonly seen as the realm of politics, which concern the inegalitarian organization of powers and the distribution of places and roles, what Rancière calls the “art of managing communities” (Rancière, 1998, 16). To this, he opposes politics as the eventful emergence of a claim to equality, equality being for Rancière the constituting principle of democracy. The term ‘police’ is intended to denote, and demote, the governmental dimension of politics—the part standing for the whole—while conveying the impatience of radical thinkers for a  See, in particular, the first part of Rancière (1998).

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dimension of collective life that is confined to day-to-day compromise or, which for Rancière is hardly the same, to the: “reasonable management of interests held in common” (Rancière, 1998, 12). Through the idea of ‘distribution of the sensible’, Rancière defines the positive operation of political institutions in terms of the institution of a given system of sensible, perceptible, and cognitive evidence, as that which defines, in Foucauldian terms, the limits of the visible and the sayable (Rancière, 2000). Here we see again the idea that ‘true’ politics cannot mean but the eruption of moments of freedom capable of breaking the iron cage of ordinary life. Consensus, agreement, understanding, are for Rancière the mere result of a previous ‘distribution of the sensible’ hence by definition they are the illegitimate consequence of the state of social relations which produced the existing distribution of the sensible. Hence representation and the other distinguishing features of democratic political institutions are reduced to a domesticating and perverting function, so that, for example, representative government amounts to nothing more than “an oligarchic form, a representation of minorities who are entitled to take charge of public affairs” (Rancière, 2014, 53). From here, it is but a step to conclude, with Wolin, that representation is “the exact contrary of democracy” (ibid.). By definition, constitutional democracy, as the domain of policing, puts in place a system of inequality and exploitation, providing a negative background against which stands democracy as the upsurge of claims to universal equality. Democracy as egalitarian politics manifests itself only as a historical accident, an exception in the long history of forms of domination. It is the fugitive result of disruptive events which contest the order of police and subverts the taken for granted representation of legitimate order, and in doing so creates temporary spaces where more egalitarian claims can be uttered. In Rancière’s words: “[d]emocracy is by no means a political regime in the sense of a specific constitution among diverse ways of bringing human beings together under a common authority. Rather, democracy is the institution of politics itself, the institution of its own subject and of its relational form” (Rancière, 1998, 232). Supposing it can be called a theory, Rancière’s conception of democracy should be praised for his stubborn insistence on the radical demands that equality imposes upon the form of common life.

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And indeed, as has been noted, his conception of democracy has rightly found important echoes in movements such as Occupy Wall Street and the Indignados, insofar as their claims are not couched in terms of a political program—something that would be immediately recaptured by the order of police—but rather as mere claims recalling that “another world is possible”, and in so doing they expose the illegitimate order of the present world.10 As Rancière has conceded, the democratic upsurges of politics, far from being mere testimonies of an ideal yet unapproachable world, can contribute to the improvement of the order of police by reactivating ideals that tend otherwise to be forgotten, and by potentially giving voice to those whose voice is constantly silenced. It remains, however, unclear at best how democratic politics can help redress the undemocratic order of police. The very logic of police, and the distrustful understanding of institutions as antidemocratic offers little hope that more egalitarian claims may receive a fair hearing. The problem is that Rancière’s distrust of institutions reveals a misunderstanding concerning the difference between historical struggles to achieve forms of political, civil, thus social inclusion through the extension of political, civil, and social rights to the entire population, and the struggles which these rights legitimate and make possible thanks to their institutional embodiment (Marshall, 2009). On the one hand, there is the democratic movement to create its own institutions. On the other hand, there is the movement within these institutions to keep them up to their own stated ideals. In other words, the distinction between policing and politics does not allow a differentiation between external and internal critique, with the consequence that the very idea of democratic institutions appears to be a paradox. For Rancière, institutions are always the site where democracy is perverted and domesticated, as if no progress had happened between the popular revolts of the first decades of the nineteenth century studied by Rancière and the rise of the welfare state some 130 years later. Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of revolutionary politics seems better suited to capture this para See, for example, Bassett (2014), Lorey (2014).

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dox: “there is nothing more futile than rebellion and liberation unless they are followed by the constitution of the newly won freedom” (Arendt, 2006, 133). Democracy can exist only in and through the operation of social and political institutions, something that fugitive conceptions of democracy systematically neglect.

3

Toward a Wide View of Democracy

Besides these theoretical moves, we may identify a third set of strategies which has been adopted to overcome the limitations of a purely governmental conception of democracy. Approaches within this set have attempted to expand the scope of the concept of democracy to the whole functioning of a social body in ways that share the ‘holistic’ attitude displayed by exceptionalist approaches, while at the same time offering a finer analyses of political and non-political patterns, institutions, and practices. With this move, we come closer to the project of a wide view of democracy pursued in this book. Hence, before introducing my own strategy, it is important to explain where it stands in comparison with similar strategies which also rely upon analogous vocabularies. Each in its own way, these conceptions emphasize the ordinary, distributed, pervasive character of democracy. In so doing, they accomplish a more decisive enlargement of the concept of democracy than that which can be found at the heart of the two sets of strategies discussed in previous sections of this chapter. This third set of strategies opens up new and original ways to rethink prospects of democracy in contemporary circumstances, at a time when participatory and deliberative approaches seem to have exhausted their propulsive power, and when exceptionalist conceptions of ‘the political’ fail to indicate concrete and practicable avenues for political and social change. This third approach is more encompassing, as it avoids the admitted limitations of its competitors, which in most cases confine their enlarging strategy either to specific practices (participation and deliberation), to historically determined actors (social movements, civil society), or to particular moments in time (revolutions, upsurges, constitutive or constitutional events).

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Democracy as a ‘Form of Society’

A conception of democracy which is significantly promising for the development of a wide view of democracy and which has significant points of contact with my views comes from the French political tradition spanning from Alexis de Tocqueville to Pierre Rosanvallon, and which finds in Claude Lefort’s theory of democracy as a form of society its most perspicuous formulation.11 By the formula “democracy as a form of society”, Lefort means that democracy denotes, first and foremost, the principle that organizes and shapes the type of society emerging after the fall of societies of the ancien régime, in which individual identity was primarily determined in terms of membership in social groups (states, états, Stände). Unlike these societies, the democratic society is a society of equals, in which the status of each is defined in terms of political but also social equality. The rejection of group membership as the basis of individual identity is also the basis of the critique of the principle of legitimate social hierarchy. It is in this sense that, according to Lefort, democracy is, in Marcel Mauss’ terminology, a “total social fact” which permeates all the dimensions of social life. The idea of democracy as a society of equals has a clearly descriptive/explanatory scope, insofar as it provides an account of western modernity as it unfolded out of the political revolutions of the modern era. But it has also a normative content, insofar as it defines a norm against which prima facie any form of social hierarchy should be contrasted. This in turn requires the removal of all the social, cultural, economic, educational, and political obstacles which hinder the realization of a society of equals in all dimensions of social life, that is, in the family, the workplace, education, the civil sphere, and access to political positions. This form of social equality can be achieved only if formal as well as informal conditions of access to symbolic, cultural, social, and material goods are equally distributed with no considerations of status. According  This theme spans most of Lefort’s writings since the late 1970s. For a general overview, see Flynn (2005). In Frega (2017d) I have compared Dewey and Lefort’s theories of democracy and claim that they overlap to a large extent, so that we can interpret Dewey’s theory of democracy as a way of life in the terms of Lefort’s theory of democracy as a form of society. The expression form of society is also used by Dewey. See Dewey (1888, ew1.232) and Dewey (1936, lw11.378). The approach I develop is derived from a re-interpretation of Dewey’s theory of democracy in light of Lefort’s. 11

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to this view, not only should the socio-economic division between upper and lower social strata be removed, but also the division between highbrow and popular culture, as well as the separation between liberal and professional education. Democracy as a society of equals can be defined neither in purely political (universal access to formal political rights) nor in socio-economic terms (removal of material causes of inequality). In addition to that, all dimensions of personal enjoyment, expression, and realization should be taken into account. Through his theory of democracy, Lefort does not merely aim at describing or justifying a given set of political institutions. Neither does he aim to extend the application of democratic principles and procedures beyond the realm of political institutions, for example through a theory of the civic society. His task is rather to conceive the political as an organizing principle which institutes a full-blown societal form and whose consequences permeate all dimensions of social life, beyond standard dualisms such as those of public and private, political and social, formal and informal. According to this view, aristocracy, democracy, and totalitarianism do not denote three forms of government, as is customary in western political thought. Rather, they denote three rival and incompatible general organizing principles which give shape to irreducibly different forms of society. The concept of democracy is broadened so that its scope encompasses the whole of social organization, but in terms that remain political because essentially tied to the notion of equality. This means that, in Lefort’s view, understanding democracy as a political category requires to study its implications in terms of social organization at all levels of the social structure. The underlying assumption is not only that there cannot be a democratic political organization outside a democratic form of society, so that democracy as a political regime is embedded in democracy as a form of society. More radically than this, Lefort claims that the political meaning of democracy can be grasped only by looking at how the democratic principle permeates the whole social body. Echoing Tocqueville, Lefort reminds us that whether in politics, in the professions, in the family, in civil society, between genders, or among age groups, societies under the ancien régime were organized according to a hierarchical principle which defined the position, rights, and duties of each individual according to the estate to which they belonged, so that all

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interpersonal relations bore the mark of asymmetry and social privilege. In contrast, the democratic society is a society of equals, in which the status of each is defined in terms of political as well as social equality. Within a democratic society, “equality puts one in presence of a ‘total social fact’ whose meaning is political, economical, juridical, moral, aesthetic (and which penetrates furthermore in the life of the mind itself, now opening itself up to once-forbidden thoughts)” (Lefort, 1999, 247). According to this view, the social and the political aspects of democracy are distinct but mutually interdependent: social equality is incomplete and inconsistent without political equality, and political equality is merely formal and inconsequential when severed from its social counterpart. So conceived, the concept of democracy is neither political nor apolitical in the usual sense. By referring to a social conception, what is meant is, therefore, not a reference to the social as an organizing principle somehow opposed to the political (in the same manner in which the private may be opposed to the public), but to the social as the overarching perspective which integrates the ensemble of multiple dimensions which characterize associated life.12 It follows that the opposition between political liberty and economic equality which has historically structured the contrast between liberal democracy and socialism fails to grasp this social conception of democracy. Contrary to that, theorists in this tradition contend that liberty and equality are at the heart of two rival interpretations of democracy: the liberal and the social-democratic. While the liberal ideal of human freedom and autonomy was forged in political terms and aimed at restraining the arbitrary exercise of power of states over individuals, the democratic ideal of equality was forged in political as well as social terms. It affirmed the rejection of hierarchy, privilege, and difference not only in politics  Whilst for Lefort democracy as a form of society and democracy as a political regime are inseparable because, historically, they stem from the same organizing principle, the relation between social and political ideas of democracy has been more complex. As historians of post-revolutionary France have shown, conservative thinkers attempted to separate social from political democracy with the aim of reconciling the revolutionary idea of a society of equals with a still anti-democratic and authoritarian political regime. Their assumption was indeed that the achievement of democracy as a form of society did not require the realization of democracy as a political regime (Rosanvallon, 1993). Tocqueville opposed this project under the assumption that combining social democracy and political aristocracy would have produced social instability and political unrest (Oskian, 2015, Ch. 2). For Lefort too such a project was misguided since the start. 12

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but in all walks of life. Hence political equality appears here as merely an aspect—albeit a decisive one—of a broader principle called upon to organize modern societies in terms radically different from those on which societies of the ancien régime were based.13 It is in this sense that, according to Lefort, democracy reveals “the truth of association as such” (Lefort, 1986, 225). By this, he means precisely that the advent of democracy cannot be measured merely in terms of a change in formal political institutions, but requires that the principle of equality permeates all spheres of social life. In continuity with Tocqueville, Lefort affirms that, if democracy is the attribute of social relations as such, then it cannot be implemented into only one social sphere while leaving the other spheres under the rule of a non-democratic principle. In so doing, Lefort shares Tocqueville’s conviction that a democratic political regime can exist only within a democratic society because people accustomed to non-­democratic relations in the ‘small things’ of daily life would sooner or later be tempted to reject the same egalitarian principle in the realm of the ‘big things’ which qualify politics. To say that democracy is a form of society and not merely a political regime implies that: “in the thick body of society everything holds together, so that a damage to the democratic tissue threatens to tear it all apart” (Lefort, 1986, 226). Following up on this social conception, Rosanvallon has developed Lefort’s intuitions by showing that, far from referring uniquely to political practices and institutions operating within the formal political sphere, the political principles which define democracy apply to a plurality of social practices which traverse the entire social body. His conception of democracy rejects any sharp discontinuity between state and society, assuming rather the existence of a continuum between diverse types of functionally equivalent normative practices taking place at different social sites. Taking the example of the democratic principle of contestation, Rosanvallon sees it as applying at the same time to practices of parliamentary political opposition and to a plurality of social practices such as denunciation of scandals, vigilance over the implementation of policies, pooling of information, whistleblowing, rating, watching, street protests,  On hierarchy and equality as principles of social organization see Dumont (1976). Louis Dumont has been a colleague of Lefort for decades at the EHESS. 13

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auditing, and striking (Rosanvallon, 2008). These practices are politically relevant because they implement at the societal level one of the central political requirements of democracy (the right to contestation and opposition), whilst through activities which do not take place within the political sphere and whose actors are non-political agents, such as journalists, the media, economists, lawyers, academics, social movements, NGOs, workers organizations, advocacy networks, and ordinary citizens. The relevance of this variant consists in making the shift to practices explicit and in adopting a functional standpoint which is consonant with the pragmatist theoretical framework here developed. As I have shown elsewhere (Frega, 2017d), the Lefortian and the Deweyan conceptions of democracy present stunning elements of proximity, and indeed Lefort’s formula ‘democracy as a form of society’ captures the essence of the pragmatist conception of democracy better than Dewey’s formula of the democratic way of life. At the same time, as I will show in Part II, the pragmatist social ontology provides a more complete and better articulated account of the Lefortian idea of democracy as a form of society, introducing subtler distinctions into it, and going significantly beyond the Tocquevillean account of the democratic function of voluntary associations that undergirds Lefort’s conception of democracy.

3.2

Democracy as a ‘Form of Life’

The Wittgensteinian tradition and its reception in ordinary language philosophy, particularly in the wake of Stanley Cavell’s, and later some strands of critical theory, have produced an original conceptualization of democracy in terms of Lebensform (form of life). While the similarities between political pragmatism and these projects are noteworthy and have often been emphasized,14 there are however significant differences that should not be underestimated. In this section I will emphasize differences in order to make the pragmatist alternative clearer. Thinkers in this tradition start with the assumption that the plurality of forms of life is a defining condition of democracy, once it is considered as a social form of life rather than a political regime. Whereas classical  See, for example, Ogien (2015), Laugier (2018).

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approaches to pluralism in the liberal tradition generally focus upon the institutional conditions that are required to protect the non-political private sphere, theorists of democracy as a form of life emphasize the all-­ encompassing meaning of democracy as the attribute of a form of life which includes social practices, institutions, world conceptions, perceptive patterns, attitudes and social orientations. Hence the very idea of democracy as a form of life implies a perfectionist standpoint, as it implies a reference to shared ideas of the good life (Ferrarese and Laugier, 2015). Works in this tradition favor descriptive and particularistic methodologies producing singular descriptions rather than general syntheses. Cavell’s original appraisal of Wittgensteinian themes emphasizes the fragility and vulnerability of human life forms. A politics of forms of life is one that focuses upon the hidden details of ordinary life, bringing to light the damage caused by gestures whose political relevance may appear to be contested (Laugier, 2015). According to this perspective, democracy as a form of life denotes an ethical system based on the awareness of the intrinsic fragility and vulnerability of human beings, and which is committed to the task of educating citizens to this caring attitude. It is a perspective that is intentionally perfectionist, one, however, seen by most of its supporters as compatible with liberalism insofar as it does not consist in an ethical doctrine but rather in a critical and therapeutic attitude that is a defining ingredient of the democratic way of life. The notion of forms of life connects human experience with the larger space of nature. Speaking of forms of life means challenging the boundaries that separate culture and nature, with the aim of making more visible the entanglement between these two dimensions (Ferrarese and Laugier, 2015). Or, in other terms, emphasizing that if democracy is our natural environment, it is also directly connected with the task of caring for our global environment. According to this view, an ethics of care should be at the heart of our relations with the environment as well as with our fellow human beings, and this caring attitude should be integrated into our understanding of what democracy means. Recent works in the tradition of critical theory have followed a similar line of inquiry, combining Wittgensteinian, pragmatist, and critical perspectives in the idea that the critique of forms of life can fill the normative demand for an emancipatory project in politics, particularly in democratic

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politics (Honneth, 2015; Jaeggi, 2014; Loick, 2017; Celikates, 2015). A form of life can, therefore, be praised or criticized on the basis of its own immanent criteria, which in modern societies should be defined in terms of their democratic potential. Theodor Adorno’s analyses can also be easily inscribed within a politics of forms of life. By analyzing capitalism as a failed form of life, Adorno defines the entire civilizational process of Western modernity under the category of commodity exchange, hence affording space for a program of social critique (Honneth, 2005). The very idea of capitalism as a form of life is also connected with Georg Lukacs’ theory of reification and represents an attempt to grasp in a single image the essential features of a civilization, rather than limiting itself to selfcontained definitions of capitalism as a mode of production. Consonant with this tradition, but emphasizing instead the emancipatory content of the project of modernity, Axel Honneth has introduced the concept of democratic ethos (Honneth, 2014, 2015) to describe the societal consequences of extending the three principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity to all spheres of social life. Honneth has insisted on the fact that social freedom—his catchphrase for the integration of the three democratic ideals—can be achieved only if it is consistently realized throughout the three social spheres of intimacy, labour, and politics. Finally, drawing on these traditions and on theories of social practice, Rahel Jaeggi defines forms of life as “a culturally informed ‘order of human co-existence’ that encompasses an ‘ensemble of practices and orientations’ as well as their institutional manifestations and materializations” (Jaeggi, 2015, 16). By fusing together the lifeworld of human reproduction with the more specialized spheres of production, communication, and power, theories of lifeforms emphasize continuity among the diverse human environments, rather than the discontinuities among functionally differentiated spheres. The upshot of these approaches for democratic theory is that understanding democracy as a form of life requires to overcome the separation between the private, the social, the economic, and the political spheres, emphasizing instead their ­commonalities, under the assumption that all these spheres have a profound impact on the conditions of possibility of human life, that they all contribute to giving it its distinctive form. While it is not yet clear what contribution the notion of forms of life can make to democratic theory—so far its tenants have preferred to speak

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more generally of a ‘politics of forms of life’ rather than of democracy as a form of life—it is obvious that this approach calls for a broadened interpretation of the scope of politics, hence of democracy as a normative political concept. Moreover, while differing in their methodologies and normative standpoint, these approaches share the assumption that political theory as such must provide such a standpoint from which political regimes, and more broadly, forms of life must be examined, evaluated, and criticized. Hence they share the assumption that the critique of forms of life is a legitimate and even necessary task of political theory (Jaeggi, 2014), so that a theory of democracy should, and indeed must, provide a standpoint from which a given form of life can be evaluated. This task requires, in turn, adopting a concept of democracy wide enough to sustain this ambitious and complex goal.

4

Conclusion

The three enlarging strategies discussed in this chapter have distinct advantages and obvious limitations, and my goal has been to emphasize both with the aim of problematizing the very concept of a wide view of democracy through the exploration of competing alternative solutions. As noted, among the added advantages I assign to approaches belonging to the first group, the most important concerns their capacity to shed light on social dimensions which are the necessary complement to the functioning of democratic political institutions. In particular, the first series of approaches provides insight into how democracy can be expanded, for example, through processes of education aimed at promoting a democratic ethos, through processes of reform aimed at democratizing the workplace, and through a set of institutional guarantees protecting the existence of a thriving public sphere. While each reveals a clear tendency to go beyond the set of formal political institutions, none, ­however, offer a systematic account of a democratic society, or identifies a core of democratic principles whose application throughout society could be used as a criterion to assess its democratic quality. Their enlarging strategies remain generally confined to specific social contexts such as the market or the public sphere, to specific sets of social actors such as social

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movements or the broader civil society, to limited dimensions of human experience such as education or the virtues, or to specific practices such as participation and deliberation. In no case do we find an attempt to provide an all-encompassing and comprehensive account of all these enlarging strategies, so that the richness of the detail is never taken to a higher synthesis. Symmetrically, approaches such as Wolin’s and Rancière’s jump too hastily to a unifying principle of synthesis, finding it in a romanticized account of those rare moments when the social bond is broken, administrative rationality comes to a standstill, and the voice of the people ruffles the curtain of such instituted routines which systematically silence it. Yet these approaches blatantly fail to answer the most basic questions a theory of democracy should tackle. Whilst they rightly remind us that politics is about more than bread and butter questions handled with problem-solving rationality, they fail to point us in the right direction. The third series of approaches provides a more balanced solution, as they point more forcefully at the politicization of society beyond the sphere of formal political institutions while remaining sensible to the details of how democracy permeates ordinary life. Both ideas of democracy as a form or life and of democracy as a form of society grapple with the task of providing a unified framework for expanding the scope of the concept of democracy, while preserving its intrinsically normative function. For this reason, all these attempts should be seen to contribute to the project of developing a wide view of democracy. Pragmatism is inscribed within this third strand of political-­ philosophical traditions, one that has consistently and systematically emphasized the wrong-headedness of any attempt to separate formal politics from the broader dimensions of social life. Like the other approaches reviewed in this section, pragmatism too brings politics back into society. Yet, as I intend to show, it does so in a way that better preserves the theoretical gains achieved by the theories reviewed in this ­chapter while avoiding their shortcomings. As Chaps. 4 and 5 will show, pragmatism provides a general theoretical framework within which the plurality of strategies described above can be integrated and combined, so that richness of detail is not achieved at the cost of lack of perspicuity, and breadth of scope is combined with a set of analytical categories

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through which the plurality of social spheres can be brought under the unifying scope of a single normative concept—that of democracy. To articulate this view, pragmatists have proceeded in two ways, whose theoretical relevance can be grasped only once they are combined. On the one hand, they have emphasized that ‘democracy’ denotes a normative standard whose field of application is the entire social world. On the other hand, they have shed light on the normative requirements of distinctively political forms of collective action. Politics is no longer seen as a completely autonomized sphere of social action, but rather as the specialization of functions which are already present and diffused in social life. As a consequence, the democratic norm can be referred to a form of human association and to forms of political organization and practice. An interaction-based theory of life-forms (social ontology) and a group-­ based theory of politics constitute its complementary, necessary, and inseparable pillars which, combined together, describe democracy as a form of society and as a repertoire of normative practices (Frega, 2014). The social ontology of democracy is composed of three principles, which combined together account for the structuring and destruction of patterns of associated living, that is, habits, patterns of social interaction, and organizational forms. Habits refer to the plasticity of human nature and to the human capacity to stabilize patterns of action through the habitualized regularity of conduct. Patterns of social interaction refer to the intersubjective dimensions of human life, to recurrent ways of interacting. Organizational forms refer to the ways patterns of social interaction are integrated in the more stable forms of collective agency such as associations, enterprises, and bureaucracies. More than to ontological layers of social reality, habits, patterns of interaction, and organizational forms refer to principles of social organization. These principles can be referred to in order to explain the genesis and functioning of the diverse forms of human association which span social life, from the most basic and informal primary associations (the family, a group of friends) to the most complex and formal institutions composing the constitutional architecture of a modern state and its tentacular bureaucracy. At the heart of the practice-based theory of politics is the idea that activation is always a collective enterprise, and that politics proper refers to the way in which publics form, act, and dissolve in time. Whereas the

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interaction-based theory of life-forms focuses upon the social functioning of a democratic society—emphasizing the importance of ethos, associations, organizational forms, the practice-based dimension focuses rather upon the practical and interactional dimension of politics, politics as the capacity to identify and pursue shared goals in a variety of ways from the most informal practices of social unrest (protests, demonstrations, movements) to the most formal practices of organization (creation of parties and associations, institutional reform). The next part will present these theoretical elements in greater detail.

3 The Normativity of Democracy

In this chapter I introduce and discuss two main theoretical aspects that will guide us throughout the book. Both dimensions concern the epistemological status of the notion of democracy. The first has to do with the apparently self-evident idea that democracy is a normative concept, and is directly connected with the idea of a social ontology of democracy. The second concerns the idea of normative practices, and is tied with the second pillar of my approach, ie the group-based dimension of politics. I will begin by questioning some basic assumptions concerning our understanding of the intuitive idea that democracy is a normative concept. The underlying idea is that to appreciate the novelty of the pragmatist move we must understand at which level it produces its most significant effects. A distinction between two senses of normativity is introduced with the aim of explaining which is the theoretical horizon pragmatists wish to cover with their concept of democracy. In particular, I want to show that the pragmatist social ontology of democracy, that will be discussed in subsequent chapters, provides a solid basis for an ambitious attempt at reconstructing the whole domain of political normative theory around the concept of democracy. In a further step, I introduce the idea of normativity as practice, and the correlated notion of normative practices, to © The Author(s) 2019 R. Frega, Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18561-9_3

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provide an appropriate theoretical framework within which to inscribe the pragmatist account of the genesis and dynamics of collective mobilization. What will be later described in the terms of a social conception of democracy and of a political theory of publics is here conceptually explored in the theoretically more abstract terms of a wide view of democracy whose main pillars are provided by an enlarged understanding of the normative scope of democracy and by a practice-based conception of politics. This preliminary discussion wishes to provide a solid theoretical framework for explaining why political pragmatism privileges democracy over justice, freedom, equality, or nondomination as the core normative concept of political theory. In presenting this larger normative framework I will also lay out the three normative principles that provide the theoretical backbone of the pragmatist theory of democracy subsequently developed. These are the three principles of (a) relational parity, (b) inclusive authority, and (c) social involvement. In the last part of the chapter I will then proceed to introduce and discuss another distinctive feature of a pragmatist conception of democracy, which is its practice-based understanding of political democracy as group mobilization. The notion of practice serves here to complement the social ontology of democracy, with its more static focus on patterns of social organization, by focusing on patterns of action more explicitly endowed with a transformative goal. Whereas the social ontology sheds light on the sociological structuration of a democratic society, emphasizing its organizing principles, the practice-based account is rather aimed at exploring how a democratic society tackles new emerging problems. For this reason, it is more concerned with practices as collective transformative events whereby existing normative orders become the object of reflective and transformative actions (Frega, 2014). Normative practices describe the ‘political phase’ of democracy, that which sustains processes of social change through which democratization as a transitional process may be produced. The two approaches overlap in several ways, so that one can see them as competing and yet complementary perspectives on the same social reality. According to the first, we start from a unified definition of democracy as an all-encompassing principle that organizes social reality at its different levels, we apply it to all dimensions of social life and we seek for what is common to the different ways

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in which the democratic way of life explicates itself: in the organization of family life, in the workplace, in interactions among strangers in public places, in the way public institutions are designed and managed, and so on. The concept of democracy refers here to a type of social order. According to the second model, we start from a more politically qualified definition of democracy as a way of putting into action forms of collective agency and try to extend its normative implications beyond the standard set of formal political institutions. Whereas the social ontology describes how a democratic society should be organized, the practice-­ based approach focuses on how the democratic quality of a given society can be improved by forms of collective activation which intentionally aim at challenging and changing the existing social order. The concept of democracy refers here to patterns of organized collective action. Order and action, as it will turn out, are the two basic dimensions of social life, so that a wide view of democracy must necessarily include a theory of democracy as social order and a theory of democracy as collective action. As I will have time to explain in what follows, the second approach proves more rewarding when it comes to questions of accountability and legitimacy of newly emerging normative orders in contexts in which traditional political institutions falter.

1

Two Senses of Normativity

According to a widely shared view, a concept is normative when it provides a benchmark against which to assess actions, events, or states of affairs. Stephen Darwall captures this basic understanding when he writes that: “[s]omething is said by philosophers to have ‘normativity’ when it entails that some action, attitude or mental state of some other kind is justified, an action one ought to do or a state one ought to be in” (Darwall, 2001). This conception is generally formulated in terms of norm compliance, where compliance may come by degrees and describes the adequacy of a piece of reality to an external standard fixing the condition in which that piece of reality should find itself. Its basic intuition is that a normative concept provides a standard against which a portion of reality can be assessed. In the domain of politics, to which the concept of democracy

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belongs, the concepts of pleasure, utility, equality, freedom, justice, and domination are normative in that sense. Indeed, each provides a standard against which the value or appropriateness of an action, event, or state of affairs can be assessed in terms that are politically relevant. For example, when we say that an institution is organized according to criteria of social equality, that a regime is just, that a constitution respects human freedom, or that a social arrangement enables individuals to pursue their utility or their happiness, we are using these concepts in a normative way, that is, we use them to assess an action, event, or state of affairs and to assign it positive value. Democracy is clearly a normative concept in that sense. When we say that a regime, an organization, or a procedure is ‘democratic’ or ‘undemocratic’, what we mean is precisely that this regime, organization, or procedure is politically good or bad, and the concept ‘democracy’ specifies in what sense good or bad. Let us call this first conception ‘norm compliant’. This is also second major way in which a political concept can play a normative function. According to this second view, rather than defining a benchmark with limited object validity, a normative concept provides a general framework for interpreting human reality. When used in this way, a concept has the capacity to provide a comprehensive and overarching interpretive framework which accounts for the whole of political reality as well as other major normative concepts. This second sense of normativity cannot be reduced to a merely larger form of norm-compliance. A political concept with paradigmatic normative scope is a concept that aspires to offer a comprehensive account of the largest possible portion of human experience in terms that are politically relevant. When a concept succeeds in playing this normative function, it exercises a specific form of intellectual orientation. More than merely setting a standard against which events or states of affairs can be assessed, it helps to structure a broad domain of experience and organize its overall normative content. Owing to its wider scope, I propose to call this second conception of normativity ‘paradigmatic’. As I will explain in the next section, a paradigm normative concept is (a) primitive and (b) has a scope that covers, potentially, the whole domain of politics. As used in this text, the term paradigm is similar to Thomas Kuhn’s use, in which it

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means a complex and multidimensional interpretative framework through which a large portion of reality is appraised, and which consists not only of theories but also of explanatory examples, protocols, and methods of empirical inquiry. Reference to Kuhn helps identify another crucial feature of paradigmatic normativity, which is its indefinite openness: its scope is not only wider but also open-ended, insofar as the paradigm does not consist in a closed definition of its own object but rather in a sort of generative scheme.1 The generative and open-ended nature of paradigm connects with the idea that democracy denotes a project rather than a set of more or less fixed institutions. Throughout the current text, paradigm and norm refer to the status a political concept is given within a theory or discourse. The terms paradigm and norm do not refer to intrinsic properties of concepts but rather to consequences of their use. If we look at the history of political ideas, we observe that few concepts have historically exercised a paradigmatic normative function. In modern and contemporary western political thought, it seems that only freedom, justice, and non-domination have succeeded in this task.2 Other political ideals such as equality and fraternity haven’t so far achieved a comparable status. My contention is that democracy too has failed to achieve the status of a paradigmatic normative concept, and this has negatively affected our understanding of democracy itself. The main reason for introducing this distinction between norm and paradigm normativity is to stimulate a reflection on the fact that, while the concept of democracy has been widely used in the last 30 years, even inflationarily, its normative potential in guiding our theoretical and practical reflections upon how to live together has remained overshadowed by the much wider reach of concepts of justice or non-domination, which have gained a much broader explanatory scope and have generally succeeded in reducing the normative core of the concept of democracy to their own terms, as the works of authors such as John  I have to thank Jörg Volbers for having pointed out to me the connection between paradigmatic normativity and open-endedness. 2  To this list we may add the concept of legitimacy, which in the political sciences seems to have played a similar paradigmatic function. 1

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Rawls and Philip Pettit show. A way of re-describing this empirical fact is to say that, whereas justice and non-domination have largely been acknowledged and used as normative concepts in both senses, the ­concept of democracy has been de facto conceived and used only as a normative concept in the norm-compliance sense. As a consequence, while the last half century has seen a stunning proliferation of norm-compliance theories of democracy, and while some of them, such as participatory, associative, and deliberative conceptions have achieved significant results in clarifying a wider understanding of the normative scope of the concept of democracy, very little has been done to assign democracy the full status of a paradigm normative concept. The upshot of this situation is that political theorists tend generally to explain the norm of democracy in terms that are extraneous to this concept. They tend for example to say that democracy is the political regime that is most conducive to a just society, or that political democracy promotes nondomination. To claim that democracy is a paradigm concept requires that these and similarly reductionist explanations be rejected, and that instead we explain democracy through democracy. To do this, we should postulate that democracy has an intrinsic normative value. Failure to acknowledge the paradigmatic content of the concept of democracy has produced two interrelated and yet distinct orders of consequences which, taken together, have significantly undermined the theoretical potential of the concept of democracy. The first has been the mainstream tendency to explain the normativity of democracy in largely reductionist terms. The second consequence has been either the discouragement of attempts to develop theories of democracy the scope of which would be as wide as that of theories of justice or non-domination. The upshot of these two tendencies has been that the normative potential of the concept of democracy has been diluted, since it is always reduced to other concepts considered more primitive. In addition, its normative scope has been narrowed down, mostly to the domain of the theory of government. Therefore, developing a paradigm-normativity conception of democracy is required if we wish to understand the full normative potential this political concept can deliver.

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Primitiveness and Rival Non-reducibility

Normative concepts used as paradigms share a tendency to join with one another in similar relational patterns which can be formulated in terms of primitiveness and rival non-reducibility. By saying that a notion is primitive, I mean that its normative meaning is not derived from other concepts. To say that a concept is primitive means that it has an intrinsic value, by which it is generally meant that its realization is not pursued for the sake of other, higher, ends, but is an end in itself. To say that a concept is non-reducible means that it is genuinely normative, by which we mean that it cannot be explained in terms of other normative concepts. Primitiveness is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a concept to exercise paradigmatic normativity. Hence a concept can be primitive and non-reducible yet lack the capacity to exercise ‘paradigm normativity’. For example, the concept of democracy can be said to be politically primitive and non-reducible, yet its scope can remain limited to the domain of formal political institutions. Primitiveness is necessary because it avoids reduction to supposedly more fundamental concepts. Yet it is insufficient because paradigmatic functioning also requires width of scope. Hence a concept that has paradigm normativity (a) should be primitive, and (b) should have a scope that covers potentially the whole domain of politics, and not only a limited portion such as the theory of government, as is the case with many theories of democracy.3 It is indeed in that sense that we can say that a normative concept operates as a paradigm. The second feature of this view of normativity concerns relations among paradigm normative concepts. Normative concepts that are considered to possess paradigmatic meaning operate as rival and incompatible frameworks in at least two senses: (1) a paradigm concept is generally presented as having sufficient scope to provide a general framework within which a comprehensive normative theory can be articulated, and (2) a paradigm concept is considered to have the normative resources  Ceva and Ottonelli (2015) for example construe the concept of democracy as being primitive and at the same time strictly confined to the domain of politics. Such an account would be insufficient for the purposes of a paradigmatic account, precisely because it lacks sufficient width of reach. 3

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which are needed to define all other normative concepts in its own terms.4 Interpreted as paradigms, normative concepts are characterized by a high level of abstraction and a potentially very wide domain of application. To say that a concept has paradigmatic normative content means, therefore, endowing it with the power of organizing conceptually a large domain of reality, implicitly disabling other concepts from playing the same function. Distinguishing norm-compliance from paradigmatic conceptions of normativity helps us see that the adoption of a reductionist attitude toward democracy is the outcome of a preliminary—and generally not justified—decision concerning what should be taken as the reference paradigm normative concept. It is precisely such a decision that I intend to make visible and then problematize. The normative status of democracy has generally been analyzed through the lenses of two conceptual distinctions, both of which, I will contend, fail to grasp the meaning conveyed by the distinction between norm-compliance and paradigmatic normativity. The first distinction opposes instrumental to non-instrumental conceptions of democracy. Instrumentalist arguments conceive of democracy as a mere external means to pursue values whose justification is prior and independent of that of democracy. Hence by definition they fail to grasp the distinctive value of democracy as they reduce it to a means to produce other goods. Whilst remaining reductivist, non-instrumentalist or constitutive arguments conceive of democracy as a constitutive component of a larger and higher value. The main difference between instrumentalist and constitutive arguments is that, whereas for instrumentalists the relation between democracy and the good is external, for constitutivists such a relation is internal (Christiano, 2015; Rostbøll, 2014). Hence, while an instrumentalist should be ready to abandon democracy if other means prove more effective in reaching the relevant normative ideal, constitutivists claim  Gould (2014) takes a different route from mine and proposes instead to combine different normative frameworks into an integrated one. I do not think that this route is feasible, precisely because of the intrinsic logic of normative concepts. In fact, what Gould does is the opposite of what she claim she is doing. Rather than combining a plurality of normative frameworks, she develops a justice-based conception within which she proceeds to accommodate the normative requirements of freedom, democracy, and human rights. 4

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that it is only through democracy that other relevant normative ideals can be attained. It should be noted that, whereas the majority of instrumentalist approaches are developed within the framework of a purely political conception of democracy as regime or procedure, constitutivists are generally more open toward wider accounts of democracy.5 Yet both instrumentalists and constitutivists operate under the assumption that democracy is a normative concept only in the norm-compliance sense. The second distinction we generally find in the literature opposes reductivist to non-reductivist approaches. Reductivists—who include both instrumentalists and constitutivists—admit the primary status of democracy as a political regime or procedure but explain it in terms of other external values it helps to achieve. On the other hand, anti-­ reductivists claim that democracy is a primitive concept, hence it denotes something that has to be pursued for its own sake. Anti-reductivist approaches can be divided into two groups. The first group (A) includes approaches that vindicate democracy as a primitive concept on the basis of purely political arguments.6 While theories within this group overcome the major shortcomings of reductivist ones, they still fail to explain the paradigmatic normative content of the concept of democracy, as they reduce the scope of the concept to political regimes. They then fail to see that democracy can play a theoretical role different from that of defining a theory of political institutions, being instead the cornerstone of a much larger and more encompassing normative framework, in the same manner as justice and non-domination. The second group (B) includes approaches that explain the normative primitiveness of democracy by scaling it up from the domain of politics to a larger one, generally that of morality.7 Conceiving democracy as a moral idea is a typical move used to justify it in anti-reductivist terms. It is, however, not clear to what extent a moral or social explanation of democracy is really anti-­reductivist,  By democracy as regime I mean a conception of democracy defined in terms of political institutions such as the separation of powers, universal suffrage, constitutional guarantees. By democracy as procedure I mean a conception of decision making based on criteria of equal power and inclusion. 6  See Ceva and Ottonelli (2015), Rostbøll (2014). 7  “Normative democratic theory deals with the moral foundations of democracy and democratic institutions. […] It aims to provide an account of when and why democracy is morally desirable as well as moral principles for guiding the design of democratic institutions” (Christiano, 2015, 1). 5

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as the moral content of democracy is generally explained in terms of supposedly more primitive moral notions such as respect, equality, or freedom. What in the end is lost through these distinctions is the basic intuition that democracy, like other normative concepts such as justice and non-domination, has a dual status: whereas at the ordinary level of political theory it provides the basis for a political conception of how formal political institutions should be designed, at the higher paradigm level it provides a larger normative account of how the whole of social life should be organized, therefore offering normative guidelines for the largest possible array of interpersonal relations. Conceiving democracy as a paradigm normative concept provides a third alternative approach, one that shares with group A the ambition to go beyond the merely political dimension of democracy as regime or procedure, and with group B the ambition to provide a fuller explanation of what makes the qualities and institutional features of political democracy distinctively valuable. Yet it does so by correlating them with properties that have a broader theoretical reach. Before developing at some length this model, in the next section I will explore the logic of paradigm normative concepts by showing how the concepts of justice and non-domination operate at both a normative level, that is, they provide the normative core of a theory of political institutions, meanwhile identifying positive and highly desirable traits of social phenomena—be they events, situations, entities, or any other ontological types of social existence.

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 ompeting ‘Paradigm’ Normative C Concepts

Introducing the distinction between norm-compliance and paradigm normativity clarifies the apparent paradox according to which, while democracy has achieved unrivaled political standing, its meaning is systematically framed in the theoretical terms of other normative notions such as justice, freedom, or non-domination. Indeed, there is plentiful evidence that political philosophy has rarely considered democracy to be the paradigmatic normative concept assigned to the task of structuring

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the whole conceptual field of politics. Liberal theory has traditionally assigned this task to the concept of liberty and, since John Rawls, to that of justice. Similarly, republicanism, Marxism, and critical theory have tended instead to side with non-domination. Even if (or when) these traditions are thoroughly committed to democratic ideals and institutions, their allegiance to democracy has been the indirect and derivative result of a prior endorsement either of justice or of non-domination as paradigm normative concepts. As a consequence of this methodological way of proceeding, in all these traditions the concept of democracy plays only a limited and subordinate role, and tends to be confined to the domain of the theory of government. Its status is that of a derivative, non-primitive normative concept. Until recently, freedom has provided the mainstream paradigm normative framework for liberal theory. The preservation of freedom, its diffusion, and its custody have been normative goals that the liberal tradition has consistently pursued for more than four centuries. Freedom was (and is) the highest good a political system should deliver, but it is also the presupposition upon which an entire vision of society has been built, that is, providing normative guidance in the domains of personal intimacy, economic exchange, and cultural and spiritual life. From this vantage point, democracy has been seen essentially as a system of government, a regime instrumentally praised for its superior capacity to provide the institutional conditions under which liberty could be achieved in the political domain.8 The appearance of Rawls’ Theory of Justice significantly changed the situation, determining in particular the fundamental shift from freedom to justice as the paradigm normative concept of liberal theory. Justice has also rapidly acquired the status of paradigm normative category for authors not directly inscribed within the classical liberal tradition, such as Ian Shapiro, Michael Walzer, Amartya Sen, or Martha Nussbaum. A similar trend has been at play also within critical theory, as can be seen in the works of Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Rainer Forst. Through these and other theoretical moves, the scope of justice has been extended to all domains of social life, referring to the ways in which a large variety of social goods including education, health, and the quality  See, for example, Sartori (1987).

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of the environment are distributed within a society. In an even deeper way, theories of recognition and of social justice have contributed to consolidate justice as a paradigm normative concept capable of extending the normative reach of the concept of justice to the whole of social life, from intimate relations within the family to those more formal relations made possible by the legal system. The concept of non-domination has undergone a similar trajectory, progressively reaching the status of a paradigmatic normative concept whose scope is as wide as that of justice. Indeed, for a large plurality of traditions in political philosophy including Marxism, republicanism, and critical theory, non-domination provides the normative standard against which to assess the largest possible array of social phenomena. Like justice, non-domination too can in principle be applied to all patterns of human interaction, in the public as well as the private sphere. As Pettit among others has made clear, while republicanism originated essentially as a political theory of government, non-domination, “as a condition under which a person is more or less immune, and more or less saliently immune, to interference on an arbitrary basis” (Pettit, 1997, viii) has significantly broadened its scope, as it applies to any form of interaction among individuals. As such, domination and non-domination describe relations that can take place at all levels of social life. They are, in that sense, paradigm normative concepts. All these paradigm concepts are interrelated, so that each can, at least partially, accommodate the normative requirement set by the others. However, because each one operates as a hegemonic framework, it will also tend to subordinate the other normative categories to itself. Whilst adopting a paradigm normative framework does not require or imply rejection of the others, it will, as a general rule, imply their theoretical subordination. This fact has deep-seated consequences. With reference to democracy, it is indeed evident that, while it is true that justice and non-­ domination in their paradigmatic normative function acknowledge the relevance of democracy, the place they assign it is inevitably narrower than the position that a democracy-based paradigm normative framework would allow.

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 emocracy as a ‘Paradigm’ Normative D Concept

By and large, the western tradition in political philosophy has understood democracy as a political category that describes a regime or a form of government. This conception has dominated political philosophy from Aristotle’s Politics to our times. In the terms I have introduced, the western tradition has denied the concept of democracy paradigm normative status. As a consequence, the concept of democracy has generally been articulated in the terms set by other paradigm normative concepts, be it freedom, justice, or non-domination. Under these conditions, the very idea that democracy could describe a final state desirable in itself has appeared ill-conceived. Contrary to this mainstream understanding, I wish to suggest that democracy can be entitled the same paradigm normative status traditionally endowed upon justice and non-domination, provided it is conceptualized in appropriate ways. As I have indicated above, a definition of democracy which is suited to fulfill the paradigm normative role demands a high level of abstraction to avoid identification with too narrow cultural or historical content. It also requires a broad range of application so as to fulfill the function of normative guidance that is typical of paradigmatic normative concepts. To function as a paradigmatic normative concept, democracy needs to have a scope that cannot be limited to a sub-set of social phenomena such as the functioning of political institutions or procedures. A higher level of abstraction and a broader scope can be achieved in two ways. The first consists in identifying democracy with one or more political requirements (principles or procedures) and extending their reach beyond the realm of politics. The second approach proceeds in the reverse order and begins by defining democracy as a social category, one that describes broader societal phenomena of which political democracy is but a specification. This is a more radical and less followed route, one that is, however, more promising as it takes its starting point in a dimension of experience that is prior to its articulation in political institutions and procedures. As anticipated in the introduction, this is the route I propose to follow and that I will introduce in the next section.

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Before examining this strategy, let me explain why I consider the first alternative to be second rate. Two major strategies have been followed to provide a wider account of democracy based on the extension of its political core. The first focuses upon democracy as a procedure for decision-­ making—in the manner pursued notably by deliberative and participative theorists—while the second emphasizes democracy as a method for managing power. The participatory conceptions of democracy articulated by Carole Pateman and Jane Mansbridge are an example of the first approach (Pateman, 1970; Mansbridge, 1983). Participatory and deliberative theorists begin by identifying democracy with inclusive and deliberative forms of decision-making, and then proceed to extend the scope of the concept of democracy to all those institutions and situations within which decisions are taken according to democratic procedures. The second strategy, exemplified by Ian Shapiro’s theory of democratic justice (Shapiro, 1999) proceed in a similar way but singles out horizontal management of power relations as the normative core of democracy whose application should be extended to the whole society. Consistently with the wide view, he proposes to analyze family relations and workplace interaction from the perspective of their compliance with an egalitarian norm of power management. Both strategies begin with a political concept of democracy and proceed to extend its reach beyond the realm of formal political institutions to the functioning of the whole society. From the perspective I’m developing, both strategies are promising and yet still incomplete because unilateral. While indeed participation as well as horizontal power relations belong to the idea of democracy, neither one of them nor their combination exhaust its content. Theorists following this strategy insist upon the instrumental value of democracy as a means for achieving other ends, in being a subordinate good necessary only insofar as it is the best means to achieve superordinate goods. As Shapiro writes: “[c]ollective goals are better pursued democratically than not, and better pursued more democratically than less democratically” (Shapiro, 1999, 24). In the case of Shapiro’s substantial account of democratic justice, the legal or negative dimension of freedom is constantly over-emphasized in a way that clearly reflects a liberal understanding of politics based on the idea of an autonomous and self-determined individual striving to pursue their interests and fulfilling their preferences.

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This should come, however, as no surprise, as the very method consisting in first taking a political definition of democracy and then extending it to the whole social body inevitably ends up finding in society what had previously been included in the political definition of democracy itself. While I concur with Shapiro’s claim that deliberation or participation should not achieve the status of final ends, from the vantage point of a social account of democracy his strategy is plagued by the same mistake of participatory accounts, which consists in reducing the social dimension of democracy to the domination of a single political factor, be it participation, deliberation, or managing power. A similar fate plagues those conceptions of democracy which reduce its normative core to one of its three constitutive principles, be it freedom, equality, or solidarity. The reason for this is simple, although demonstrating it would require much more space: it is that each of these three principles expresses a distinct, necessary but not sufficient feature of the normative core of this concept. While the case of liberty seems more evident in light of the debate having opposed liberalism to democracy—or liberal democracy to social democracy—the recent resurgence of egalitarianism has given new impetus to this reductive move. As I show in the following section, the idea of equality—and hence egalitarianism—accounts only for one of the three principles defining democracy as a paradigmatic concept. Three major claims are therefore at the basis of my project: (1) we should consider ‘democracy’ as a paradigm normative concept, and develop a theory that is consistent with this assumption; (2) the best chances of success are obtained when we adopt a social rather than a political notion of democracy; (3) a social interactionist ontology of democracy provides a suitable basis for developing a paradigmatic theory of democracy. While other strategies can certainly be envisaged to develop a paradigmatic conception of democracy, in this book I will develop a social approach, relying moreover on an interactionist account of social life. These claims will be historically articulated in Part II and their relevance for contemporary debates will be proven in Part III. I contend, therefore, that rather than starting with and confining oneself to a thin conceptual definition in the same manner in which the notions of justice and non-domination are currently defined, we need take a socialtheoretical route, as pragmatists themselves did. This will imply in turn

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relying upon empirically based arguments concerning the social dimension of human action and the basic forms of social cooperation, a reason why interaction based social theories will have to be mobilized in due course. More specifically, a social account of democracy should begin from the baseline of social interactions and proceed to identify social interactional patterns of which the concept of ‘democracy’ can be predicated and take this as the building block for a wider theory of democracy. Such a theory has two stages. The first consists in a theory of patterns of social interaction which should explain in what sense social interactions may be qualified as democratic. The second stage consists in a social ontology that, building on these social-interactionist micro-foundations, expands the scope of the concept of democracy to the largest possible domains of social life, from basic face-to-face interactions to formal political institutions. While both stages will be discussed at length in the following chapters, in the next sections I sketch a general overview of the argument.9

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 he Micro-foundation of Democratic T Theory and the Three Democratic Principles

An all-encompassing conception of democracy such as the one here developed must be able to explain under what conditions democratic properties are displayed by a plurality of social aggregates, what is their common denominator, and what the distinctive properties democracy acquires in the different social units of which it is predicated. Several options are available to those desiring to explore the consequences of a social-theoretical approach to the concept of democracy. Two are most prominent. The first is anthropological and seeks to identify universal traits of human nature which are assumed to correlate positively with forms of social and political organization to which the term ‘democracy’ may significantly apply. For example, theories of human development10 contend that under circumstances of sufficient material security the liberal values of freedom  But see also Frega (2019a, 2019b) for a more systematic account.  See, for example, Inglehart and Welzel (2005).

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and autonomy are endorsed by increasing numbers of individuals, and processes of democratization will inevitably follow. The second option is sociological and emphasized the differential contribution of diverse social dimensions to the realization of democracy. Honneth’s Hegelian account of democracy (Honneth, 2014) is an example of this second strategy, insofar as it specifies how the three social spheres of family life, the market, and the state should be organized in a society that complies with the democratic norm. A second, alternative and sociologically more refined sociological strategy consists in taking a unified approach to social reality, reconstructed from the baseline of its patterns of social interaction. Such an approach requires that we identify the major principles that preside over the overall organization of social life and that we establish which properties are associated to the predicate ‘democratic’. This is the strategy I will follow. The idea that social interaction is the basis of all social life has been defended by a plurality of sociological schools that I will group under the label of “social interactionists”, and which includes, beside the pragmatists, also the Chicago school of sociology, symbolic interactionism, and ethnomethodology.11 These approaches share the idea of a micro-­ foundation of social phenomena in elementary patterns of social interaction. This idea can be taken into the political realm and translated into that of a micro-foundation of democracy. Social interactionists generally subscribe to the following assumptions: (a) individual identity is shaped through social interactions in which individuals take part; (b) social interactions are the flesh of associated life and compose the constitutive order of social life; (c) properties of social interactions can be inherited by more complex social aggregates such as organizations and institutions, and (d) normative orders are a mix of formal and informal patterns of social interaction and their capacity to steer social life depends upon the combined effects of these different dimensions. It follows that normative expectations and requirements emerge out of social interactions. This means that we first experience democracy as a valuable normative trait within these patterns of interaction. We experience the value of democracy while engaging in interactions that are governed by 11

 Frega (2015c) explores in greater details the normative implications of social interactionism.

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specific norms, and we try subsequently to generalize the reach of these norms to the overall organization of society. This is an idealized argument: it does not mean that de facto historically we always achieve political democracy in this way, but that connecting political democracy to social democracy enhances our intelligence of why democracy matters to us, and of why democracy must denote an open-ended and unfinished project of democratization. It does not mean either that a democratic society should be intolerant of nondemocratic patterns of interaction, but that what provides the positive norm of social life within a democracy are some specific features of social patterns of interaction, rather than specific features of formal political institutions. The normative relevance of social interactions is directly tied to its constitutive function in determining the quality of human life by shaping individual identity as well as chances of social realization. Social interactionists suggest that democratic patterns of social interaction are characterized by the following traits: (a) a prima facie preference for horizontal and symmetrical patterns of interaction (hierarchy and asymmetry always need to be justified to those on whom they are imposed); (b) promotion of cooperative relations which acknowledge the reality of interdependence; (c) equal participation in practices of inquiry and decision-­making; (d) privilege of deliberation over other methods of taking decisions; (e) effective integration of all participants in social practices, and (f ) successful integration between the functional dimension of problem-solving and the expressive dimension of self-realization.12 These traits can be condensed into three major principles, whose political relevance appears immediately evident: (1) relational parity; (2) inclusive authority, and (3) social involvement. Relational parity obtains when an individual’s position within a relation and the specific content of that relation do not depend upon one’s social status. For example, when the status of citizen depends upon one’s economic standing, or when authority in a relation depends upon gender or race,13 the principle of relational parity is violated. Relational parity  For a similar list and a justification see, for example, Anderson (2009).  This is notably what happens in what Miranda Fricker calls cases of epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007). 12 13

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requires that social positions are not imposed on the basis of status, and that religion, gender, race, ethnicity, class and other social markers do not affect someone’s status within social interactions. The idea that democracy requires that interactions among individuals are not status-­ dependent—the Tocquevillean idea of democracy as the “society of equals”—has recently received fresh impetus under the banner of relational egalitarianism. Opposing traditional views of redistributive justice, relational egalitarianism has proposed the idea that: “in an egalitarian society people should relate to one another as equals or should enjoy the same fundamental status (and also perhaps the same rank and power)” (Arneson, 2013). According to Elizabeth Anderson, a leading relational egalitarian, the goal of egalitarian justice is “to create a community in which people stand in relations of equality to others” (Anderson, 1999, 289). Compared to traditional conceptions of egalitarianism, relational parity shares with relational egalitarianism the idea that the norm of equality does not refer primarily to goods, entitlements, capacities or other individual attributes, but to the status individuals obtain within social relations. Relational parity is concerned with how patterns of social interaction construe social identity by assigning status, value, and rights to individuals within these relations. What matter most for relational parity, therefore, is not what one has, but how one is treated. Inclusive authority requires that individuals be the authors of the decisions whose consequences they will undergo, rather than their passive recipients. Whereas relational parity refers to the consequence of social status in interpersonal interactions, authority concerns the power one has to influence other’s decisions. Authority can be exercised in many ways, egalitarian or hierarchical, and this fact is not specific to politics but pervades the entire social life. Prima facie the notion of inclusive authority refers to patterns of authority in which all affected by the consequences of a decision are included in the decision process. Not all human relations can, however, be organized in ways that avoid hierarchical patterns of authority. Yet authority needs not be exercised necessarily in ­authoritarian ways. Authority can be defined in neutral moral and political terms as “a set of asymmetric relations among hierarchically ordered members of a social unit that involves the direction of the unit” (Eckstein and Gurr, 1975, 22). Obvious examples of hierarchical authority relations that fall

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within this definition are those between officers and citizens, parents and children, teachers and students, managers and the rank and file in workplaces, spiritual leaders and their followers. Hierarchy is, to a certain extent, unavoidable in social relations, either because of a specific minority state of some of those involved in the relations, or because the specific circumstances of action require it.14 Nothing, however is said so far concerning how authority is or should be exercised. In other words, democracy and authority do not necessarily stand in opposition, and hierarchical patterns of authority can be assessed in terms of their democratic quality, which in turn depends on the degree to which subordinates are involved in decision processes. Hierarchical relations display democratic properties when superordinates can exercise only limited direction and are responsive to the claims and influence of subordinates, and when subordinates in turn are entitled to a significant degree of participation, and comply on the basis of perceived legitimacy.15 According to this view, the democratization of hierarchical relations, rather than their abolition, is a normative expectation consistent with democracy. Social involvement refers to a social unit’s capacity to involve all its members in a plurality of social practices, particularly those having in view some common good. The notion of involvement is used to signal that this requirement is broader than the more standard condition of inclusion in decision-making processes usually associated with the notion of authority. Social involvement exceeds inclusion in decisionmaking in at least two ways. The first, usually noted by participatory theorists, includes forms of democratic action such as protest, manifestation, and other kinds of public engagement characterizing social movements and, more broadly, forms of collective mobilization. The second way is even broader, and concerns all forms of social intercourse through which ­individuals are concretely made part of a given social unit. Social interactionism assumes that, besides the protective function of inclusion in decision-making processes, participation in social intercourse is an activity with intrinsic value, because through these interactions individuals build their own identity and at the same time cooperate in solving  For an analysis of authority along these lines, see McMahon (1994).  This should sound as a rather uncontroversial claim. See Christiano (2008), Viehoff (2014) for extended examination. 14 15

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collective problems affecting the social unit itself. The two conditions are interdependent, as involvement in shared social practices produces collective goods while contributing to self-development. The major implication of this assumption is a rather wide understanding of involvement in social life. Social involvement refers to the effective, material inclusion in the concrete activities of a community, through everyday patterns of social interaction as well as through forms of active political involvement. It certainly includes participation in decision-making, but also and in a more basic way, unrestrained access to social practices and spaces, effective integration in social institutions such as the workplace, the neighborhood, or the educational system. Residential integration, equal educational opportunities in integrated schools, meaningful and sufficiently creative jobs, and moderate economic inequality are the conditions more directly correlated with social involvement understood as the concrete experience of belonging to the same social world and having a significant position within it. Conceived in the terms of these three normative principles, the democratic norm can be applied to social interactions as they take place in all dimensions of social life. Patterns of family organization, interactions in the group of friends and in the neighborhood, relations in the workplace, in learning environments, and in voluntary associations, as well as organizational models up to the level of the constitutional architecture can embody the three democratic principles in different degrees. This fact accounts for the democratic quality of a given society, and changes in the degree of embodiment of these principles at all these levels should be taken as a sign that processes of democratization or of de-­democratization are in play. Such an account of democracy is primitive in the sense stated above because democratic interactions have the status of ends in themselves. Not that we engage in these interactions for their own sake, but we appreciate their democratic quality as contrasted to other patterns. It is part of the normative content of the concept of democracy that democratic patterns of social interaction are preferable to nondemocratic ones in any walk of life. Saying that democracy is a primitive concept means precisely this: that a form of society in which all interactions are organized and arranged according to the three principled stated above provides a normative ideal

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we cherish and pursue for its own sake. In other words, that we assign democracy paradigmatic normative scope means that we desire to live in an environment structured by horizontal, egalitarian and inclusive relations, and this desire has a final value, it is not a means we pursue for the sake of higher goals. Such an account is also, inevitably, larger in scope than more conventional theories of democracy. One obvious and first implication of this account of democracy is indeed that opportunities for active involvement on an equal basis should be maximized across society. Because patterns of interaction happen everywhere in society and not only among individuals considered in their capacity as citizens or rulers, the idea of democratic patterns of social interaction provides guidance for normative considerations that apply also outside the domain of political relations. The wide view of democracy is compatible and indeed requires that the democratic contribution of formal politics be specified so as to be distinguished from that of other types of social units. A paradigmatic conception of social democracy, in other words, does not eliminate the need for a full blown account of democratic political institutions. Such an account will have to explain how formal political institutions can promote the democratization of a society, extending the reach of democratic patterns of interaction. As we will see in subsequent sections, this task has two major component. On the one hand, politics defines and regulates relations among individuals in their capacity as citizens. A democratic polity is one which construes these relations in terms that are consistent with the three principles of (1) relational parity; (2) inclusive authority, and (3) social involvement. On the other hand, formal political institutions can promote and sustain the spread and consolidation of democratic patterns of social interaction in the other spheres of social life, where individuals interact among themselves on a basis which is different from citizenship, for example as employer and employee, as mother and son, as consumer and producer, as teacher and student, and so on. Legal ­regulations, economic incentives and institutional actions are some of the leverages through which such goals can be achieved. A paradigmatic concept of democracy has momentous consequences also when used to examine cases of failed democratization. Indeed, it requires us to acknowledge that undemocratic societies are not only those

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lacking democratic formal political institutions or that are inadequately embedded in a public sphere and a civic society (Merkel, 2010). They are also societies in which access to social spaces and practices is determined by group identity, societies in which status determines patterns of authority, in which someone’s social standing, gender, age, ethnicity, determines their position in a social interaction. These norms of interaction determine entitlements, obligations, rights within the family, in interactions with partners, or in the workplace. But they also determine the places they can access and those from which they are formally or informally excluded, for example in cases of racial segregation (Anderson, 2010). Formal and informal practices of racial zoning and gated communities are two examples of this trend. The overall implication of this approach should be clear. A country may be fully democratic according to international surveys such as those of Freedom House, and yet, according to a wider paradigm normative concept of democracy, it should be considered as undemocratic. The three democratic principles aptly convey this wider idea of democracy, provided we do not understand them only in terms of self-­ government. To begin with, we should emphasize the very fact of having free and unhampered access to social processes and spaces in order to be given the chance to interact on a par with the highest number of individuals in the largest range of social situations. The limitation of the social consequences of status is a major historical achievement of democracy as a principle of social organization. That is, from the normative perspective opened up by democracy, individuals should be able to join social groups, occupy social spaces, receive entitlements, interact with others in ways that are not determined by their social, economic, religious, racial, or political status. From a socio-historical perspective, the idea of democracy as a form of society is a unicum in a world that has rather been shaped by the opposite principles of hierarchy and social seclusion. We should, therefore, pay particular attention to the social and not merely legal or political meaning of patterns of democratic interaction, for reasons that are, however, not only historical. Indeed, tendencies toward exclusion of the underprivileged and the seclusion of the privileged are constantly at play at all levels of social life, and relational parity is regularly undermined by the rise of new forms of asymmetry. The very

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idea of democracy as a project implies that this task is incomplete by definition, and that no formal guarantee of political equality will suffice to render all interactions consistent with the democratic idea.

6

 enefits of Taking Democracy B as a ‘Paradigm’ Normative Concept

Given the reductionist logic which is proper to the functioning of paradigm concepts, the full theoretical potential of the concept of democracy remains inevitably inchoate as long as it is theoretically subordinate to other paradigm normative concepts. Arguing that democracy can successfully operate as a paradigmatic normative concept in its own terms implies that something essential to democracy is lost when its normative content is understood through such reductionist strategies. In other words, that the added value and meaning realized by a democratic society or way of life exceeds its mere capacity to instrumentally promote other values such as justice and non-domination. It resides in realizing a self-­ contained form of social life which is valued for its own sake. A paradigmatic account of democracy can bring at least two types of theoretical benefits. The first is reconstructive,16 and it consists in providing us with a fresh perspective on our history, its meaning, its major achievements, the features that distinguish it from rival forms of social and political organization. In the context of present democratic deficits, a more articulate understanding of democracy on its own terms, an understanding of the democratic project as a description of the best hopes and prospects that have characterized world transformations of the last centuries, may help us see in a clearer light what is timely and what is out of date, in order to better grasp what should be done to update and pursue this project. Moreover, a clearer understanding of the connection between the social and the political dimension of democracy  In referring to reconstruction what I have in mind is neither Habermas’ nor Honneth’s well known reconstructive methodologies, but rather the standard pragmatist—particularly Deweyan— account of this notion. Reconstruction is an intellectual process of reinterpretation of reality that is conducted with the aim of providing guidance to present and future action, rather than as a basis for retrospective criticism. For a useful comparison among these three conceptions see (Gaus, 2013). 16

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may help us better understand the complex and sometimes contradictory findings of democratization studies, particularly of cases of so-called ‘defective democracies’, i.e. cases in which the transition to democracy remains frozen in an incomplete state of achievement (Rose and Shin, 2001). A wider view of democracy may probably lead us to reconsider the ethnocentric content of the democratic project in a way that may help us not only better understand the reasons and the causes of failed attempts at democratization, but also reconsider in a more pluralistic way the social and historical conditions by which social and political progress can be achieved. The second advantage I see in adopting a paradigmatic conception of democracy concerns the capacity and function of political theory in providing guidance for social innovation, by orienting our attention toward the particular goods that democracy can help us achieve, in a way that competing paradigms of justice and non-domination can explain only incompletely. In a non exhaustive way, we can identify at least four dimensions of social life the relevance of which tends to be underestimated by rival normative ideals, dimensions which on the contrary come to the fore once we approach social reality from the vantage point of a paradigmatic conception of democracy. 1. Social cooperation. Theories of justice, especially those with a heavy distributive bent, have been explicit in connecting justice with social cooperation. These theories tend, however, to conceive of cooperation exclusively according to the perspective of its just terms, and in so doing they underestimate the normative relevance of the trade-off between functional and expressive requirements. They tend in particular to overlook the intrinsic value of cooperative patterns of interaction. A theory of democracy offers a richer account of social cooperation than that usually found in theories of justice or non-domination, insofar as these tend to understand social cooperation in merely functional or instrumental terms. 2. The social constitution of individual identity. With the exception of recognitional theories of justice, both justice-based and non-domination-­ based theories heavily underestimate the function of social interaction in shaping individual and collective identities. By focusing upon the

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normative qualities of justice and non-domination as ends that each social interaction should pursue, they neglect other equally important goals of social interaction in shaping human identity. In that sense, they have too weak an understanding of the social dimension of normativity. 3. Learning. Democracy as a form of life based on horizontal cooperative interaction encompasses a sustained capacity for self-correction. Ideas of learning and of experimentalism are indeed constitutive of the idea of democracy, whereas they do not play any necessary or first order function in theories of justice and non-domination. As Amartya Sen has noted: “the practice of democracy gives citizens an opportunity to learn from one another, and helps society to form its values and priorities” (Sen, 1999, 10). There is an epistemic added value that seems to be intrinsic to democracy, and that justice and nondomination can explain only in derivative terms. 4. Personal self-fulfillment. Theories of justice and non-domination emphasize the formal conditions that enable individuals to formulate and pursue their goals. A democratic way of life has its own recompense in the inclusive and equality-based interactions which define its core. In other words, it has intrinsic value for human life and well-­ being, so that we can assume that to be prevented from involvement in social and political life on an equal and inclusive basis is a major deprivation independent of other external negative consequences. Generally, we tend either to avoid discussing this fact owing to its apparent conflict with liberal intuitions about pluralism, or to take it for granted as something so deeply entrenched in our experience as not to require theoretical discussion. However, as soon as we open our perspective up to the plurality of life forms that compose the contemporary world, we should not lose sight of the fact that engaging in activities which contribute to achieving a collective goal is sometimes its own recompense. In the course of this book I will explain at greater length in what sense the pragmatist conception of democracy is a promising candidate to fulfill the paradigmatic normative function here described and why a social ontology of democracy like the one developed by classical pragmatists has the best chances to fulfill this task.

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7

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Introducing the Social Ontology of Democracy

In itself, social interactionism provides a necessary but insufficient basis for understanding democracy as a paradigmatic normative concept.17 This task requires in addition a theory that explains how this normative principle operates in different dimensions of social life. This function is fulfilled by a social ontology of democracy, which I conceive as a theory which describes the basic layers that compose social life. Being built on the micro-sociological foundations provided by a theory of social interaction, it will be a social interactionist ontology of democracy.18 The baseline of my social interactionist approach to social ontology is that for an ontology to provide the building block of a paradigmatic normative theory of democracy, different types of social units should be organized according to the same principles, that in my case are the three normative principles of (1) relational parity, (2) inclusive authority, and (3) social involvement. Hence the property which specifies under what conditions social interactions are democratic provides the content upon which we can generalize the normative use of the concept of democracy in ways consistent with its use as a paradigm normative framework. Indeed, democratic interaction at different social sites may, and in fact does, assume different forms. The social ontology of democracy should, therefore, explain under what conditions the democratic properties of basic social interactions are preserved and expanded in highly heterogeneous social contexts. Social interactionists see society as dynamic and characterized by ongoing processes of structuration and destructuration of group life (Giddens, 1984). Hence,  For a more complete account of the social interactionist roots of this approach to the ontology of democracy, see Frega (2019b). 18  The recurs to social ontology in political theory is not new, and the revival of Hegel’s scholarship since the late 1970s has played a major role in renewing the prospects of social ontology as a basis for democratic theory. Social ontology has generally been conceived of as a countermeasure against mainstream methodological individualism, as a way to emphasize the social prerequisites upon which political regimes rely. For this reason, political ontologies never attempted to provide a micro-foundation of politics. Similarly, no attempt has been made to flesh out a full social ontology in terms of the constitutive layers composing social reality. Although philosophers such as Crawford B. Macpherson, Carol Pateman, and Carol G. Gould have relied upon social ontological arguments to extend democratic practices to nonpolitical institutions such as the workplace, their argument lacks a systematic social-theoretical foundation of the kind attempted here. 17

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rather than emphasizing permanent structures, they put emphasis on dynamics of organizational formation and dissolution. This activity of grouping (Follett, 1919a), this ‘ongoing concern’ (Hughes, 1984), denotes a fluid activity which displays indefinite degrees of variation. Anticipating on what will be discussed at great length in the next chapter, I suggest to identify three main principles of social structuration that largely account for social life: of (a) democratic habits, (b) democratic patterns of social interaction, and (c) democratic forms of institutional organization. On the one hand, individual habits stabilize human conduct and coalesce in collective habits which amounts to patterns of social interaction. On the other hand, forms of organization can be seen as materialized instantiations of patterns of social interaction which in turn contribute to the formation of individual habits. The three levels are in constant interaction and influence each other, contributing together to shape social life. A social ontology of democracy will have therefore to explain which habits best promote democracy, what properties should be displayed by patterns of interaction, and which organizational forms best promote democratic ways of life. In other terms, the social construction of democracy requires a sophisticated sociological imagination and the capacity to innovate. As it should be obvious, democratizing family life and the workplace cannot and should not be done on the basis of the same organizing principles. For example, democratic interactions at the level of primary groups take place within the framework of trust-based relations and can rely on a type of affective capital that is unavailable in more formal settings. On the other hand, democratizing social settings such as the workplace requires the invention of new ways to achieve social cooperation under the pressure of external constraints in an environment where we cannot choose with whom we cooperate. As has been noted by several commentators, involvement in voluntary associations has a significant impact in the development of civic competences (Putnam, 1994), whereas for example cooperation in the workplace can have more significant effects on our ability to tolerate difference and develop more inclusive attitudes (Estlund, 2003). Similarly the ‘bonding’ type and the ‘bridging’ type of associations promote the flourishing of different aspects of social attitudes and therefore contribute to the democratic quality of a society and to the realization of individual life in different ways (Putnam, 2000).

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Democratizing the different types of social units implies acknowledging their different ways of functioning. To this extent, the primary sociological distinction is perhaps that between primary and secondary social groups. Primary groups denotes social units such as the family, the group of friends, and other forms of spontaneous grouping which take place on an everyday basis and whose integrating principle is essentially affective. Informality, trust, affective bonds qualify patterns of interaction at this level. Here democracy qualifies patterns of interaction based on equality of relations and cooperative forms of exchange. The category of secondary groups is internally much more differentiated. From the perspective of their contribution to the democratic quality of a society, we can distinguish five main different types of social aggregates. The first is composed of informal associations such as networks of solidarity and communities of peers. Trust and informality continue to qualify these social units, although elements of functional differentiation and asymmetry begin to appear. At this level too the informality of horizontal inclusive interactions provides the core of the normative argument. A second type of secondary social aggregate is provided by those voluntary associations in which membership is free and the level of obligation generally low. Charities, NGOs, neighborhood associations, urban centers belong to this category. While informality, trust, and affective bonds continue to play an important role, the functioning of these social units requires also a significant level of formal organization and role-definition. The function of these associations for the democratic life of a society has traditionally been emphasized by scholars of social capital since Tocqueville. Here democracy as a normative standard refers to day-to-day interactions but also to the explicit procedures and rules presiding over assignments to roles, relations between officers and members, the capacity to actively involve the community of those concerned etc. Yet at the basis of all these dimensions we continue to find relational parity, inclusive authority, and social involvement. A third type of secondary associations is defined by more structured forms of interaction which take the form of stable organizations, with rules, entry and exit conditions, and which impose higher constraints on an individual’s behavior. At this level, compliance with the three normative principles of democracy requires more sophisticated forms of organizational engineering as social relations tend to be more complex. Institutions such as the education system, the army, the

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church, the state, and the public administration exemplify a fourth type of secondary associations. Here the realization of democratic conditions of associated living requires even greater efforts in institutional design. The various traditions of industrial and workplace democracy have shown to what extent democracy provides an inspiring, demanding, and revolutionary standard for shaping social interactions in the workplace. The last type of secondary association that are of concern for a social ontology of democracy are the formal political institution composing the constitutional architecture of a political unit. Formal political institutions have two main and distinct functions in preserving and promoting democracy. They guarantee that political decisions are taken in ways that do not violate the three democratic principles and they promote the diffusion of democratic patterns of social interaction throughout all spheres of social life. At each of these levels the idea of democracy plays a normative role which may differ from case to case. While the requirements that each of these social aggregates should satisfy in order to be democratic are different, reference to relational parity, inclusive authority, and social involvement unifies them all, giving democracy the strength, coherence, and breadth of scope required to function as a paradigmatic normative concept.

8

 he Forms and Practices of Political T Democracy

The previous discussion has let emerge a tension internal to the wide view of democracy model between the social and the political dimensions of democracy. Whereas the first dimension describes the social constitution of a democratic society in terms of its social ontology, the second dimension focuses upon the normative practices whereby collective goals are formulated and achieved, social-problems identified and solved, crises brought to a positive solution. While apparently diverging in their scope, the social and the political conceptions have in common: (1) the rejection of a restrictive interpretation of democracy as a purely governmental concept; (2) the priority assigned to democratic problem-solving as a central feature of the concept of democracy, and (3) the priority assigned to organizations and institutions as the central subjects of a theory of democracy. They differ simply in consideration of their selective emphasis.

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My aim in this section is to suggest that we can obtain a more precise understanding of the normative scope of a wide conception of democracy if we conceive its political counterpart in terms of collective democratic practices rather than in terms of political formal institutions and consider that such practices are distributed throughout the social body. In other words, a full account of democracy as a paradigm normative concept requires that a social ontology of democracy be combined with a group-­ based theory of normative democratic practices, conceived as those practices whereby collective normative orders are modified and collective goals framed and pursued in concert. Whereas the social ontology of democracy explains how a society should be organized in order to be democratic, a theory of normative democratic practices explains how, within such a society, individuals can organize themselves to achieve collective goals. These two dimensions have obvious areas of overlap, particularly in the domain of political institutions. Compared with the social ontology, the practice-based account focuses more directly upon the political dimension of democracy, if by ‘political’ we mean the intentional activity whereby individuals mobilize to achieve collective goals. This distinction is made in order to enable a more precise discussion of the normative implications of democracy seen as a collective way of addressing conditions which directly or indirectly affect the life of a group of individuals. As already observed, a wide view of democracy must include a theory of democratic social order describing how the major areas of society should be organized if they are to be consistent with the three democratic principles. But it must also include a theory of democratic collective action, which explains under what conditions societal problem-solving complies with the normative requirements of democracy. The distinction between the social ontology of democracy and the theory of normative practices delivers a more perspicuous account of the different faces of democracy, once this is conceived in the terms of a paradigm normative concept. By ‘normative practice’, I refer to all doing and saying through which each part of a normative order can be made the object of a specific concern, while ‘normative orders’ denote the heterogeneous mangle of elements that simultaneously constrain and enable a given form of social life (Frega, 2014). Democratic normative practices answer two political questions: (1) how a given society can be further democratized at its different levels, and (2) how a democratic social unit must behave while engaging

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in identifying and solving its problems. Standard accounts of politics tend to conceive formal political institutions and administrative agencies as the major actors endowed with this task. Their answer to these two questions consists in saying that a democratic polity is that which is governed by formal political institutions which intervene in society through administrative agencies whose action is legitimated by their dependence upon political power. A wide view of democracy strives to go beyond this standard account by inquiring into the democratic quality and potential of a larger plurality of forms of collective action. In so doing, it assumes that their political legitimacy and their democratic quality do not necessarily derive from formal mechanisms of delegation, but result from their compliance with broader democratic principles. In a very simplified manner, and anticipating further discussions in Chaps. 9 and 10, these practices can be distinguished according to their degree of institutionalization, or societal structuration. To this extent, we can distinguish (a) formal political practices; (b) informal political practices, and (c) informal distributed social practices. Formal political ­practices are those which take place within the boundaries of formal political institutions and which are the standard core object of democratic theory. They include practices such as voting, participating in consultations, the activities of international organizations and, more generally, practices related to the functioning of formal institutions. Informal political practices are those which aim directly at changing a normative order but which do not take place within the political sphere. Examples are the different forms of protest, civil disobedience, boycott, strike, public display, communication campaigns, practices of informal representation, the consultative, advocative, problem-solving activities of associations, NGOs, the third sector. Informal distributed social practices are practices which do not have a direct political aim but which nevertheless affect the political life of a community. Examples include ‘quiet encroachment’ upon public spaces and resources (Bayat, 2010), ways of life which reject basic values of our society, participation in civic associationism, development of forms of local solidarity, norms production undertaken by non-­state actors, forms of cooperation directly aimed at the service of individuals and collectivities, the activities of non-state actors oriented to the private sector.

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We distinguish normative practices in terms of their level of structuration to highlight the different normative expectations that each must fulfill to be qualified as democratic and to achieve legitimacy. In other words, in calling all these normative practices ‘political’ and in searching for common criteria to specify their contribution to democracy, we should, therefore, not forget that the operation of formal political institutions is generally submitted to much more stringent requirements than that of practices which can be entered into and exited on a voluntary basis. The analytical criteria that we employ to analyze the democratic quality of normative practices refer to the ways in which individuals are included within practices whose effects concern them. The rationale is that if we consider politics as the sum of activities through which a social unit organizes itself for the sake of controlling its own environment, we should then ascertain that all those that are affected by the given situation are involved throughout the whole social process, and not only in the final phases when a decision is taken on the basis of a previous analysis and definition of the situation at hand. To provide a theoretical framework for understanding democratic political activation I suggest, therefore, that, besides expanding the concept of political action to informal and distributed social practices, we adopt a notion of political action large enough to include types of activities which are not included in mainstream accounts of political life. A significant aspect of this move consists in challenging the idea that politics refers merely to how a political unit organizes itself. Indeed, a central dimension of politics consists rather in promoting the formation of new collective subjectivities with the aim of solving collective problems. This in turn requires that individuals engage together in practices of inquiry which are required to create awareness of a common affectedness, which in turn provides the starting point for processes of collective mobilization. Anticipating the discussion developed in Chap. 5, I rely upon the pragmatist theory of rationality as inquiry to identify a set of criteria for assessing how different normative practices include concerned individuals in their proceedings.19 These criteria refer to the major dimensions that com For a discussion of problem-solving as a pattern of collective rationality common to pragmatism and critical theory, see Jaeggi (2014). For a comment, see Frega (2017c). 19

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pose a collective process of problem-solving. While in social life these dimensions are always inextricably fused together, here I present them in analytic distinction, readapting to political circumstances the terminology developed by Dewey in his logical theory.20 1. Identification of the problem (agenda setting): to this phase belong formal practices such as electoral consultations, informal practices such as opinion polling, meeting with citizens, public hearings, social surveys, forms of social protest, NGOs campaigns but also practices of whistleblowing that aim at raising awareness about critical aspects so far underestimated; 2. Formation of the public: to this dimension belong the activities of political parties and social movements, but also of all forms of civic non-political association (churches, recreational associations, solidarity movements, etc.) which aim more concretely at producing organized forms of response to collectively perceived problems; 3. Determination of solutions: to this dimension belong formal and informal political practices of political decision-making, including parliamentary debate, expert committees, practices of public deliberation, participatory practices, public hearings etc.; 4. Implementation of solutions: the realm of public policies, but also of actions carried out by administrations, public and private agencies; 5. Evaluation and feedback: to this dimension belong the formal political work of oppositions, voting, the work of journals and media, of NGOs and other formal and informal ‘watchdogs’ and more generally the activities by which individuals manifest their agreement or disagreement with the results of a political action. Combining the two criteria of the degrees of structuration with the different phases of social problem-solving, we obtain a table which can be used to analyze and classify different types of normative practices. Here the table is filled with examples which give an initial idea of the extension of the political phase of social democracy.  I discuss in greater details Dewey’s theory of inquiry as a basis for political rationality in Frega (2012b, Ch. 2). 20

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Identification of the problem Formation of the public Determination of solutions Implementation of solutions

Evaluation and feedback

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Formal political practices

Informal political practices

Electoral consultation, public hearings Political party mobilizations

Whistleblowing Opinion polling, social surveys, social protest Social movements, Civic association meetings, informal media, NGO networks campaigns Participatory NGOs, norm processes entrepreneurship

Parliamentary debate, expert commissions Government activity, administration Political opposition

Private agencies

Media, consumers associations, NGOs, independent rating and evaluation agencies

Informal social practices

‘Quiet encroachment’, new lifestyles, consumer conduct Social networks, informal networks

As this grid shows, compared to social ontology, the practice-based approach sheds a different light on the nature of political experience, as it focuses upon activation strategies rather than on more or less permanent patterns and forms of social interaction. The general idea is that everything happening within the square defined by the table above affects the democratic quality of a polity hence it belongs to the scope of democratic theory. It is to be expected that items included in different cells within the table will have to be evaluated according to different normative criteria, which in turn requires us to develop a multilevel fine-grained normative theory. This is particularly evident with respect to the question of legitimacy, whose stringency varies when we pass from the formal to the informal sphere, or from practices of decision-making to practices of evaluation and feedback. The table is meant to give a unified picture of the basic intuition that the democratic quality of a society depends upon a vast array of normative practices, most of which tend usually to remain beyond the scope of normative analysis and which, on the contrary, prove to be decisive, especially once we accept the general picture of a wide view of democracy here articulated.

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This table also shows that the informal sphere can fulfill two very different political functions. On the one hand, it can operate as a complementary integration of the formal sphere, accomplishing the same normative functions but by different means. On the other hand, it can compensate for the shortcomings of the formal sphere. In the first case, what is implied is that normative functions which formal institutions cannot fulfill, or can fulfill only with great inefficiency, may be better taken on by informal practices. The second case emphasizes the fact that there are situations in which formal institutions are either missing or too weak, so that informal practices and institutions replace them. This is notably the case of countries with extremely weak political institutions, or of the whole field of post-national politics in which the creations of global political institutions which would act in the name of a transnational public prove unlikely. Chapter 10 will explore some of these questions in more depth.

9

Conclusion

As I have indicated above, a definition of democracy which is suited to a paradigm normative role requires a high level of abstraction, so as to avoid identification with too narrow cultural or historical forms. It also requires a broad range of applications so as to fulfill the function of normative guidance that is typical of paradigmatic normative concepts. If the concept of democracy, like that of justice and non-domination, is to be emancipated from its narrowly political-institutional use, then we should find an appropriate strategy to move from the level of a norm-­ compliant theory of democracy to that of a paradigmatic normative theory of democracy. My proposed strategy sets off from a social rather than a political notion of democracy. I have assumed that a sociological interactionist account of social life, combined with a group-based account of politics, provides an appropriate theoretical framework, as it enables us to identify social objects—patterns of social interaction and social practices—of which the concept of democracy can be predicated. Such an approach has several advantages, the major being its hermeneutical contribution to a better understanding of who we are and who we want to

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become, and its conceptual contribution to a richer understanding of what democracy promises to deliver in terms of social as well as political goals. Understanding democracy as the unfinished project of achieving a form of society committed to values of relational parity, inclusive authority, and social involvement provides us with a fruitful orientation to engage not only with intellectual projects of social and political critique, but also with practical attempts to design new institutions better capable of realizing our normative goals. As pragmatist philosophers discovered long ago, it is only through experimentalist practices that the democratic project can be advanced. The rest of the book is devoted to a deeper articulation of these basic intuitions concerning the attributes of this form of society and of the social practices for which the term ‘democratic’ appears to be the most appropriate normative descriptor. In Part II I will show in detail how classical pragmatists forged their theory of democracy precisely in terms of a social account of democratic life (Chap. 4) combined with a group-based conception of democratic political practices (Chap. 5).

Part II The Historical Background

4 The Pragmatist Social Account of Democracy

The pragmatist theory of democracy as a form of society is composed of three main dimensions, that will be discussed in turn: (a) the idea of democracy as method; (b) the priority of involvement in action over participation in decision-making; and (c) a social ontology of democracy. Before that, the next section provides an overview of the social and historical experience that the wide view of democracy articulates.

1

Enlarging Democracy

In Part I of this book I have presented a plurality of strategies that, combined together, have provided an enlarged account of democracy and offer an initial conceptual outline of what I have called the wide view of democracy. The wide view of democracy demands a significant enlargement with respect to traditional account of democracy so as to encompass a wider array of social actions and practices having political relevance as well as the larger spectrum of social interaction which provide the flesh and blood of a democratic society. In Part II I will address the same question though historical lenses. I will focus in particular on how, at the beginning of the twentieth © The Author(s) 2019 R. Frega, Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18561-9_4

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century, a group of American philosophers, social, and political thinkers have come about to conceptualize democracy along the same ways, as a form of society and as a peculiar style of political activation. For methodological reasons, I separate the analysis of the social and political dimensions of democracy in two separate chapters. I begin by first presenting some central themes in the pragmatist view of democracy as a form of society or way of life, whereas the next chapter will deal with democracy as a concrete form of social and political action.

1.1

Changing Politics in a Changing Society

Pragmatists have generally subscribed to social accounts of democracy. Living at a time and in a place where the steering capacity of governmental institutions was weak, pragmatists have generally inscribed their analysis of political institutions within a larger account of social processes of self-activation. For thinkers such as Josiah Royce (1855–1916), John Dewey (1859–1952), Jane Addams (1860–1935), George Herbert Mead (1863–1931), Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929), Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933), Arthur Bentley (1870–1957), and Sidney Hook (1902–1989), the normative scope and potential of the concept of democracy was not primarily oriented to the task of reforming state political institutions but, first and foremost, to that of redesigning the general profile of the society in which they lived. These figures share the idea that equal and inclusive forms of interaction have normative priority over hierarchical and exclusionary ones. Pragmatists consider this as an ultimate fact based in experience, and to that extent they have not devoted many energies to provide an independent justification. This postulate says that prima facie it is preferable to engage in horizontal and inclusive interactions rather than in hierarchical and exclusionary ones. The justification for this assumption is that these patterns of interaction are better suited to promote individual self-realization. This assumption finds empirical confirmation in diverse social experiences to which this literature constantly refers: it is notably the case of primary groups life (the family, the group of friends) for Cooley, of small groups such as ­neighborhood communities and organizational units for Follett, and of

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small political communities for Dewey and Royce. Indeed, as the historian Jean B. Quandt has noted (Quandt, 1970), the transition from the small town to the great community had been part of the personal experience of these and several other progressive thinkers: born in small rural villages characterized by homogeneous and intense personal relations, they were later brought up in some of the biggest and most rapidly growing and bustling cities of the world, where new patterns of social interaction among strangers had to be invented.1 They saw the new big city as a social laboratory where new forms of life were being created and experimented.2 Having had a first hand experience of these two worlds, they struggled practically and intellectually to have the best of both. Starting from this experience, pragmatist social and political theorists have been deeply concerned by the question how the benefits of horizontal and inclusive interactions typical of small circles could be obtained also in larger and more complex forms of social organization. In the context of American pragmatism, this question, which is common to most if not all social and political theorists of that age—one has to think only to Ferdinand Tönnies, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber—has received full normative articulation through the concept of democracy, that they understood as a social category. One of the major concerns for these thinkers is precisely how to devise institutional conditions liable to extend to the entire range of social settings the enjoyment of goods originally experienced at the level of these smaller groups. Cooley’s distinction between the caste principle and the democratic principle, Follett’s theory of integrative management, and Dewey’s concept of “Great community”, that I discuss in what follows, represent the most explicit and theoretically most complete answers to this question. In this social and cultural climate, to be a democrat and to strive for democracy means therefore first and foremost to promote a new kind of society in which horizontal  To that extent, several of the masterworks of the Chicago School of Sociology are vivid depictions of this new way of life, of its unprecedented opportunities and challenges. Works such as Cressey (1932), Anderson (1923), Zorbaugh (1929), or the essays that Robert Park, Ernest Burgess and others devoted to the ethnographic study of urban life (Park and Burgess, 1921, 1925), explored the transformations undergone by traditional habits and patterns of interactions once individuals moved from small rural areas to big cities. 2  For an overview of the experimentalist attitude of this generation of American intellectuals, see Gross and Krohn (2005). 1

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and inclusive forms of human relations can be maximized. Indeed, what counted most for these thinkers was not the formal constitutions of political institutions themselves, but the general makeup of the larger social context in which these institutions had to be inscribed. For all of them, the task of a theory of democracy was directly and intimately connected with that of explaining how a cooperative social group could be built starting from the elementary material of human beings that are dependent upon society. Their ideas about democracy were consequently aimed at making sense of the normative resources that a modern society needed if it were to steer itself in ways capable of promoting personal self-­ fulfillment combined with functional integration and stability. Democracy named the attempt to reshape urban life in ways consistent with the values and experiences of more traditional ways of living. The emphasis on the experimental dimension of the democratic project, that in Chap. 8 I will examine in terms of democratic experimentalism, derives from the awareness that a new form of life had to be invented nearly entirely from scratch. Two main reasons militate in support of reactivating these ideas today, helping to explain the regain of interest for political pragmatism. The first is that the society in which we live has noticeable similarities with that in which they lived, and that problems of integration, cooperation, social order continue to plague our society as they plagued theirs. We are still, as they were, in the infancy of an endless project of democratization, one that is still in the making. The second is that we live today, as they lived, in a time of great social unrest, which currently determines, as it did at the time, the astonishing lag of institutions behind societal change. As it happened at the turn of the twentieth century, today too political institutions fail to keep up with a society that is in a state of permanent flux. This is not only because the problem of inequality is again assuming alarming dimensions which threaten social stability and bring injustice to intolerably high levels, but also because the phenomena of social acceleration are transforming deeply and too rapidly the profoundest values, habits, and assumptions on which our society has been organized since the end of the Second World War. Puzzlement, disorientation, lack of understanding are producing the sort of anxiety and anger which characterized their age. This fact, today like yesterday, results in increasing democratic

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deficits, constantly amplified by the utter incapacity of existing institutions to adjust themselves to circumstances which have so dramatically altered. This situation of uncertainty encompasses all domains of life: the forms of intimacy and friendship, the interpersonal relations with strangers, the experience of learning and working environments as well as those of political representation are affected by the same movement of radical change to which, ultimately, also political institutions are subjected. Indeed, for these thinkers as well as for us, the very idea of a reform of political institutions which does not start from a global reflection on social structures and relations reveals its superficiality in the face of so radical changes. Rediscovering the social basis of democracy is a necessary step for us as it was for them.

1.2

 emocracy and the Persistence of Ancien D Régime

To appreciate the depth of the experiential roots of the wide view of democracy we must, however, take an even more distant look at our history, reaching back at the revolutionary moment when ancien régime societies were overturned, first in France, and then, slowly and progressively, elsewhere in the Western hemisphere. The end of the ancien régime signals the advent not only of a new political regime, but also and especially of a new form of society, we usually refer to as ‘democratic’. As historians of modern Europe have often pointed out, the ancien régime was qualified by an extraordinarily diversified system of social inequalities, inherited privileges, and unevenly distributed rights. In societies of ancien régime, someone’s chances in life, rights, and duties were nearly completely defined by one’s wealth, origin, gender, religion, and occupation. Political rights as well as other privileges such as the right to exercise some professions, own real estates or other properties, or the entitlement to tax exemptions were rigidly hereditary. As the General Prussian Code of 1791 explicitly stated: “The rights of man arise from his birth and from his estate. […] Persons to whom, by their birth, destination in life, or principal occupation, equal rights are ascribed in civil society, make up an estate within the state” (Quot. in Palmer 2014, 305). Social rank defined

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an individual’s legitimate position and expectations in life, and the hereditary nature of one’s status meant that this could not be changed voluntary. In societies of ancien régime, “the deference that inferiors owed superiors was the cement that hold society together” (Morgan, 1989, 141). The idea of a democratic revolution intended precisely to emphasize the refusal of a form of society entirely based on the organizing principles of rank, privilege, and hierarchy.3 The idea that free and equal individuals could associate freely was profoundly new, unsettling, and contested. To be achieved it required the invention from scratch of a new form of society, one in which social cooperation would be achieved through voluntary association among free and equals rather than through integration through the traditional mechanisms of rank, privilege, and hierarchy. The idea of a new form of society, based on unprecedented patterns of social interaction and newly created organizational forms, constitutes the core of the democratic revolution and defines its long lasting project. Its achievement required not only that ancient privileges in the exercise of power be abolished, as the political revolutions of the end of the eighteenth century were doing, but also that the entire set of social relations be reinvented. Such a project could not be achieved by the simple means of a political revolution, and indeed, this form of society, that had dominated Europe for centuries, did not disappear—nor could it have—in the space of a night as a result of political revolutions. Indeed, as social historians have shown, even when political revolutions were successful, hierarchical and inegalitarian patterns of social organization continued to dominate European and (to a lesser extent) American societies well into the twentieth century, until at least the 1930s. This historical persistence of the ancien régime conceived as a form of society rather than as a political system, indicates to what extent the very idea of a democratic form of society has remained unachieved in European and American societies till very recently, and continues to be  The historian Robert Palmer (Palmer 1953, 2014) has shown that the emergence of the terms ‘democratic’ and ‘aristocratic’ is simultaneous, and that the two are defined through their mutual opposition. Closer to us, James Kloppenberg has contended that our present society continues to suffer from the failed attempts at dismantling the pre-democratic organization of social life, and that “those assumptions and hierarchies continue to inflect European and American cultures today” (Kloppenberg, 2016, x). 3

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so in several countries which formally count as political democracies, but where hierarchy, privilege, and social seclusion continue to organize social life. In that extent, democracy remains even today an unachieved project. The historian Arno Mayer has notably shown that in Europe nobility has continued to play a hegemonic role not only in politics and economics—a fact already acknowledged—but more broadly in shaping the self-image of western societies, which continued to be moulded by feudal ideals and patterns of social interaction until very recently. As a mark of status and as a closed social group, nobility has, indeed, continued to be the most privileged social class, preserving and spreading ideals of social life based upon the hierarchical image of a society divided into states sharply separated one from the other and vertically integrated through relations based upon hierarchy, asymmetry, personal dependence, and privilege. Until after World War I, European aristocracies still provided the model of social life for the new emerging bourgeoisies. The forms and the dominance of logics of social distinction throughout the whole nineteenth century so vividly depicted by Norbert Elias (Elias, 1978) were those of an ancien régime society to which the ideals of a democratic society were largely extraneous. Even in those cases in which formal political institutions were effectively organized according to democratic ideas, associated life continued to be organized according to hierarchical rather than democratic patterns of interaction at all levels: within intimate relations, in social interaction in public places, and within social institutions such as the enterprises, educational institutions, bureaucracies, or the army.4 Thorstein Veblen—a friend and colleague of John Dewey and a perceptive observer of his time—similarly insists upon the cultural and social role of the traditional aristocracy in shaping the self-image of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, even in America.5 Later still, Joseph Schumpeter will depict in similar terms the social and cultural hegemony that the aristocratic leisure class continued to exercise at the beginning of the twentieth century thanks to its economic and political force, and his elitist theory of democracy reflects his deep agreement  A similar argument is developed also in Eckstein and Gurr (1975).  See, in particular, the sociological analyses contained in Veblen (2007).

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with the hierarchical view of society that was still dominating at his time.6 Other lines of research have similarly pointed to the persistence of feudal patterns of social organization in Europe until at least the end of the nineteenth century. Scholars like Walter Burhnam, Seymour Lipset, and others have explained the success of socialist ideas in Europe as a reaction against the persistence of feudal institutions such as guilds and corporations, as well as of much stronger status lines and barriers. As Adam Seligman summarizes: “not economic inequality per se but the continual traditions of exclusion from political, civil, and social membership in the community is what stood at the root of the development of nineteenth-­century socialist movements” (Seligman, 1995, 105). For example, until the middle of the nineteenth century, French workers continued to suffer from mobility restraints, as epitomized by the ‘Livret’, which conferred upon employers the right to control workers’ freedom of movement. Other patterns of formal domination such as those expressed by colonial rule, racial segregation, or women disenfranchisement only began to be called into question much later, and remained in place as late as after the Second World War (Wagner, 2016; Allen, 2016). As American historian Gordon S. Wood notes, social inequality, status-based patterns of social interaction, and forms of patriarchal dependence and patronage were also extremely diffuse in the United States (Wood, 1991). What is most remarkable, however, is the fact that democracy emerged historically as a social reaction against the class-based social organization of aristocratic societies, rather than as a political revolt against monarchy.7 To that extent, the multifarious revolutions that took place in Europe and America at the end of the nineteenth century can be seen as forms of conflict among “the proponents of ‘aristocratic’ and ‘democratic’ forms of the community” (Palmer, 2014, 20). As Palmer contends, the historically simultaneous emergence of these two concepts shows that Europeans at the time perceived the conflict at hand as opposing two irreducible ways of life, rather than two forms of government. Whereas the opposition of monarchy and republic has an essentially political content, that between aristocracy  See, in particular, Schumpeter (2008).  Palmer (2014) is the classical statement of this thesis. See Przeworski (2010), Rosanvallon (1993), Dunn (2005) for more recent restatements of the same argument. 6 7

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and democracy has first of all a social meaning. Indeed, the abolition of feudal rights in the political, administrative, and judicial fields has not been sufficient to overturn the whole aristocratic form of society that dominated Europe throughout the Middle Ages and into the Modern era. Mayer’s influential work has shown to what extent European culture and social life have been dominated by aristocratic values at least until the early twentieth century. Nobility, with its hierarchical patterns of social interaction, has continued to provide a model for the bourgeois and lower classes to the point that “the aristocratization or nobilization of the obeisant bourgeoisie was far more pervasive than the bourgeoisification of the imperious nobility” (Mayer, 1981, 81). According to Mayer, historians have generally overestimated the impact of modernization on social organization, noting in particular that “liberal democracy, industrial and finance capitalism, the grande bourgeoisie, and cultural modernism were not nearly so far advanced as many historians would have it” (Mayer, 1981, 85), so that the post-feudal nobilities of land and public service continued to play a hegemonic function even at a time when formal democracy had become, at least in some states, the only legitimate kind of political regime. “The grands bourgeois of the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries imitated and adopted rather than scorned the forms, habits, and tones of the noble life that still dominated their societies” (Mayer, 1981, 85). As also Seligman comments, “recognition of individual autonomy […] was thus of a restricted nature throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth” (Seligman, 1995, 107). Also the educational system was designed to reproduce hierarchical forms of social organization, with their asymmetric, and exclusionary patterns of social interaction. Through the rigid separation between a classical education open only to the elites and a professional education destined for the rest of society, the educational systems of Europe and America were de facto powerful means for the reproduction of an aristocratic form of society, as Mayer documents (Mayer, 1981, Ch. 4) and as educational reformers of the age confirm.8 In the US, in France, in Germany, in Britain, in Italy and elsewhere, educational systems were organized on a class basis, with a curricula and a set of exclusive institutions devoted to the  Dewey’s later proposals to democratize the educational system should be read against the background of this persistence of an élitist and inegalitarian society. Cf. Dewey (1916). 8

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heirs of the privileged classes, and a curricula and separate institutions specifically geared to lower class families. Under these circumstances, the idea of democracy as a way of life represented the image of a society yet to come and pointed to a dynamic project of societal democratization which would find in the system of formal political institutions and in the set of political, civil, and social rights only its formal—necessary and yet insufficient—conditions of realization. In conclusion, historical studies such as those of John Huizinga, Thorstein Veblen, Norbert Elias, Arno Mayer, John Wood, and Adam Seligman remind us that, within a given form of society, patterns of social interaction can be deeply at odds with the ‘official’ ideology as well as with the principles that rule its formal political institutions. The case of early twentieth century European society is to this extent instructive. While democracy was timidly gaining legitimacy as a principle for organizing formal political institutions, society continued to be organized according to opposed and incompatible models of social life. This “persistence of the ancien régime” explains in what sense the democratic project has to be conceived first of all in terms of a project for the democratization of society, rather than merely in terms of the advancement of a specific set of formal political institutions. In assessing the ambition, radicalism, and incompleteness of the democratic project we should therefore start from the acknowledgment that European societies have been shaped mainly by hierarchical rather than egalitarian principles of social organization until rather recently, and that informal practices of domination based upon asymmetrical and hierarchical patterns of social interaction are far from being overcome even today. It is important to note that what characterizes this form of social organization is not merely the disenfranchisement of larger parts of the population—their de facto exclusion from citizenship—but more radically the fact that hierarchical patterns of social interaction and practices of social exclusion have ­dominated all spheres of social life. When pragmatists declare that their aim is to realize democracy as a way of life, and that political democracy is merely a “phase” of a larger social idea, they are heading precisely in this direction.

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 rinciples of the Pragmatist Social Theory P of Democracy

To understand correctly what the pragmatists meant by arguing that democracy denotes primarily a way of life rather than a form of government, we have to place this notion within the general framework of pragmatist social theory. This social understanding of democracy should not be confused with more familiar approaches which insist upon democracy as an ethical or moral idea (Perry, 2010), nor with participatory or workplace-­based conceptions of democracy (Mansbridge, 1983; Hirst, 1993; Gould, 1988), although some common themes traverse all these traditions. Certainly, one cannot dispute that pragmatists have emphasized the ethical dimension of democracy (Bernstein, 1996; Dallmayr, 2010; Pappas, 2008) and that they also pioneered an approach later called ‘social-democratic’. It is, however, my contention that we misunderstand the novelty of the pragmatist strategy if we confine it to a moral justification of democracy, or to a theory of the democratic ethos. Similarly, we should avoid conceiving of the term ‘social’ as evoking the ‘social question’, as is customary in contemporary theories of social democracy (Meyer, 2007; Castel, 1995). In this chapter I intend to show that, besides their reflections on democracy as a moral ideal, pragmatists have also developed a rather sophisticated and original reflection on democracy as a social concept. Indeed, the distinctive feature of political pragmatism does not lie in its humanistic praise for ethical values, but rather in their original social-theoretic account of the constitutive features of a democratic society, of democracy as a form of society. In other words, the kernel of the pragmatist theory of democracy is sociological rather than moral. Political pragmatism is, indeed, built upon a sophisticated theory of society based upon an interactionist processual social ontology.9 The idea of a social ontology of democracy articulates the implications of social ontology for political theory. Its basic assumption is that the normative term  As contemporary sociologists have largely documented (Abbott, 2016; Joas, 1992; Schubert, 2011), although pragmatists never developed a full blown social theory (with the obvious exception of George H. Mead), the main elements of such an approach are present in scattered form in their texts. 9

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‘democratic’ can be predicated on a plurality of social entities that compose social life, and that spans the whole gamut of human life from individual habits to highly complex social institutions, finding in association or interaction—the terms are often used interchangeably—their genetic principle. Democracy can, therefore, refer to a society that is organized according to specific normative principles which apply to the different types of associational forms that exist in society. To apprehend the exact meaning of the pragmatist social theory of democracy, we should, therefore, begin by seeing how pragmatists understood social life. Indeed, for the pragmatists, as for many social scientist of that time, especially in the United States, the term ‘social’ referred to social dynamics in a quite abstract meaning of the term. Along with their colleagues the sociologists of the Chicago School, pragmatists conceived a theory of society essentially in terms of a theory of associations, by which they meant an approach positing the ontological as well as the methodological priority of social interactions in the explanation of social phenomena. The reference to the associational principle provides a decisive clue for understanding the pragmatist approach to politics. As Mark Warren has noted: “[t]he concept of association evokes the possibilities of collective action, but in a way that retains social (as opposed to legal/ bureaucratic or market) modes of mediation among people, through language, norms, shared purposes, and agreements” (Warren, 2001, 8). In other words, an associational political philosophy puts a premium on the political resources of society as distinguished from the conventional steering mechanisms of political power (State) and money (the Market). If a social system’s ways of functioning have political relevance and, a fortiori, are decisive ingredients of democracy, this is not because ‘the political’ has colonized or invaded the whole social life, but because society has its own immanent forms of organization, which have direct political relevance. It is this primary sociological sense that I have in mind when I argue that the pragmatists were engaged in developing a social, rather than a moral or ethical, conception of democracy. This characterization does not hold only for sociologists and social theorists such as Charles H. Cooley, George H. Mead, Robert Park, William Thomas, or Ernst Burgess, but also for philosophers and political scientists such as John Dewey, Arthur Bentley, Jane Addams, Mary P. Follett, and Sidney Hook. In their

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approach to democracy, they took as their starting point a shared understanding of politics as the organizing principle of a multi-layered and pluralistic society composed of shifting, dynamics, and mobile groups, seeing it as one of the functional mechanisms whereby such a complex and unstable collective achieved and maintained unstable equilibrium. As can be inferred, for example, from the text that more than any other shaped the sociological imaginary of the age, the Introduction to the Science of Sociology edited in 1923 by Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, legal and political institutions were seen to be one of the “mechanisms of control” whereby individuals are organized into a functioning aggregate, and through which: “a community assumes the form of a society” (Park and Burgess, 1921, 785). From this perspective, the functioning of these institutions would have to be understood by placing them within the larger framework of a theory of associations, the task of which was to explain how dynamics of interpersonal interaction can attain a certain degree of stability. While processes of competition, cooperation, assimilation, or imitation were identified as the main forms through which these interactions took place, traditions, customs, institutions, and laws were endowed with the task of explaining how such interactions could take a stable form. From this approach to the study of society, political theorists such as Bentley, Dewey, and Follett derived the basic assumptions on which they built their theories of democracy. From this perspective, the emphasis on the social connotation of the concept of democracy has two distinct implications. The first is to underline that its theoretical scope exceeds that of a purely political conception of democracy, i.e. a conception that refers exclusively to the formal institutions which are legitimated to enforce binding decisions upon a social group. It should be noticed that this conception of politics betrays an attitude opposed to that of thinkers such as Hannah Arendt, Chantal Mouffe, and Carl Schmitt, for whom, on the contrary, politics denotes a distinct domain of action. Pragmatists would have considered the very idea of the ‘political’ as opposed to politics methodologically misguided because rooted in an incorrect understanding of politics as something separate from society. The second implication is that enlargement of the concept of democracy beyond the domain of politics does not necessarily imply nor require

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resorting to an ethical or moral conception of democracy. Whilst Dewey insisted upon several occasions—especially in texts written after the rise of European totalitarianisms—that democracy denotes a moral ideal,10 his main argument is built around a social rather than a moral conception of democracy. The difference between the two strategies is that, whereas a moral conception of democracy explains the meaning of democracy with reference to values considered as ultimate ends, a social approach to democracy is based upon a sociological understanding of human interactions and of how social life should be organized in order to reconcile individual striving toward self-expression and societal constraints relating to social stability. The differences are to this extent major. Whereas moral and ethical conceptions are usually introduced with the aim of subordinating politics to a moral ideal such as that of respect (liberalism) or to an ethical ideal such as that of self-government (republicanism), a social conception integrates ethical and moral considerations into a broader picture which also takes conditions of social functioning into account. As I pointed out in the previous chapter, this is a theoretically demanding starting point, particularly if one considers the set of theoretical presuppositions which are mobilized. Taking this step seems, however, necessary, if a wide view of democracy is to be developed to its full consequences. And indeed, for the pragmatists as well as for other social interactionists, without a sociological theory of democracy we will inevitably fall short of understanding what the implications of a wide view of democracy are. Contemporary trends of globalization, the mixed fortunes of experiments in exporting democracy, the parallel evolution and coexistence of different stages of modernization throughout the world, the rise of populism, and the apparently successful coexistence of capitalism and non-democratic regimes in some countries count as ­ important reminders that our current views about democracy rely upon a set of tacit assumptions that are in need of more critical articulation. These assumptions are not limited to the sphere of formal political institutions and of their socio-economic embeddedness, but cover more generally the basic structure of human interactions. This way of conceptualizing democracy cannot be easily squared up with conceptions and approaches  See, for example, Dewey (1935, 1937, 1939a, 1939b), although the list is far from exhaustive.

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that are familiar in contemporary academic research, for reasons largely due to its disciplinary compartmentalization. Its meaning unfolds more clearly once it is placed within the framework of a larger reflection on the social basis of human life based upon a theory of association, as pragmatists propose. For pragmatists, the social idea of democracy is defined by the successful integration of epistemic, functional, and expressive dimensions. It is built on the assumption that knowledge, society, and self are strictly interdependent factors, so that the search for reliable knowledge, the compliance with functional imperatives, and the realization of individual aspirations can progress successfully only if they are pursued in concert. Democracy denotes the form of a society in which these three factors are successfully integrated; it describes a society in which self-realization is achieved through cooperation mediated by intelligence. The pragmatist social conception of democracy can be summed up in three major general assumptions: (a) the idea of democracy as method; (b) the priority of involvement in action over participation in decision-making; and (c) a social ontology of democracy. Taken together, these assumptions contribute to define democracy as a “social” idea. These three assumptions will now be discussed at length.

3

The Democratic Method

The first assumption of the pragmatist social conception of democracy is the idea that at the heart of democracy stands a method for the fixation of beliefs upon which collective action should rely. This idea of method is rooted in the pragmatist epistemology, and notably in the theory of ­rationality as inquiry developed by Peirce and Dewey.11 Dewey calls it the “method of democracy”, and it consists in: “persuasion through public discussion carried on not only in legislative halls but in the press, private conversations and public assemblies” (Dewey, 1939b, lw12.153). As Dewey explains: “the prime condition of a democratically organized  I elaborate more fully this argument providing an account of the pragmatist theory of rationality as inquiry and of its political implications in Frega (2012b). 11

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public is a kind of knowledge and insight which does not yet exist” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.339). Such a democratic method consists in “collective intelligence operating in cooperative action” and based on the best available knowledge and methods of inquiry (Dewey, 1939b, lw13.188). In similar terms, Follett states that, for the pragmatists, “democracy is a method, a scientific technique of evolving the will of the people” (Follett, 1918, 160). As these quotes clearly show, their understanding of the democratic method was not limited to what we currently understand as political proceduralism, which is to say a method for legitimizing binding collective decisions taken within institutionalized formal settings. Indeed, the pragmatist definition of democracy-as-method is much broader than political proceduralism, since it includes a principle of indefinite extension beyond the realm of formal politics, that is, of democracy as representative government, to any situation in which there is conflict or disagreement about how to act in concert. As such, the idea of democracy-­as-­method applies to both branches of the pragmatist theory of democracy; to its social idea of democracy and to its public-based theory of politics. Moreover, being derived from the methodology of science (rationality-­as-inquiry), the idea of democracy-as-method does not presuppose a dualistic separation between procedure and substance as it is found, for example, in Jürgen Habermas’ theory of deliberative democracy.12 Methodologically, pragmatists such as Dewey, Follett, and Addams reject the idea that the diverse social spheres should be organized according to their different approaches to the fixation of beliefs. Indeed, the pragmatist epistemology of inquiry is based on the assumption that inquiry should provide a unified normative framework for human problem-­solving in different spheres of social life, and that, on the ­contrary: “the real trouble is that there is an intrinsic split in our habitual attitudes when we profess to depend upon discussion and persuasion in politics and then systematically depend upon other methods in reaching conclusions in matters of morals and religion, or in anything where we depend upon a person or group possessed of ‘authority’” (Dewey, 1939b, lw13.154). This assumption, which stems from the epistemological core of pragmatism—the theory of inquiry—is a decisive  For a more extended analysis and critique of this dualism, see Frega (2013b).

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argument in support of the wide view of democracy.13 In terms of the pragmatist epistemology, democracy denotes a method of decision-making which cannot work successfully unless it is used in all spheres of personal and social life. Several of the arguments presented below depend upon this epistemic argument. The expression ‘democratic method’ or ‘method of democracy’ refers to at least three different dimensions. The first meaning of the idea of democracy-as-method is the idea of inquiry as a method of reasoning used not only in professional and institutional settings but in everyday life. Since Peirce’s contention that pragmatism strives to extend to the whole of society the “laboratory habit of mind”, pragmatism has articulated in a range of ways the idea that social emancipation requires the sustained diffusion of rational methods for the fixation of beliefs. The whole of Dewey’s philosophy is based upon this assumption. The same applies to Follett’s discussion of ‘group logic’ as opposed to ‘crowd logic’, or to Cooley’s ideas about the place of discussion and deliberation within primary groups.14 The second dimension concerns the application of evidence-based, fallible, and experimental methods to the solution of social problems. This is a central theme in the pragmatist tradition, as pragmatists have traditionally militated in support of extending science-based experimental methods to the analysis and solution of social problems. In particular, Dewey in the most vocal way emphasized the need to introduce experimental methods in the social and political sciences and to rely upon their knowledge to design and implement projects of social reform. Harold Lasswell caught the revolutionary meaning of this intuition for developing a new approach to politics for which he coined the expression ‘policy sciences’.15 According to the policy sciences view, the task of political theory is: “to search for ways of discovering and clarifying the past, present, and future repercussions of collective action (or inaction) for the human condition” (Lasswell, 1971, 14). Lasswell’s conviction  For a more extensive analysis of the epistemological basis of political pragmatism, see Frega (2012b), esp. Chs. 1 and 2. 14  I discuss this use at some length below in the section devoted to democratic habits. 15  Lasswell’s indebtedness to Dewey and pragmatism for the foundation of an experimentalist, problem-driven, and practice based approach to politics is explicitly stated in Lasswell (1971, xiii). 13

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was that what was needed was not a better scientific knowledge of society, but rather a more sophisticated method for taking decisions, and that the task of the policy sciences is to support decision-making processes. Indeed: “by focusing on the making and execution of policy, one identifies a relatively unique frame of reference, and utilizes many traditional contributions to political science, jurisprudence, and related disciplines” (Lasswell, 1971, 1). “[T]aking […] aggregate consequences into account” implies for Lasswell the necessity of expanding the scope of politics beyond the functioning of formal institutions to the whole “social process”—including public and civic orders, which, for Lasswell, means: “the collective activities of businesses, churches, and other active participants in society [that] are independent of detailed direction from government” (Lasswell, 1971, 1). Pragmatists insist upon the crucial role of the social sciences and public media to enhance a society’s capacity to take charge of its own problems and promote processes of democratization in ways that are distributed and participative, that is, in ways that are effective in mobilizing those affected by the problems at hand. The contextuality of approaches, problem-driven attitude, and plurality of methods and perspectives are the guiding criteria of the pragmatist method, according to thinkers such as Dewey, Lasswell, and Follett. The third dimension that compose the idea of democracy as method refers to the epistemic consequences of social and political inclusion. The idea is that democracy is epistemically superior to its competitors because of its better capacity at valorizing diversity and conflict as epistemic resources. Democracy is the form of social organization that best succeeds in rendering conflict epistemically productive thanks to its capacity to assign positive value to diversity, interaction, and dynamism. Hence to exploit the benefits of productive dissent we need to recognize and take advantage of the heterogeneous situated knowledge of diverse agents. Pragmatists have developed arguments in support of the epistemic benefits of social inclusion at different levels. While Dewey, for example, has persuasively shown the advantages that inclusion brings to the political organization of a society, authors such as Follett have explored the organizational benefits brought about by the application of the method of democracy to the management of public and private organizations, whereas authors such as Cooley have emphasized the epistemic superiority of primary groups because of their horizontal and

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inclusive internal organization. Later theories of democracy have articulated these intuitions in terms of an epistemic justification of democracy.16 In her account of organizational life, Follett insists upon the productive function of conflict: “as the appearance of difference, difference of opinions, of interests” (Follett, 2003, 1). Elsewhere she states: “What people often mean by getting rid of conflict is getting rid of diversity, and it is of the utmost importance that these should not be considered the same. We may wish to abolish conflict, but we cannot get rid of diversity. We must face life as it is and understand that diversity is its most essential feature…. Fear of difference is dread of life itself. It is possible to conceive conflict as not necessarily a wasteful outbreak of incompatibilities, but a normal process by which socially valuable differences register themselves for the enrichment of all concerned” (Follett, 1919b, 300). A democratic method for the management of organizational life relies on the capacity of making friction productive, rather than avoiding it. Follett’s theory of creative conflict resolution is to this extent exemplary of the pragmatist approach. As she notes: “[t]here are three main ways of dealing with conflict; domination, compromise and integration” (Follett, 2003, 2). Integration is a creative strategy that changes the situation in a way that enables a win-win solution, and is based upon abductive thinking. It is an open, experimentalist procedure. Because, unlike domination and compromise, the integrative solution cannot be known in advance, an experiment needs to be done which in turn will change the situation. As Follett, states: “integration requires a high order of intelligence, keen perception and discrimination, more than all, a brilliant inventiveness” (Follett, 2003, 18). ‘Democratic’ qualifies to this extent a method for dealing with difference and conflict, attempting to overcome conflict while not suppressing difference. Follett contrasts the method of democracy with the method of domination, which consists in suppressing difference by the use of force, and with the method of compromise, which consists in taking difference for granted and merely negotiating the distribution of losses. The democratic method requires not only that the use of force is rejected, but also that difference as it stands is not taken for granted but challenged by: “try[ing] experiments in methods of resolving differences” (Follett, 2003, 6). 16

 See Anderson (2006), Talisse (2007), Misak (2000), Knight and Johnson (2011).

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 he Priority of Action T and of Self-fulfillment

The second assumption underlying the pragmatist theory of democracy is that the normative core of the concept of democracy cannot be reduced to decision-making. By this I do not mean in any way to downplay the fundamental political relevance attached by deliberative democrats and others to the democratization of decision-making processes, nor that of participatory democrats who have claimed the necessity to extend the democratic method also to decision-making processes taking place outside the secluded spaces of formal politics. What I mean is that our understanding of democratic decision-making should be inscribed in a more encompassing account of democratic action and of the democratic way of life. A reformulation of the same idea in the language of Critical Theory would be that the task of democracy consists in recovering individuals from the social forms of alienated life in which they are entangled.17 Achieving this goal certainly requires instituting them as autonomous citizens, as well as empowering them as capable social agents. But it requires also something more: to provide them with the conditions for achieving a fulfilled social life. Seen from the perspective of this social philosophy, political philosophers, and even more political scientists, have too often been numbed by a myopic and unjustified compression of their theoretical concerns to the cognitive-decisional dimension of politics, hence neglecting the relevance to democracy of other spheres of human life and action. They have, in the today dominant Kantian parlance, reduced self-fulfillment to autonomy. This of course has not always been the case in the history of political thought, and pragmatists are known for having championed a much broader view of democracy, one I have proposed to capture with the concept of “social involvement” (Frega, 2020, forthcoming).  Axel Honneth’s recent works articulates this connection in details, under the heading of a theory of democratic ethos which owes equally from to Critical Theory and pragmatism. See, in particular, Honneth (2014, 2015). I come back to this theme in Chap. 9. For a comparison between Marx and Dewey as theorists of the relation between democracy and alienation, see Medearis (2015, Ch. 3). 17

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Not only have pragmatists incessantly promoted the expansion of collaborative and inclusive practices of decision-making in all spheres of social life, well before participative and deliberative theories begun to defend them. More profoundly, they understood democracy to imply the concrete involvement of individuals in social activities and their effective integration within social spaces and practices. In other words, pragmatists prioritize partaking in joint activity18 over participation in joint decision-­making as the hallmark of democracy, because democracy is not only a matter of epistemic decision-making but of concrete concerted action as well as involvement in social interactions. As important as the existence of a shared space of reasons is, and as central as the method of inquiry is for the pragmatist theory of democracy, the participatory imperative extends beyond both to include concrete involvement in social practices and inclusion in a plurality of social groups and social spaces. Partaking has to do with how citizens live together and together engage in the widest spectrum of normative practices, of which decision-­ making covers only a fraction, however important. As Dewey notes: “[t]he defining or characteristic condition of a group as social is communication, participation, sharing, interpenetration of meanings” (Dewey, 1923, mw15.239). Pragmatists see integrated participation in social processes as a key feature of a democratic form of society. Unsurprisingly, it is by direct participation in activities rather than by inclusion in decision-­ making that Dewey defines democracy as a social normative standard: “wherever there is conjoint activity whose consequences are appreciated as good by all singular persons who take part in it […] there is in so far a community. The clear consciousness of a communal life, in all its implications, constitutes the idea of democracy” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.328). To this extent, communal life does not refer to nostalgic and bygone forms of political association as they were found in rural America, but rather to inclusive and egalitarian patterns of social interaction. An important corollary of this wide view approach, is that our account of democratic agency should not be limited to what individuals do in their capacity as  The archaic verb ‘to partake’ captures more effectively than the modern verb ‘to participate’ the difference between the idea of sharing an experience and that of participation as involvement in decision-making current in contemporary political theory. 18

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citizens. It should be extended to the plurality of social roles in which they are involved, as workers, parents, educators, friends, members of an association. As Dewey clarifies later, the very idea of a common good, or of a political community, is directly tied to that of participation, which he explains, however, not in terms of inclusion in decision-making procedures but of inclusion in social practices: “to partake is to take part, to play a role. It is something active, something which engages the desires and aims of each contributing member” (Dewey and Tufts, 1932, lw7.345). He further articulates the meaning of collective or common goods for individuals in terms of (a) support in the pursuit of one’s own goals, and (b) learning through participation and interaction. Both achievements, but particularly the second, require the existence of an open and inclusive society. Indeed, “individuals are free to develop, to contribute and to share, only as social conditions break down walls of privilege and of monopolistic possession” (Dewey and Tufts, 1932, lw7.348). To this extent, a telling example of a form of social involvement is provided by the democratic councils that emerged in Germany at the end of WWI. Faced with the dramatic consequences of a lost war, “[t]he councils’ participants engaged in a wide variety of political activities—not just forming the councils, electing members to them, and debating about principle and strategy, but also, more mundanely, taking and restarting paralyzed factories, planning military demobilization, and finding and distributing food. Yet for all the diverse functions the councils took on, they did not see themselves as replacements for parliaments or indeed other government organs” (Medearis, 2015, 130–131). The example of councils is telling because in this view what is added to standard deliberative machinery is not only equally standard participatory practices such as organizing, dissenting, marching, mobilizing, debating, negotiating, striking, and petitioning,19 but more profoundly a concrete involvement with mundane tasks, with what need to be done to set up an institution, make it going, organize concrete life, provide services, and so on.20 Dewey develops a normative  For a classical statement, see Walzer (2007).  To this extent, a pragmatist interpretation of councils differs from Hannah Arendt’s, for whom they essentially represented a space where free political discourses could exist. I come back to this theme in Chap. 9. 19 20

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standard for assessing the democratic quality of a human association which is based upon a combination of two criteria, that is, the width and intensity of “interests held in common” and the “amount of interaction and cooperative intercourse with other groups” (Dewey, 1916, mw9.89). Both criteria prioritize social interaction, and the concept of participation encompasses all dimensions of being together in a social situation. Right at the heart of The Public and its Problems he states that “[a]ssociation or joint activity is a condition of the creation of a community” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.330). The associative principle is so important that Dewey redefines the political notions of liberty and equality in associational terms. Liberty is “the power to be an individualized self making a distinctive contribution and enjoying in its own way the fruits of association”, and equality “denotes the unhampered share which each individual member of the community has in the consequences of associated action” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.329). If we take this social view of democracy seriously, it follows that by reducing the pragmatist conception of democracy to the discursive, epistemic, procedural, decision-making dimension of politics we leave out very important and indeed essential traits of the original idea. There is much in the pragmatist conception of democracy that exceeds contemporary, post-Habermasian, theories of the public sphere. While contemporary scholars in the pragmatist tradition have widely acknowledged the role of the ethical, imaginational, and aesthetic dimensions of experience for democracy,21 the acknowledgment of the distinctive contribution that action in concert (partaking) makes to democracy has been insufficient. This fact may partially be explained by the overwhelming role played by Mead’s theory of socialization, later popularized in political theory by its incorporation in Habermas’ theory of communicative action. However, whilst it is certainly true that Mead’s theory of self allows significant room for cognitive and symbolic mechanisms in the formation of social identity, it does not completely discard the role played by the simple fact of action in concert in the production of social identities.22 While Mead’s and also Cooley’s prioritization of the symbolic dimension as the medium  See, for example, Pappas (2008), Alexander (1990), Fesmire (2003).  See Joas (1985) for a more sophisticated interpretation of Mead which emphasizes the socio-­ practical dimension of the symbolic action. 21 22

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in which self and society meet, may leave room for this kind of misunderstanding, Dewey’s take on this point is much less controversial. Indeed, for Dewey this mediating function is essentially played by action. In Dewey’s words, this means, for example, that the mind, or self, consists of “the organized habits of intelligent response” (Dewey, 1916, mw9.38) previously acquired through social interaction. Or, as he explains halfway through his account of democracy, “thinking is secreted in the interstices of habits” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.335). Identity is produced through action and the self is an emerging property of ongoing social transactions. Indeed, whatever their take on this point, pragmatists share an externalized conception of personal identity which largely explains the place they assign to patterns of social interaction. The self and knowledge exist only in action, through their exercise in time. For philosophers who assign such a central role to habits in shaping human life, it should come as no surprise that autonomy, conceived in terms of sovereignty of a free mind over a self ’s actions, cannot provide the normative ideal of politics. If indeed it is true that “personal desire and belief [are] functions of habit and custom” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.336), then it is not by conquering sovereign intellectual or moral autonomy but by changing habits that social situations can be improved. And a change of habits necessarily takes place through action: it is by acting differently that individuals develop different habits. Democratic ways of behaving find their source in democratic habits rather than in a supposedly autonomous faculty of self-legislation. According to this view of human action and selfhood, autonomy is but a feature—as important as it is—of this complex emergent entity which is the self, because it is indeed through social action that identity is formed. Participation in joint activity, involvement in practical tasks, joint and collaborative problem-­solving, active involvement in processes of social inquiry are all examples of social practices through which the self is formed. For Dewey, the social actors that are relevant to democratic theory are not mere ‘selves’, they are ‘agents’. Individuals are “interested, and chiefly interested upon the whole, in entering into the activities of others and taking part in conjoint and cooperative doings” (Dewey, 1916, mw9.29). The priority of partaking implies a major shift of perspective in democratic theory, insofar as the traditional understanding of democracy as the regime which entitles indi-

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viduals to be the authors of their laws, while not being rejected, is inscribed within a broader view. This view puts center stage the idea of democracy as a form of society in which citizens as responsible agents partake in conjoint and cooperative activities aimed at achieving shared goals. Autonomous decision-making is obviously an essential ingredient of responsible partaking, but it does not exhaust it. On the other hand, autonomous decision-making severed from responsible partaking voids the democratic way of life of its deepest meaning. As we will see in the next section, the upshot of this account is the central role pragmatists assign to social integration and the rejection of asymmetric and hierarchical forms of authority. As is recalled above, (a) relational parity, (b) inclusive authority, and (c) social involvement are normative standards valid for any sphere of social life and for any form of human intercourse. Consonant with the priority of action over decision-making, pragmatists tend, therefore, to prioritize self-fulfillment over autonomy as the individual good that politics should promote.23 Pragmatists are persuaded that personal fulfillment requires active involvement in domination-free settings where personal involvement is oriented toward shared goals. The argument is not limited to freedom to act, but implies opportunities to be actively involved in activities which contribute to collective aims. An essential ingredient of this idea is that partaking means being part of a collective project, seeing one’s action as being conducive to shared goals. Such an argument is, for example, the basis of Jane Addams’s reform project of Hull House,24 and is used by Dewey in several contexts to defend his participatory views. It also underlies Mead’s integrative theory of the social self. In all cases, the idea of partaking is not confined to the domain of politics. It is, rather, a general statement concerning how our social nature influences our capacity to find meaning in what we do. It is indeed a central assumption of classical pragmatism that, as social beings, we realize our selves only through active participation in the activities of  Pragmatism can also be seen as engaging in a reinterpretation of the very notion of autonomy along Hegelian lines. According to this perspective, one could simply state that ‘self-fulfillment’ is autonomy in pragmatist terms. For a recent interpretation along these lines, see Kloppenberg (2016). 24  See Addams (1912). For a discussion of Addams views and its political implications, see Seigfried (1999), Hamington (2004), Fischer, Nackenoff and Chmielewski (2009). 23

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groups or associations such as the family, voluntary associations, professional bodies, workplaces, and political communities. And our self-­ fulfillment as individuals depends upon the degree of our expressive and functional integration into these groups, that is, upon the degree of recognition we obtain and upon active involvement in the practices which compose the life of the group. When our political role as citizens is reduced to that of casting a ballot every four years, we are severed from a real involvement in collective life and we inevitably lose the meaning of political action. We are no more involved in the destiny of the community to which we belong, so that politics becomes disconnected from our form of life. This social-theoretic assumption puts the pragmatist conception of democracy at odds with current Kantian approaches to politics. It is obvious that the human agent that pragmatism posits at the heart of democratic theory is not the self-legislating Kantian citizen who realizes his human nature by achieving moral and cognitive autonomy. For this political agent, the highest political good consists in being the author of the laws to which he is submitted. The priority of law-making as the supreme political good derives from the priority of autonomy over other modes of experience in Kantian philosophy. The pragmatist human agent is an embodied social actor who seeks self-realization through active involvement in activities shared with others—the activities which ­compose their form of life, rather than a rational actor seeking autonomy through self-legislation. The pragmatist theory of democracy articulates politically this idea of a priority of action in concert, in the same manner in which liberal theories of democracy articulate the basic Kantian intuition of the priority of autonomy in terms of democratic legitimacy as self-legislation. From a pragmatist—and at least to this extent anti-­Kantian standpoint, the highest good politics should provide is not autonomy but rather social interconnectedness. Consequently, as the higher system of social coordination, democracy should reflect this fact. If “participating in a joint activity [is] the chief way of forming dispositions” (Dewey, 1916, mw9.33), the forms through which participation takes place are of vital importance in defining the quality of associated life. Democratizing decision-making is, to this extent, a necessary but insufficient means to achieve democracy. If the aim of politics consists

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in achieving what human beings consider important goods, then in a Kantian conception, according to which the highest good is autonomy, the task of politics consists, unsurprisingly, in protecting and expanding the scope of autonomy narrowly construed. In a pragmatist perspective, according to which the highest good is the self-realization of a social self, the task of politics consists in multiplying and preserving opportunities for social interaction which promote self-fulfillment. Such a task can be pursued only within the framework of a social conception of democracy which extends to the whole social process. Participation, as should be clear by now, does not refer only to active involvement in groups or associations having social or political goals. More broadly, it refers to the general patterns of social interaction that shape a society, that is, to gender and race relations, class divisions, neighborhood interactions, or to the conditions promoting or impeding access to given social spaces and institutions such as universities, clubs, and cultural events. Indeed, the highest good requires multiplied participation in a plurality of social groups with which the individual shares the highest number and variety of interests, whether material, intellectual, or aesthetic (Dewey, 1916, mw9.89). Sharing interests means and requires not only being included in decisions concerning the concrete management of these interests, but actually being involved in activities which contribute to the realization of such interests, having unrestrained access to social spaces and situations where they are pursued in common. Consequently, a democratic society is one which renders the largest amount of social experiences accessible to the highest number of individuals, a society which consistently enforces what Elizabeth Anderson has called an imperative of integration (Anderson, 2010). To have an interest in common means doing things with others: “in order to have a large number of values in common, all the members of the group must have an equable opportunity to receive and to take from others. There must be a large variety of shared undertakings and experiences” (Dewey, 1916, mw9.90). Patterns of interaction and forms of associated living that prevent circulation of experiences and framing of widely shared interests are anti-­ democratic according to that specific social understanding of democracy. I have in mind here at least three sets of phenomena: (1) class division based on material and cultural asymmetry and privilege (the persistence

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of the ancien régime); (2) authoritarian relations based on power asymmetry, and (3) group self-segregation based on protection of material or symbolic interests. The pillars of classical democracy such as universal suffrage, division of power, the rule of law, political, civil, social rights and the other basic institutions of political democracy have a limited impact on these three dimensions. This is one of the reasons why a social rather than a purely political conception of democracy should be privileged. Self-consistency and isolation of social groups is, for pragmatists, an almost ineradicable tendency of human societies, thus calling for continuous and sustained redress mechanisms. Dewey, Mead, Addams, and the other pragmatists strictly associate the notion of social progress— hence of democracy—with the process whereby social distances are progressively overcome: “every expansive era in the history of mankind has coincided with the operation of factors which have tended to eliminate distance between peoples and classes previously hemmed off from one another” (Dewey, 1916, mw9.92). Anderson’s critique of authoritarian social epistemologies relies precisely upon this pragmatist argument to criticize models of social organization which enforce separation among social groups, thus preventing shared social experiences from which only mutual understanding and mutual respect can grow. As she explains with reference to the historical example of slavery, the very possibility of authoritarian and anti-democratic forms of social organization rely upon and tend to reproduce forms of social isolation which in their turn reinforce injustice and exclusion (Anderson, 2016). At the basis of this mechanism lies the absence of shared lived experience. What is undemocratic in this form of life is not only the exclusion of part of the society from decision-­ making, but, more radically, its exclusion from socially important forms of experience, the lack of shared forms of joint action. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that Dewey based his normative account of democracy on the two following factors: “the first signifies not only more numerous and more varied points of shared common interest, but greater reliance upon the recognition of mutual interests […]. The second means not only freer interaction between social groups (once isolated so far as intention could keep up a separation) but change in social habit—its continuous readjustment through meeting the new situations produced by varied intercourse. And these two traits are precisely what characterize

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the democratically constituted society” (Dewey, 1916, mw9.92). Both factors emphasize the function of social involvement in individual as well as collective flourishing.

5

 he Social-Ontological Basis T of Democracy

The third assumption at the heart of political pragmatism is an interactionist social ontology of democracy. As I understand the term, ‘social ontology’ is a theoretical discourse which describes the general traits of social life, identifying its main constitutive features and explaining how social properties are generated. Pragmatist social ontology is interactionist insofar as it posits that social interactions provide the basic structure of social life.25 In other words, it states that social interactions give shape to individual traits and to social structures. As Dewey has explained, “associated or conjoint behavior is a universal characteristic of all existences” (Dewey, 1928, 161) and all social realities are generated through transactional activities (Dewey and Bentley, 1949). His social ontology is theoretically built upon the assumption that “the fact of association and of range of associations as determining “degrees of reality” gives us our starting point” (Dewey, 1928, 163). Expressed differently, the social world is seen as being primitively constituted neither of individuals nor of social structures but of social interaction which are stabilized through the formation of individual habits and of social institutions. This social ontological feature was shared by a larger array of pragmatist philosophers and social theorists of the time.26 Pragmatists have described their social ontology with a plurality of terms which all refer to the transient and  See Frega (2019b) for a fuller account of an interactionist social ontology of democracy. See also Testa (2016). While I concur with Italo Testa in seeing John Dewey as a founding father of social ontology, I disagree with him about the interpretation of his ontology. Whereas Testa sees in habits and habituation the constitutive principle of Dewey’s ontology, I interpret instead his ontology in terms of the processual or transactional priority of the principle of association. 26  Andrew Abbott described this social ontology in terms of a processual social theory at the basis of which stands the idea—that he traces back to pragmatism and Chicago sociology—that “everything in the social world is continuously in the process of making, remaking, and unmaking itself ” (Abbott, 2016, i). 25

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ongoing nature of social facts and their generative function: process (Cooley, 1918), association (Dewey, 1928), interaction (Mead, 1934), transaction (Dewey and Bentley, 1949), going concern (Hughes, 1984). Translated into normative terms, the basic intuition at the heart of the pragmatist social conception of democracy is that democracy defines a specific mode of associated living, normatively characterized by its capacity to maximize opportunities for cooperation and integration in all spheres of social life (social involvement) under conditions of relational parity and inclusive authority. This mode of associated living can be further specified in terms of (a) individual habits, (b) patterns of social interaction, and (c) forms of institutional organization. On the one hand, individual habits stabilize human conduct and coalesce in collective habits which amount to patterns of social interaction. On the other hand, forms of organization can be seen as materialized instantiations of patterns of social interaction which in turn contribute to the formation of individual habits. The three levels constantly interact and influence each other (principle of congruence). The ontological status of habits, patterns, and forms can be interpreted in two ways, both consistent with the pragmatist account. The first, here privileged, sees them as principles that generate and structurate social reality, so that the functioning of social units can be described and explained with reference to them. The second way consists in seeing them as layers or strata which compose society, spanning its sociological constitution from the level of family life to that of the most sophisticated institutional architectures. From a normative standpoint, the difference is small. On the one hand, we can speak of democratic principles, referring to habits, patterns of social interaction, and forms of institutional organization. On the other hand, we can apply the term ‘democratic’ to any strata of social life complying with normative principles of (a) relational parity, (b) inclusive authority, and (c) social involvement identified above. Pragmatists did not develop a complete social ontology of democracy, nor did they clearly differentiate the two interpretations. In their writings, the two perspectives mingle constantly. We have already seen that in their sociological, pedagogical, ethical, and political writings, pragmatists refer to democracy as a ‘method’ or ‘principle’ of human association. At the same time, they consistently apply the term ‘democracy’ to a large array of social units spanning the

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whole gamut of social life, from small informal everyday social interactions to highly structured formal political institutions composing the political sphere of highly developed modern constitutional democracies. For example, when Follett claims that the goal of democracy consists in replacing “crowd logic” with “group logic”, she is reclaiming democracy as an abstract normative principle of institutional organization to be applied in any type of secondary association. On the other hand, when Cooley states that primary groups are organized according to democratic principles, what he has in mind is at the same time democracy as an abstract principle of social interaction and democracy as a concrete way of functioning among specific social groups such as the family and a group of friends. Hence the basic normative idea which pragmatist writings articulate is clear and straightforward. If a society is to be called ‘democratic’, individual habits, patterns of social interaction, and organizational forms—not merely formal political institutions—should comply with some basic normative requirements concerning how human beings live together. Democracy is a graduated predicate. Each society is more or less democratic according to its capacity to consistently implement democratic principles at all levels of social life. While stabilizing social interaction, habits and institutions tend also to rigidify patterns of social interaction and to this extent conduce to situations of maladjustment which in the end produce conflict. This fact explains why, according to pragmatists, democracy does not designate a stable state but a condition of ongoing adjustment and revision. It is important to bear in mind that the basic ingredients of the pragmatist social ontology are not individuals, groups, and organizations—as is common in substantialist views of ontology—but habits, interactions, and associational forms. These categories are part of a relational ontology and identify traits which are much less stable than ontological substances and much more dependent upon concrete ecologies of situated interaction.27 In this section I identify and discuss the three main conceptual articulations of this social ontology. As a social concept, democracy denotes a society in which these three different levels are fused together: it refers to a mode of social organization in which a specific set of habits is integrated  In Chap. 7 I will further elaborate on this idea by relying on recent studies in contemporary sociology of interactions. 27

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within peculiar forms of social interaction in the structured framework of social institutions which are also organized according to democratic principles. These three dimensions interact constantly, so that the distinctively democratic quality of a social aggregate stems from the positive feedback generated by the mutual and beneficial effects of these interactions. None of these dimensions alone is sufficient for a democratic polity to exist. This complex bundle of individual habits, patterns of social interactions, and associational forms is the prime referent of a pragmatist theory of democracy.

5.1

The Democratic Ethos

The idea that democracy describes a distinct form of society or way of life embedded in a specific ethos traverses the whole pragmatist tradition. While the connection between individual character and the body politic in itself is not new, the novelty of pragmatism derives from its habit-­ based conception of human behavior. The idea of a distinctly democratic ethos is, therefore, reformulated in terms of a habit-based dispositional theory of action. Given their general function in the explication of ­behavior and, more broadly, in the explanation of how individuals are socially integrated, habits have obvious relevance for a social theory of democracy in view of their function in sustaining forms of mutual interaction. If ‘democratic’ denotes a mode of human interaction—hence an attribute of human relations—its structuration through habits is for the pragmatists inescapable. To persist in time, a democratic society depends either upon specific types of habits or on a specific combination of generic habits. The reference to habits clarifies that for pragmatists ethos is an action-­theoretic rather than a moral concept. In this section I will not rehearse arguments explaining the difference between habits and routine, as the difference is today well understood and accepted.28 Suffice to say that, as an action-theoretic concept, the notion of habits incorporates critical and self-reflective elements. Its aim is to explain action as a process which relies upon stabilized routines which are constantly  For an examination of the pragmatist contribution to this distinction, see Kilpinen (2000), Joas (1996), Chauviré and Ogien (2002). 28

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adjusted to circumstances by integrating the feedback of environmental reactions. James in his monumental Principles of Psychology (James, 1950), Dewey in his philosophical anthropology (Dewey, 1922) and Mead in his social psychology (Mead, 1934) all go to considerable lengths to explain that human action is lent texture by a habitual dimension which, far from being merely passive and routinized, can rely on consciously entertained resources in action. The democratic ethos describes those individual traits whose spread within a political community is a requirement for democracy to thrive. The grammar of habits has an advantage over other moral-­political grammars because habits, thanks to their action-theoretic constitution, have a direct bearing on action. Whereas the link between moral values and social action is notoriously problematic, habits establish a more direct causal connection with social reality. With respect to grammars of virtue and character, habits emphasize the interaction between human individuals and their social environments as well as their mutual dependence. Habits denote dispositions to act which are acquired through interaction and stabilized by social institutions. At the same time, thanks to their plasticity, habits can account for societal transformations. As I will further explain in Chap. 6, the novelty of the pragmatist approach to democratic politics is better appreciated when seen in comparative terms. One can see, for example, that the classical liberal view of politics offers an individualistic account of the democratic citizen based upon values of autonomy and tolerance (Macedo, 1990), whereas a republican view is rather framed in the terms of a democratic citizenship rooted in the civic virtue of self-denial (Maynor, 2003). Both approaches emphasize individual traits that assist agents to overcome their original egoism in pursuit of the public good. These political grammars presuppose the separation between the private and the public realm, and tend to conceive of morality as the set of drives that coerce people out of their private self-concern to act in the name of common goods. Both assumptions are highly problematic. Political pragmatism presupposes neither, as its habit-based anthropology offers a better integration of the private and public dimensions of associated life. Whereas both the liberal and the republican conceptions emphasize specific individual traits, the pragmatist view insists on the interactional dimension of habits, that is, of habits

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as meaningful and effective only in reference to the social context in which they are exercised. As Dewey explains “conduct is always shared”, to the extent that “to get a rational basis for moral discussion we must begin with recognizing that functions and habits are ways of using and incorporating the environment in which the latter has its say as surely as the former” (Dewey, 1922, mw14.15–16). More than education, it is socially situated action that shapes habits. Habits are not formed once and for all but constantly adjusted through the demands of situations. The grammar of habits is consistent with the view of ourselves as socially situated agents rather than subjects, and with the idea that selves are not self-contained substances but the result of ongoing interactions with the plurality of natural and social environments in which they happen to live. Hence the direct correlation between the three principles of social ontology. Whilst pragmatists never offered a list of democratic habits, habits which are most often invoked in the literature can be distinguished according to the behavioral dimension they highlight, that is, cooperative, epistemic, and reflective. The first group includes habits which promote and sustain cooperative relations and nonviolent practices of conflict resolution, but also habits of toleration toward opposition and dissent. We can see this idea at work in this quotation from Dewey: “Democracy is the belief that even when needs and ends or consequences are different for each individual, the habit of amicable cooperation— which may include, as in sport, rivalry and competition—is itself a priceless addition to life. To take as far as possible every conflict which arises—and they are bound to arise—out of the atmosphere and medium of force, of violence as a means of settlement into that of discussion and of intelligence is to treat those who disagree—even profoundly—with us as those from whom we may learn, and in so far, as friends” (Dewey, 1939a, lw14.228). Habits of cooperation take our mutual dependence into account, rather than stressing independence and isolation, so as to incorporate the outer society in our own identity. Follett’s theory of conflict resolution is similarly built upon a theory of democratic habits at the heart of which is the capacity to engage in conflict resolution in ways that promote what she calls “integrative” strategies of problem-solving (Follett, 1919b, Ch. IV). Follett has criticized the idea that negotiation and compromise are the only alternative to violence and domination, showing

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why negotiation and compromise, while superior to violence and domination, are still only second-best options, if compared to cooperative strategies based on abductive methods of problem-setting and -solving. She has equally emphasized the need to learn such habits as well as their importance in shaping human interactions at all levels of social life, particularly in the workplace. Cooperative habits involve an orientation toward social action and privileging of the common good, but also require a cognitive openness and capacity to sustain and manage uncertainty, because integrative solutions are usually not easily found and require that all participants engage in collective processes of inquiry. In the wake of Dewey, political scientist Harold Lasswell has defined the democratic character in terms of “the maintenance of an open as against a closed ego” (Lasswell, 1951, 495), and more broadly as the set of traits that are supportive of the democratic community, which he defines in turn as a form of social organization “in which human dignity is realized in theory and fact” (Lasswell, 1951, 473), one which “is characterized by wide rather than narrow participation in the shaping and sharing of values” (Lasswell, 1951, 474)—a paradigmatically pragmatist definition of democracy. Lasswell emphasizes the cooperative dimension of the democratic ethos, rather than the epistemic-decisional. What is of utmost importance to Lasswell is the orientation toward social inclusion, the habit of interacting with other individuals without taking social status into account: “such a person transcends most of the cultural categories that divide human beings from one another, and senses the common humanity across class and even caste lines within the culture, and in the world beyond the local culture” (Lasswell, 1951, 495–496). The recent upsurge of populism, and the threat that anti-immigrant movements are posing to contemporary democracies confirm the destabilizing effects of anti-cooperative habits on democratic societies as well as on their political institutions. The democratic ethos requires an open and potentially cosmopolitan orientation, as Charles Cooley, Jane Addams, and George H. Mead show. Cosmopolitanism refers here to what Hannah Arendt would call “enlarged mentality”, i.e. the capacity to reach outside the limited circle of acquaintances to share views and ideas with larger social groups. This proves indispensable in order to integrate complex and pluralistic societies in

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which diversity increases constantly. Lasswell’s empirical investigations of political behavior, inspired by pragmatism, are consistent with the pragmatist idea that partaking in social life and sharing common values has precedence over participation in decision-making as the factor which promotes integration among free and equal citizens. Lasswell defines the democratic character as: “multi-valued, rather than single-valued, and as disposed to share rather than to hoard or to monopolize” (Lasswell, 1951, 497–498). Follett’s emphasis on integration, Dewey’s insistence upon the priority of action in common, and Mead’s conception of the self all describe the same set of democratic habits in only slightly different terms. Cooperative habits are important because they determine the capacity to build patterns of social interaction based upon inclusion rather than exclusion. They underlie the social dimension of democracy as a form of life in common. The second dimension of democratic habits emphasized by pragmatists is epistemic. An individual’s willingness and capacity to fix their beliefs according to the experimental method rather than by relying upon other non-rational methods of hardwiring is a central element of the democratic ethos. Epistemic habits are required because democracy rejects authoritarian and hierarchical forms of social integration, relying instead on forms of self-organization which require that each member actively contribute to the goal of cooperation. Emphasis on the epistemic dimension of democracy was a standard argument in the pragmatist tradition since Peircean claims in support of the general diffusion of the “laboratory habit of mind”, and is consonant with the enlightenment tradition of faith in the emancipatory function of reason. This epistemic understanding of democracy is, however, very distant from the kind of rationalist interpretations of democracy to which contemporary political philosophy has accustomed us.29 The first commitment of a democratic ethos refers to what Dewey and Follett called “the method of  As Richard Bernstein has remarked in his critique of Jürgen Habermas’ discursive theory of democracy, the very idea of a democratic theory purified of any substantial ethical commitment is misguided, because the pragmatic presuppositions which lie at the bottom of communicative rationality are not merely linguistic. At the same time, Bernstein does not wish to reintroduce ethical commitments to political theory. Indeed, the kind of habits he has in mind concern rather the discursive practices through which communicative rationality is exercised. In other words, the idea of a democratic ethos does not necessarily imply postulating moral and political virtues. 29

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democracy”, and includes all the predispositions and attitudes which deliberation requires. For example, when Dewey defines democracy as a moral idea what he has in mind are not Kantian or religious ideals of respect and human dignity, but rather an ethic of scientific inquiry, what he also called a “scientific morale”, by which he meant the “extension of the qualities that make up the scientific attitude” to the domain of moral facts (Dewey, 1939b, lw13.170–171). Epistemic habits are so important for the democratic ethos that “the future of democracy is allied with spread of the scientific attitude” (Dewey, 1939b, lw13.169). Reference to epistemic habits helps to overcome the shortcomings ensuing from the restriction of democracy to the procedural imperative of the uncoerced force of the better argument (Habermas). Moreover, it shows that going beyond pure epistemic proceduralism needs not necessarily postulating an ethical background—as Habermas himself seems to imply. More than to deliberative theory, one has to think at more mundane phenomena such as the consequences of the internet and new social media on contemporary democracy, or the extent to which the fabrication of fake-news can influence electoral results to appreciate the extent to which epistemic habits are the backbone of democracy. The habit of taking habit denotes the third type of habit required by democratic life. William I.  Thomas, a Chicago sociologist inspired by pragmatism, observed that “the habit of change”—a linguistic variant of Peirce’s “habit of taking habit”—is a distinguishing feature of modern life and a characteristic feature of democracy. The fact of human plasticity shapes the pragmatist understanding of how a democratic society should address the problem of social change. Insofar as democracy defines a participated way of orienting collective life, it should also incorporate social strategies for changing habits consistent with its own basic principles. This means, for example, that collective strategies of identity-formation such as those developed by totalitarian regimes are excluded. Rather than being drilled through social pressure, the citizens of a democratic society must be given the tools to independently adjust to changing outer circumstances. In other words, for the citizens of democratic societies, habit-taking or habit-changing must become a second nature. Like other prominent social theorists of the time, pragmatists were aware that the advent of modernity required and imposed new habits of

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social interaction, and in particular the adoption of a more flexible structure of behavior, based on a reflexive and critical attitude toward one’s own habits of thought and action. Pragmatists saw very early that modern societies imposed upon human life an unprecedented acceleration which required from each individual the adoption of reflective attitudes in which doubt and uncertainty were acquiring greater weight.30 More than their European colleagues, they also reflected on how a society should be organized to meet these challenges, and how its democratization was part of the answer. American social theorists were among the first to see that one of the major trends brought about by the advent of modernity was the increased intensity with which different groups with different normative standards were entering in mutual relations. Thanks to this process, normative systems once isolated and self-contained began to interact, consequently, increased occasions for conflict emerged: “mobility invades society. War, commerce, travel, communication, contact with the thoughts and desires of other classes, new inventions in productive industry, disturb the settled distribution of customs. Congealed habits thaw out, and a flood mixes things once separated” (Dewey, 1922, mw14.59). Under these circumstances, the very possibility of living together requires more than the liberal virtues of tolerance and respect. In particular, second order habits are needed to enable individuals to manage an unprecedented degree of moral conflict while reconciling personal autonomy with social change. The emphasis pragmatists placed on the creativity of action31 is part of a theoretical strategy which aimed at reconciling the extreme pressure to invent new strategies to cope with a changing environment with the reduced weight of social constraints on individual action which characterizes a democratic society in which individuals are let free to choose their course of life, hence to fail. The demand for improved reflective habits and the spread of what Peirce called “the laboratory habit of mind” is, therefore, an essential ingredient of the pragmatist conception of social democracy, not only because modern life is characterized by an unprecedented  For a general overview of this argument, see Rosa and Scheuerman (2008). Scheuerman (2004) discusses Dewey’s argument about the ‘mania of speed’. 31  See Joas (1996), Schubert (2006, 2011). 30

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degree of epistemic complexity and uncertainty, but also because individuals must themselves find the most appropriate way to deal with them. Both conditions impose on individuals an extremely heavy burden in terms of a duty to revise one’s own beliefs and habits, and to deal with habits and beliefs different from one’s own. The very possibility of a democratic society depends upon the successful implementation of this second order habit which is the habit of taking habits. The distinction between first order and second order habits has, therefore, a direct bearing on the theory of democracy. As Dewey and other representatives of the educational and progressive movement of the time clearly noted, most individuals did not possess the reflective habits needed to cope with the new society, and their formation was considered a major task of the modern state. Dewey noted that the liberal system of education inherited from the past maintained social and economic inequalities by fostering in individuals different kinds of habits. Indeed, whereas elites received an education which instilled in them the second order habits needed to cope with the circumstances of modern life, the lower classes— when educated at all—were trained to learn repetitive routines which did not leave any room for reflectivity and self-criticism. This class-based practice of habit-formation has, for Dewey, far reaching political consequences as it does not merely imply—as pedagogists had already noted—that members of the lower classes were destined for occupations in which there was no space for the exercise of intelligence and creativity. For pragmatists such as Jane Addams, George Mead, Charles Cooley, and John Dewey, the political implications of this education system were much more pervasive as, in a society whose rhythm of change constantly increased, members of the lower classes were not given the chance to form the second order habits needed to change one’s first order habits so as to adjust to changing circumstances. Consequently, the capacity to react creatively to unexpected circumstances, to form new values, to interact with individuals coming from different worlds, remained the privilege of a social class. For Dewey, a society in which a few are taught only repetitive habits whereas others are trained in intelligent habits is one in which: “democracy is bound to be perverted in realization” (Dewey, 1922, mw14.52). It is a society in which the experimental method cannot be successfully applied.

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Democratic Patterns of Social Interaction

The second principle of the pragmatist social ontology of democracy is provided by qualified patterns of social interaction. Pragmatists’ concern for patterns of social interaction was part of a larger “mania for association” (Clemens, 1997, 37) that characterized American social theory of the time, to which Cooley and Mead contributed with a more sophisticated social-theoretic account, and Dewey with a more abstract philosophical foundation. Associational theories of social life prioritize as the basic fact of social life social interactions over subjective attributes (preferences, interests) and structural traits.32 Pragmatists claim that the ­adjective ‘democratic’ could and should be predicated on patterns of everyday human interaction which comply with given normative requirements. While both Dewey and Mead went to considerable lengths to analyze the interactional and transactional structure of social life, and while the whole tradition of Chicago sociology produced rich and varied descriptions of the new patterns of associational life, it is probably Charles Cooley who pointed out in the clearest way the implications of social interaction for a social theory of democracy, one that would provide the baseline of pragmatist social theory. Cooley explicitly defines society in associative terms. In Cooley’s account, sociality as the distinctive ontological feature of all human manifestations expresses itself through three related properties, that is, organization, connectedness, communication. The idea of association conveys the priority of this relational structure. According to this associational paradigm, social life is defined by the nature and quality of the relations through which social members are tied together, rather  Some strands of cultural theory applied to the study of politics have recently developed an interaction-­based model of social explanation that resonates with the pragmatist account. For example, Michael Thompson and collaborators coined the term “social solidarity” to analyze political cultures as combining “a distinctive pattern of social relationships, a distinctive cultural bias and a distinctive behavioral strategy” (Thompson, Grendstad and Selle, 1999, 8). In so doing, they clearly locate patterns of social interaction at the heart of political life. As they acknowledge, focus on patterns of interaction enables the analyst to move up and down the layers composing the social ontology: “by thinking in terms of solidarities, and of their complex dynamics, we are able to zoom in on any scale level–the household, the state, the international regime, the firm, the political party or whatever” (Thompson, Grendstad and Selle, 1999, 10). The same assumption lies at the basis of the interaction-based pragmatist account of the social ontology of democracy. 32

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than by the nature of its elementary constituents (individualism) or of its constitutive structures (structuralism, institutionalism). Cooley sees the defining feature of sociality in the interaction and influence among parts that are integrated and organized, especially by means of communicative exchanges. Hence organization, interaction, and mutual influence define the basic structure of all social phenomena. ‘Social’ in this sense does not denote a permanent structural feature of a social unit but a pattern of ongoing interactions through which temporary states of equilibrium are constantly achieved, maintained, and transformed. Like Dewey and other pragmatist social theorists of the time, Cooley wishes to ground his concept of democracy in the primary facts of face-­ to-­face interactions. As I have already remarked, the priority of face-to-­ face interactions should not confused with communitarianism, nor with a romanticized vision of democracy as a consensual, conflict-free form of human association. It rather articulates a basic psycho-social intuition, the fact that “it is when we see each other’s faces and hear each other’s voices that we become most human to each other” (Turkle, 2015, 23). Cooley anticipates much of contemporary research on this theme when he proposes to examine democracy starting from an account of human interactions within primary groups rather than within the larger circles of interactions in public places. Here we see at its clearest what is entailed by taking a social, rather than political, stand on democracy. According to Cooley, primary groups defined as “those characterized by intimate face-­ to-­face association and cooperation” (Cooley, 1909, 23) are the building blocks of social life in three senses: (a) they are the primary and simplest form of social interaction in which human beings engage; (b) they are the form of social life in which human beings learn the basic patterns of social interaction they will then replicate in all other social circumstances, and (c) they embody the normative standard that all other forms of social life should try to realize. Given their normative function, primary groups also have a direct bearing on Cooley’s understanding of politics, in particular on his theory of democracy. Indeed, for Cooley, patterns of interaction that characterize primary groups when they operate in non-distorted ways set the normative standard of democracy. Democracy, in other terms, is the quality of social interactions—and of the social units within which they occur—which respect given normative standards.

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We can distinguish three different ways in which primary groups shape Cooley’s notion of democracy, that is, genealogical, causal, and normative. From a genealogical perspective, primary groups breed and shape democratic attitudes. “They give the individual his earliest and completest experience of social unity” (Cooley, 1909, 26–7). It is within primary groups that individuals have a deep and enduring experience of social life that is positive and fulfilling, and Cooley qualifies it in terms of unity. From a causal perspective, primary groups are the source of normative ideals that shape the political notion of democracy. The normative content of the concept of political democracy is derived from the social experience that takes place within primary groups. Finally, from a normative perspective, primary groups define an ideal typical instance of democracy which is pre-political in nature but which can be extended to politics as well. As Cooley contends, “habits of free cooperation and discussion almost uninfluenced by the character of the state” (Cooley, 1909, 27) are found already at the level of small rural communities. “In these relations mankind realizes itself, gratifies its primary needs, in a fairly satisfactory manner, and from the experience forms standards of what it is to expect from more elaborate association. Since groups of this sort are never obliterated from human experience, but flourish more or less under all kinds of institutions, they remain an enduring criterion by which the latter are ultimately judged” (Cooley, 1909, 32). By association, Cooley means a plurality of forms of interaction whose basis is at the same time cooperative and competitive, and whose aim is to integrate individual impulses within a larger social framework. The most important primary groups are the family, a children’s play-group, and the neighborhood or community elders. “These are practically universal, belonging to all times and all stages of development; and are accordingly a chief basis of what is universal in human nature and human ideals” (Cooley, 1909, 24). Cooley has emphasized that these traits of the primary forms of human association are universal, and this argument provides the basis for a naturalistic justification of democracy as a social (read: pre-political) concept. As a form of cooperative and competitive association based on dialogue and communication, democracy defines the basic structure of human society across continents and cultures because it refers to a type of human experience which is universal, primitive, and positive.

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At the heart of this naturalistic understanding stands a relational ontology—the core of the associative model—according to which: “human nature is not something existing separately in the individual but a group-­ nature or primary phase of society, a relatively simple and general condition of the social mind” (Cooley, 1909, 29–30). The basic intuition pursued by Cooley is that human nature is essentially relational, that human individuality is shaped through interactions in small primary groups, and that throughout the world these basic forms of human association tend to follow the same pattern, which is that of a mix of competitive and cooperative relations based on discourse and communication. Within primary groups, human beings experience ‘democracy’ as a normatively positive ideal of associated life. Such an experience is universal, as it does not depend upon specific cultural values or traditions, is primary or primitive as it takes place at the simplest level of social life, and is positive, as it produces in the individual a sense of personal fulfillment and social integration.33 Hence, “[a] right democracy is simply the application on a large scale of principles which are universally felt to be right as applied to a small group—principles of free cooperation motivated by a common spirit which each serves according to his capacity” (Cooley, 1909, 119). In social-theoretic terms, democracy is defined by five main traits: cooperation, diversity, communication, organization, and discussion. (a) Cooperation: “in its most general form it is that of a moral whole or community wherein individual minds are merged and the higher capacities of the members find total and adequate expression” (Cooley, 1909, 33). The most basic experience which is at the basis of this associative conception of democracy is that of the psychological and practical integration of the I in the we. (b) Diversity and conflict are also basic ingredients of any structured form of human interaction. Indeed, from the lowest and simplest level of primary interaction up the ladder of social organization, social life is characterized by the coexistence of competing impulses and the organized attempt to integrate them. Cooley sees the coexistence of  Recent works in evolutionary ethics (Kitcher, 2011a) and in social anthropology (Boehm, 1999) provide independent confirmation to Cooley’s intuitions. In particular, they demonstrate that, well before the advent of modernity and the spread of Enlightenment ideals of individual autonomy and collective self-government, the ethical life of mankind has been fashioned by practices of group discussion in which all mature members participated on roughly equal terms. 33

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conflicting impulses and interests as at the same time a powerful resource of social innovation and a potential threat to social life. The idea of association as a dynamic and ongoing concern, as opposed to that of society as constituted by stable structures, refers precisely to this basic fact of human social nature. (c) Communication is the third basic ingredient of democratic experience, upon which the very possibility of producing unity out of diversity depends. “By Communication is here meant the mechanism through which human relations exist and develop—all the symbols of the mind, together with the means of conveying them through space and preserving them in time” (Cooley, 1909, 61). While at the level of primary groups “gesture and speech” are sufficient to this task, the larger the group, the more sophisticated forms of communication should be. A “communication hope” (Simonson, 1996) is inscribed in this view of democracy. (d) Organization is also an ever-present feature of human associations because even at the very basic level of primary groups, unity is not conceived by Cooley as an immediate emotional fusion but always the result of some form of social organization. Organization is a necessary ingredient of human association as such, as only through organization “human nature may express itself in an orderly and effective way” (Cooley, 1909, 53–54). (e) Discussion and deliberation are the final omni-­pervasive ingredient of association. As Cooley conceives of them, they are not the end result of a recent process of modernization. On the contrary: “it springs so directly from human nature, and is so difficult to suppress even by the most inquisitorial methods, that we may assume it to exist locally in all forms of society and at all periods of history” (Cooley, 1909, 108). These five basic features qualify human association at the primary level in sociological and in evolutionary terms. Their role is, however, not limited to the simplest forms of human association but extends far beyond. Indeed, Cooley sees the formation of more complex forms of social organization as driven by the attempt to extend the ideals developed within primary groups to larger social aggregates: “the central fact of history […] may be said to be the gradual enlargement of social consciousness and rational cooperation. […] Human nature, possessed of ideals moulded in the family and the commune, is ever striving, somewhat blindly for the most part, with those difficulties of communication and organization which obstruct their realization on a larger scale” (Cooley, 1909, 113).

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In agreement with this social conception of democracy, Cooley sees the progress of democracy not only nor primarily in the diffusion of representative institutions, but rather in the fact that democratic patterns of social interaction are extended from primary groups to all secondary forms of human association. Cooley notes that, whereas democratic patterns of social interaction spontaneously thrive within primary groups, the same does not hold for secondary forms of human association. Historically, secondary groups have for the most part been shaped by another, rival, principle of social organization, which Cooley calls the “caste principle”. By ‘caste’, Cooley means every form of social organization which is based on the close reproduction of a group which, therefore, becomes hereditary and characterized by low degrees of exchange with the rest of society. The progressive replacement of the caste principle by the democratic principle in all social spheres defines the normative core of the democratic project. The advance of democracy requires, therefore, that ideas “of caste, of domination, of military glory, of conspicuous leisure” be replaced by “our sentiment of fair play, our growing kindliness, our cult of womanhood, our respect for hand labor, and our endeavor to organize society economically or on ‘business principles’” (Cooley, 1909, 119). Yet the pursuit of the democratic project is dauntingly complex. Indeed, as much as democracy emerges spontaneously within primary groups and is found in most human societies, the caste principle has been the most diffused form of social integration at a higher level. “Any increase in the complexity of social functions— political, religious, military or industrial—such as necessarily accompanies the enlargement of a social system, may have a caste tendency, because it separates the population into groups corresponding to the several functions” (Cooley, 1909, 222). A conflict, however, arises among these two principles of social integration, as the caste principle achieves social integration but frustrates the human aspiration to self-fulfillment, prioritizing descent and custom over merit and intelligence as criteria of social selection. Hence the core problem of modern society consists in finding new and creative ways to expand the reach of the democratic principle beyond primary associations, in manners that, however, do not threaten the fulfillment of equally necessary integrative functions at the level of society.

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The democratic project, in Cooley’s view, consists, therefore, in inventing patterns of social interaction and organizational forms through which the democratic principle can be extended to all domains of social life: “to abolish extrinsic inequalities and give each a chance to serve all in his own fit way, is undoubtedly the democratic ideal. In politics this is expressed by doing away with hereditary privilege and basing everything on popular suffrage; in education it is seeking an expression quite as vital by striving to open to every one the training to any function for which he may show fitness” (Cooley, 1909, 234). Cooley acknowledges that the caste principle fulfills an indispensable social function, and to that extent the historical and geographical persistence of nondemocratic forms of society is somehow understandable. At the same time, however, he stigmatizes its social costs, as the good of social integration is achieved at the high price of forms of inequality which result in collective damage in terms of ­learning opportunities and the general quality of social life. These forms of social organization are in the end detrimental not only to those who are directly disadvantaged but also to those who apparently benefit from it. Dewey reiterates the same argument, remarking that the “disparity of status and function breeds conflict and induces disorder. At the same time, this pattern of dominance-subservience makes the development of personality extremely difficult, if not impossible–and strangely enough, this is as true of members of the dominant group as it is of those in the subservient group” (Dewey, 1973, 92). This tension between a necessary social function and its personal costs can be overcome only if the democratic norms of free exchange and communication replace caste as a principle of social integration. This quick overview of Cooley’s theory of social organization gives a more concrete exemplification to the idea that democracy defines a principle of social integration that is applicable to all dimensions of human life, from the intimate sphere of family life to the most complex and formalized political and non-political settings. By rooting the democratic principle within primary groups, Cooley is the most explicit among pragmatists about the social meaning of the democratic norm. Moreover, by highlighting the tension between primary and secondary groups, Cooley points toward the discontinuity of democratic forms throughout society, showing that whilst democracy can be predicated to any form of

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associated living, the meaning and content of democracy may differ profoundly, when we move from the domain of primary groups to that of secondary associations. Nevertheless, the concept of democracy has a normative core that reaches out from the family to the state, because at all these levels a society faces problems of social integration which need to balance individual aspirations to self-fulfillment against the collective needs of social stability. What is meant here by ‘democratic’ is that participants are treated as free, equal, and responsible agents, no matter the social sphere in which these interactions take place. As Dewey will also contend “the society which we desire is one in which there is maximum opportunity for free exchange and communication. This is the ultimate criterion by which we judge the worth of any sort of institutional arrangement” (Dewey, 1973, 92). The democratic organization of political institutions is a necessary ingredient of such a society. It is however neither the first nor the principal requirement.

5.3

Democratic Forms of Organization

The third principle structuring the pragmatist social ontology of democracy is provided by a democratic theory of organizations and institutions. Pragmatists emphasize the political relevance of the way in which public and private organizations function, preparing the ground for what has latterly been called ‘democratic experimentalism’ (see Chap. 8). Organizational forms are an additional test for the democratic quality of a society in two senses. Individuals live and interact in organizations, hence organizations play a decisive role in shaping and spreading democratic patterns of interaction and habit. But organizations are also the agencies through which social groups shape and pursue collective goals, and democratic publics depend heavily upon them for their existence. Whilst the pragmatists do not distinguish between organizations and institutions and tend generally to use the terms as synonyms, often adding the third term ‘custom’, they are concerned with the design of private and public organizations and with the architectonic design of public institutions. On the one hand, they are attentive to how organizational

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settings—the school, the firm—shape human interactions, promoting or impeding their democratic quality. On the other hand, pragmatists are concerned with the more abstract questions of how a State should be organized so as to be responsive to a democratic public. Both cases emphasize how organizations and institutions should function if they are to promote a democratic way of life. In this light the works of Follett and Dewey are probably the most interesting and I now turn to a short presentation of their organizational and institutional theories, that I read as contributions to a social ontology of democracy. Similarly to Cooley, although from a completely different perspective, in her work Follett’s develops a concept of democracy that is valid for a plurality of social unit, particularly the political community and the workplace. Follett’s commitment to a wide view of democracy is then seen in her attempt to combine a political theory of the State with an organizational theory of management. From the vantage point of her pragmatist social conception of democracy, she recognizes that in the days of mass organization the workplace became a key battlefield for democracy, so that its reform was as important as that of the State. In both cases, it is the notion of democracy as method which provides the unified normative core. Her theory of democratic management, developed around the same time as Frederick Taylor was developing his theory of scientific management, anticipates later theories of industrial democracy and provides guidelines to reform organizations (enterprises and bureaucracies alike) if they are to adhere to the norm of democracy. Whereas in her management studies Follett develops a democratic normative model of business organization whose distinguishing features are a theory of conflict resolution, a theory of decision-making, and a theory of power, these same elements also provide the normative core of her political theory of the democratic State.34 Follett sees organizations as problem-solving collective agents ridden with conflict and generally dominated by inadequate procedures of decision-­making. The three factors are deeply intertwined as the poor quality of decision-making produces inadequate solutions and is in part  Follett’s political theory has been developed mainly in Follett (1918), whereas her most important writings on democratic management can be found in Follett (2003). For an overview, see Ansell (2009), Schilling (2000), Snider (1998), Armstrong (2002), Tonn (2008). 34

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determined by inappropriate patterns of power management. Conflict is a revealing issue for Follett as it combines these different factors together. In a series of now famous papers, Follett has criticized conventional theories of conflict management in a way that sheds light on her conception of democracy. Follett distinguishes among three main strategies for solving conflicts within human groups that she calls ‘domination’, ‘compromise’, and ‘integration’. Unsurprisingly, these strategies are not exclusive to specific types of organizations, but can be applied in any kind of social unit. The first two strategies are well-known in political and management theories. Domination refers to all those strategies of conflict resolution based on relations of asymmetry, in which one side merely struggles to impose his view upon the other. This is the least democratic way of managing organizational life, as it implies the systematic discrimination of one part and legitimates the use of violence. Compromise refers to forms of interaction based on mutual partial renunciation to one’s own interest: “each side gives up a little in order to have peace, or, to speak more accurately, in order that the activity which has been interrupted by the conflict may go on” (Follett, 2003, 2). Its political counterparts are contractualist theories of politics. While preferable to domination, compromise remains, however, an inadequate basis for collective decision-­ making because it is based on the flawed assumption that situations are well-defined from the start, so that gains and losses can be known in advance, as in zero sum games. Given these premises, instrumental forms of reasoning are considered the best means to find the most appropriate solution. Besides these two standard approaches to conflict resolution, Follett introduces a third, that she calls integrative, and which is based upon creative strategies aimed at overcoming the ‘zero sum’ assumption that the other two strategies tacitly adopt. Follett’s idea is that creative practices of cooperative inquiry can help participants discover new solutions that are not available when the conflict emerges. When Follett writes that “[i]ntegration involves invention, and the clever thing is to recognize this, and not to let one’s thinking stay within the boundaries of two alternatives which are mutually exclusive” (Follett, 2003, 4), she is creatively translating Peirce’s theory of abduction into the terms of a sociological theory of how organizations should be designed and managed in

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order to take advantage of inclusive processes of collective inquiry. Interesting enough, according to Follett invention is possible only if conflict is accepted and publicly faced rather than denied: “[a] business should be so organized (this is one of the tests for us to apply to our organization) that full opportunity is given in any conflict, in any coming together of different desires, for the whole field of desire to be viewed” (Follett, 2003, 11). This is where the democratic method enters. Indeed, creativity is not conceived by Follett in merely epistemic terms as is the case in many theories of organizational problem-solving, but rather in the socio-­political terms of a theory of democracy. Consonant with the pragmatist epistemology of inquiry, Follett surmises that creativity can result only from cooperative patterns of interaction. Integrative methods of decision-­making are central to a democratic organization because they implement the idea that by participating in joined cooperative inquiry individuals can produce new knowledge that in the end benefits them all: “when two desires are integrated, that means that a solution has been found in which both desires have found a place, that neither side has had to sacrifice anything” (Follett, 2003, 3). Once the conflicting claims have been clearly identified, it is the task of the collaborative inquiry to “break them up into their constituent parts” (Follett, 2003, 12) in order to proceed then to identify what in different terms Dewey would have called the “problematic situation”. A socially inclusive model of inquiry stands at the heart of a democratic conception of conflict resolution suited to public and private organizations. Hence the second feature of Follett’s conception of organizational democracy is provided by the principle of cooperative decision-making. This idea is beautifully captured by her apparently paradoxical claim that it is ‘situations’ rather than individuals that take decisions. Particularly in her paper “The Giving of Orders” (Follett, 2003, 23–45), she takes up the question of authority within organizations in ways that emphasize the importance of democratic patterns of interaction. Follett directly challenges traditionalist conceptions of management based upon an asymmetric distribution of power not in order to invoke some radically egalitarian ideal—she rejects equally the two extremes of ‘bossism’ and of radical autonomy (Follett, 2003, 32)—but to understand decisionmaking based upon cooperative social interaction.

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With reference to organizational settings, Follett notes that, to orient their conduct, agents must understand the content of the actions they will undertake. This can happen only when they are actively involved in the management of the situation, which in turn requires that the giving of orders is depersonalized: “My solution is to depersonalize the giving of orders, to unite all concerned in a study of the situation, to discover the law of the situation and obey that” (Follett, 2003, 32). Discovering “the law of the situation” is Follett’s shorthand for the idea that a socially inclusive inquiry into the situation offers a better chance to reach a shared understanding of what needs to be done. As Follett sees it, the model of collaborative inquiry is not incompatible with the existence of organizational hierarchies and differential individual responsibilities. On the contrary, it promotes a democratic understanding of how individuals with different responsibilities within a situation can handle decisions in ways that maximize the chances of finding out what type of action would best fit with the situation and carry it out. The adoption of this democratic attitude in decision-making requires radical changes in organizational patterns: “[o]ur job is not how to get people to obey orders, but how to devise methods by which we can best discover the order integral to a particular situation” (Follett, 2003, 32). Allegiance to the “law of the situation” reveals a democratic attitude because the law of the situation cannot be known in advance of processes of inquiry, nor imposed by bosses on all the other members. The task of democratic leaders in any kind of organization consists, therefore, in promoting collaborative processes whereby everyone’s knowledge is taken into account. Rather than being objective hence liable to be grasped from outside the situation, the law of the situation is context-dependent, and can, therefore, be discovered only through collaborative processes of joint inquiry in which everyone’s perspective on the situation is carefully examined. The normative ideal of decision-making offered by Follett is not that of a frictionless world in which consensus dominates, but rather that of a world in which friction in human interaction is accepted and rendered productive. As she explains, “[t]here will be just as much, probably more, room for disagreement in the method I am advocating. The situation will often be seen differently, often be interpreted differently. But we shall know what to do with it, we shall have found a method of dealing with it” (Follett, 2003, 32–33). The controlled

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exploitation of disagreement for creative purposes requires in its turn a different understanding of what legitimates power. Follett should be credited for coining the expression “power with”, later given greater notoriety by feminist thinkers.35 In her paper titled “Power” (Follett, 1925), she distinguishes between two types of power: “[s]o far as my observation has gone, it seems to me that whereas power usually means power-over, the power of some person or group over some other person or group, it is possible to develop the conception of power-­ with, a jointly developed power, a co-active, not a coercive power” (Follett, 2003, 78–79). Follett conceives of power as a group’s ability to use resources to achieve desired results. Hence the focus upon c­ ooperative and horizontal rather than competitive and hierarchical types of power relations. Follett takes issue here against authoritarian theories of organization, but also against approaches militating in support of a radical reversal in power relations. Follett sees the world of organizations as dominated by a conception of power as power-over, whose presupposition is a hierarchical understanding of social relations based on asymmetry and vertical integration, according to the standard managerial method of “command and control”. As a feature of a democratic way of managing organizations, power-with aims at changing the forms of organizational life. Power-over denotes forms of social interaction in which one side merely seeks to impose their views on the other, whereas power-with implies a willingness to cooperate. Power-with instantiates forms of circular-­integrative social interaction which formulate in different terms the imperative to abide with the law of the situation. Common to these three features of Follett’s democratic thinking is the epistemic requirement to base decision-making on collaborative and inclusive forms of social inquiry. Combined, these three traits define a normative standard for democratic institutions. Following Follett, we can claim that an organization is democratic insofar as it (a) promotes power-­ with over power-over, (b) enables collaborative and inclusive forms of decision-making, and (c) promotes integrative practices of conflict resolution. As this quick overview shows, as a way of managing organizations, democracy requires the development not only of habits of cooperation,  See Allen (1998), Mansbridge (1998).

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but also of techniques and routines for rendering conflict productive. Hence organizations should be designed in ways that are consistent with democratic principles. This requires a specific institutional design and explains why Follett devoted most of her intellectual energies to devising new models of management. Through her commitment to organizational innovation, Follett has shown to what extent the realization of a democratic society is a matter of institutional design, requiring heavy investment in the creation of settings that are consistent with the normative content of the concept of democracy. This intuition, as I will show in the next part of this book, has been taken over by contemporary theories of democratic experimentalism, in which we find promising approaches for renewing the pragmatist theory of democratic institutions. In Dewey’s works, we find converging analyses of the normative requirements that are needed if institutions are to operate democratically, formulated, however, at a much higher level of abstraction. On several occasions, Dewey has pointed out that, to be democratic, a society should organize the major institutions of social and economic life, such as state bureaucracies, the workplace, care and learning institutions, according to democratic principles. This for several reasons. On the one hand, because these institutions have a tremendous responsibility in shaping habits and providing the conditions in which individuals flourish. Given their impact in shaping an agent’s self, those who are subjected to its consequences should be involved in their design and management. On the other hands, because institutions are means to ends, so that decisions about their organization should be taken democratically: “is necessary from the standpoint of both the general social welfare and the development of human beings as individuals” (Dewey, 1937, lw11.218). Particularly in texts written in the late 1930s, and partially in the context of his long-distance debate with Walter Lippmann, Dewey has also emphasized other functions of democratic institutions. Institutions are in fact agencies designed for the sake of solving specific social problems, functional tools in the hands of publics which should, therefore, be designed so as to maximize their responsiveness to publics as well as their efficacy in achieving social aims for the sake of which they have been created. While this assumption is true for every kind of institution, Dewey focuses in particular upon knowledge-based and knowledge-producing

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institutions such as the educational system, the research institutions of modern science and technology, and the media, whose function consists in producing and making available the kind of knowledge and information necessary for the functioning of increasingly complex societies.36 Seen in the light of their functional connection with publics, epistemic institutions should acquire quasi-independent status in order to be protected from the pressure of economic and political interests. Dewey was aware of the risk that science, as it had happened in the mass media of his time, could fall prey to vested interest that would undermine the ­emancipatory potential of knowledge. In warning against this danger, Dewey had in mind on the one hand the political examples of European totalitarianism, and on the other the growing influence of interest groups and, specifically, economic corporations. What is remarkable in his analysis is the awareness that knowledge-producing institutions need some sort of special protection, a theme that has become increasingly important over the last two decade.37 Dewey therefore criticizes social institutions whenever they are organized in ways that violate democratic principles, for at least three reasons. The first is that in this way they prevent individual self-realization and become alienating institutions. The second is that undemocratic institutions promote the formation of undemocratic habits which in turn threaten to produce undemocratic forms of interaction beyond these institutions. The third reason is that in so doing they fall prey to vested interests and cease to serve the general public. At the political level, as late as 1939 Dewey continues to see the Jeffersonian model of self-governing local communities as a paradigm of democratic institutions. One may wonder how Dewey could reconcile awareness of the increasing scale of scientific enterprise and international mass media with local political units. Like Cooley, Dewey was fully aware of the democratic paradox of modernization. On the one hand, he considered face-to-face relations necessary to develop the democratic ethos, and on the other he knew that in modern societies all the forces shaping life conditions operate at a much larger scale, rendering small communities politically irrelevant. The paradox is, however, resolved if one sees that small and local organiza The democratic organization of educational institutions is discussed in Dewey (1937). For the crisis of mass media, see Dewey’s remarks throughout Dewey (1927). 37  See, for example, Vibert (2007), Rosanvallon (2011). 36

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tions based on face-to-face interactions are particularly apt to fulfill the first function of social institutions, which is the formation of appropriate habits, whereas larger and more impersonal institutions also have a second order function which becomes clearer from the perspective of the pragmatist group-based theory of politics that I will discuss in the next chapter. Combining these two strands explains the democratic relevance of institutions in light of their threefold function in modern society: (a) as contexts in which democratic habits are formed, hence as material ­conditions for the spread of democracy; (b) as reliable sources of information and knowledge on which social life relies, and (c) as proper agencies through which a public can emerge, become conscious of its own needs, and define strategies for solving its problems. Hence the social theory of democracy requires a theory of institutions whose task is the articulation of the democratic function of institutions at these three distinct levels.

6

Conclusion

A given configuration of habits, patterns of interaction, and organizational forms defines the basic structure of a society. A democratic society is one in which these three dimensions are weaved together in ways that are consistent with the three normative principles of (a) relational parity, (b) inclusive authority, and (c) social involvement. Moreover, it is a society which renders their constant updating and revision easier: “the alternative to revolution as a means to social progress is a system of habits, customs, conventions, traditions, and institutions flexible enough to permit adjustment to changing environments and conditions” (Dewey, 1973, 87). The democratic method denotes for Dewey a particular procedure whereby at all levels of social life individuals and groups engage in the critical revision and adjustment not only of formal systems of rules but also of the habits, customs, and institutions which define the basic structure of society. As Dewey explains: “such flexibility requires thinking—the exercise of individual intelligence in discussing and appraising, in choosing, in judging, and in testing. Habits, customs, and systems can remain viable only when they are the objects of intelligent thinking”.

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The results of these analyses can be summarized in the following definition. As a social concept, democracy denotes the form of a society in which epistemic, functional, and expressive factors are successfully integrated at the level of ethos, patterns of interaction, and social organization. It describes a society in which self-realization is achieved through functional cooperation mediated by intelligence.

5 The Politics of Democratic Collective Action

1

 ragmatist Politics Between Groups P and Interests

With the group-based theory of political activation, we attain the second pillar of the wide view of democracy, entering more directly into the domain of politics properly considered. Whereas the social conception of democracy exposed in the previous chapter emphasizes the democratic meaning of forms of human interaction based upon the three principles of (a) relational parity, (b) inclusive authority, and (c) social involvement, the theory of publics focuses more explicitly upon the epistemic, organizational, and functional aspects of democratic approaches to social problems. It explores the capacities as well as the conditions which enable and constraints forms of political activation. At this level, what is important is neither individual action nor established patterns of social interaction, but rather the way in which forms of collective activation become possible. By this I means practices whereby new collectivities—groups—emerges, as well as forms of organized action whereby these groups, transformed into publics, strive to achieve their goals. Whilst in social life the two dimensions are inextricably interwoven, © The Author(s) 2019 R. Frega, Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18561-9_5

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their analytical ­distinction is useful to single out specific traits of democracy that would otherwise remain under theorized. This distinction enables, in particular, to appreciate the political relevance of two distinct types of social practices politically relevant. On the one hand, practices whereby the scope or quality of democracy is reaffirmed and expanded. As I have already noted in Chap. 2, this process is not reducible to those rare constitutional moments where the people speak (Wolin) or political action happens (Arendt). More broadly, collective activation is at play any time individuals engage in the necessary, ongoing, everyday processes of adjustment, maintenance, and improvements of social norms, practices, and institutions in the face of changes in the social and natural environment. Whist these practices are not usually labelled as political, the wide view emphasizes their necessary function in the pursuit, achievement, and maintenance of a healthy democratic society. These activities can be conceived as the perennial struggle of democracy against the alienating forces that constantly threaten social life. This is the political message we can distill from the idea of democracy as a way of life, once we understand it as a social and political, and not moral idea. Here the oppositional and contestatory language which characterizes many current conceptions of democratic politics seems misguided. First, because this is not the language these thinkers used to theorize and describe democratic practices. Second, because the oppositional language so diffused today in political theory tends to obscure one of the greatest novelties of political pragmatism, that is to say its capacity to shed light on the often tacit, ordinary, reconstructive ways through which a democratic society is kept ongoing. As it will be clear in Part III, the pragmatist focus on habits, patterns of interaction and organizational forms aims precisely at contrasting possible causes of alienation which are rooted in unperceived ways of behaving, taking for granted routines, consolidated institutions. Their ongoing maintenance and reconstruction is an extremely demanding and yet indispensable task of democracy. The second dimension of political activation is provided by the ongoing formulation and pursuits of collectively identified goals. Here the language of interests and conflict comes out explicitly, and the question political pragmatism asks is how these activities—goal-setting, problem-­ solving, conflict-resolution—can be carried on in democratic rather than

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undemocratic ways. While the democratization of insufficiently democratic or undemocratic practices and social spaces through oppositional practices—what Pierre Rosanvallon has dubbed ‘counter-democracy’ (Rosanvallon, 2008)—is certainly a central goal of collective self-­ activation, pragmatists seem to have devoted more energies to the equally pressing question of what democracy as a norm for collective action requires from its participants, once it is understood in its whole breadth. When Dewey diagnosed the ‘lost’ quality of the American public, what he wanted to say was nothing less than that democracy was impossible for a people who did not know who he was, who failed first of all to constitute itself as an acting collective agent and who, to that extent, remained profoundly alienated to himself. Under these conditions, no political task more ambitious than ‘rediscovering the public’ could be devised, and this required, more than opposition, active reconstruction. The political grammar of pragmatism, based as it is on the notions of conflict, interests, and consequences, needs no overemphasize the oppositional moment, as that would come at the precious loss of what Mary Parker Follett dubbed the ‘integrative’ moment of political action, and Dewey the ‘reconstructive’. As an added value, this move will also help avoiding hypostatize the terms of this conceptual distinction. As I have insisted throughout, politics is distinct and yet strictly dependent upon the social account of how a democratic society is organized. Group activity, therefore, does not represent a distinct realm of social life—the political sphere as opposed to the private, or politics as opposed to sociality—but rather an embedded dimension of social life that is singled out only for analytical purposes. Following Dewey, we can call it the “political phase” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.327) of social life. This phase has distinct features whose analysis requires that appropriate categories be devised. Its dynamics cannot, however, be understood in isolation from the form of society in which it is inscribed. Properly speaking, the group-­ based theory of democracy stems directly from the social conception of democracy and represents its political achievement. Democracy defines the norm by which such forms of collective action are appraised as normatively appropriated. It provides a standard with reference to which the collective life of groups can be assessed in terms of how they identify and pursue their shared goals. In this chapter I ask

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which are the conditions under which a process of collective self activation can be defined democratic. In particular, I aim at articulating a basic grammar of democratic group activation, one that is based on the seminal intuition of pragmatist thinkers. This basic grammar will be deployed through a close examination of the political works of three major pragmatist political thinkers. I will refer in particular to Arthur Bentley’s theory of interests, Mary Parker Follett’s theory of group-based politics, and John Dewey’s theory of publics. As I intend to show, all these authors have explored the nature of democracy as the quality of collective forms of action which combine means-end rationality with a normative concern for the common good. From their work emerges a realistic account of democratic politics that is often underestimated in the standard view of political pragmatism, one which gives pride of place to the notions of consequences, conflict, interests, means-end rationality, and organizational constraints.

2

 entley’s Interest-Based Theory of Group B Politics

The theoretical bases of the pragmatist action-oriented group theory of politics were firstly outlined by Arthur Bentley in his influential 1908 book (Bentley, 1908). Bentley, who much later in time was to co-author Dewey’s last book (Dewey and Bentley, 1949), was a pioneer of American political science, and many of his ideas have clearly pragmatist overtones.1 Particularly relevant is Bentley’s methodological starting point, which identifies in social activities—rather than in individual interests or in institutions—the raw matter of politics. From the vantage point of his pragmatically oriented practice-based approach, Bentley includes in the domain of politics, or government, any type of activity which concerns collective life. More precisely, and anticipating later formulations by Follett and Dewey, Bentley identifies politics with that particular phase of group life which touches upon the identification, definition, and  On the connection between Bentley and pragmatism with reference to political theory, see LaVaque-Manty (2006). It is remarkable that referring to his 1908 book, Bentley named Dewey as one of the “real writers of this book”, cit. in LaVaque-Manty (2006, 5). 1

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achievement of a group’s demands or interests.2 Bentley’s group-based theory of politics relies upon an interactionist social ontology, which construes the basic structure of society in terms of interactions within and among groups. Bentley adds to the pragmatist model of social democracy an important distinction, that between social groups and political groups. This distinction enables him to conceptualize politics as a phase of social life: “The political action reflects, represents, the underlying groups; but the political groups will have different boundaries than the other groups; there will be splittings and consolidations; and even if as regards the persons belonging to them they are ever the same, even then they will have different ways of reaction, different activities; and since the activities are the groups, they cannot properly be called the same groups under exact discrimination” (Bentley, 1908, 210). For Bentley, groups exist always in the plural, and the very notion of a group presupposes notions of conflict and pluralism, that is, social life is characterized by interactions among groups whose existence is unstable and temporary, and whose differential interests give rise to conflicts. It follows that no group can ever speak for “everyone’s common interest” because, if the interests were not differentiated, there would be no need to speak about them, no conflict to be solved, no politics whatsoever to enter into. For Bentley, group is a synonym of activity, and activity is in turn a synonym of interest. A group exists only through the concrete social activities which are initiated in order to pursue interests shared among its members: “[t]he group is activity and the activity is only known to us through its particular type, its value in terms of other activities, its tendency where it is not in the stage which gives manifest results. The interest is just this valuation of the activity, not as distinct from it, but as the valued activity itself ” (Bentley, 1908, 213). Interest is, for Bentley, the basis of politics simply because it is the basis of life. Interests are forms of collective intentionality. A group exists as a result of a shared intentionality, individuals gathered together can say “we” insofar as they have collective aims, share normative assumptions, and pursue collective goals that Bentley calls ‘interests’. In that sense, the absence of a shared goal ­corresponds ipso facto with the absence of a group. In other words: “the  See, in particular, Bentley (1908, Ch. 2).

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interest is merely a manner of stating the value of the group activity” (Bentley, 1908, 215). Because the existence of interests is revealed by collective activities aimed at pursuing them, Bentley can say that the three notions of group, interest, and activity to a large extent overlap. Particularly from the analytic perspective of political science, activities, or practices, is all that needs to be observed in the social world. Indeed, social practices reveal the existence of interests held in common, hence of groups. Interests are, therefore, conceived as forms of social interaction. Like Dewey’s notion of consequences, Bentley’s notion of interests is clearly anti-reductionist, and interests are never reduced to mere material concerns, neither to the mere aggregation of individuals’ preferences. The idea that political interests may be different from social interests is rejected too. Indeed, Bentley’s vision of politics is based upon the idea that all interests are by definition social, as they express a group’s position in social life. To that extent, politics is nothing less and nothing more than the process whereby a group’s activates itself in order to satisfy its own interests. This notion includes the broader process whereby a plurality of group-based interests are accommodated within the context of a larger society. With a methodological twist common to several pragmatist thinkers, Bentley proposes to define politics as the stage of social life concerned with the pursuit of interests held in common. It follows that the definition of interest is, in itself, pre-political. Even the notion of ‘government’ is conceived in pre-political terms as reflecting group-based processes of collective mobilization. In its broadest sense, the process of government is: “the process of the adjustment of a set of interest groups in a particular distinguishable group or system without any differentiated activity, or “organ,” to center attention on just what is happening” (Bentley, 1908, 260). To this broad, or social, conception of government, Bentley opposes a narrower and distinctively political definition—which he rejects, according to which: “government is a differentiated, representative group, or set of groups (organ, or set of organs), performing specified governing functions for the underlying groups of the population” (Bentley, 1908, 261). Accordingly, Bentley aptly speaks of a process of government, rather than of government as a set of institutions, so as to emphasize that the domain of politics is entirely defined in terms of concrete activities. He dismisses

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the idea that the state is the key concept and the central actor of politics, and equally dismisses the idea that politics has essentially to do with sovereignty. He goes as far as to say that, given the group-based process perspective he adopts, the state “is too minute a factor to deserve space in a work covering as broad a range as this” (Bentley, 1908, 263). The theory of the state, or of representative government, is explicitly given a subordinate position within a larger theory of social life based on the idea of dynamic interactions among and within interest-based social groups. Hence, for Bentley, the process of government in its widest scope covers a wide range of unpolitical phenomena such as marriage. Indeed, “marriage is an arrangement of social order, a balancing of conflicting interests, a forming and shaping of these interests along lines which eliminate certain disturbances and violent struggles and soften down others, a substitution of a new technique for the adjustment of interests in place of an older technique become objectionable to dominant elements of society” (Bentley, 1908, 265). An interesting feature of Bentley’s notion of the group is that its interactionist bases make it secure against essentialist temptations. A group exists only in relation to other groups, so that its interests always have a contestational form. Interest groups are qualified by oppositional doings and active contestations, and an interest coincides with contested group action. Hence Bentley rejects as equally insufficient the reduction of interests to individual attributes as well as to an objective collective goal. Bentley’s concept of interest refers to phenomenal attributes of human interactions. Interests reside neither within individuals nor in the outer space of objectivity. Rather, they emerge out of social interactions having an associational dimension. Interests denote the mobilizing phase of social life, and to this extent define the scope of politics. In the later terminology that Bentley develops in his collaboration with Dewey, interests are transactional. Like groups, they are constituted through social interactions and do not pre-exist them. In other words “[r]ather than seeing political processes as the aggregation of individual interests, Bentley invites us to see politics as the provocation and mobilization of agency and identity. As Bentley showed, the language of “interest” is a practice of government by which political identities are contested and provoked to action” (Mathiowetz, 2008, 12).

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Bentley operates a decisive conceptual inversion with respect to conventional analyses, as interests are not seen as emanating from individuals, but as developing through social interactions themselves. Politics, to this extent, is the process whereby groups are constituted through the joint discovery of the existence of interests held in common. For Bentley, as for the pragmatists, identity and action are mutually interdependent. Indeed, because individuals as well as groups are literally constituted through the activities in which they are involved, action is not a process whereby a previously constituted identity explicates itself, but rather the process whereby this very identity forms and evolves. Indeed, one of the major contributions of pragmatism to political theory consists precisely in its way of conceptualizing politics as the movement whereby a collectivity is organized, mobilized and, to a considerable extent, formed. In this way, the expressive and the functional dimensions of social life are once again integrated. Follett and Dewey’s group-based theory of politics will develop this intuition further, and it is to the exploration of their group-based theory of politics that I now turn.

3

F rom Groups to Publics: Mary Parker Follett’s Pragmatist Theory of Democracy

Mary Parker Follett is one of the most interesting and least known political theorists of the pragmatist constellation. Four years younger than Cooley, Follett intensively contributed to the advancement of the organizational and political science of her time, operating within a philosophical framework deeply indebted to William James and John Dewey (Ansell, 2009). Her understanding of politics is processual and interactional. As such, it is well captured by Harold Laski’s motto that “the human being is a community building animal”.3 Her book, The State, published in 1918, anticipates by nearly a decade some of the central themes Dewey will expose in his political masterwork. Indeed, more than any other pragmatist, Follett laid the foundations for a group-based  Follett, like Dewey, was an important interlocutor and source of inspiration for Laski, and for the British pluralists more generally. 3

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theory of politics which provides a smooth transition from the still speculative formulations of Charles Cooley to the later systematization offered by Dewey’s theory of publics. A basic assumption of this groupbased theory of politics is that the political bent of human nature is not fully captured by the Hegelian idea that human identity is socially shaped, nor by any other holistic approach. What Laski’s motto suggests, and Follett’s theory articulates, is the idea that more than any static ontological property, what matters in the definition of the human being as a political animal is a dynamic quality. This dynamic quality is expressed by the idea that the human being is a maker of groups, and that social interaction are the basic fabric of human life. That we are political animals means that we are constantly involved in the formation and dissolution of new collective entities, of new groups. The priority of the active, creative, dynamic, interactional dimension of shaping over the static, ascriptive dimension of belonging gives a significant twist to political philosophy, and to our understanding of the place of groups within it. For once, if to be a political animal means being engaged in the making of groups rather than belonging to one or another identity-based group, then group-­politics comes to mean something quite different from what communitarian conceptions suggest. Laski’s dictum invites us to think the political relevance of groups in terms of the human capacity to create new associative ties as well as to transform them in the face of the changing circumstances of life. It is well known that before the steady rise of twentieth century liberal individualism,4 group politics provided the baseline for organizing social life. From the corporative social organization of ancien régime societies to the interest-based politics of nineteenth century social movements, groups have traditionally been the basis of political life. At the turn of the twentieth century, the idea of representation of collective interests provides the chief rationale for integrating groups into political life. The opposition of capital and labour was the most prominent way to ­understand the place of groups in society, although religion and race based ideas played also a significant role. The British pluralists, the French solidarists, the Guild socialists are among those who at the time insisted  This theme has been masterfully developed by Dewey in Dewey (1930).

4

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more explicitly on the economic basis of a group-based conception of social and political life.5 In direct and continuous dialogue with these movements, Follett articulates a radically new understanding of how groups should be understood as the cornerstone of democratic politics, at the basis of which stands a different interpretation of the relation between groups and interests. Indeed, her path-breaking 1918 book was tellingly entitled The new state: Group organization the solution of popular government. The first sentence reads: “Our political life is stagnating, capital and labor are virtually at war, the nations of Europe are at one another’s throats—because we have not yet learned how to live together. The twentieth century must find a new principle of association. […] Group organization is to be the new method in politics, the basis of our future industrial system, the foundation of international order. Group organization will create the new world we are now blindly feeling after, for creative force comes from the group, creative power is evolved through the activity of the group life” (Follett, 1918). A few pages later, she adds that “[t]he group process contains the secret of collective life, it is the key to democracy, it is the master lesson for every individual to learn, it is our chief hope for the political, the social, the international life of the future”. This, for Follett, is the task of politics, once it is understood in terms of a social ontology of democracy. The question of group politics for Follett epitomizes the much more general and challenging political question of how social cooperation is possible. In a way that reminds us of Cooley’s distinction between democracy and caste as competing principles of social organization,6 Follett opposes groups to crowds as competing patterns of social interaction. She then relies upon this distinction to define democracy as a principle of social organization consistent with the ‘group logic’. Group and crowd denote two distinct, opposite, and irreconcilable patterns of social i­nteraction. Like Cooley, Follett too believes that a society is democratic only to the extent that interactions among individuals within groups and interactions among groups within society display specific patterns. To this extent, her proposed solution to  For a view of how these themes were common to a wide range of political traditions across the Atlantic divide, see Kloppenberg (1986), Rodgers (1998). 6  See previous chapter. 5

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achieve a more democratic society consists, as the title of her book suggests, in replacing the crowd with the group as the principle of social organization at all levels of social life. Follett is of course aware that the advent of modern society has brought larger masses of individuals on the scene of history. Contrary to theorists of mass psychology, she believes that masses are not inevitably destined to be governed as crowds. On the contrary, she sees the effective prominence of crowdlike forms of human association as the greatest social and political problem of her age, and contends that, as a process of social emancipation, democratization consists in reorganizing social life in ways that enable more egalitarian and inclusive patterns of social interaction. In other terms, she sees the prospects for social emancipation in the progressive displacement of crowd logic and in the progressive extension of group logic. In Follett’s terminology, democracy denotes these inclusive and egalitarian patterns of social interaction, and the group, as opposed to the crowd, epitomizes properly democratic form of human association. Hence for Follett too, group and democracy are social[theoretic] concepts which stem from a larger social ontology. Like Cooley, Follett too finds in primary groups the source of the democratic experience. As she notes, “[i]n the small group then is where we shall find the inner meaning of democracy, its very heart and core” (Follett, 1919b, 225–226). She is particularly concerned with the question of how this primal democratic experience can be recreated outside primary groups, in particular, at the level of neighbourhood groups and professional groups in the workplace. According to Follett, the problem of democracy, seen from the perspective of politics, consists precisely in identifying and creating the institutional conditions under which democratic patterns of interaction—what she terms ‘group logic’—can be expanded beyond the circle of primary relations. For Follett, the achievement of the democratic project requires the design of new institutions and the reorganization of existing ones so as to expand the reach of group logic beyond the level of primary groups: “It is the technique of democracy which we are seeking. We shall find it in group organization” (Follett, 1918, 155). While Cooley already pointed to the democratic relevance of the social organization of work as one of the conditions for achieving a democratic way of life, this theme takes centre stage in Follett’s theory of

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democracy and explains the continuity between her theory of the democratic state and her theory of democratic management. Follett criticized the political theories of her time for having failed to understand the close connection between democracy as a political idea and democracy as a principle of social organization. But Follett’s critique has a larger scope, as can be inferred from its methodological concern. She notably contends that any explanation of social life beginning with pre-formed individuals—what today we would call methodological individualism—or with self-contained social totalities—holism—is plagued by the same mistake. Their apparent opposition notwithstanding, individualistic theories of action as well as crowd-based theories of collective action take imitation as the basic law of associated life, with the consequence that both conceptions fail to understand the creative dimension of social interactions. “Many writers imply that we must either believe in homogeneity, similarity, uniformity (the herd, the crowd), or lose the advantages of fellowship in order to discover and assert our own particularistic ideals. But our alternatives are not the individual and the crowd: the choice is not between particularism with all its separatist tendencies, and the crowd with its leveling, its mediocrity, its sameness, perhaps even its hysteria; there is the neglected group” (Follett, 1918, 152). Between the lone individual and the homogenous crowd, Follett places the group, by which she means neither the small unit nor the primary group, but rather the organized unit, a social unit that is internally organized according to democratic principles. Follett’s idea of the group stems from the same interactionist logic we have seen at play in the thought of other pragmatists: “association is the impulse at the core of our being. The whole social process is that of association, individual with individual, group with group. Progress from one point of view is a continuously widening of the area of association. Our modern civilization has simply over-laid and falsified this primary instinct of life” (Follett, 1918, 193). Like Dewey, Follett too defines democracy in procedural terms, as a method: “[d]emocracy is a method, a scientific technique of evolving the will of the people” (Follett, 1918, 160). However, in referring to ­techniques of will-formation Follett does not have in view representative methods for the selection of elites, but more broadly organizational methods for shaping groups’ lives. Indeed, as a system of electoral representation, democracy

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does not guarantee that crowd logic is effectively replaced by group logic. While it is certainly a necessary condition for organizing a people as a democratic group rather than as a crowd, it is by no means sufficient. Indeed, “no scheme of representation, functional or otherwise, can save us, but only a different method of association—in shop-committee, industrial council, legislative commission or international league. The problem of democracy is how to make our daily life creative” (Follett, 1919b, 230). Accordingly, the radical enlargement of the concept of democracy demanded by Follett cannot be satisfied by mere extension of the representative method at all level of social life: “Many persons’ idea of increased democracy within the cooperative movement is to democratize the organization: to have it less hierarchical than at present, to have more democratic elections, etc. This is not enough, to elect the officials and then to listen to their policy and consent. The farmers must also contribute. There is no democracy without contribution” (Follett, 1919b, 215). By contribution Follett means what Dewey defines as ‘partaking’, ie the active involvement in social practices, including (but not reduced to) identifying, diagnosing and solving problems affecting a social group: “where we have stake, personal responsibility and vital interests, we make vigorous response. Here where our action tendencies are formed, democracy must begin” (Follett, 1919b, 224). Like the other pragmatists, Follett is aware too that the successful organization of democratic institutions at a state level presupposes that the same method is consistently applied throughout all walks of life. “How shall we gain a practical understanding of this essential unity of man? By practising it with the first person we meet; by approaching every man with the consciousness of the complexity of his needs, of the vastness of his powers” (Follett, 1918, 160). In other words, democracy can satisfactorily exist only if its organizational logic permeates the whole society. Follett has notoriously advocated a horizontal, bottom-up, and distributed conception of democracy which is but the consistent application of the idea that a democratic society is one in which patterns of social interaction follow group logic: “our proposal is that people should organize themselves into neighborhood groups to express their daily life, to bring to the surface the needs, desires and aspirations of that life, that these needs should become the substance of politics, and that these neighborhood groups should become the recognized political unit” (Follett, 1918,

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192). Neighborhood groups play a prominent role in Follett’s theory of democracy insofar as they are small enough to enable face-to-face relations while at the same time providing a degree of internal differentiation not to be found in primary groups. As should be clear by now, for pragmatist thinkers such as Follett or Bentley the core question of group politics did not consist in the identification of groups in terms of substantial or functional traits. It did not consist either in establishing the moral or political obligations of states or other political entities toward this or that group. The type of group politics advocated by early pragmatists is to this extent distant from contemporary debates on themes such as the politics of reparation or affirmative action. The interest of group politics does not lie in the identification of specific groups in order to grant them specific rights or duties. Group politics in this sense is neither a form of interest-based politics such as Marxism nor a form of identity politics such as nationalism or multiculturalism. Indeed, any social unit based on class, religion, race, or any other ascriptive trait can be described either as a group or as a crowd as, according to Follett, the fact of sharing given substantial or functional traits is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the definition of a group. Nor does self-consciousness play a specific function in Follett’s argument. We are here at the farthest point from the Hegelian logic of recognition. What indeed matters for Follett is not why individuals stay together, but rather how they do so. For Follett, a group denotes a social unit organized according to a specific pattern of interaction, one that is consistent with the three principles of (a) relational parity, (b) inclusive authority, and (c) social involvement. Interestingly, Follett’s paradigmatic example of a group is a committee. As she conceives of it, a committee satisfies the epistemological and the political conditions that a social interaction should fulfill to be democratic. Indeed, a committee is a collection of individuals gathering together to solve problems and this activity shapes their interaction in discursive ways. According to Follett, a collection of individuals act c­ ollectively as a group if (1) it respects deliberative principles of common reasoning, and (2) it orients its own actions toward the cooperative formulation and achievement of a common goal. A group is a social unit whose dominant associational pattern can be described in terms of the pragmatist theory of inquiry, that is, engaging in cooperative and inclusive joint deliberation in

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the pursuit of shared goals. It is in this precise sense that group politics constitutes the core of democratic theory. Group life is the process by which difference is overcome in a creative and synthetic way, so that it can be said that “the core of the group process is creating” (Follett, 1918, 42), and democracy is a technique for making experience creative by rendering it inclusive and experimental. With reference to neighbourhood communities—a paradigmatic case of social units organized according to democratic patterns of social interaction—Follett identifies five conditions which, duly reformulated in more general terms, provide normative guidelines for the democratic organization of any form of social life: “1. By regular meetings of neighbors for the consideration of neighborhood and civic problems, not merely sporadic and occasional meetings for specific objects. 2. By a genuine discussion at these regular meetings. 3. By learning together—through lectures, classes, clubs; by sharing one another’s experience through social intercourse; by learning forms of community art expression; in short by leading an actual community life. 4. By taking more and more responsibility for the life of the neighborhood. 5. By establishing some regular connection between the neighborhood and city, state and national governments” (Follett, 1918, 204–205). These five conditions can be summed up in the three principles of (a) relational parity, (b) inclusive authority, and (c) social involvement that define the normative core of the wide view of democracy. As for all the other pragmatists, for Follett too active and egalitarian involvement in processes of decisionmaking (inquiry) must be complemented by concrete involvement in social life, that is, sharing experiences. Unlike crowds, groups are inquiry oriented (truth-seeking) types of human association, and this trait distinguishes them from other winning oriented (competition-based) discussion groups. The epistemic norm of democratic associated life is cooperative social inquiry. Follett also develops her idea of groups in terms of a democratic formation of public opinion, which she sees as one of the pillars of a democratic ­society. Like the other main political concepts, the notion of public opinion too is redefined through reference to the group dimension. As she notes: “[t]he chief need of society to-day is an enlightened, progressive and organized public opinion, and the first step toward an enlightened and organized public opinion is an enlightened and organized group opinion” (Follett, 1918, 226).

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Follett gave some of her political ideas a local inflection that, after decades of debates about the limits of deliberative and participatory democracy, we may consider problematic. She was persuaded that “the organization of men in small, local groups must be the next form which democracy takes” Follett (1918, 142). We should, however, be careful not to confuse Follett’s theory of groups with an apology for small communities, and even more with communitarian social theories. Indeed, there are no reasons to construct the opposition between groups and crowds in terms of size, and to avoid this mistake we have only to follow consistently the principles of Follett’s theory of associations, and to understand her juxtaposition of groups and crowds as representing alternative patterns of social interaction. What should, therefore, be emphasized is Follett’s claim that ‘group logic’ is nothing less and nothing more than “the technique of democracy”. In close to identical terms, Dewey describes his public-based theory of collective action as the “the method of democracy”. For both these authors, the priority of small groups is organizational and methodological rather than dimensional, and articulates their interactionist standpoint. They both saw political processes in terms of the constitution of larger social aggregates from more basic interactional structures and groups, and both considered face-to-face direct experience of democracy in small groups as the purest instantiation and the most promising condition to promote a democratic culture, and to develop the democratic habits which are required in order to participate in larger groups such as a national community.

4

Dewey’s Group-Based Theory of Politics

The clearest statements about the function of groups in politics in Dewey’s works can probably be found in his Lectures in China, which precede The Public and its Problems of nearly a decade.7 Here Dewey develops the main outlines of a group-based theory of society, which presents group  The recently discovered unpublished manuscript of these lectures has modified in significant ways our understanding of Dewey’s social and political philosophy. I have examined this theme in detail, with a focus on the notion of groups, in Frega (2015b). See also the series of articles published in the volume 53, 1, 2017 of the Transaction of the C. S. Peirce Society. 7

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pluralism as the result of the irreducible diversity of basic human needs and aspirations. “A group is a number of people associated together for some purposes, some common activity that holds them. Human nature has a variety of interests to be served, a number of types of impulses that have to be expressed, or instincts that form needs to be satisfied, and about each one of the more fundamental of these some form of association, of living together, of acting together continuously or repeatedly and regularly (as distinct from mere chance and transient contacts) [exists]” (Dewey, 2015, III.1–2). Hence groups emerge when individuals gather together to pursue what they come collectively to perceive as a common interest. In this series of lectures, Dewey formulates a normative ideal based on coexistence and integration among a plurality of groups: “We can frame in imagination a picture in which there is a proportionate equal development of all these forms of associated life, where they interact freely with one another, and where the results of each one contribute to the richness and significance of every other, where family relations assist equally the cooperation of men in science, art, religion and public life, where association for production and sale of goods enriches not merely materially but morally and intellectually all forms and modes of human intercourse—where in short there is mutual stimulation and support and free passage of significant results from one to another. Such an ideal picture is of use only because it helps us paint by contrast the state of things which has actually brought about social divisions and conflict” (Dewey, 2015, III.3). Social life consists therefore of interactions within and among groups. These interactions are of two kinds—among groups which belong to the same social type (such as two religious ­communities), or among groups which belong to different social types (such as economic lobbies and political parties). This account of social life betrays Dewey’s allegiance to pluralist ideas with, however, the much finer sociological understanding that a group-based conception of politics is rooted in a group-based account of society, whose theoretical basis is provided by the social ontology of democracy discussed in the previous chapter. In The Public and its Problems this account is further developed and reaches a higher degree of theoretical abstraction. Besides groups and associations, Dewey introduces a new collective agent he calls ‘public’, and political institutions are given a more precise status. In addition to a

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genealogical theory of political institutions which integrates territorial and functional criteria, The Public and its Problems presents Dewey’s group-based theory of publics which constitutes the second pillar of his theory of democracy. Here his views are more fully articulated, and in a way that is more consistent with the social view of democracy I have presented above.

4.1

 ontinuity and Innovation in the Pragmatist C Public-Based Theory of Politics

To fully understand the theoretical contribution of Dewey’s theory of publics to a pragmatist theory of democracy, we need first inscribe it in the context of the political debates of the time. Historically, the idea of a public-based conception of politics emerged out of Dewey’s struggles with three contemporary and competing paradigms in political theory: (a) the group theory of politics developed by the British pluralists (Hirst, 2005; Ehrlich, 1982); (b) the community-based conception of politics that was current among progressive thinkers in the US at that time (Campbell, 1992; Quandt, 1970); and (c) the rising science of polling which was rapidly imposing ‘public opinion’ as the central category of political science (Gunnell, 2004). By identifying the central political subject with ‘the public’, Dewey was at the same time (a) generalizing the sociological notion of the group while giving it a political twist, (b) de-­ provincializing the notion of community and making it suitable for the needs of a global society, and (c) resisting the epistemic drift that was replacing the thick substance of political experience with the thin air of volatile and unrooted ‘opinions’. It is known that Dewey wrote The Public and its Problem partially as an answer to Walter Lippmann’s Public Opinion (Lippmann, 1922), a book that deeply impressed Dewey. Indeed, Dewey agreed with Lippmann’s diagnosis of the deep transformation that American society was undergoing and about the necessity to scale-up the horizon of public life from the level of small communities to that of the “great society”. In Public Opinion as well as in his later The Phantom Public (Lippmann, 1927), Lippmann develops a lucid and pathbreaking analysis of contemporary politics

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which is based on the idea that the recent revolutions in means of transportation and communication have produced an unprecedented increase in the intensity and reach of human interaction, which in turn has produced a degree of social complexity that can be mastered only through specialized expert agencies operating at national and even international scales. In this context, Lippmann contends, the meaning and functioning of democracy has to be reconsidered from scratch. Public opinion emerges as the central category of Lippmann’s post-traditional view of democratic politics. It should be noted that in Lippmann’s works there is no conceptually articulated use of the term ‘public’ other than to qualify collective systems of belief. ‘Public’ is always employed as an adjective to qualify the epistemic domain of opinion and never as a substantive referring to a group of individuals. The reduction of the public to an epistemic category has deep political implications, and it is with reference to this epistemic use that we have to appreciate Dewey’s semantic twist. Indeed, by retaining the term ‘public’ to refer not to collective epistemic properties but to social processes, Dewey sought to resist the negative implications of Lippmann’s move for democratic theory, while taking his diagnosis seriously. Lippmann’s analysis of politics is rooted in an epistemic paradigm which prioritizes knowledge over action as a central category of political analysis. Indeed, because our actions are always mediated by representations, Lippmann saw the major consequence of modernization in the increasing complexity of knowledge required to master social problems. A former student of William James, Lippmann understood knowledge pragmatically, as a tool for action, but unpragmatically as objective ­representation. Indeed, it is essential to Lippmann’s argument that in modern times the public has become a mass of spectators which can judge matters only externally, as social differentiation and specialization has confided collective action to specialized agencies. The conditions of modern life then have severed action from knowledge, and in so doing have made the very idea of self-government irrelevant. Lippmann contends that in pre-­modern societies individual knowledge and collective action were in agreement, because individuals acting on the smaller scale of local communities could easily acquire the knowledge needed to tackle social problems in appropriate ways. According to Lippmann, prior to

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the emergence of the twentieth century great society, democratic life was solidly based upon the reliability of everyday knowledge as a basis for collective action. Simplified conditions of social life, reduced webs of interdependencies, and less specialized knowledge enabled citizens to act as competent members of a collective body. Within these circumstances, citizens could effectively govern themselves. Up to this point, Lippmann reasons according to a pragmatist trope, that is, personal involvement in collective action sustained by appropriate knowledge of external circumstances creates conditions within which egalitarian, horizontal, and inclusive patterns of collective action are not only morally desirable, but also effective in the management of social life. Hence democracy as a way of life and as a way of solving collective problems can thrive. The scale and complexity of modern society is, however, such that individual knowledge and collective action are now divorced, so that a citizen’s knowledge ceases to be a reliable basis for collective action. Today, effective collective action must be undertaken by specialized agencies relying upon expert knowledge, with the result that a citizen’s involvement in public life ceases to matter and, as a consequence, becomes increasingly meaningless.8 Once the complexity of collective problems becomes too great to be mastered by ordinary citizens, the public as a collective body of sovereign citizens ceases to exist and democracy as a form of reflective cooperation loses its meaning as a reliable pattern of social organization. The upshot for Lippmann is that the democratic ideal of a self-organized public must give way to the much thinner and evanescent notion of public opinion, which in Lippmann’s analysis will be equated with an emotion-based and symbol-driven device for legitimating the exercise of political power.9 Hence, for Lippmann, the historical transition from the small rural communities of nineteenth century America to the new Great Society, demanded that the traditional conception of democratic politics centered upon the notion of a self-governing community be replaced by the idea of an abstract and evanescent ‘public opinion’ which as such is incapable of action and whose only function can consist in the legitimation or de-legitimation of those which are in  For Lippmann’s critique of the omnicompetent citizen, see, in particular, Lippmann (1927, Ch. 1). 9  See, in particular, Lippmann (1922, Chs. 13–14). 8

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power. Hence the idea of a self-organizing collectivity internally differentiated is replaced by a new conception at the heart of which stands the tripartite system of representative government, expertise, and public opinion.10 The historical transition from the direct democracy of town meetings to the representative government of large-scale nation states implies, for Lippmann, the sociological transition from a public democratically organized along the lines of Follett’s group logic to a crowd-like type of human association that, rather than govern itself through collective deliberation, will have to be externally governed through media manipulation. However, once public opinion replaces the public as the basic category of politics, the sociological basis of the concept of democracy is lost. Unsurprisingly, Lippmann will rely on this sophisticated diagnosis of the relationships between knowledge and action to justify an elitist conception of representative government within which the quality of patterns of interactions and organizational forms become irrelevant. This short reconstruction let emerge by contrast the novelty of Dewey’s political pragmatism. Indeed, by reclaiming the notion of the public as the central category of his theory of democracy, Dewey accepts Lippmann’s socio-historical diagnosis while rejecting the consequences he draws from it. Dewey thinks notably that the existing gap between individual knowledge and collective agency, while real, can, at least in part, be reduced even under the new circumstances of contemporary society. He is ­therefore looking for solutions that are able to reconcile knowledge and agency in ways that are, however, consistent with the social and material conditions which are ours. This is the theoretical starting point of his theory of democracy and the underlying motivation for his rehabilitation of the notion of public against more common notions such as those of group or community. The second theoretical tradition Dewey confronted while developing his theory of publics is that of political pluralism.11 At the very outset of the book, where Dewey lists the theories of the State that are most common and to which he opposes his own, he refers to four major doctrines:  Whilst in Lippman (1927) Lippmann will refine his analysis by differentiating public opinion from interest-based groups, this move does not, however, modify significantly the function of the public. 11  On pragmatism and pluralism see Smith (1964); da Silva (2009). 10

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Aristotle, Marx, liberalism, and a fourth one he describes in these terms: the state “is just one of many social institutions, having a narrow but important function, that of arbiter in the conflict of other social units. Every group springs out of and realizes a positive human interest; the church, religious values; guilds, unions and corporations, material economic interests, and so on. The state, however, has no concern of its own; its purpose is formal, like that of the leader of the orchestra who plays no instrument and makes no music, but who serves to keep other players who do produce music in unison with one another” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.239). This is clearly a synthetic presentation of political pluralism. Harold Laski, one of the most prominent representative of this group, was a colleague of Dewey at Columbia University for several years, as well as a colleague on the board of New Republic.12 As it was noted above, Follett too was deeply involved in this debate, and already in her The State she endorsed a pluralist conception of the state while criticizing British pluralists for their insufficient understanding of the social and political dynamics of group-politics, and instead looked for solutions within pragmatism (Follett, 1918, 256). Pluralist ideas are also present in (Bentley, 1908). In contrast with Lippmann, pluralists conceived the basic subject of politics not as an epistemically thin nation-wide public opinion but as a plurality of concrete social groups directly involved in the active ­management of their collective lives and organized on the basis of their functional contribution to social life. While pluralist ideas were present in several European countries at the turn of the twentieth Century, it is mostly with the British Pluralists that pragmatists were in contact.13 Pluralists are known for their harsh critique of the state, that they blame for having taken on social ­functions that could and should be better fulfilled by smaller territorially and functionally differentiated social groups. Indeed, the majority of pluralists ­advocated  the priority of forms of integration through participation in  On the connection between pragmatism and the pluralists see Ehrlich (1982). On the relations between Dewey and Laski see Westbrook (1991). 13  See Ehrlich (1982). French pluralists and solidarists such as Leon Duguit were however well known among pragmatists like John Dewey and Mary Parker Follett. For a useful reconstruction of the circulation of political ideas between Europe and America at the time, see Kloppenberg (1986); Rodgers (1998). 12

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social and economic associations over political integration achieved through mere political citizenship. Their definition of groups was more specific than the conception advocated by pragmatists. Groups were generally defined either in territorial terms or in terms of their socio-economic function within society, that is, local communities through decentered administration, occupational groups through guilds organizations, churches through the organization of local solidarity, consumers and producers through the cooperative organization of economic activities epitomized the groupbased ordering of society and justified the idea that organized groups, rather than states, will have to cater to social problems. These social units already played an important role in organizing the life of their members and in looking after their major needs, and pluralists contended that this role needed to be further expanded by reducing the political functions of the state and devolving them to such units, particularly through forms of collective rather than individual representation. For example, according to British Guild socialists, the guilds were expected to organize production and sales, and take over the social welfare of producers. The devolution of functions from the state to smaller and functional units implied strong limitations to State sovereignty. Pluralists such as Laski, along with Guild Socialists, thought that the state was unable to cope with the task of economic management and economic development, and even questioned the role of the state as the institution which co-ordinates social processes. The organizational pattern of guilds was, however, not to be confined to industry. A separate Collective Utility Council would be in charge of the services, an Educational Guild in charge of the school system, and there would also be a Health Guild etc. All would be structured along similar lines, serving as decentralized national organizations. Agriculture would be included in the guild system on principles similar to those governing the other branches of production (Ehrlich, 1982, Ch. 2). At the basis of pluralist thought is the idea that it is by freely associating that human beings satisfy their basic needs, particularly social, cultural, and economic ones. These associations had to be kept outside the control of the state and should be given sovereign authority in the management of problems and resources. A basic argument advanced by pluralists to defend a group-based conception of politics is that individuals are integrated within these associations not only through rights of formal

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membership but also through social ties and direct involvement in social, economic, cultural, and religious activities. As conceived by pluralists, groups provide, therefore, a paradigm of political involvement that is the opposite of Lippmann’s idea of a polity steered through the polling of opinions. Pluralists such as G.D.H. Cole contended also that even political representation should be organized on the basis of group identity rather than on that of individual autonomy. Indeed, pluralists proposed a functional theory of political representation, according to which the human being cannot be represented on the basis of his naked individuality, but only insofar as he belongs to a group. Indeed, for pluralists, individual rights, duties, and identities all derive and depend upon an individual’s relations to social groups. They claimed, therefore, that traditional territorial representation organized by state authorities should be superseded, or at least integrated, by a new type of functional representation, in which interests were aggregated and represented on the basis of the function individuals played within society. Hence pluralists such as Harold Laski refused standard accounts of state sovereignty. According to them, the state was but one of many social organizations, and its sovereignty did not differ from the power of the Church or a trade union. The idea of state sovereignty was then replaced by that of a polyarchy of sovereign groups. In his theory of the public Dewey is very much concerned with the democratic implications of non-state forms of social and political ­organization highlighted by pluralists. He is however not willing to dismiss, as they do, the very idea of state sovereignty and territorial organization and representation. As he explains: “the hypothesis which we have supported has obvious points of contact with what is known as the pluralistic conception of the state. It presents also a marked point of difference. Our doctrine […] is not a doctrine which prescribes inherent limits to state action” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.281–282). Indeed, whereas the pluralists reduced the state to the same level as other social groups, through the notion of the public Dewey provided new foundations for rethinking state sovereignty in ways that, however, left room for a larger plurality of social groups. The very idea of democracy relies, for Dewey, on this pluralist interpretation of the political function of groups. For example, in the new Introduction to the 1946 edition of The Public and its Problems

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Dewey he re-asserts that at the heart of the book stands: “the public and its connection with the state as the political organization of human relationships” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.375). But in light of recent political events, Dewey thinks that these notions could and should be extended to refer to supra national entities. In this perspective, he militated in support of the US joining the League of Nation under the assumption: “that there is developing the sense that relations between nations are taking on the properties that constitute a public, and hence call for some measure of political organization” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.375). The third theoretical debate that provides the backdrop to Dewey’s political philosophy is that dominating the social sciences of the time, captured by Ferdinand Tönnies’ distinction between community and society (Toennies, 2001) and further debated by authors such as Graham Wallas, whose book The Great Society is one of Dewey’s explicit sources of inspiration. As several generations of scholars have noted, the notion of community played a central role in the political literature of the time, and pragmatists were no exception.14 The concept of community was rooted in the lived experience of these scholars, many of whom had lived a significant part of their lives in small towns. Indeed, “along with a feeling of intimacy and a sense of classlessness, the small-town ethos which shaped the values of these intellectuals emphasized widespread participation in the public affairs of the community. […] The result was a political democracy based on an egalitarian rather than a paternalistic sense of community” Quandt (1970, 6). While the extent to which real small town communities matched this idea may be questioned, it can hardly be disputed that for many intellectuals of this generation this experience shaped their social and political views, accounting for a sort of “enlightened provincialism” that could sometime transform itself in a nostalgic longing for a lost sense of community. Within pragmatist circles, it was probably Josiah Royce, a prominent philosopher and Harvard colleague of William James, who developed the theoretically most articulate account of community. This account was based on the three principles of (a) integration of individuals into the group, (b) communication, and (c) shared values (Mahowald, 2014).  For a reconstruction of the uses of the notion within the pragmatist tradition see Campbell (1992). For a study of the intellectual history of the notion see Quandt (1970). 14

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Royce expressed with philosophical mastery the common idea that a homogeneous community was the basis upon which a collective identity could be developed. He defended a model of “enlightened provincialism” based on deep moral relations of loyalty among members of local units coordinated at a higher level. For his ideal of democratic community, Royce “looked to small groups of thoughtful, committed, active people who could be counted on to think for themselves, to keep each other mentally alert, and to get things done on the local scale of their necessarily limited collaborative powers” (Green, 2014b, 195). This metaphysical image relied upon morality as the last source of social unity. Yet it missed a finer sociological analysis of how social units grow and change, as well as a concern for interests other than those emerging from the fact of sharing a past history and being a community of fate. What was also missed was an adequate understanding of the plurality of interests—as mundane as they often are—which prompt human beings to gather together. Royce’s language of loyalty and devotion to the good seemed to leave only a marginal place for Dewey’s realist appraisal of the role of interests and conflict in human life. Although echoes of this nostalgia are certainly found throughout Dewey’s book, particularly in its last pages, reading Dewey as a philosopher of community offers a unilateral and impoverished account of his political ideas. This conception of the community found its political counterpart in Jefferson’s political vision of a “ward republic”, which historically provided another central reference for pragmatists. As is known, the centre of Jefferson’s political thought is defined by his conception of “ward democracy”, with its educational, political, and economic components. Jefferson gave a precise definition of these political entities: “Were I to assign to this term a precise and definite idea, I would say, purely and simply, it means a government by its citizens in mass, acting directly and personally, according to rules established by the majority; and that every other government is more or less republican in proportion as it has in its composition more or less of this ingredient of the direct action of the citizens”. Among those things which Jefferson considered immediately relevant to ward residents, in addition to elementary schools, and well within their competence, were: “care of their poor, their roads, police, elections, the nomination of jurors, administration of justice in small cases, elementary exercises of militia and all those concerns which, being under their eye,

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they would better manage than the larger republics of the county or state”. While Jefferson saw direct participation in local political life drawing upon citizens’ affections for their community and its public virtues, he also saw the ward’s limited size contributing to public deliberation and the development of citizens’ minds, as evidenced by his repeated plea: “reduce your legislature to a convenient number for full but orderly discussion”.15 Again, in his biography he wrote: “Every state again is divided into counties, each to take care of what lies within its local bounds; each county again into townships or wards, to manage minuter details; and every ward into farms, to be governed each by its individual proprietor… It is by this partition of cares descending in gradation from general to particular that the mass of human affairs may be best managed for the good and prosperity of all”.16 Jefferson’s political idea of a federalist republic combined direct-­democratic procedures at ward level with representative procedures at the federal level. While Dewey certainly saw himself as a follower of the Jeffersonian tradition,17 he had no illusions about the likelihood of resuscitating the bygone era of small town communities. By providing a sociological account of publics based on social theories of groups, Dewey sought to re-adjust ideas traditionally associated with the concept of community to the new world of impersonal relations, functional differentiation, and indirect consequences that Lippmann analyzed with such lucidity. In so doing, Dewey was also aware of the new functional forms of social and political organization as they were discussed by the pluralists, but he was not willing to downplay the role of the state as they did. The public was, to that extent, the community plus social differentiation and modern communication. The notion of the public, as I intend to show, aimed to bring to a higher level of theoretical synthesis ideas discussed in these circles, developing in this way the basis of a new theory of democracy at whose heart stood the project of articulating the social conception of democracy discussed in the previous chapter to the conditions of modernity. The main categories of this pragmatist political theory of democracy are those of public, consequences, institutions, and problem-solving.  Jefferson, all quotations from Sheldon (2000, 91–92).  Cit. in Versluis (2006, 10). 17  See, for example, Dewey (1940). 15 16

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 ublics, Consequences, Institutions, P and Problem Solving

The pragmatist view of democracy assigns to publics the role of main collective subject of political theory.18 The priority of publics as the main political subject implies a situated approach to normative theory, it requires taking as the starting point of political analysis the concrete social processes of group-making rather than existing institutions or established political principles such as liberty, equality, or the will of the people. The perspective adopted is neither that of a normative reconstruction nor that of the identification of supposedly overarching, ahistorical ideals. As a consequence, there is no prior determination of what counts as a political body. Citizens of nation-states are only the contextual and spatio-temporal manifestations of publics under the historical circumstances of western modernity. They are particularly strong and ­certainly important instantiations of publics, but as such they are only transient historical occurrences of a larger and more abstract conceptual entity whose determination is contextual and functional. As Dewey noted in 1946, the progressive enlargement of global interdependencies called for a transnational political organization, whose seed were sawn by the recently founded Society of Nations (Dewey, 1927, lw2.375). As I have contended, it is the notion of public, rather than that of the community, which provides the cornerstone of Dewey’s vision of politics. Indeed, the political is defined as the domain of the public, as the space where a public emerges and organizes itself, it is the space where a public—rather than a political opinion or a community—appears and acts. In terms closer to Bentley’s and Follett’s, for Dewey too, political institutions such as governments are intelligible—and should be understood— only in terms of the processes whereby a public organizes itself. Political institutions must be understood functionally as the emergent and contingent historical answer that a public provides to its own needs. What kind of political community is a public? Dewey adopts an experimental method of definition which leaves the question open. Indeed, a public is  In what follows I will refer to publics in the plural form because part of the strength of the pragmatist theory of democracy resides precisely in its capacity to conceptualize the pluralistic nature of modern politics. 18

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not analytically defined by political terms such as being subject to the same political authority or having a shared identity, but neither is it defined in ethical terms such as “the community as a whole” (Dewey, 1927, lw.259). In terms that remind us of Follett’s analysis, Dewey defines the public as an “organized community”, where the key term is not ‘community’ but rather ‘organized’. Indeed, what transforms a sum of individuals into a public are the forms of its internal organization. By defining the public as an organized community, Dewey has in mind four different aspects. The first is a condition of being commonly affected by consequences that are extensive and relevant. The second trait is its sociological density, appraised in terms of patterns of temporal and spatial dispersion of members, which in turn translates into patterns of social articulation and complexity calling for specific forms of organization. Neither homogenous communities nor scattered associations provide the appropriate sociological basis for the existence of a public. These two features are the most basic, so that: “when consequences concern a large number, a number so mediately involved that a person cannot readily prefigure how they are to be affected, that number is constituted a public which intervenes” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.269). The third feature of a public as organized community is the existence of consolidated routines which operate like collective habits and whose function consists in economizing individual energies (Dewey, 1927, lw2.274). Accordingly, a public does not exist unless it is sustained through the institutional agencies it requires to achieve its goals. If these conditions do not apply, Dewey says that the public is eclipsed, it is still in search of itself. The fourth mark of the public is its solidaristic orientation toward the protection of its weaker members. In this sense, the public has what Dewey calls an intrinsic equalizing function (Dewey, 1927, lw2.274). Because of its internal functional differentiation, a public is not a homogeneous community. Dewey rejects two other equally important methodological starting points: (a) the principle of territorial closure—the methodological nationalism presupposed by Lippmann’s approach, and (b) the principle of functional differentiation endorsed by pluralists. Openly critical of these approaches, which hypostatize the public or the state, Dewey proposes a dynamic and contextual definition according to which a public defines a group of individuals which cater for the management of

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the indirect consequences of actions by which they are affected. This definition is for Dewey general enough to be of nearly universal application to human history. The central fact of political theory is seen by Dewey in the fact that “human acts have consequences upon others, that some of these consequences are perceived, and that their perception leads to subsequent effort to control action so as to secure some consequences and avoid others” (Dewey, 1927, lw.2.243). The central category Dewey posits at the heart of his analysis of the concept of public is that of indirect consequences. In speaking of “indirect consequences of transactions” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.245), natural causes and events are equally included. Dewey focuses not upon human causation but rather upon human affectedness, on the existence of a public as the collective body composed of all those who are affected. Human beings gather together with the aim of controlling these consequences, no matter whether they originate from social or from natural causes. The notion of consequences is carefully chosen by Dewey as it strikes a middle ground between that of moral values—the stock upon which theorists of community build their political views—and that of interests, which realist political thinkers usually place at the heart of their analyses. Indeed, the notion of consequences is compatible with a large variety of aims which spans from ethical values to material interests. Reference is to a common affectedness that concerns something that matters. Consequences, like problems, always refer to how basic human needs are perceived, reformulated and transformed according to social circumstances. The concept of perceived indirect consequences, like that of problem-solving, implies that human beings do not react to brute natural facts, but to facts as they are appraised in socially mediated circumstances. As Dewey explains in the Lectures in China, groups form historically in order to satisfy the irreducible plurality of basic human needs which include material and affective security, spiritual satisfaction, and intellectual curiosity. In The Public and its Problems consequences replace needs as Dewey abandons the project of a more substantialist social philosophy in favor of a proceduralist account of politics.19 Yet the idea remains that social groups are formed on the basis of disparate motiva For more details on this transition, see Frega (2015b).

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tions that cannot be determined in advance, and that the democratic quality of a society depends greatly upon the extent to which processes of group formation unfold. Dewey specifies that what prompt the rise of publics is not the mere existence of causal processes affecting individuals (the indirect consequences), but rather the perception of these consequences. “The public consists of all those who are affected by the indirect consequences of transactions to such an extent that it is deemed necessary to have those consequences systematically cared for” (Dewey, 1927, lw.2.245). Later he explains that “the fact of association does not of itself make a society. This demands […] perception of the consequences of a joint activity and of the distinctive share of each element in producing it. Such perception creates a common interest; that is concern on the part of each in the joint action and in the contribution of each of its members to it. Then there exists something truly social and not merely associative” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.353). The perception of consequences and the ensuing attempt to control them is then the elementary fact which defines the domain of the political. Indeed, collective mobilization requires appropriate perception of one’s situation. In this plea for perception, we can recognize in nuce the elements of subsequent theories of the public sphere, and indeed Dewey is very explicit about the role of intellectuals and journalists—of public communication broadly construed—in sustaining processes of public formation. Publics are, therefore, not a given of politics but rather something that must be discovered and created. Hence we must begin by problematizing the very existence of publics. In general, we tend to ignore who the publics are, which are their manifold interests and needs, which the consequences that led to their organization. The problem is, simultaneously, a problem of existence and a problem of perception, that is, a public may not exist, or there may be a lack of knowledge about it. For a public to exist, two conditions must be fulfilled (a) there must be indirect consequences which similarly affect a plurality of individuals, and (b) these consequences must be perceived. There have been historical moments when there were consequences but no clear awareness of how and who they affected. As I explain in Chap. 10, this is precisely what is happening today at the global level. The process of globalization determines deep

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and plural transformations in the structure of publics, which in turn disparage forms of political organization and produce the enormous democratic deficit we observe. This is also the condition the world experimented at the turn of the last century. Dewey describes this mismatch between historical reality and institutional organization by noting that the US had succeeded to create agreat society (the global network of consequences which indirectly connects individuals spread across increasingly vast geographical surfaces) but not yet agreat community (a public aware of this condition of common-affectedness and willing to cooperate to master it). The constitution of a public is, for Dewey, sparked by the need to control the circumstances of social and natural life. The theoretical importance of the notion of consequences in a pragmatist account of the political cannot, therefore, be mistaken for a mere instrumentalist concern for material convenience. For Dewey: “human associations […] develop into societies in a human sense only as their consequences, being known, are esteemed and sought for” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.330). Dewey explains the rise of national political institutions against the background of the ­ecological20 sea changes which, by transforming relationships between individuals, human groups, and the environment, required new and more complex forms of organized action. According to this view, the circumstances which are relevant for political theory are the demographic density of human population in a given area and the reach of networks of exchange and interaction among them. In short, the scale of politics is determined by the level at which a human group can produce a sort of systemic closure which enables it to control the basic dimensions of social life. It is in this sense that consequences assume a theoretical and methodological priority in Dewey’s view of politics, as institutions can and should be understood in terms of socially coordinated answers to challenges prompted by threatening events. Institutions—political institutions among them—emerge as agencies for controlling perceived consequences, they are indeed regularized or stabilized patterns of collective action. Hence, it is to these “extensive and enduring consequences which involve others beyond those directly engaged in them” (Dewey,  The term “ecology” is used here in the sense of the “human ecology” that was developed by the first generation of the Chicago School of Sociology. 20

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1927, 252) that we must turn to understand political life. Concern for this kind of consequence distinguishes political from non-political forms of association. Reference to consequences may be understood in three different ways, all included in Dewey’s concept. The first refers to conditions that need to be controlled and for whose sake actions need to be undertaken. This meaning captures the consequentialist or utilitarian interest-based conception of politics. The second meaning is epistemic, and refers to the experimental orientation of the policy sciences and to observable effects as the verification test for policies conceived as experimental hypotheses. The third is sociological and refers to the existence of shared interests as the cement of society, to the fact that a public emerges as long as it becomes aware of shared interests. Dewey combines this notion with a discontinuist conception of history. Innovations, transformations, and revolutions transform from outside the conditions of political action. Social, economic, and natural events change the conditions in which human beings act, altering the way in which publics are engendered. When the configuration of publics changes due to the alteration in the webs of consequences, then a political crisis may occur, due to the ensuing misalignment between the public and the forms of political authority and the institutions which control indirect consequences. Dewey observes that “[t]he new public which is generated remains long inchoate, unorganized, because it cannot use inherited political agencies” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.254), and adds that “[t]o form itself, the public has to break existing political forms” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.255) and, we should add, it also has to break with inherited forms of collective action. A recurring example is that of the labour movement. On several occasions, Dewey notes that economic growth in the nineteenth century profoundly transformed the social conditions with reference to which American political institutions were designed 150 years before. “Economic developments which could not possibly have been anticipated when our political forms took shape have created confusion and uncertainty in the working of the agencies of popular government, and thereby have subjected the idea of democracy to basic strain” (Dewey, 1939b, lw13.106). To decide what is the most adequate form of political authority for a given social context, one has, therefore, to identify at the outset which is

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the relevant public, which its form, who are its members, how does it attempt to effect control upon consequences. What follows is a formal, rather than substantial, definition of political authority: “the state is the organization of the public effected through officials for the protection of the interests shared by its members” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.256).21 This functional and dynamic definition provides a normative criteria for assessing its quality: “the degree of organization of the public which is attained, and the degree in which its officers are so constituted as to perform their function of caring for public interests” (Dewey, 1927, 256). As was the case for Bentley, for Dewey too the government does not denote a specific form of political organization but rather the organized response to social needs, the exercise of a social function organized by a public and demanded by an institutional agency. The government is an institutional device to master consequences in the interest of publics. It may be ­democratic or not, according to the manner in which the needs and views of the public are taken into consideration. This definition also provides us with an initial descriptive and normative yardstick for analyzing democratic processes—their capacity to favor an inclusive constitution of publics. A functional and dynamic conception of democracy should not take the existence of the political collective for granted. At any given time, the public can be lost, so that the first task of politics is to search for it, a task consisting in: “discovering the means by which a scattered, mobile and manifold public may so recognize itself as to define and express its interests” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.327). Hence the notion of consequences provides a normative starting point for explaining why a given situation becomes politically relevant and a form of authority takes on a political role. A form of power becomes public hence it requires democratic accountability when the indirect consequences it seeks to control are of importance, which for Dewey means (a) far-reaching, uniform, (b) recurrent, and (c) irreparable (Dewey, 1927, lw2.275). Given the plurality of publics which characterizes (or may characterize) a given society, we must, therefore, expect that a plurality of organizational and institutional agencies need to be developed. This definition displaces conventional  See note 7 at Dewey (1927, lw2.276) for a clear statement of the functional definition of the state, government, officials, and all the main political terms in Dewey’s political philosophy. 21

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boundaries between the private and the public. As in institutionalist approaches, institutions are conceived of as being functionally dependent upon the historical trajectories of publics. A further defining element of the public is the existence of political institutions and public officials, which for Dewey denote individuals acting in the name of others. Complexity and heterogeneity of publics, combined with the need to set up appropriate agencies for the resolution of problems, imply that special agents have to be identified. To this extent, political democracy refers to the relation that is instituted between the public and its officers, as it denotes: “a specified practice in selecting officials and regulating their conduct as officials” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.286). The existence of officials is a mark of the public because complexity can be handled only through mediated and specialized action. And because no collective body can properly act—only individuals act—some process of conferring authority is necessary for an association to become a public. The scope of political democracy, that Dewey differentiates from that of social democracy, is exhausted by this problem (Dewey, 1927, lw2.286). In his political analysis, Dewey acknowledges that, while the existence of procedures for the selection of officials is to be found in all human societies with a political organization, in the large majority of cases these officials have been selected for reasons other than serving the interest of the public. The political implication of this sociological fact is that, under these conditions, a democratic public cannot emerge. When officers are selected according to criteria such as military prowess, dynastic right, age or social prestige, the connection with the public remains weak. Officers lack proper accountability to publics because the source of their legitimacy is external to publics themselves. The existence of officers goes hand-in-hand with that of institutions, and the socio-political organization of institutions becomes a key feature of democratic politics. Yet part of the problem of democracy consists precisely in the capacity publics have, or lack, to devise the appropriate institutional form its agency should take. Indeed, “An inchoate public is capable of organization only when indirect consequences are perceived, and when it is possible to project agencies which order their occurrence” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.317). If we combine these sketchy remarks with what we have said about institutions in the previous chapter, we see that institutions play a fundamental role in any pragmatist theory of democracy, and this at two distinct

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levels. On the one hand, institutions are the backbone of social organization, so that social democracy cannot exist unless all social institutions are organized according to democratic criteria. On the other, institutions are the proper agency of publics, hence the identification of political institutions is functionally dependent upon the identification of matters of public concern. In other words, institutions are the concrete link between democracy as a social idea and its ‘political phase’. This remark introduces the fourth element of the public-based approach. The domain of the political is not formally defined through a set of formal institutions (general elections, constitutional division of powers, parties etc.) but rather by that of problems calling for solution.22 A public is set in motion and officials and institutions established in order to deal with sets of perceived consequences, hence problems. As a consequence, non-­political institutions affecting different spheres of social life such as administrations, bureaucracies, public and private institutions operating in the educational, economic, health, transportation etc. sectors are in that sense fully political actors which should be questioned from the perspective of their compliance with democratic principles. The same holds for non-state international organizations, NGOs, certification agencies, and other private-public organizations that were still rare in Dewey’s time, but whose impact on contemporary life is growing, while their political status often remains unclear.23 The priority pragmatists assign to the dimension of problem-solving contrasts with more traditional ways of conceiving the political sphere in terms of ‘purely political’ values such as protection from arbitrary interference, preservation of individual liberty, or emancipation from domination. All these may certainly become primary concerns in given historical circumstances, and they certainly have, but none should be disconnected from the historical circumstances of its emergence, nor given contextindependent priority over other problems.24 The limitation of the power  This intuition has later been pursued by the pragmatism inspired tradition of the sociology of social problems. See Cefaï and Terzi (2012). See below in Chap. 8 my discussion of the pragmatist idea of a “problem-solving state”. 23  In Chaps. 9 and 10 I will show how political pragmatism inscribes these institutions within the framework of a global conception of democracy. 24  For a rich account of the pragmatist conception of inquiry see Pappas (2016). 22

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of the state, the protection against arbitrary interference, the critique of bureaucracy, from this perspective, are necessary but insufficient tasks of a theory of democracy. They define only in a negative way what political authority is, and lack the theoretical resources required to articulate a fullblown theory of political authority as a form of institutionalized agency aimed at solving the problems experienced by publics. This problem-solving orientation has to be understood at two distinct levels. At the historical level, it can explain the rise of specific political regimes in terms of answers to concrete historical circumstances. This move is consistent with the functional-genealogical orientation which characterizes pragmatism. In this connection, Dewey explains genealogically the advent of liberalism as a theoretical and political answer to the real threat that emerging national states represented for local communities. As such, liberalism reflects and articulates the perceived need to c­ontrol the consequences associated with this new and threatening power. The same kind of argument is used by Dewey to criticize contemporary liberalism for having failed to adjust its political vision to the radically changed circumstances of modern society, in which private corporations, rather than governments, represent the menacing power that needs to be curbed.25 But the problem-solving orientation of political pragmatism has to be seen also in a different light. Indeed, the truly pragmatic concern with problems and consequences is itself the product of specific and contingent historical circumstances. The scientific and economic-technological revolutions of the modern era have in fact magnified the human capacity to manipulate the natural as well as the social environment to such an extent that the control of agency and the fruitful use of resources for pursuing human goals have taken on unprecedented political meaning. If the capacity to control action needs to be proportionate to its potential impact, then politics is endowed with tasks and responsibilities whose scope increases with the increase of the human capacity for social and environmental control. The greater the power, the larger the set of indirect consequences calling for control. Nowhere before in the history of humanity could politics become so important, because the human capacity to intervene in the control and modification of the environment has 25

 See, in particular, Dewey (1930, 1935).

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never been so acute. Whatever interpretation we endorse, we should avoid reducing the problem-solving orientation of political pragmatism to its instrumental dimension. Inquiry denotes, in fact, the reflexive dimension in the existence of a public hence it is essential to its expressive realization. Through inquiry, a public comes to understand itself as a public, articulates its aspirations and needs, organizes itself in order to reach the goals it has set for itself. As I have anticipated in Chap. 3, rationality as inquiry describes human reflexive interactions with an environment as a path from the inarticulate perception of a problem to its progressive articulation as a problematic situation for which a solution is sought, competing hypotheses are examined, a course of action is undertaken, and its direct and indirect consequences feed back into the former definition of the situation. The theory of inquiry is an attempt to provide a formal and epistemically sound account of a more basic social fact which is the learning capacity of individuals and groups in the face of changing external circumstances. Learning is here directly related to the responsiveness of a social organism to outer circumstances, hence to its capacity to adapt and change. Organizations, institutions, social movements are to this extent characterized by their capacity to formulate strategies and learn from experience in their ongoing transactions with reality. Democratic experimentalism will articulate this general assumption in terms of a social and political theory of institutions.

4.3

From Public to Publics

Before concluding this section, a word needs to be said about the numerical constitution of publics. The question of singular or plural identification of publics has been essential to the recent resurgence of interest in Dewey’s theory of democracy, as in its plural use the notion of public has been used to conceptualize the democratic and emancipatory potential of social movements.26 This shift has, however, introduced a semantic ambiguity that we need to dispel, disentangling its meaning from that of other political concepts currently used by Dewey and many other contemporary political theorists to refer to two political collective subjects, namely,  See, for example, Cefäi and Trom (2001); Cefaï and Joseph (2002).

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association and populus. As we would expect from the historical reconstruction offered above, Dewey seems to oscillate between a pluralistic action-based conception of a public as the process whereby any collectivity may become conscious of itself and act in concert, and a monistic interpretation of the public as that which overcomes local forms of association to create a unified political community, the institutional expression of which is a politically organized state. On the one hand, Dewey criticizes pluralists for overlooking the difference between voluntary associations and publics. In so doing, he explicitly endorses a monistic interpretation of the public as the political community organized in the form of a territorial state. On the other hand, his functional account of publics and political institutions clearly goes beyond a standard interpretation of the public as national populus, and to this extent he clearly rejects the reduction of democratic politics to representative government. As David Smith, among others, has noted: “the pragmatist conception of politics had revolutionary overtones. Dewey and Follett looked at a public largely unorganized, apathetic and unaware of itself, and wanted to summon it to a successful campaign” (Smith, 1964, 604). Here we find an ambiguity which threatens to drift into a contradiction, as the public in the singular refers explicitly to the populus or “Great Community”, with its direct connection with state and government, whereas at the same time, and in the same text, reference to publics in the plural form points toward a less restraining interpretation of the term.27 To understand how pragmatists conceptualize political subjectivity between social and political democracy, we should take two criteria into account. The first is that a social practice has political relevance insofar as it organizes interests held in common, having a general interest in view. This process of collective self-organization and self-activation can be understood in two ways. On the one hand, a public is a collectivity that organizes itself in order to pursue shared interests (control of indirect consequences), and to this extent, as we have seen, Dewey posits the commitment to internal democracy as a normative criteria for the existence of a democratic public, ie the development of democratic patterns of interaction and internal solidarity. The traditional local community  James Bohman (Bohman, 2010) gets Dewey’s theory of politics wrong precisely because he fails to see that Dewey has a dual understanding of this notion. 27

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and the national state clearly constitute a public in this sense. On the other hand, a mobilized collectivity that strives to achieve goals that have a larger social reach, and to this extent struggles to achieve a common good can be considered a ‘public’. Emancipatory social movements have been interpreted as Deweyan publics, insofar as they mobilize to overcome circumstances of subjection and domination, and/or their actions can be seen to contribute to improving the conditions of social life of the larger polity. Conversely, self-seeking pressure groups cannot be publics in this sense, as they pursue interests which cannot be generalized. The second criteria is pragmatism’s overall commitment to a thorough contextualism and a bottom-up conception of politics as self-activation. Dewey’s analysis of publics tends in fact to emphasize the social processes which preside over the genesis of new collective subjects. While Dewey was mainly concerned with how to transform the scattered public of America’s rural communities into a unified democratic national public, this theoretical framework has been largely utilized to understand processes whereby heterogeneous collectivities such as urban populations, neighborhoods, parents, peoples in poor areas, marginalized groups etc. succeed in organizing themselves to solve the problems that affect their lives. Already in the writing of Chicago sociologists in Dewey’s time and later in the wider tradition of the sociology of social problems, the public-­based theory of politics has been significantly expanded so as to provide a conceptual apparatus to study the emergence and dynamics of all kinds of mobilized collectivities. From this perspective, ‘a public’ denotes any collective entity which mobilizes itself to pursue interests which directly concern one’s situation, but which also affect the wider society. What criteria can then be used to differentiate a political public in the stricter sense from a group organizing to solve a social problem, and a group merely seeking self-interest? While Dewey’s The Public and its Problems is somewhat elusive on this question, an answer can be found in his Lectures in China, where Dewey reflects on the emancipatory function of organized collective action. Here Dewey clearly states that the political relevance of mobilized collectivities is directly related to their capacity to pursue interests that are also of concern to those not belonging to the

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mobilized group. According to Dewey, groups (or associations) emerge historically as individuals organize themselves to satisfy basic human needs that have a broader reach than those who become associated. Associations such as families, churches, scientific associations, or social movements are organizational forms developed to fulfill human needs which have a universal reach. Political units such as municipalities or national peoples on the one hand, and social movements on the other represent two variants of the same intuition that politics has to do with processes of self-organization aimed at pursuing a common interest. Their obvious differences notwithstanding, these two conceptions of publics are unified by their commitment to a form of public interest. Pluralism and differentiation explain that, while interest-based groups and voluntary associations are certainly an important ingredient of a democratic society, the theoretical explanation of their political meaning requires that we link collective mobilizations to the collective good of a political social unity. We can, therefore, make sense of these two strands of pragmatism’s public-based theory of publics by combining two definitions of what is a public: (1) a public denotes any collective of individuals which mobilizes to solve a public problem, hence satisfying interests which also affect those who reside beyond its boundaries. Self-seeking pressure groups are, to this extent, excluded from the definition of public, insofar as they pursue interests which cannot be generalized; (2) a public denotes a second-­order political association—a polity—that is capable of integrating into a coherent social aggregate a plurality of groups pursuing distinct interests, and that does so in ways that are not detrimental to the interests of its weakest parts. Particularly in Chap. 4 of The Public and its Problems, Dewey insists on the privileged relation that exists between the public as populus and the State, and he opposes the public as a distinctively political body to other kinds of human association. As I have shown, these statements should not be decontextualized, but rather understood as moves internal to his rhetorical strategy against pluralists. Dewey’s insistence on the public as political subject should be read as emphasizing that the political community is a type of unity which transcends the mere sum of social groups organized and represented through voluntary associations. From this point of view, Dewey seeks to emphasize that, whereas

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guilds, cooperatives, and churches are merely forms of social grouping— what he calls ‘associations’—the populus constitutes the properly political form of human association. Groups belong to a political society of which they are mutually interdependent and internally differentiated parts, whose existence has no meaning if severed from the political society to which these groups belong. Politics refers primarily to the self-governing capacity of a whole society. However, beginning from Chap. 5, Dewey emphasizes the functional dimension of publics, using the term in plural form, stating notably that the social situation which characterizes modernity is that of a manifold multiplication of publics which is the outcome of processes of functional social differentiation unknown to past societies. And already in Chap. 3 he makes it explicit that “the words ‘government’ and ‘officers’ are taken functionally, not in terms of some particular structure which is so familiar to us that it leaps to the eyes when these words are used. Both words in their functional meaning are much wider in application than what is meant when we speak, say, of the government and officers of Great Britain or the United States” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.276 Note 7). Indeed, given the condition of complex modern societies, we can no longer postulate homogeneous and single publics in the form of communities. Social differentiation implies that homogenous communities are progressively replaced by publics which are internally divided, so that the common good has to be seen simultaneously as the outcome of two types of strategies, one vertical and the other horizontal. On the one hand, the structuration of publics at a plurality of levels ranging from neighborhood associations to a worldwide Society of Nation. This process provides a first reason to pluralize the concept of public along a vertical line going from the smallest to the largest. On the other hand, diffracted group-­ based practices of collective mobilization striving to fulfill collective goals, for which the term ‘public’ seems to be equally appropriate. As Dewey contends, while the search for a political public remains the main task of politics, the pursuit of collective interests often proceeds through group-­ based collective actions. Particularly in a modern polity: “there are too many publics for conjoint actions which have indirect, serious and enduring consequences are multitudinous beyond comparison, and each one of them crosses the others and generates its own group of persons especially

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affected with little to hold these different publics together in an integrated whole” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.320). For reasons of terminological clarity, it would be advisable to confine the concept of public to processes whereby political communities pursue their collective goals, and speak rather of groups and associations when referring to interest-based forms of collective mobilization. And indeed, most of the time Dewey himself distinguishes between merely social collective aggregates, that he calls associations, and specifically political ones, that he calls publics. Hence, even when pluralized, the notion of public is used by Dewey to refer to political communities such as small rural communities, cities, national states, and transnational unities. Associations that do not constitute publics are guilds, cooperatives, churches, trade unions, and social movements. This apparent paradox is dissolved once we understand that the distinction between association and public corresponds to Dewey’s distinction between social and political democracy. Whereas associations are constitutive of the social dimension of democracy, publics correspond to what Dewey calls “the political phase” of democracy. Indeed, for Dewey, associations are precious and necessary elements in the life of a community but do not constitute an autonomous political entity, insofar as they fulfill functional roles that are subservient to the survival of a larger unity to which they belong. Hence the relation of social groups to publics is a functional one. Whereas a public is a political community that can self-­sufficiently cater for the plurality of its needs, a group always represents only a particular interest which needs to be pursued for the good of the greater public. And Dewey defines the conditions under which a public can function democratically in the social-[theoretic] terms of his social conception of democracy, that is to say, by referring to the mediating role played by groups: “from the standpoint of the individual, it consists in having a responsible share according to capacity in forming and directing the activities of the groups to which one belongs and in participating according to need in the values which the groups sustain. From the standpoint of the groups, it demands liberation of the potentialities of members of a group in harmony with the interests and goods which are common” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.327–328). As can be seen, the relation of groups to publics is a relation of inclusion based on the criteria of functional differentiation. Because every individual belongs simultaneously to a plurality of groups and, at

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least potentially, to a plurality of publics ranging from small communities to supranational polities, groups can contribute to advance the democratic expectations of publics in complex and diversified ways. We should, therefore, not reduce the role of groups to that of interest-based pressure groups subjected to or inscribed within local or national politics. Transnational social movements, for example, fulfill similar functions. However, technically speaking, mobilized collectivities such as social movements are not publics in Dewey’s sense. They are, rather, groups or associations. To better understand the relationship between groups and publics, as well as that between the social and the political dimension of democracy, we have to distinguish at least two ways in which group activity contributes to democracy. The first, which Dewey explores in detail in The Public and its Problems and elsewhere, is consistent with the pragmatist view of human beings as social selves, and refers to the integrative function of group-life also described by authors such as Cooley and Mead. The second way, explored by Dewey especially in his Lectures in China, refers to the emancipatory function of social groups, to their capacity to bring forth new social visions and values, and contribute to the realization of basic human needs. According to this second view, social groups are agents of social change. They are mobilized collectivities that struggle to change society, rather than mere sources of social identity. In that sense, groups as mobilized collectivities combine aspects of social as well as political democracy. On the one hand, they contribute to social integration and self-realization, and on the other they strive for control of the indirect consequences that affect not only their lives but the larger society. Classical social movements such as labour movements, feminism, student movements, and black movements are paradigmatic examples of social groups that combine social and political traits and jointly fulfill these two functions. The point of Dewey’s distinction is that, no matter what the interest-base of a group is, its activities cannot aim only to the advantage of the group itself. This is presumably because groups denote homogeneous subsets of larger social polities, whereas plurality is an irreducible trait of complex social units. Hence the political meaning of group activity can be understood and evaluated only in the context of criteria that transcend the group, inscribing its action within the larger whole of what can appropriately be called the political community.

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Indeed, as the Lectures in China make clear, interest-based groups rather than publics have been the historical motor of social emancipation. Dewey’s social and political conceptions of democracy converge on the idea that group-based practices are an essential ingredient of a public-­ based political democracy. Indeed, what counts as agencies of the public are not only its formal officials operating within public institutions, but also its manifold mobilized social groups. We have to refer to Dewey’s Lectures in China to understand how a group’s activity contributes to the life of publics and how the political phase of a society is organized. In this set of lectures Dewey clearly relates a public’s emancipatory fortunes to the capacity of social groups such as scientists, women, youth to struggle to achieve social change which in the end will also benefit other members of the public. To this extent, the Lectures in China present three types of normative criteria according to which the emancipatory potential of a group can be described. These criteria are extremely helpful to understand the democratic function of groups within Dewey’s public-based theory of politic.28 According to Dewey, social struggles have emancipatory potential if at least one of the following conditions apply: (a) they contribute to the recognition of a basic human need that has so far been frustrated; (b) they realize a better integration of basic human needs, and (c) they grant greater satisfaction of a given basic human need. The first, and theoretically prior, set of normative criteria refers to the recognition of a basic human need that has so far remained suppressed. Whenever a social group succeeds in providing new scope and legitimacy for the realization of a human basic need, there is social emancipation. Emancipation is here conceived in abstract terms, because what is properly emancipated is not a social group itself, but rather the organizing principle of which it is the bearer. The paradigmatic example is that of scientists seen as a social group who succeeded in freeing the human desire for knowledge from the domination of a religious principle which imposed an illegitimate external form of authority on it. The emancipation of a political form of social organization from the traditional principle of kinship is another example, and democracy provides the normative standard to assess the quality of this process. The second set of normative 28

 For a more complete analysis of this theme, see Frega (2015b).

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criteria refers to the capacity of a social group to ameliorate the overall quality of social integration of the larger social group to which it belongs. Here again, the reference to social emancipation is the whole public, and the normative criteria refers to its general capacity to adequately acknowledge and satisfy a plurality of basic human needs. Youth’s and women’s movements are taken by Dewey as examples of this particular form of social emancipation. With reference to both, Dewey explicitly states that these social groups act as the unconscious bearers of a universal interest of humanity. They are, in the language of The Public and its Problems, agents of the public. The third type of normative criteria refers to more conventional struggles conducted by groups which believe that they have received an unfair share of a given entitlement, be it respect, recognition, rights, or material resources. This type of criteria operates at the level conventionally identified by theories of domination, as it refers to relations among groups which have competing claims to a single dimension, so that in most cases domination can be described in terms of injustice, and normative requirements can be formulated in terms of equality or non-­ discrimination, that is: equality of women and men; equality of slaves and freemen; equality of capitalists and workers, and non-discrimination against minorities. From the perspective of the basic normative framework of Dewey’s social philosophy, this third type plays a theoretically even more subordinate function because it refers to struggles in contexts in which the legitimacy of a given normative principle is not disputed. In the original version of the Lectures in China, only the workers’ movement belongs to this group. Dewey’s analyses of the political phase of social life offered in the Lectures in China is thus consistent with and complementary to that developed in The Public and its Problems, insofar as in both cases social groups are clearly identified as the motor of social emancipation but at the same time their political relevance is assessed in terms of their capacity to contribute to the wellbeing of a larger political community, a public. I therefore suggest using the term ‘public’ to denote what Dewey termed “the political phase”, which is to say, all forms of mobilized collectivity, both in the sense of ‘public’ proper and in the sense of the larger social theory of associations to which Dewey and the pragmatists of his generation subscribed. ‘The public’ denotes the political phase of social

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life, that in which joint action for the control of indirect consequences at no matter what level takes centre stage. In conclusion, we reach the following definition of democracy: Democracy denotes a social and political arrangement of a human polity which, through cooperative forms of organization, succeeds in empowering its publics to deal with their own perceived problems in ways that are consistent with the three democratic principles of (1) relational parity; (2) inclusive authority, and (3) social involvement, and which for that reason are responsive to expressive and to functional normative standards.

5

Conclusion

The two dimensions of social ontology and of the group-based theory of politics which compose the pragmatist theory of democracy have been distinguished here only for analytical purposes. It is important to recall that they are two sides of the same concept, and their theoretical articulation is guaranteed by the social naturalistic framework within which pragmatist thought is inscribed. At the level of the theory of democracy, this articulative function is mainly accomplished by the notion of public, which on one side is turned toward the social and expressive idea of community, and on the other is turned toward the functionalist idea of societal problem-solving. The theoretical coexistence of these two elements organizes the pragmatist theory of democracy as a normative project and cannot therefore be undone by discarding either one or the other constitutive pillar. Yet this coexistence is far from being unproblematic. As we have seen, with the rising complexity of modern societies the functional factor gathers momentum and independence and tends to emancipate itself from the bounds of the expressive form of life whence it emerged. First systems theory, and later theories of depoliticization and the rise of expertise have shown to what extent this phenomenon is taking centre stage today. Hence a potential source of normative conflict springs from the tension between the two moments, the expressive and the functional. This systemic component of social life, and of complex organizations, determines the fact that such a reconciliation cannot be easily accomplished within standard conceptions of democracy, nor through the mere

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supplement of citizens’ participation. Thus the question a wide view of democracy will have to answer is: Which practices and institutions contribute to the overall democratic quality of associations of different types, and what are the conditions under which these practices and institutions can be considered democratic according to this conception, no matter whether they belong to the formal political sphere, to the informal public sphere, or to social non-political, and non-public spheres? One has to consider, given what I have stated above, that, according to a pragmatist view, institutions and organizations are spaces in which democracy is practiced. At the same time, institutions have indirect democratic import as long as they contribute to the general democratic quality of a society: they are the instruments whereby a society can achieve democracy. Whether we consider institutions as ingredients of a social ontology or as part of the political phase of social life, or whether we consider democracy in terms of internal organization or of external consequences, the question of their democratic quality and their contribution to the overall democratic quality of a society lies at the heart of the pragmatist conception of democracy. Hence the double-edged question of their democratic relevance, that is, as spaces in which democracy is realized and as guarantees for the realization of democracy elsewhere. To conclude, the general argument that emerges from these classical texts is the following: A political conception of democracy as collective problem-solving is intelligible only within the theoretical framework of a social conception of democracy. Taken together, these two dimensions compose the wide view of democracy. This articulation seeks to avoid two equally unsatisfactory reductive moves, that is, the reduction of the political theory of democracy to (a) a realist and purely instrumental conception of problem-solving as the efficient management of the ordinary, or (b) a formal and idealistic conception of the political as being detached from day to day problems and aspirations. Institutions certainly play the most important role in connecting social and political democracy because, more than any other social factor, they incorporate expressive and functional moments. Politics, moreover, represents the specialized achievement of an otherwise ordinary and widely distributed social function, and Dewey’s theory of publics is there to remind us of this fact. One could say that, for Dewey, formal politics is to ordinary politics what

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professional science is to ordinary inquiry, or artistic works of art are to ordinary aesthetic experiences.29 The specialized forms stem from everyday forms as purified and perfected tools whose roots and raisons d’être are, however, to be found in needs and ways of proceeding which are constitutive of our natural and cultural outlook. What Dewey wrote in his Logic of adaptive problem-solving being the natural and cultural matrix of scientific inquiry holds true equally for politics. Politics is the specialized expression of tendencies and ways of doing which are pre-­ political in nature and which can be observed at any level of associated life. Like science and art, politics can be understood only through the appropriate articulation of these two distinct and at the same time inseparable dimensions of human experience. Politics, in that sense, has no real autonomy vis-à-vis ordinary social experience. Political specialization, like artistic or scientific specialization, emerges in specific circumstances as an answer to specific needs, and in that sense it has instrumental value. Yet, like art and science, this form of specialization is characterized by a partial autonomization from its otherwise ordinary contexts of expression. As in the other cases, the successful articulation of continuity and discontinuity explains the successful development of new practices capable of opening up new and unprecedented opportunities for human progress, embodying expressive and emancipatory properties. In a nutshell, this political theory of democracy lays out the descriptive and the normative implications of the idea that democracy denotes, first and foremost, the set of social conditions as well as normative standards needed: (1) to promote the formation of autonomous and egalitarian publics; (2) capable of controlling the indirect consequences of action; (3) through appropriate institutional arrangements, (4) adapted to the resolution of the problems the publics have identified. In this light, before proceeding further in our investigation, we can recapitulate the two elements of the pragmatist wide view of democracy: In its largest, social, constitution, democracy denotes the form of a society in which the three principles of (a) relational parity, (b) inclusive authority, and (c) social involvement are consistently applied at the levels  These interpretations of science and art have notoriously been carried out by Dewey in his masterworks (Dewey, 1934, 1938). 29

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of ethos, patterns of social interaction, and forms of social organization. It describes a society in which self-realization is achieved through functional cooperation mediated by intelligence. In its political phase, democracy denotes the social and political arrangement of a human polity which, through cooperative forms of organization, achieves the empowerment of its publics when dealing with their own perceived problems in ways that are consistent with the same three democratic principles, and which for that reason are responsive to expressive and functional normative standards.

Part III Political Pragmatism

The wide view of democracy aims at reconciling the social and the political dimensions of democracy by adopting a unified account of “the democratic way of life” which conceives political behavior as a phase in the wider functioning of a democratic society. According to this view, the social conception of democracy revolves around the idea of patterns of social interaction based on the three principles of: (a) relational parity; (b) inclusive authority, and (c) social involvement. The underlying normative assumption is that social integration is generated through two combined strategies, that is, the development of relations which promote individual self-realization, and normative practices conducive to effective social problem-solving. Both conditions are needed to avoid the reproduction of alienated social circumstances and to prevent the establishment of forms of social domination. This definition of democracy combines an instrumental, or functional, dimension—it functions well in solving societal problems—and an expressive or primitive dimension—it is an end in itself insofar as democratic interactions are their own recompense. Defined in these terms, the concept of democracy has the widest possible application and provides a normative standard that operates in all spheres of social life and can be used to assess the quality of any form of human association, offering guidance in diagnosing social pathologies, identifying positive models of social interaction, and devising prospective processes of social emancipation. So conceived, democracy

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defines that form of society in which all basic institutions from the family to the state and all major organizations from schools to firms are organized according to the three principles of: (a) relational parity: (b) inclusive authority, and (c) social involvement, with the added benefit of promoting cooperative learning and problem-solving in a wide range of social situations which largely transcends those rarified moments where politics emerges under the classical guise of collective decision-making. In this sense, democracy achieves the status of a paradigmatic normative concept, as defined in Chap. 2. A social conception of democracy cannot, therefore, be formulated in terms of a self-standing and purely political theory of institutions. On the contrary, it will have to rely upon substantial theoretical assumptions concerning the nature and functioning of society as well as human psychology. A psycho-social theory of habits, a sociological theory of interactions, and an organizational theory of institutions seem to be the most appropriate avenues for specifying essential features of such a wide view of democracy insofar as they provide actualized and scientifically reliable accounts of what pragmatists identify as the three main drives of social democracy: a democratic ethos; democratic patterns of social interaction, and democratic forms of organization. The task of this and of the following two chapters is to present the outline of a contemporary theory of social democracy in line with the intuition of the early pragmatists, and to show how it can help us advancing our understanding of key issues in social and political philosophy. The last two chapters will submit the group-based theory of politics to a similar treatment, providing an updated and working version of a public-based pragmatist theory of politics.

6 From Civic Virtues to Democratic Habits

1

Understanding the Philosophical Grammar of Virtues and Habits

I begin my inquiry into a contemporary wide view of democracy by reclaiming habits as a central category for political theory. Habits provides a first test for the wide view of democracy insofar as they are one of the locus where social life is constantly reproduced, yet one that usually eschews the spots of democratic theory, insofar as it falls outside the scope of deliberative decision making, conflict resolution, as well as of conscious participation. Moreover, habits are not a promising candidate for explaining democratic legitimacy. Yet, as I intend to show, habits are a precious and even indispensable concept for the study of how democratic regimes exist and evolve in time. Habits are generally considered the source of stability, repetition, and conservation, and for that reason they have generally been looked upon with suspicion by democratic theorists. Since William James’s seminal account, however, pragmatists have seen in habits not only a central ­category of political thought but, moreover, one strictly entrenched with  democracy’s emancipatory ambition. Pragmatists were aware that © The Author(s) 2019 R. Frega, Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18561-9_6

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­ emocratization could not be achieved if established traditional and antid democratic habits were not removed, and that to an extent the task of democratic practice would precisely consist in democratizing habits, a task they saw as equally important as the task of democratizing discursive or decision-­making procedures. As it will discussed later in the section on racial habit, the lack of concern of contemporary democratic theory for extra-­deliberative factors has left several decisive features of democracy insufficiently explored. While such an interest for habits is not common in contemporary mainstream democratic theory, there is at least one political tradition which has assigned habits a crucial place in democratic politics, republicanism. Since its inception, this philosophical tradition has offered a view of habits as necessary ingredients of an emancipatory view of politics. And we certainly have to thank the republican tradition if the notion of character has not been completely expelled by the lexicon of contemporary political philosophy. The similarities between pragmatism and republicanism on these two points are therefore more than episodical. Indeed, because republicans have contended more than any other modern western political tradition that achieving nondomination presupposes the development of a specific system of habits they call “civic virtue”, it is worth reflecting on the comparative merits of these two traditions. Therefore, to prove the relevance of the pragmatist theory of habits I will proceed to a comparison of the habit-based pragmatist conception of politics with the republican virtue-based view of democratic politics as it can be inferred by contemporary works in the republican tradition. By reflecting upon differences and similarities between these two different philosophical grammars of political life, I wish to show that habits have a marked superiority over virtues when it comes to conceptualizing their specific contribution to politics. As I intend to show, pragmatists like republicans contend that appropriate habits are the backbone of a well organized polity, so that the pursuit of the normative goal these traditions posit—nondomination for the republicans and democracy for the pragmatists—require also a specific cultivation of habits. They differ however in their understanding of the nature of these habits, and of the specific relation they entertain to political practice. Seen from the perspective of the history of moral thought, virtues and habits are strange bedfellows

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that have undergone a similarly ill-fated destiny. Tied together from Aristotle’s to at least Hume’s moral philosophy, they have subsequently taken different paths. Overall, one can say without fear of refutation that habits and virtues have played a marginal role in modern moral and political philosophy. Whilst the thesis of a general eclipse of virtues has been challenged (Schneewind, 1990, 90), it is evident that mainstream moral and political philosophy has displayed a sustained disinterest, if not outright rejection, of character-based conceptions of politics. According to this perspective, the pragmatist rediscovery of habits at the beginning of the twentieth century may appear to be a historical curiosity, as much as, although for different reasons, some have considered the republican rehabilitation of virtues to be. In this sense, pragmatism and republicanism have shared the same unhappy fate. In moral theory, virtue-based approaches are generally identified by their reliance upon character rather than rules as the basis of moral behavior. According to this view, behaving according to specific habits that have been inscribed in the self, generally through processes of education and socialization, replaces duty-compliance or rule-following as the proper source of moral behavior. Since Aristotle, the idea of virtue has been conceptually tied to that of habit through the mediation of dispositions. Yet, as Schneewind reminds us: “[t]he assumption almost universally made is that if the virtues are important it is precisely because they are the habits, however formed, of obeying the moral laws” (Schneewind, 1990, 90). In this way, the notion of virtue appears to be tied also to that of good or moral law in a way that, as I will show, is not implied by the notion of habit. Or, at least, by the interpretation of that notion developed by the pragmatists. Indeed, according to this view virtues are a subset of habits. Virtues are habitual and their functioning consists in producing appropriate behavior without requiring intentional deliberation. Yet their scope is narrower than that of habits. This interpretation of the relation between virtues and habits informs my reading of the political relevance of habits. As I will show in this chapter, in rehabilitating the notion of habits, the pragmatists did not rely on the old tradition of virtue ethics, with its implied attempt—fully endorsed by the republicans— to provide a moral foundation to political life. They were, rather, aiming at providing a social-theoretic foundation for politics—something we

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would expect, considering the role played by habits in the pragmatist social ontology. Hence the autonomization of the notion of habit from that of a telos or good which, on the contrary, is a constitutive ingredient of the republican concept of virtue. Acknowledging these differences should, however, not blind us to some important convergences. Indeed, republicanism shares with pragmatism an orientation toward a substantial or thick view of politics, by which I do not mean that pragmatism and republicanism subscribe to some form of illiberal perfectionism, but rather that both traditions reject the attempt to reduce politics to the mere operating of formal institutions and both reclaim the need to ground politics in a broader account of social life and a deeper understanding of the basic features of human action. They seem, moreover, to accomplish this task in surprisingly similar ways, relying upon concepts whose grammar is rather similar and at the heart of which stand the notions of virtue and habit. In this chapter, I will compare pragmatism and republicanism from the perspective of the function they assign to human character in their respective conceptions of politics.

2

 ivic Republicanism and the Political C Function of Civic Virtues

Republicanism has gained new impetus in the political theory of the last four decades thanks to its capacity to reintroduce into political discourse a dimension of political life that political thought—particularly its liberal Anglo-American variants—has neglected. This dimension has been articulated either in terms of a recovery of duties as a necessary complement to rights, or of a recovery of character as against formalistic, rule-based conceptions of politics. Indeed, as Richard Dagger has aptly summarized, the task of republicanism: “is to find a way of strengthening the appeal of duty, community, and related concepts while preserving the appeal of rights” (Dagger, 1997, 4). Since its beginnings, republicanism has pursued the goal of reviving forms of political thought that place civically oriented concepts at the centre of their vocabularies. This has been a ­commendable task, and one which has met with considerable success, if

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one thinks, for example, of the way in which liberals have been willing— to a significant extent—to accept the republican challenge and to allow conceptual room for virtue and duty besides rules and rights.1 There are reasons, however, to suspect that the republican project has been continued in a somewhat insufficient and sometimes confused manner. This leaves room for considerable improvement in the direction republicans have indicated, but relies instead upon conceptual resources derived from the pragmatist tradition. Contemporary scholars of republicanism2 tend to agree that the republican tradition in political theory is roughly divided into two main strands, one referring directly to Aristotle and sometimes called ‘neo-­ Athenian’, and the other referring to the Roman tradition and usually called ‘neo-Roman’. This division is particularly relevant for our purposes as the divergences among the two strands concern precisely the political relevance of virtue. Both strands of republicanism acknowledge the irreducibly social nature of human beings, yet they draw different normative conclusions from it. Moreover, they both admit that the central task of politics consists in shaping the collective project of a polity, but conceive of the task and scope of government in quite different ways. Another feature shared by both strands, and one which distinguishes them from pragmatists, is that republicans tend to limit the scope of character to activities directly tied to the social role of citizenship. Consequently, their concern for human character is limited to virtues which are relevant to this role. This is the reason why for republicans the only virtues that matter are civic virtues. So-called ‘Neo-Athenians’ maintain—in agreement with a tradition dating back to Aristotle—that active involvement in public affairs has an intrinsic, or constitutive, and not merely instrumental function. Indeed, to participate in public actions oriented toward the common good is considered to be an activity with intrinsic worth as it is conducive to a better and fuller realization of individual life. To this extent, republicans agree with pragmatists on the political importance of what I have called social involvement, although they tend to reduce its scope to involve For an informed discussion, see Macedo (1990).  See Dagger (1997), Maynor (2003), Burtt (1993), Honohan (2003), Peterson (2011).

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ment in directly political activities. For this reason, this strand of republicanism is sometimes called ‘intrinsic’, as opposed to the ‘instrumental’ variant of republicanism, which roughly corresponds to the neo-Roman alternative. Neo-Athenians tend to emphasize a specific form of virtue which is civic virtue, sometimes declined in the plural, but generally conceived as a specific kind of virtue. While neo-Athenian republicans’ emphasis on character or virtue may lend credit to the idea that the notion of virtue is incompatible with the basic assumptions of a liberal society, a significant consensus exists today, even among significant strands of liberalism, on the fact that, if duly defined, virtues can be accommodated within a liberal account of politics. One can see therefore the concept of virtue as spanning contemporary political thought from communitarianism, to republicanism, and even to liberalism. Michael Sandel and Benjamin Barber are generally considered to be the most prominent spokesmen for the neo-Athenian version of republicanism, for their explicit appreciation of the formative and self-expressive role of political participation and for their insistence on the political relevance of civic virtue. They both propose an image of democracy based on the idea of a citizen’s commitment to active participation fostered by a deep sense of civic virtue, which in turn is constantly renewed and animated by the activity of the state. As Sandel has remarked: “given our nature as political beings, we are free only insofar as we exercise our capacity to deliberate about the common good, and participate in the public life of a free city or republic” (Sandel, 1998, 26). Compared to pragmatists, republicans reduce the formative dimension of community life to activities which concern our social identity as citizens. Consequently, their concern for human character is limited to virtues which are relevant to citizenship, that is to say, civic virtues. Neo-Athenian thinkers often associate politics with morality, and the language of virtue is expedient to reinforce this link. As Sandel observes: “politics should aim at doing the right thing, not at giving people what they want” (Sandel, 1998, 131). In agreement with a tradition dating back to Aristotle, they maintain that active involvement in public affairs has an intrinsic, or constitutive, not merely instrumental function in human life. Indeed, to participate in public actions oriented toward the common good is considered to be an activity with intrinsic worth, as it is

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conducive to a better and fuller realization of individual life. For this reason, this strand of republicanism is sometimes called ‘intrinsic’, as opposed to the ‘instrumental’ variant, which roughly corresponds to the neo-Roman alternative. Neo-Athenian thinkers often associate politics with morality, and the language of virtue is expedient to reinforce this link. Republicans of both stripes tend to favor a moral reading of virtues because they think that the greater threat to good politics is not state oppression or majority’s tyranny, but moral and political corruption, conceived as the prioritization of one’s private interest to public concern. Morality is therefore politically relevant insofar as it helps individuals to subordinate their private interest to the pursuit of the common good. Republicans have been surprisingly elusive in their effort to theorize civic virtue. The best conceptual analysis of virtue to date remaining Alasdair MacIntyre’s, I will rely on his definition to articulate the republican conception of civic virtue. I find particularly helpful MacIntyre’s contention that the concept of virtue has a teleological structure and that, for this reason, it is inseparable from the normative ideal of a good, or telos, which provides the benchmark for assessing the degree to which a virtue is effectively exercised as well as for justifying its worth. Hence specification of the telos is expedient in deciding which virtues are most appropriate to a given situation. As a matter of fact, virtues have traditionally been conceived as means toward ends, and we can distinguish an intrinsic and an extrinsic interpretation of the means-end relation. According to the intrinsic conception, whose main representative is Aristotle, the exercise of virtues is part of the good they are conducive to, whereas, according to the extrinsic model, the exercise of virtue is a mere instrument that is valued and prized for the external outcome to which it is conducive. In both cases, political activity can be understood as a kind of practice, by which MacIntyre means “a coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended” (MacIntyre, 1981, 187). While

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not all that MacIntyre says about virtue is relevant in this context, a selective reading of his analysis provides a useful starting point to examine the function of virtue in a republican theory of politics. Moreover, the definition of virtue through the notion of practice has the advantage of making explicit key features that republicans consider necessary ingredients of their virtue-based conception of politics. Below I identify seven traits MacIntyre associates with the concept of practice, and relate them to themes in the republican tradition: 1. The idea of a common end which orients the exercise of the practice. This idea is clearly expressed in the republican rejection of liberal neutrality and in the understanding of citizenship in terms of an obligation toward the community which derives from the awareness of our dependence upon it: “The guiding principle for [civic republicanism] is the existence of significant moral obligations which citizens, as human beings, have to each other as members of political communities. In this sense, civic obligation is viewed as a fundamental feature of, and as being essentially rooted within, the polis. Civic obligation is embedded and, crucially, is prior to the individual” (Peterson, 2011, 58). 2. The idea of competence or excellence in exercising a given role. Whereas liberals assume that adult human beings dispose of the basic competences to be citizens, republicans consider that these competences exist only when trained. Hence the indispensability of the notion of virtue for most, if not all, republicans, as well as the general tendency to conceive of virtues as role-based. 3. The indispensability of processes of social learning in acquiring the status of citizen. To practice citizenship, some prior requirement must be fulfilled, that is, citizens have to be empowered to act: “What this means is that the habits, customs, and traditions of a community, its moeurs, its codes of moral and civil conduct, have to be such that there is within them a secure place for the practice of citizenship” (Oldfield, 1990, 184). The republican claim is that the practice of citizenship is unnatural for human beings, hence without training it is unlikely to occur. 4. The bi-univocal relation between virtues and institutions. The exercise of a practice can satisfy given normative standards only if institutions and virtues are balanced. Institutions must be sustained by virtues and

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they must contribute to the formation and maintenance of virtues. On the one hand: “the ability of a practice to retain its integrity will depend on the way in which the virtues can be and are exercised in sustaining the institutional forms which are the social bearers of the practice” (MacIntyre, 1981, 195). On the other hand: “the virtues are … themselves in turn fostered by certain types of social institutions and endangered by others” (ivi). As authors such as Philip Pettit and John Maynor have emphasized, the republican polity presupposes that political institutions and individual virtues are successfully integrated. The attainment of political goods such as non-domination is clearly and explicitly dependent upon the joined operation of institutions and virtues. 5. The idea of an explicit normative standard or value shared by the participants to the practice and agreed as a criteria for assessing the quality of individual’s contribution to the practice. Republicans translate this idea in terms of a normative standard of citizenship, or of distinctive civic values related to a duty to comply. This idea is embedded in the image of the common good to which each citizen is committed. 6 . The idea of practice as defining the social space within which virtues are exercised. “In the civic-republican conception of citizenship, the emphasis on practice gives rise to a language of ‘duties’, whose discharge is necessary to establish individuals as citizens among other citizens. It is thus a communally based conception of citizenship: individuals are only citizens as members of a community. They need ‘empowering’ in order to be able to act as citizens, and they can retain their autonomy, but only if it is exercised not just with respect given to others’ autonomy but also in accordance with a practice which is socially defined, and which they have a duty to engage in. The social bonds between citizens are not, thus, contractual, but are based upon sharing and determining a way of life. It is shared commitment to the practice which makes individuals citizens, and in the process creates and maintains the social solidarity and cohesion of the community upon which the practice rests” (Oldfield, 1990, 178). By acting, by public service of fairly specific kinds, individuals demonstrate that they are good citizens. This public service relates to what is necessary for citizens to do in order to define, establish, and sustain a political

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community of fellow-citizens. Military service, rearing of young, and deliberation are typical activities that are constitutive of citizenship because these activities are constitutive of the life of the community itself. 7 . The idea of an internal relation of virtue to good. Part of what it means to engage in a practice is to excel in achieving (or contribute to achieving) the goods which define the practice itself. To be a virtuous or civic citizen means to take a certain pleasure in doing the kind of thing that is expected of a citizen, that is, pay the taxes, monitor state activities, restrain from exercising domination etc. It also means to believe that engaging in these activities is not a mean for an external good, but it a part of the good itself. While MacIntyre’s definition certainly best suits neo-Athenian or ‘intrinsic’ republicans, it also applies to neo-Roman or ‘instrumentalists’, as they too consider the cultivation and exercise of some specific civic virtues a necessary condition for achieving highly desirable political goods. Even a liberal republican such as Richard Dagger believes that we “must find some way to restore a sense of common purpose to civic life” (Dagger, 1997, 4), and that this requires “to find a way of strengthening the appeal of duty, community, and related concepts”. Indeed, even for liberal republicans such as Dagger, the very idea of virtue makes sense only in connection with that of end, good, or telos. As he explains: “[s]omeone exhibits civic virtue when he or she does what a citizen is supposed to do. In this respect civic virtue is like the other virtues, which typically relate to the performance of some role or the exercise of a certain skill” (Dagger, 1997, 13). A virtuous person is someone who performs well with respect to a given end. In the case of ‘civic’ virtue, this given end is the common good. Indeed: “[c]ivic virtue is the disposition to act for the good of the community as a whole” (Dagger, 1997, 128). The second most important feature in the republican appraisal of virtue after the means-end relation, is the sharp separation between the public and the private sphere, which republicans express in the idea that civic virtue is the capacity to renounce personal attachments, interests, desires to serve the common good. The republican discourse on virtue requires the acceptance of a sharp separation between the private and the public.

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At its core lies the question whether to reach common goods human egoistic impulses should be expelled from the public domain, or whether institutional solutions can be found to extract public benefits from them. Shelley Burtt has nicely captured this internal tension by distinguishing three main types of virtue-based republican psychology, which are worth mentioning. They are: (1) the education of desire; (2) the accommodation of interests, and (3) the compulsion of duty (Burtt, 1990). Emphasis on desire implies a focus upon passions and appetites in the cultivation of civic virtues. According to this view, it is not by sacrificing personal interest or private advantage that the common good is achieved, but by attaching personal rewards to actions conducive to the common good. The second psychological model emphasizes the rational accommodation of interests and assumes that at the basis of individual behavior there is a rational calculation of personal advantage. The idea is that this selfish orientation can be conducive to the common good when it is structured by the norms and institutions of the commonwealth. More than civic virtues, it is then the virtuous republic which is crucial. This approach closes the gap between republicanism and liberalism as it puts the weakest premium on individual character. The third model, the compulsion of duty, rejects both previous psychologies and introduces the idea of a rational motive that is independent of any kind of individual drive. According to this quasi-Kantian view, passions, appetites and any form of self-interest are all obstacles to achieving the common good, and need to be curbed and replaced by reason. The normative requirements of this psychology are the most demanding, as they imply that: “[o]nly individuals disciplined by a sense of moral or religious duty can be relied upon to resist the temptation to turn public service to the service of their own ambitions”. As a consequence, “civic virtue can be and must be grounded in the sacrifice of private interest to the public good” (Burtt, 1990, 35). Whereas models of the education of desire and the compulsion of duty all place a heavy burden on citizens’ responsibility to achieve the common good, and in so doing legitimate interference of public institutions in moulding citizens’ attitudes, the model of the composition of interests relies rather upon the capacity of institutions to mediate among competing private interests. In its most radical form, this instrumentalist view can renounce any appeal to virtues, and precisely for this reason it has

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been charged with throwing the baby out with the bath water, as it were, since no specific republican trait remains. The republican contention that corruption is the greatest political evil is a natural consequence of the republican emphasis on civic virtue, the one being the reverse of the other. Indeed, corruption as well as virtue are defined in terms of telos. Corruption is the process whereby an individual comes to prioritize his or her own interests over the common good, whereas virtue denotes that trait of character which assists the individual to renounce his or her own private interest for the sake of the common good, for love of country. A third aspect to be noted is that republicans tend to offer a restrictive view of virtue as civic virtue, that is to say, that set of virtues that are most directly related or conducive to goods that have to do with communal life, to common goods. According to this perspective, there has hardly been any systematic effort to draw up a list of civic virtues. As we have seen, either civic virtue is considered in the singular as the proper kind of political virtue republicans promote, and in that sense it corresponds to the willingness to subordinate private to public interests, or it has been identified, in the wake of Pettit, with the virtue of non-domination, to which I will return. As Dagger states it, “[s]omeone exhibits civic virtue when he or she does what a citizen is supposed to do” (Dagger, 1997, 13). Civic virtues are defined with reference to the opposition between the personal or individual and the common good: “Virtues are valuable because they promote the good of the community or society, not because they directly promote the good of the individual” (Dagger, 1997, 14). Civic obligation comprises the duties expected of a citizen within a particular political community. No clear definition of the precise tasks required by civic obligation exists, and indeed these are likely to differ according to the particular political community, but they can usually be understood to refer to certain civic, social, and economic activities. Civic virtue then is the “disposition to further public over private good in action and deliberation” (Dagger, 1997, 14), and it is in this context that we should understand the republican reference to corruption as the opposite of virtue, because corruption is the condition whereby an ­individual prioritizes their own good over the common good. Hence the idea of self-renunciation for the sake of a common good that is higher because related to the life of the community is clearly inscribed in the

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republican tradition. A democratic republic, therefore, can thrive only if the citizenry develops the appropriate civic competences and if leaders are willing and competent to serve the public interest. Iseult Honohan is among the very rare republican thinkers to attempt to draw up a coherent list of republican virtues, among which she mentions (1) awareness, (2) self-restraint, (3) deliberative engagement, and (4) solidarity (Honohan, 2003). It is worth pausing to examine them before passing on to the discussion of pragmatist habits. Awareness refers to the fact of being sensitive to mutual interdependencies and common concerns in a world shared with others. Honohan describes it in terms of what we owe each other as citizens, and not as individuals who belong to a social unit defined in non-political terms, such as gender, race, religion, or other. Self-restraint refers to virtuous citizens as refraining from pursuing their own self-interested goals in wealth, power, and status. It is the classical idea of putting the common good before the private. It implies the acceptance of individual costs to promote the common good in terms of money, time, status, and other individual achievements. “This is implied in taking responsibility as a citizen for what happens in the common world rather than focusing on personal integrity alone” (Honohan, 2003, 161). Deliberative engagements refer to the deliberative attitude consisting in adopting the standpoint of others. Politics is a process whereby the common interest is first defined and then pursued. Thus willingness to deliberate is a central virtue of civic republicanism. Solidarity refers to a direct concern for our fellow citizens which is not captured by the liberal command of abiding by laws. With the exception of the most radical strand of instrumentalist, republicans believe that good politics requires practices of self-restraint as means to pursue the common good, and this fact explains why civic virtues are so important. Virtues are then a proxy for ‘duties’. Yet this view puts republicans in an uncomfortable theoretical position, as their political project depends upon a foundational conception of politics which, in the anti-foundational temper of our culture, lacks the normative resources upon which the ancient republican ideas were founded. On the one hand, they need virtues to complete their normative account of social life. On the other hand, they are aware that the liberal temper of our societies is decidedly impatient with the idea of the good citizen

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as well as with its related injunctions of political participation and commitment.

2.1

The Thin Character of Extrinsic Republicanism

It is having these difficulties in mind that so-called neo-Roman republicans have tried to refashion republicanism in more liberal friendly ways. Instrumental republicans retreat to a thinner, and apparently less controversial, conception of virtue. In so doing, they hope to have the cake— keep in touch with the venerable tradition of republicanism and its original political language—and eat it too—escaping the troubles into which this tradition runs. To achieve their goal, neo-Roman republicans have shifted their attention to two apparently less controversial sets of virtues—those related to deliberation and those related to non-domination. Neo-Romans generally place a premium on the epistemic virtues of good deliberators on the ground that these virtues are directly related to participation, conceived as an essential ingredient of citizenship. Hence good citizens are re-described as good deliberators. In this view, traditional virtues of love of country, self-renunciation, passionate patriotism, public-spiritedness are replaced by virtues which emphasize critical distance and objectivity, and in that sense instrumental republicans promote a detached rather than a passionately involved model of republican citizenship. It is, however, unclear how purely instrumental deliberative competences can overcome the structural tension between private and common goods, which is the self-confessed goal pursued by republicans. Burtt has, for example, suggested that focusing upon deliberative procedures as they take place at a more local and de-centered level, which are in turn more directly focused upon citizens’ real interests, can be conducive to the republican good. Indeed, a central notion of this strand of republicanism concerns precisely an institution’s capacity to track citizens’ interests, and in so doing arouse in them a sense of obligation toward the polity. What remains unclear, however, is how a concern for the public good may be generated out of individual private interests. The problem is, however, that de-centring the level of analysis merely begs the question rather than solving it. Stating things otherwise, deliberative competence does not belong to the grammar of virtue. There is nothing

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in that notion that is capable of motivating an individual’s concern for the common good. As a consequence, the central republican question how to restore a sense of common purpose to civic life remains unanswered. Deliberative competences do not enable republicans to have their cake and it. Let us now turn to an apparently more promising attempt. Pettit has proposed an alternative strategy which strives to reconcile a distinctive republican take on politics with the preservation of some central tenets of a liberal culture. He has done so by reframing the central concept of the liberal tradition—that of freedom—in terms which are distinctively republican, as reference to the idea of non-domination makes clear. This approach maintains an important role for virtue in politics, defined this time even more restrictively by its relation to the common good, now identified as non-domination. Pettit’s account of civic virtues or, as he prefers to call it, civility, derives from his selective orientation to non-­ domination as the overarching goal of the republic. To be effective, institutions require that they: “win a place in the habits of people’s hearts” (Pettit, 1997, 241). To achieve this goal, institutions should be supplemented by social norms: “the laws must be embedded in a network of norms that reign effectively, independently of state coercion, in the realm of civil society” (Pettit, 1997, 241). Pettit articulates this concern for virtues in terms of civility, by which he does not refer to a list of virtues but rather to a general attitude of positive orientation toward the common good, articulated in terms of non-­ domination. Civilities are needed for several reasons. First: “people enjoy a higher degree of non-domination under a regime where there are norms to support republican laws” (Pettit, 1997, 246). Social norms tend to have a strong influence on an individual’s compliance with law. Second, republican civility enables individuals or groups to identify interests that are not tracked hence not protected by law. Activists display republican civility when they raise questions of justice or respect and struggle to change laws. Third, civility helps in the “effective implementation of legal and related sanctioning”. Enforcement of law and sanctioning presuppose not only that people approve compliance with law, but also react against non-compliance, for example, identifying and reporting o­ ffenders. Police alone can do little if society does not assist. Ordinary people must be active in sanctioning infractions and calling in the legal authorities.

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This is the basic republican idea that “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance” (Pettit, 1997, 250). Pettit’s emphasis on vigilance is consonant with the classical tenets of the republican tradition, as vigilance is the antidote against corruption. Pettit speaks in this sense of a “virtuous vigilance” when he refers to citizen practices of whistleblowing. Being a good citizen requires possession of three clusters of virtues all directly or indirectly related to the achievement of non-domination both in interpersonal relations between citizens and in political relations. The first cluster includes deliberative virtues, that is, those virtues that are required to articulate one’s own and others’ interests with the aim of tracking them. Consonant with Pettit’s proposal, Maynor has identified the following (open) list of deliberative virtues: “listening to the other side; respecting the ‘other’; solving matters in a conversational manner; and being able to accept decisions that one is opposed to with the understanding that they do not constitute arbitrary interference” (Maynor, 2003, 171). The second set includes the virtues of duty. These express the central republican intuition according to which citizens should do their best not only to comply with laws but also to make others comply. The third set of virtues includes virtues of contestation, that is, citizens should engage actively in practices of vigilance and contestation of state power in order to monitor State’s tendency to adopt dominant positions.3 Pettit makes explicit that the reference to social norms cannot be explained in purely instrumental terms, as it implies a process of identification with a community, the idea of social norms being inseparable from the existence of the social group which acknowledges such norms. Hence to adopt a norm is to endorse the standpoint of the social group that supports it. Civility is the process whereby an individual identifies himself with a larger group and subordinates his/her own selfish interests to those of the group. Here Pettit draws consistently upon the classical republican idea according to which, without the idea of a common good, there is no good politics, that is, the republican state needs republican social norms, and compliance with social norms requires in turn recognition that that ‘the good’ is the good of the social group whose members share these norms. ‘Norms’ refers to a plurality of social identities (woman, citizen,  See Maynor (2003, 42) and Pettit (1997, 207).

3

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human being…) and the capacity to take on these plural identities is part of what it means to be a citizen of a republican state. Civic virtue or civility is the virtue which refers to that specific social role which is citizenship. Hence civility is the consequence of “the irrepressibly social nature of our species” (Pettit, 1997, 260), and civic virtuous behavior is not the result of self-obligation but rather of identification with a particular social group, the political community. For Pettit, this identification requires the awareness that the state provides us with the most important good— non-domination. Trust and vigilance are then introduced as a necessary integration of civility. Without trust, individuals remain confined to the restricted circles of family and friends, whereas for a republican polity to thrive, there should be shared trust—of other citizens as well as public officers. In addition, republicanism requires that trust be combined with vigilance, so that to be vigilant toward public officials does not mean mistrusting them but: “maintain[ing] a demanding pattern of expectations in their regard: to insist that they should abide by certain procedures, for example, that they should accept challenges to their actions in parliament or in the press, that they should allow access to information on relevant aspects of their personal lives, and so on” (Pettit, 1997, 264). While convincing for several reasons, Pettit’s account of civility does not offer an updated discourse on civic virtues, and his preference for the less evocative and less contested term of civility is telling. The uncoupling of virtues from goods he accomplishes is such that civilities resemble competences or skills more than virtues, that is abilities that can be put in the service of this or that external end, hence of either good or bad ones. The republican rehabilitation of virtue is, therefore, caught in an insuperable dilemma. Either republicans remain faithful to the original program of a virtue-based conception of politics, then expose themselves to well-­ known liberal critiques. Or they opt for a thinner conception of virtue-­ as-­competence, but then lose the theoretical grammar of virtue, so that their account falls back on a rather standard rule-based conception of political action in which human character plays only a limited role. In conclusion, we can say that, whereas neo-Athenian republicans succeed in connecting individuals and society but do it in the wrong way, ­neo-­Roman republicans fail to explain the connection between character and politics, precisely for the same reasons liberals fail. A habit-based

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theory of politics aims precisely to solve this contradiction by replacing the philosophical grammar of virtue with that of habits.

3

The Concept of Habit

I have indicated above that pragmatists take their starting point in political theory at a place that is at the same time close and distant to that of republicans. This theoretical starting point is epitomized by the notion of habit. Whereas the concept of virtue has a direct political bearing, habits are a much broader concept, which covers the entire domain of human action. As I have shown in Chap. 4, the notion of habit is the building block of the pragmatist theory of action, and it is central to the pragmatist account of how individual actions contribute to the democratic quality of a polity.4 As such, the notion of habit plays a central function in the general philosophical outlook of all the main figures of the pragmatist tradition. Charles S. Peirce relies upon this notion to define the central categories of epistemology, such as meaning (the meaning of a concept is the habit it entails), belief (the essence of belief is the establishment of a habit), reasoning (reasoning is the self-controlled practice of adopting a habit), and symbol (the interpretant of a symbol is a habit). Habits are for Peirce generalities, and a habit is “a tendency to repeat any action which has been performed before” (Peirce, 1998, 223). But it is well known that the notion of habit plays a decisive role also in William James’ psychology. As James’ often quoted sentence says: “Habit is the enormous fly-­ wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein…” (James, 1950, 121). Similarly, Dewey saw in habits the cornerstone of social psychology, as the dialectic between habits, instincts, and intelligence defines the basic human way of func The most comprehensive study of the notion of habit in the pragmatist tradition is Kilpinen (2000). In this valuable book, the reader will find plenty of information concerning the theoretical function this notion has played in the thought of the main figures belonging to this tradition, with an emphasis on theories of action. 4

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tioning. Indeed “[h]abit is the mainspring of human action, and habits are formed for the most part under the influence of the customs of a group. The organic structure of man entails the formation of habit, for, whether we wish it or not, whether we are aware of it or not, every act effects a modification of attitude and set which directs future behavior” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.334–335). Habits have priority over intentional states in shaping human conduct, and intentional activities are seen as being only secondary to habits. This fact not only means that the network of intentional states can function only on the basis of, and be applied in the context of, a background of dispositions, but also that intentional states are dependent upon processes of habituation and have to be logically explained in terms of these. The general idea is that social behavior is essentially shaped by the interaction of individual habits with the contingent and ever-changing demands of contextual situations, with reflexivity intervening only as a second order steering mechanism. So conceived, habits exercise an important explanatory role almost in any field of social theory, politics included. Yet the concept of habit has played so far only a marginal role in political philosophy. One may certainly ascribe this fact to the limited appeal such a notion may have compared to that of virtue (Hartmann, 2003). As we have seen, the notion of virtue, in particular that of civic virtue, makes a direct call on an individual’s willingness or orientation toward values which are of direct political importance, such as those of the common good, shared values, public ends etc. Moreover, ‘virtues’ refers to the distinctively political dimensions of autonomy, self-government, and emancipation, incarnating the active involvement and taking of responsibility for one’s own decisions and actions. This apparently self-evident superiority of virtue over habit as a basis for politics was clearly stated by Immanuel Kant, whose opinion was that “all acquired habits are objectionable”, and that: “virtue is moral strength in pursuit of one’s duty, a duty which should never be a matter of habit, but should always proceed, fresh and original, from one’s mode of thought” (quot. in Camic 1986, 1048). Seen from such a perspective, the notion of habit remains confined to the unreflective, habitual, routinized repetition of the same. Even within the pragmatist tradition, under the influential authority of William James’ psychology, habit first appeared under the apparently conservative

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image of: “the enormous flywheel of society”. And even Dewey subscribes to James’ authority, when he observes that “the social consequences of habit have been stated once for all by James” (Dewey, 1927, lw2.334). Indeed, considered from the standpoint of the opposition between repetition and autonomy, habits have little to offer democratic theory, precisely because they lack the basic ingredient required by any normative project, that is, the capacity to ascribe responsibility to the bearer, so as to be able to engage in normative evaluations, which is what the notion of virtue precisely aims at. Moreover, partially at least, pragmatists can be seen to subscribe to a variant of what German philosophical anthropology names the “Entlastung” (facilitation), which is to say the idea of habits as being essentially in the service of freeing higher human capacities, an idea clearly endorsed by James and by Dewey. From this perspective, the political relevance of habits becomes secondary and indirect at best. As long as habits are appraised, as is, for example, the case in Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, as structuring patterns which play actors behind their backs, so to speak, treating them as mere cultural or sociological dopes, it is difficult to see how they can be put to use in theoretical projects other than those of a structural, sociological, or genealogical explanation of why things are as they are and people behave as they behave. Normativity, in that perspective, is simply explained away. Yet for the pragmatists habits are far from being blind and conservative structures, they are indeed endowed with a creative potential that makes them essential factors not only for social stability but also for social change. They are “judgments of the body”. Habits as well as emotions incorporate a reflective dimension which is however neither conceptual nor symbolic but rather operational and embodied. As Peirce acknowledged, abductions are not merely the result of conscious forms of reasoning but are most of the time operated unconsciously through perception (Hookway, 1990). Far from being unconscious and repetitive, habits have a rational content precisely insofar as rationality has a habitual dimension, so that habits incorporate perceptive, affective, and reflexive features that are the basis on which social interactions are built. In so doing, they play a fundamental function in giving shape to our ­interactions with the social world. Hence, in order to understand the role habits play in democratic politics, we should resist too hastily adopting a list of

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­ ragmatist habits by way of comparison with a list of republican virtues. p I suggest instead that we focus on how the logical grammar of habits differs from that of virtues. Three main differences between republican and pragmatists need to be emphasized. The first and more obvious is that pragmatists explain the political relevance of character in terms of habit rather than virtue. The second is that pragmatists have articulated a general theory of habit which renders republican efforts at articulating a concept of virtue pale. The third is that habits which are relevant to politics are not specifically political—or civic—so that pragmatists tend to consider habits in their broad context rather than focusing upon a limited sub-set of specifically political habits. Whereas republicans tend to reduce virtue to selected virtues directly oriented—and supposedly conducive—to the common good, pragmatists focus on those ordinary habits which are the backbone of social interaction, to concentrate only at a later stage on the political consequences of these same ordinary habits. This is, of course, the consequence of having taken as a theoretical starting point a paradigmatic wide view of democracy. Therefore, whereas for republicans civic virtues are mainly resources to be used in moments of direct political involvement, as the model of contestation shows, pragmatists emphasize the tacit and ordinary structure of the democratic way of life. We see emerging here, to a certain extent, the difference between a conception of politics as specialized practice, and of politics as an ongoing form of social interaction, a point captured by the articulation between the idea of a social ontology of democracy and a public-based conception of politics. So what is a habit? Habits are tendencies to reproduce the same type of behavior when the same circumstances occur. According to Dewey “the essence of habit is an acquired predisposition to ways or modes of response, not to particular acts” (Dewey, 1922, mw14.32). In other words, a habit is a disposition to face similar circumstances with similar patterns of response, it is not the blind repetition of the same behavioral sequence. Habits define the basic structure of behavior by specifying the patterns of interaction between an agent and his/her environment. On the one hand, they “incorporate” the outer environment through ­processes of socialization. On the other hand, they shape it by producing regular and expectable patterns of action. Social action is, therefore,

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essentially shaped by habit. This fact explains why habits must matter to democratic theory, because if the political quality of a community depends to a significant extent upon the kind of habits shared by its members, then the question which habits promote and which hamper democracy becomes relevant. Habitual tendencies or dispositions are neither rigid nor blind, and the feedback produced by their exercise leads to their modification. Peirce has insisted that habits embody generalities and to that extent have a meaning which largely exceeds mere repetition. That each habit is a general means in fact that it incorporates an idea which it translates into action. Or, as Dewey writes: “thought which does not exist within ordinary habits of action lacks means of execution” (Dewey, 1922, mw14.49). This is valid also for democracy considered as a general concept and as a system of values. Its existence is evanescent if detached from concrete ways of behaving and from the habits that sustain it. Has we have seen, this theme is also at the heart of Mary Parker Follett’s analyses of democratic and undemocratic forms of social interaction, and is again taken on by Dewey when he considers that explanations of mass behavior based on folk-psychology5 apply only to social groups in which individuals have been socialized to undemocratic habits of action. Again, we owe Peirce the central idea of the human being as a creature of habit, one, however, also possessing a very peculiar habit, which is “the habit of taking habits”. The added value of introducing a habit-based theory of behavior in political theory depends also from the fact that from an action-theoretic standpoint the concept of habit offers a larger explanatory basis of human behavior than the kind of purposive theory of action which is generally presupposed by virtue-based theories of action. And indeed republican conceptions of politics usually conceptualize virtue as a conscious, intentional, rationally chosen basis for action. A politics of virtue, like a politics of will, desires, and interests, will therefore tend to focus nearly exclusively upon the conscious dimension of individual life, hence ­blinding itself to the powerful political effects of those aspects of indi-

 Here meant in the sense of the French ‘psychologie des foules’ popularized by authors such as Gustave Le Bon at the turn of the century. 5

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vidual life that are not within direct control but which nevertheless dominate our lives. Before considering the direct political relevance of a different classes of habits, it is useful to recall some general ways in which habit influences political life. The first is its role in the genesis of normative orders, a function that has been emphasized notably by Durkheim, but is also at the heart of Dewey’s theory of action. Both of these thinkers have emphasized that normative orders tend to emerge immanently from social practices. First, given that habits of action become widespread, these forms of behavioral regularity acquire normative power and become shared social norms. The second is the role of habit in shaping conduct. Another widely shared assumption that Informs the notion of habit is that human nature is plastic hence in large part shaped by practice and experience. This idea was shared by pragmatists such as Peirce, James, and Dewey, as well as by Cooley. Dewey, in particular, developed a theory of self-­ transformation based on the assumption that human beings succeed in changing their own and others’ attitudes not by rational self-command, but rather through the necessary mediation of activity, because only concrete practice is capable of producing the steering regularity of habit. Hence habit is a necessary feature of a given normative order, which rely upon the textured operation of habit and not only upon the reflective activity of more or less rational agents. To this extent, we can compare and contrast the republican focus upon civic virtue with the pragmatist concern for those unconscious habits which shape our ordinary behavior whether for the worse or for the better. Several studies have shown to a great length to what extent the democratic quality of a way of life is either fostered or hampered by habits that most of the time are tacitly endorsed and acquired, and which are not directly related to our civic attitudes or orientations toward something like the common good, nor with citizens’ attitudes toward political institutions.6 We know today beyond reasonable doubt that forms of privilege and discrimination such as that associated with gender, race, religion,  For compelling analyses focusing on habits of racial discrimination, see Sullivan (2006), MacMullan (2009), Alexander (2012). Along similar lines, and still in a pragmatist-wise perspective, José Medina (Medina, 2012) proposes an insightful analysis of the habitual, tacit texture of social injustice. 6

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social status operate as unseen, invisible, even seemingly nonexistent determinants of action. Given their hidden mode of operation, something more indirect than and much different from conscious argumentation is required. Emphasizing the democratic relevance of habits goes therefore well beyond a mere moral exhortation to mobilize public and private energies to build a democratic character. Several studies as shown for example that when moral norms such as those that stigmatize racial discrimination coexist with contrary habits, high levels of discrimination may coexist with the overt denial. Recognition of the habitual dimension of action bears tremendous consequences not only at for our understanding of how everyday undemocratic interactions undermine the democratic aspirations of a society as injustices continue to be perpetrated without often even being acknowledged. In a more dramatic way, also institutions may become blind to them and consolidate tacit discriminatory procedures, especially when only overt or intentional discrimination is admitted. The example of racial discrimination is telling. As Michelle Alexander impressively documents (Alexander, 2012), denial of implicit racial bias, i.e. refusal by courts to admit that judiciary decisions may be determined by racial habits, is the greatest cause of racial discrimination and denial of justice in the U.S. legal system. Because only intentional discrimination is considered relevant, actions based on racial habits that do not explicitly admit racial grounds are extremely more difficult to sue. Under these circumstances, acknowledging the political relevance of habits would amount not only at concrete attempts at improving social relations throughout society, but also to achieve a far greater level of legal justice as is the case today. A politics of virtue, like a politics of will, desires, and interests, will focus nearly exclusively upon the conscious dimension of individual life, hence blinding itself to the powerful political effects of those aspects that are not within direct control but which nevertheless dominate our lives. What is required, rather, is a critique and a social practice that directly target tacit undemocratic habits. Pragmatists such as Peirce, James, and Dewey have all emphasized the rational nature of habit conceived as embodied generality, by which they mean that a habit incorporates and translates into action a general idea or value. Criticisms of whiteness as habit, for example, have shown that many individuals combine the

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abstract endorsement of anti-racist ideas with deeply engrained racial habits, so that undemocratic values continue to persist under the guise of tacit and non-problematized habits. A habit-based political theory, on the other hand, shows that eradicating forms of social injustice such as racism will inevitably fail if the main lever upon which it relies is the moral injunction to become decent citizens. What is required, rather, is a critique and a social practice that will target tacit habits. The political consequences which stem from a habit-based approach to democracy are, therefore, momentous: “due also to the constitutive role that the world plays in the formation of habit, the particular type of indirect assault needed is one that transforms the social, political, institutional, economic, aesthetic, physical, psychological, and other conditions for the composition of white privileged habits” (Sullivan, 2006, 2). A pragmatist view of democracy begins, therefore, from the assumption that habits are socially construed through social practices, so that overcoming injustice and discrimination requires a structural modification of the social practices which are responsible for the formation of undemocratic habits. The perspective assumed here is not that of a sociological critique of habitus, but rather that of a political engagement with the practice of habit-changing. The focus upon habit has another advantage. Because habits embed social as well as individual elements: “thinking of white privilege as habit helps demonstrate how white domination is located, so to speak, in both the individual person and the world in which she lives” (Sullivan, 2006, 4). Such a view “can explain both how people become personally invested in racist institutions and structures and how they might try to combat this ‘internal’ investment by changing their relationship to the ‘external’ world” (Sullivan, 2006, 4), because it acknowledges that white privilege as well as other forms of informal domination do not merely depend upon external socio-economic structures but also upon the way they are built into our habitual structures. Hence the idea that we cannot succeed in changing oppressive habits by means of a mere moral critique of individual actions. Prior to this, we need to change the political, social, physical, economic, psychological, aesthetic, environments that ‘feed’ their habits and reinforce them. As a consequence, a transformative democratic practice needs to be based on the understanding of how habits grow, how individuals come to fixate

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discriminating habits, and how these habits perpetuate themselves without individuals being able to transform them, and often even become aware of them.

4

Democratic Habits

The pragmatist argument in support of a habit-based theory of democracy proceeds at three different levels. First, a general theory of social action that explains the place of habit in social life is developed. Second, an account that highlights the different levels at which habit is politically relevant is proposed. Third, a typology of habits that are particularly relevant for the functioning of a democratic society can be derived bottom up. While the first two levels have been discussed in the previous section, this section briefly recapitulates the main themes of the pragmatist theory of habit already discussed in Chap. 4, where habits have been distinguished according to the behavioral dimensions they highlight, that is, (a) cooperative, (b) epistemic, and (c) reflective. The first group includes habits which promote and sustain cooperative relations and nonviolent conflict resolution. Habits of cooperation are those which take our mutual dependence into account, rather than stressing independence and isolation. Cooperative habits involve an inclination toward social action and privileging the common good, but also require a cognitive openness and a capacity to sustain and manage uncertainty, because integrative solutions are usually not easily found and require that all participants engage in collective processes of inquiry. They include, equally, the capacity to tolerate dissent and opposition. The second dimension of democratic habits emphasized by pragmatists is epistemic. The willingness and capacity of individuals to assert their beliefs according to the experimental method rather than by relying upon other non-rational methods of belief is a central element of the democratic ethos. Epistemic habits refer to how we engage in discussion with others and to check facts, test our convictions, or listen to others. Pragmatists insist that, to be a deliberative citizen, it is not enough to be proficient in logic and argumentation. Moreover, they should have an open and fallibilist attitude.

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The habit of taking habits denotes the third type of habit required by democratic life, which are necessary to develop an appropriate degree of sensitivity to the type of radical contingency and change which characterizes the social environment, particularly in modern societies. Habits are not only static properties defining agents, are also features which we adopt and change. Peirce and other pragmatists have rightly emphasized the priority of habit-taking and habit-changing over habit-having, showing that habituation and socialization reveal only a small part of the function of habits, that which can be accounted for in the Bourdieusian terms of habitus. For the pragmatists, the very fact of taking-habits and changing-­habits defines the sphere of human action in a way that integrates the stabilizing function of habituation with the creative dimension of the instinctual and the reflexive dimension of critical thinking. In conclusion, what this comparison shows is that when we look at the list of virtues/habits that republicans and pragmatists associate with good politics, there are several resemblances. For example, pragmatists and republicans both emphasize epistemic virtues related to deliberation. However, when we look at the theoretical framework which defines their respective understanding of the place of character in politics, significant differences appear, depending upon the different philosophical grammars conveyed by the concepts of virtue and habit. Particularly relevant is the fact that, whereas habits encompass the totality of associated human life, republican virtues are essentially limited to the political domain. For this reason, republicanism runs into trouble when it seeks to explain the social roots of politics, something that it can do only by resorting to moral arguments, as can be seen from its struggle to rehabilitate the moral notions of corruption, duty and common good. This difference has important political implications insofar as republicans have to stress the social role of citizenship, in contrast to other social roles, as the decisive factor in shaping individual identity. As pragmatists, republicans generally accept the basic traits of a social ontology and consider that individual identity (character) is fundamentally shaped through social experience. Yet they tend to restrict the political relevance of socialization to experiences that are directly related to politics, that is to say, those which ­essentially concern the relationship of the individual with formal political institutions. While we can easily understand why, historically, this has

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been the case in the political experience of Athens and Rome, it is much more difficult to accept it as a viable understanding of politics today. From this perspective, we can argue that pragmatism is better placed to explain how political identity and experience emerges out of our broader experience of social life. This is so precisely because pragmatism distinguishes, and yet clearly articulates, the social and the political dimensions of democracy. According to this perspective, the social and political function of shaping individual character is distributed across a broad array of social spheres and practices, so that political experience is not overloaded with functions and meanings that it can no longer sustain, at least if we are to accept the basic features of modern societies, notably the rise of individualism, the undeniable priority of rights over duties, and the irreversible achievement of a sort of liberal right to be left alone.

7 Democratic Patterns of Social Interaction

Since the first empirical monographs produced by representatives of the Chicago School of sociology,1 a lot of work has been done to provide empirical evidence concerning the social foundations of democracy, and we are now in a better position than the early day pragmatists to understand the sociological constitution of what I have called ‘democratic patterns of social interaction’. In this chapter I integrate three different social-theoretic perspectives to lay bare the social basis of democratic life.2 I will begin by discussing several sociological traditions that I label ‘social interactionist’ which have explored in great depth the associational intuition that was at the heart of the pragmatist account of democracy. In particular, the works of Harold Garfinkel and Ervin Goffman theorize the normative structure of the  For a short introduction to the Chicago School of Sociology, see Bulmer (1986). For an informed examination of the connections between Chicago sociology and pragmatist philosophy, see Joas (1992), Schubert (2006, 2011). Shalin (1986) discusses the commonalities between philosophical pragmatism and social interactionist approaches in sociology. 2  Unsurprisingly, the three strands of research I will discuss in this chapter have at least an indirect connection with pragmatism, and their representatives were by all accounts acquainted with the pragmatist tradition. Each in its own distinctive way, these three traditions deepen our understanding of democracy as a social as well as a political project fully consistent with the pragmatist wide view of democracy. 1

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ordinary in ways that help to clarify in what sense the predicate ‘democratic’ can be applied not only to formal political institutions but also to basic facts of social life. Although Garfinkel and Goffman were only indirectly interested in the political implications of their approach to social reality, their accounts of how social reality emerges out of patterns of social interaction have powerful implications for our understanding of the political relevance of these patterns. In the second section, I discuss some recent works in sociology which have focused more directly upon the civic and democratic features of patterns of social interaction. Drawing on social interactionist works, they have explored in greater detail how these democratic patterns of social interaction function in concrete situations. Indeed, explorations of the forms of civic engagement (Pharo, 1985), studies of how people interact in ordinary relations and in public spaces (Eliasoph, 1998; Gayet-Viaud, 2015; Bidet et al., 2015), explorations of intermediary publics (Cottereau, 1992), and analysis of the structure of public experience (Quéré and Terzi, 2014) empirically confirm that, even in its politically less relevant dimensions, what renders a society democratic are the patterns of interaction that give democratic associated living its unique form. In the third and last section, I examine the idea—defended by authors such as Talcott Parsons, Jürgen Habermas, and Mark Warren—that association defines the distinctively democratic principle of social integration. According to this view, the spread of democratic patterns of social interaction is the distinctive mark of a democratic form of society, and democratization can be defined in terms of extension of the associational principle to the detriment of other concurring principles of social integration. While this approach is rooted in a form of sociological functionalism that is theoretically at odds with the interactional model presented in Sects. 1 and 2,3 these approaches converge in assigning to social interactions a central function in the constitution of a democratic society. Taken together, they provide a solid foundation for a social theory of democracy.  It should be noted, however, that Parsons as well as Habermas have at least partially attempted to come to terms and integrate in their functional perspective elements taken from the social interactionist account of Garfinkel and Goffmann. On Parsons and ethnomethodology, see Heritage (1984). Habermas’ most explicit use of social interactionism is to be found in Habermas (1984). A more synthetic statement can be found in McCarthy (1996). 3

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241

The Normative Structure of the Ordinary

In the second half of the twentieth century, an entire array of sociological approaches, at the forefront of which stand symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and the work of Goffman, focused upon a hitherto neglected dimension of social reality, that of everyday forms of social interaction.4 Some of these works go to considerable lengths to explore the ordinary texture of social life, claiming that social interactions compose its basic structure, the location where the social bond is engendered and maintained, and where social order and cooperation are realized. If one takes this sociological view seriously, one is compelled to assume, at least hypothetically, that this dimension of social life has a decisive connection with what philosophers term ‘normativity’. If, indeed, normativity has to do with how human beings orient their lives and regulate their reciprocal interactions, and if the basis of social life resides in this neglected—in Harold Garfinkel’s words “seen but unnoticed”—order of interaction then it seems plausible to inquire into the normative implications of a view of society that claims to prioritize the constitutive or “interaction order” over an “aggregative order” governed by the better known play of norms, values, and institutions.5 In this rich and complex sociological panorama, the works of Goffman and Garfinkel stand out as the most compelling and it is to them that I now turn. Ethnomethodology has probably provided one, if not the most, interesting and empirically compelling series of arguments in support of a distributed and all-encompassing conception of normativity. The novelty of the ethnomethodological revolution consists in having shown, in surprising discontinuities with previous sociological traditions, that the successful continuation of social life is not granted merely by the existence of shared values, norms, institutions, or attitudes, nor by the mere operation of social steering systems, but relies upon the incessant renewal of social  This section presents, in a more concise form, arguments developed at greater length in Frega (2015c). 5  For a sociological account of this distinction, see Rawls (2009), Korbut (2014). I explore in greater details the implications of this approach for a social ontology of democracy in Frega (2019a, 2019b). 4

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order achieved through the active and passive normative engagement of social members within the everyday interactions which structure our interpersonal intercourse. In so doing, ethnomethodology has challenged the most pervasive conception of social order as based upon collective orientations, of which paradigmatic examples can be found in Durkheim’s idea of collective mentality as a shared set of normative expectations capable of granting social coordination. Contrary to mainstream sociological traditions, ethnomethodologists have shown that the ordered continuation of social life is achieved through the “ongoing accomplishment of the concerted activities of daily life” (Garfinkel, 1967, vii). Social order relies upon constantly renewed and continuously accomplished normative interactions aimed at confirming and adjusting our reciprocal normative expectations. A relevant feature of this approach consists in pointing out that these interactions seldomly take the shape of explicit and discursive acts. The point illustrated by ethnomethodology is that, without this active normative engagement, the social world simply falls apart and no collective undertaking can succeed. Consequently, ethnomethodologists have insisted that normativity cannot be adequately grasped by uncoupling and articulating the justification of norms and their subsequent application,6 but that it relies upon the ongoing micro, often tacit, and constantly produced, doing and undoing of normative acts that confirm, adjust, and repair the fragile net of our normative expectations. Garfinkel’s “breaching experiments” (Garfinkel, 1967, Especially Chs. 1 and 2) have shown beyond reasonable doubt not only that our ordinary life is structured by an implicit range of normative expectations, but that normativity is also constantly produced through active, albeit often tacit, normative actions accomplished by social members, such as those wrought by social actors standing in line waiting for their turn to be served, according to Garfinkel: “a society’s members encounter and know the moral order as perceivedly normal courses of action—familiar scenes of everyday affairs, the world of daily life known in common with others and with others taken for granted” (Garfinkel, 1967, 35). The naturalness of these courses of action is itself achieved through social ­interactions,  A conception still alive in Habermas’s conception of normativity. See notably Habermas (1993).

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something that social members generate by orienting their own and others’ actions in accordance with their normative expectations. These actions, which take the form of turns in either conversational or actionbased exchanges, often remain beneath the threshold of our perceptual attention, constituting what Garfinkel describes as the “seen but unnoticed” background upon which social life plays out. Among these actions are a vast array of normative practices through which actors confirm or disconfirm, correct and amend, reinforce or downplay what is being advanced by their interlocutors. This “seen but unnoticed” background is not made up of stable values, norms, or expectations, but of knowledge concerning the proper way to engage in social interactions, and it consists of a plurality of ways of doing through which the mutual engagement of social members is kept on the track of ‘proper’ interaction. According to Garfinkel, social order must be necessarily worked out in detail at the level of local interaction because normative orders are structurally and unavoidably under-determined.7 Hence the possibility of engaging successfully in a social interaction reposes upon our capacity to interpret the other’s reaction with reference to the assumed regularity of a shared system of “perceived normal values” (Garfinkel, 1967, 94), which enable us to fill the gaps produced by the indexical structure of social life. As Garfinkel constantly reminds us, these “perceived normal values” are not assumed by members once and for all, but are constantly produced and reproduced—Garfinkel calls it “managed”—in the course of the social interaction itself. The performative efficacy of our assumptions depends, then, upon its constant confirmation through the feedback of others. It is not assumed but rather constructed and entertained through the give and take of sequential turns within a social interaction. In other words, the very possibility of social interaction relies upon: “the enforceable character of actions in compliance with the expectancies of everyday life as a morality” (Garfinkel, 1967, 53).

 According to Garfinkel, social situations: “are, in any calculable sense, unknown; in their actual and intended logical structures are essentially vague; and are modified, elaborated, extended, if not indeed created, by the fact and manner of being addressed” (Garfinkel, 1967, 96). It is this structural under-determination which imposes stringent normative expectations upon members’ behavior. 7

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The order of interaction is then characterized by three distinctive features. The first is that social interaction heavily depends upon this duty to comply with expectations. The second feature is that this order is not given or found, but constantly produced through the interaction itself. The third feature is that these expectations find only weak transcendent guarantees outside the social situation itself. Indeed, it is a central thesis of social interactionist approaches that the order of the interaction does not find independent guarantee in some transcendent institution, but relies upon nothing more than ‘what everyone knows’. Taken together, these three features concur to define the distinctive normative quality of the order of interaction, which is to say its structural fragility. Depending upon members’ willingness to comply, being exposed to the inappropriateness of members’ actions and lacking any independent normative source, the order of interaction is constantly exposed to the threat of its failure. This fact may explain why participation imposes on all participants the duty to take care of it, not only by complying with expectations, but also by forcing others to do so. These empirical facts render even the simplest settings of social life, such as standing in a line or exchanging greetings with strangers in the street, literally imbued with normativity. These empirical facts have, therefore, decisive implications for understanding the social basis of democracy, insofar as they prove that social life is completely impregnated with normative facts, that is, expectations that agents engage even in the least important or least politicized interactions respecting shared normative assumptions concerning the appropriate ways of treating other human beings. In this way, the normative reach of the three principles of (a) relational parity, (b) inclusive authority, and (c) social involvement can be translated into normative expectations guiding social interactions at all levels of social life. A second take on the idea of human beings as normative creatures can be found in Goffman’s study of the normative order of social interaction. Goffman’s entire sociology is based upon the assumption that the deepest dynamics of social life—and of normativity with it—can be disclosed to us provided we turn our attention to “the little interactions that are forgotten about as soon as they occur, into what serious students of society never collect, into the slope of social life” (Goffman, 1972, 138). Goffman has written that: “the main principle of the ritual order is not justice but

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face” (Goffman, 1967, 44). By this, I take him to mean that the preservation and constant maintenance of normative orders is the primary normative concern of human interaction, that saving the face of the other so as to bring the present interaction to fulfillment, rather than abstract compliance with norms, is the regulative standard to which our normative interactions are attuned. For Goffman, normative social orders rely upon the constant and successful achievement of everyday micro-­ normative practices through which agents take responsibility not only for their ‘face’ but also for that of other agents by constantly correcting, sanctioning, criticizing, approving others’ behaviours which impinge upon the stability of social interaction. The point of Goffman’s analysis that is relevant for my understanding of the social conditions of democracy is the idea that any normative order is based on normative expectations which take the form of mutual engagements. On the one hand, each agent is engaged in what Goffman calls “defensive strategies”, through which they protect themselves from potentially disruptive social situations. On the other, each agent is equally engaged, through what Goffman calls “protective strategies”, in helping others to save their own face. What Goffman terms “Face work” is not a self-centred and defensive procedure, but a cooperative task. Since their very start, social orders presuppose and rely upon mutual normative interactions because in any social intercourse each agent exposes their face, but depends upon others for purposes of defense. The mutuality of normative engagements seems to stem from this basic fact of social life which acquires, therefore, a primary meaning. As Goffman remarks: “when the person commits a gaffe against himself, it is not he who has the license to forgive the event; only the others have that prerogative” (Goffman, 1967, 33). This determines the fact that social life is built upon “a system of checks and balances” that can operate only on the basis of strict cooperation, as each participant relies and depends upon others to preserve their own face and has in turn responsibility for that of others. Indeed: “it seems to be a characteristic obligation of many social relationships that each of the members guarantees to support a given face for the other members in given situations” (Goffman, 1967, 42). This is, for instance, the social work accomplished by a peculiar normative practice that Goffman calls “cooling the mark out” (Goffman, 1952), a practice by which a social actor who has constructed

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“a conception of himself which cannot be sustained” needs to be “cooled out”, which is to say helped to save his face and escape the socially unsustainable situation in which he has fallen (or has been thrown). Beginning from its roots in the order of interaction, social life can be maintained only as long as each participant accepts the role of a critical controller with regard to the behavior of each agent in the face of tacitly shared normative assumptions: “the individual must not only maintain proper involvement himself but also act so as to ensure that others will maintain theirs” (Goffman, 1967, 116). These attitudes of mutual involvement that Goffman calls ‘face work’ seem, therefore, to provide the most general paradigm of human attitudes toward normative orders.8 Another aspect of the normative structure of the ordinary which emerges from Goffman’s work concerns the centrality of the reparative dimension of normativity. As Goffman remarks, whereas in the case of the macro social order punishment seems to be the overarching goal of normative devices, in the case of the interaction order the concern to restore a smooth interaction overrides that for normative attribution and punishment: “Since the guilt is small and the punishment smaller, there often will be less concern—and admittedly so—to achieve proper attribution than to get traffic moving again” (Goffman, 1972, 108). The ritual work described allows the participants to go on their way, if not with satisfaction that matters are closed, then at least with the right to act as if they feel that matters are closed and that ritual equilibrium has been restored. If any discontent remains within either party, presumably it will have to be expressed or exhibited at some other time. In other words, after the ritual work, the incident can be treated as though it were closed. So the

 While most interpreters tend to emphasize the constraining power of ‘face work’ (e.g. Gamson, 1985), it is important to also note its constitutive role in the production of the social bond, by putting social interaction and mutual interdependence at the very root of social situations. Even if we grant that “his first lesson is that all face-to-face interactions operate to restrain challenge” (Gamson, 1985, 610), we should also consider that face-to-face interactions operate in a way that presupposes and instantiates a deeply reciprocal form of social interaction based upon mutual accountability and shared responsibility for the successful furtherance of social life in the face of its intrinsic and irreducible vulnerability. Constraining power, vulnerability, and mutual interdependence are, therefore, three distinct but inseparable dimensions of the normative constitution of ordinary life, according to Goffman. 8

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“‘round’ that has occurred is also a complete interchange” (Goffman, 1972, 140). Ethnomethodologists, conversational analysts, as well as Goffman (and Goffmanians) have extensively studied how a normative order can emerge and be preserved out of face-to-face ordinary interactions in apparently irrelevant situations such as standing in a line, meeting in an elevator, exchanging words on a shop-floor, and so on (Goffman, 1983). They have shown that these social practices rely upon an intrinsic logic of organization, as members make a commitment to the orderliness of that practice which is independent of other external considerations. One of the overarching and possibly most interesting achievements of this sociological tradition consists in having singled out for empirical description a dimension of social democracy not directly ascribable to the functioning of formal institutions and norms. Under the expressions of constitutive practices (Garfinkel) and the interaction order (Goffman), these authors have shown that the successful furtherance of social order relies upon two distinct normative phenomena. On the one hand, there is the well-known and much studied normative order of explicit norms and institutions, whose main logic can be described in terms of rule-following, norm application, and institutional compliance. At this level, social order can be analysed in terms of an agent’s compliance with a normative order that is publicly and explicitly embodied in norms, values, and institutions. This is the visible and widely acknowledged order of democracy as a system of formal political institutions, rules, and values that is expected to elicit everyone’s commitment. On the other hand, ethnomethodology contends that social interaction is characterized by a specific form of normative order which does not rely upon pre-existing, transcendent norms and institutions that agents are merely expected to apply or comply with, but which is situational. This is democracy understood as the order of interaction. Indeed, it is in the framework of these tacit relations that the social bond takes shape, where a perceived discrimination can burst out into a violent reaction, or where a form of solidarity may arise. In an important sense, it is first and foremost at this level that men experience freedom and equality at its most immediate level. While providing the concrete sociological basis upon which social life exists, its order often remains often under- thematized and tacit. Three conditions emerge as

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defining features of the normative structure of the ordinary: (a) its irreducible and constitutive indexicality; (b) the mutuality of engagements as a basic feature of our normative commitments, and (c) the pervasiveness of reparative kinds of normative practices. Taken together, they account for the specific normative mix of immanence, fragility, and objectivity which characterizes it. Whilst neither Garfinkel nor Goffman have developed a full-blown account of the political implications of the normative structure of the ordinary, their empirical analysis of social life clearly goes beyond standard philosophical accounts, and calls for a different, practice-based, and society-centered account of democracy such as the one developed here. These sociological inquiries into elementary forms of social order are, therefore, particularly relevant to political theory. If, indeed, our normative constitution is, first and foremost, defined by the priority of orders of interaction and mutual accountability, what does this social fact tell us about the nature of democracy? My claim is that, in order to adequately account for the ordinary structure of democracy, we need to provide an account that takes into fuller consideration the structure of ordinary experience. As I show in the next section, the notion of civility, once replaced within a social interactionist framework, provides a first step into this direction.

2

 he Normative Constitution T of the Democratic Order of Interaction

Since at least the seminal work of Norbert Elias, the strong connection between ‘civilities’ and social structures has been emphasized. As Elias showed with regard to ancien régime society, codes of behavior express at a different social level dominant ideas about social orders and social relationships (Elias, 1978). Elias’ historical analyses provide empirical flesh to the view that politics, like any other form of social normativity, is embedded in ordinary forms of interaction, through which the meaning of the social and political bond is constantly confirmed and negotiated. They show also that engaging in these interactions requires an articulate, rich, and complex set of what ethnomethodologists call a “member’s

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competences”. A member’s competences are those tacit and shared patterns of response upon which individuals rely in their daily interactions, that is, appropriate ways of addressing their fellow citizens, shared rules of etiquette and precedence, conventional formulas for managing and solving disagreements, and all that Goffman called ‘face work’. Assigning these forms their political relevance means admitting that they cannot be reduced to mere forms of politeness, as on the contrary they provide the backbone of the order of interaction as described in the previous section. Civilities thus define the appropriate normative basis for the order of interaction that characterizes a given society. Like any other form of society, democracy presupposes and requires its own forms of shared understanding and patterns of interaction, without which it would be reduced to a rigidified formalistic skeleton incapable of shaping the life of a human community. Social intercourse among individuals of different gender, social class, profession, education, age, nationality etc. is structured in radically different manners according to the form of society in which people have been raised and live. Preserving and enhancing a democratic way of life requires active involvement in ordinary life based on specific patterns of interaction which are not to be found in other forms of society, such as authoritarian ones, ancien régime societies, or totalitarian states. As pragmatists argue, these shared and tacit patterns of interaction cannot be achieved by mere institutional reform, as they are not the direct product of the functioning of formal political institutions, nor can they be explained in terms of shared moral values. The civic bond is that which unites the social and the political dimensions of democracy, integrating values and institutions in the coherent texture of a form of life. As a normative type of order, democracy can exist only provided it is embedded in internalized patterns of interaction, whose political function is generally underestimated. Indeed, according to this view, normativity does not reside in external deposits such as institutions and values. Rather, it exists mainly in and through social intercourse, and values and institutions on the one hand, and individual habits on the other, are but material supports upon which societies rely in order to stabilize and maintain appropriate patterns of social interaction. We should, therefore, pay the highest attention to these patterns if we wish to understand what a normative

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order such as democracy of. Consonant with ethnomethodological assumptions, the very idea of a normative order of interaction implies that formal regulations (laws and institutions) can be effective only through the acts whereby they enter social life. On the one hand, formal institutions express the civic and cultural substratum of a polity. On the other hand, they are constantly transformed through their use. Similarly, values and ideals are seen from the perspective of their embeddedness in patterns of social interaction, in concrete forms of acting together in society. The ethos, to this extent, is the life and blood of a form of society only under the condition that it permeates and gives shape to ordinary forms of interaction. Ethnomethodologists have revealed the normative order of a given social body through the study of how social members engage in practices aimed at reaffirming elements of this order when a member’s behavior threatens existing patterns of social interaction. While the ethnomethodological tradition in sociology has convincingly proven that the order of interaction is sociologically distinguished from formally more structured forms of social interaction, this theoretical intuition has not been directly applied by its followers to the domain of politics. A promising strategy for charting the political implications of this conception in a way that is consistent with the project of a wide view of democracy consists in bringing into focus the democratic implications of ‘civilities’, understood as a specific subset of the order of interaction. We need in particular to distinguish the political status of ‘civilities’ from more explicit forms of active political engagement such as militant practice, protest, and other forms of informal and yet intentional political practice. Civilities are particularly interesting as they define an interstitial dimension of social order, one which nests between the individual level of values and preference on the one hand, and the social level of formal and informal political practices on the other. Civil interactions in public places are an essential ingredient of a democratic way of life for several reasons. First, in these contexts too democratic habits are practiced and reinforced. Second, as in a large society, political recognition and inclusion are often accorded or denied in the tacit forms of ordinary exchange among strangers in public places. In that sense, civilities appear as a necessary ingredient of a democratic society, as the democratic quality of a society also depends upon how these impersonal relations are experienced

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on a day to day basis in public places. Indeed, civil interactions among strangers define a situational context in which people make continuous efforts at confirming and reinventing the social bond. Hence ordinary encounters have a double implication for democracy, which can be fully understood only if we free them from conventional apprehensions of the passivity of ordinary interaction as well as from conventional ways of dichotomizing political experience. It is only by rediscovering the normative constitution of the ordinary that we will be able to appreciate the democratic implications of this dimension of social life. In their works on the democratic implications of forms of civility, several French sociologists9 have emphasized the need to rescue civility from consolidated prejudices through which they are categorized as mere habitual, unreflective, and superficial habits devoid of intrinsic political relevance because entirely subjected to the “the tyranny of the second person” (Gayet-Viaud, 2008, 152–159). In this perspective, civilities or civil interactions denote the activities whereby strangers negotiate, in public, what each owes the other, in the political terms of the rights, duties, expectations, and requirements on which the democratic social bond is built. Civility, in that sense, can be defined as the normative order of interaction as it deploys its political implications in a democratic form of society. Conceived as an order of interaction, civility appears to be a decisive domain in which interpretations and practices of democratic life are constantly negotiated among actors. Its function is, therefore, decisive in confirming the self-interpretation of a society, but also in confirming social positions and social relations. Indeed, civilities or their denial play a central function in establishing, contesting, and confirming social relations of exclusion, inclusion, and hierarchization. They provide or deny recognition to a member by establishing or refusing to establish them as an equal partner in social cooperation.

 In what follows I will refer to a sociological tradition which stemmed from works done by Patrick Pharo, Louis Quéré, Albert Ogien, and Isaac Joseph since the late ’80s and which has been continued by a new generation of researchers among which one has to include Mathieu Berger, Marc Breveglieri, Daniel Cefaï, Alexandra Bidet, Carole Gayet-Viaud, Philippe Gonzalez, Joan Stavo-­ Debauge, Cédric Terzi. Reference to pragmatism has played a central role in shaping this sociological approach to politics. 9

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To say that ordinary interactions have normative content—that they form the constitutive order of social life—means that their function is not merely reproductive; they are not the mere reflections of normative orders being constituted elsewhere. Indeed, they constitute the arena in which the meaning and content of the social bond is constantly challenged, where received views can be defied and transformed, and where new claims can be articulated and implemented. In this sense, the way in which ordinary relations among strangers are carried on assumes, therefore, a decisive political meaning. The willingness to take sides in an ordinary quarrel on apparently irrelevant issues such as precedence in a line or at the entrance to a public means of transportation is not only a revelatory sign of one’s democratic ethos, but is also the opportunity to reassert and discuss the boundaries of the social bond. As GayetViaud remarks in conclusion to a series of ethnographic inquiries into ordinary forms of civility: “[t]he frequency and the intensity of conflicts, whether taking place in public transportation, streets or queues, show three things. First, not everyone agrees on what are the rules that matter most, how they should be interpreted (that is understood and performed) and which one prevails in such or such situation. Second, the commonly admitted partition between civil and rude people does not stand. Observations and interviews show that the same people continuously go from respecting to not respecting rules, according to the circumstances. […] Third, the great number of fights proves that “maintaining face” is not always what people care most about, even in public settings: they sometimes choose to endanger their face and “lose time”, just to be able to make their point about what they think is right or fair” (Gayet-Viaud, 2015, 102–103). Empirical research on civilities has equally shown that behaviors usually interpreted as mere signs of outburst or otherwise emotional reaction are in fact essential ingredients of a democratic form of life. Protesting when equality is violated, being angry at those who disrespect others on grounds of social difference, reacting at attempts to patronize other individuals, even in apparently irrelevant minor interactions of ordinary life, should not be conceived as mere external expressions of inner principles, but rather as decisive moves for reasserting and furthering the democratic order of social interaction.

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Rather than being merely ‘good manners’, civilities are forms of social interaction through which the democratic order of interaction is constantly renewed. They are based on the assumption that, in a society of free and equal citizens, obligations are not defined a priori by transcendental codes of conduct based on ascriptive traits such as economic and social status, gender, age, race, or religion. Democratic civilities incorporate this moment of constant openness to negotiation because the equality and freedom of social partners leave open the content of social intercourse. Historically, the role of civilities in the practical accomplishment of democracy became evident after the French Revolution, when new codes of mutual interaction among citizens and new practices of urban hospitality were developed: “[p]eople had, for the first time, equal rights not only to talk or express their opinions, but also to be there and to come and go, to take their place (Joseph, 1998) without having to justify their identity, who they were, or where they came from (Cottereau, 1992)” (Gayet-Viaud, 2015, 110). Other lines of ethnographic research show that a similar ongoing critical reflection concerning the appropriate forms of solidarity with strangers takes place similarly in the interstices of social life, for example, by assisting homeless or sick people on the street, or by calling social services to provide them with first aid, citizens do not merely put their democratic values of solidarity into practice. More profoundly, they contribute to the maintenance of democratic patterns of social interaction, confirming or disconfirming the quality of a portion of social life. In social interactionist terms, they are really producing the democratic society in which they live. Empirical inquiries have, for example, shown that the effectiveness of solidarity and aid institutions is heavily dependent upon ordinary citizens’ willingness to report cases of suffering or abuse, to offer first aid to strangers, to care for people in distress (Bidet et al., 2015; Cefaï and Gardella, 2011). Civilities are in this sense essential ontological ingredients of a democratic form of society and stand on an equal footing with social institutions such as firefighters and social workers. Indeed, it is only through the combined interaction of a citizen’s call for help with the prompt intervention of the appropriate public service that a democratic social order can remain intact and function. These inquiries confirm the insufficiency of formalistic theories of institutions.

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Under the apparent homogeneity of civil manners, ordinary life appears as a textured succession of troubles, conflicts, dilemmas which call for citizens’ constant involvement and which require of them the taking of a stance on issues which have clear political implications: shall I help this beggar? Shall I offer to help this old woman to carry her suit? Shall I intervene in this quarrel among youngsters? These micro, tacit, and unnoticed decisions not only presuppose that each citizen has taken a stance about how principles of equality, freedom, and solidarity should be ordered and allowed to orient their conduct, they also enact in public and contribute to reaffirm these very values and principles, making them the living texture of social interactions rather than abstract theoretical principles that should organize society only at the formal level of its legal structure. If we take seriously the category of constitutive order of interaction as discussed above and agree to accord it normative weight, then we are forced to acknowledge the normative relevance of these forms of civility as necessary features of a political order. At a slightly more structured level, the same democratizing or anti-­ democratizing effects of patterns of interactions are also at work in the exchange taking place within informal groups of acquaintances and within voluntary associations. Here, too, interactions may take place according to different type of patterns, some of which have direct implications for assessing the democratic quality of a social unity. These patterns, as Nina Eliasoph among others has noted, are practical as well as discursive: they concern the way we treat our fellow human being, but also the way we speak with them, by which she does not merely means how we show them respect or disrespect, but also how, through discourses, a group succeeds or fails to constitute itself as a small political community. Discourses are to this extent as important as actions, insofar as they create the space where ideas about the common good, the good society, the ends we strive for are formulated, exchanged, revised, and shared ideas about collective values are created. To that extent, when groups develop strategies for avoiding rather than engaging politics, these patterns of interaction acquire a political relevance that is troubling if seen from the vantage point of the democratic norm. Indeed, to a significant extent the democratizing benefits we usually connect with voluntary

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associations cannot be realized in concrete practices unless a willingness to debate together is already present. To produce its beneficial political consequences, a group or an association should dispose of some habits without which the usual concern for the public good, that is to say for society as it exists outside the narrow limits of the group itself, fails to materialize. Patterns of interaction which make political discussion inappropriate, tacit rules of etiquette which prevent ideas about the common good, justice, or good government to be spoken loud and debated, end up shrinking the democratic quality of a group or association, as this group will lack the patterns with which collective problems can be discussed as such, that is to say as problems that affect their members collectively. Patterns of interaction promote and confirm given ways of thinking about our place in the world, ways of making sense of how we can contribute to the common good, how individual actions coalesce in collective undertaking, how the individual self is connected to larger social identities. They are the connecting link between ordinary life on the one hand, and politics as the organized concern for collective goals on the other. As Eliasoph rightly reminds, “when good manners prevent publicly minded speech in the potential contexts of the public sphere, the public sphere has a problem” (Eliasoph, 1998, 7). The conclusion of her study resonates deeply with my conclusions about the democratic relevance of patterns of interaction: “the ‘democratic norms’ that really matter are unspoken norms for conversation, manners, civility, tact, that make citizens comfortable engaging in freewheeling political conversation in everyday life contexts. For democracy to survive, there must be a range of contexts that citizens recognize as appropriate places for broad political debate. Valuing this neither exclusively subjective nor exclusively objective, but ‘intersubjective’, nature of politics means taking interaction seriously, as a social fact that is patterned, real, and important” (Eliasoph, 1998, 20–21). Whilst there is no reason to limit the scope of the democratic norm to discursive interactions, patterns of interaction establish social expectations and define tacitly approved patterns of interaction which give shape to the way individuals treat each other, and to that extent establish the basis upon which democracy as a norm is promoted or hampered.

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F rom Associations to Associational Relations

This interpretation of the democratic norm can be further refined by looking more directly to the democratic meaning of associations. This I will do by discussing some of the political implications of a debate sparked by the sociological work of Talcott Parsons, later developed by Jürgen Habermas in his social theory, and recently reinterpreted by Mark Warren in terms of an associational theory of democracy. By reflecting on the power of associational ties in integrating a society composed of equal individuals, these authors have pursued the associational intuition that the pragmatists had found at the basis of the democratic form of society. With the transition from the Tocquevillean theory of democratic voluntary associations to the idea of democratic associational relations, a new awareness of the relevance of specific patterns of social interaction for democracy is reached, one that is consistent with the interactional model developed so far, and that brings it to a further level of theoretical complexity. As is known, Parsons—and Habermas in his wake—distinguished between power, money, and influence as the main steering media upon which social order depends. In Parsons’ view, influence is the steering media deputed to integrating society. It “consists in capacity to bring about desired decisions on the part of other social units without directly offering them a valued quid pro quo as an inducement or threatening them with deleterious consequences” (Parsons, 1971, 14). Influence operates through persuasion and differs, therefore, from forms of collective action based on bargaining and violence. According to Parsons, persuasion requires that the agent be convinced that what is suggested is “in the interest of a collective system with which both are solidary”. Parsons considers influence as the media specifically oriented to societal integration because its basis are voluntary interactions and other social properties that Robert Putnam and others will later call ‘social capital’. Hence, “[i]nfluence may be regarded as a generalized medium for activating obligations that are rooted in underlying relationships of solidarity” (Lidz, 1991, 116). Solidarity should be understood here as meaning reciprocity in the Durkheimian terms of a theory of social integration

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through functional differentiation. The focus is upon how social cooperation is achieved by personal relations that succeed in establishing mutual obligations on a basis that is different from self-interest (money) or external coercion (power). Parsons is so persuaded that in modern society the associational principle is pivotal to the functioning of social systems that he affirms that “[p]erhaps the prototype of an association is the societal collectivity itself, considered as a corporate body of citizens holding primarily consensual relations to its normative order and to the authority of its leadership” (Parsons, 1971, 24). With reference to the United States, that according to Parsons, at the time he was writing, was the country where modernization was at its peak, “[t]he associational emphasis has been enhanced […] by the increasing elimination of ethnic membership and social class as ascriptively constitutive structures” (Parsons, 1971, 92). Parsons notes that modern social systems are characterized by higher levels of differentiation which require abstract media of integration capable of operating upon highly diversified materials. The modern principle of association is based on the three criteria of egalitarianism, voluntariness, and proceduralism whose highest achievement is the idea of citizenship. Democratic associations are then acknowledged as “the prototypical structural context” in which influence operates, as in this context social action is coordinated through influence rather than through money or power. Parsons points out that the associational principle is at work not only at the political level. He notes that “[c]oncurrent with the development of associationalism in government, there has been a vast proliferation of associations in other sectors of society” (Parsons, 1971, 25). Two major non-governmental associational developments concern notably the organization of private firms and of professions. In both cases there has evolved an associational model based on elected bodies in which decisions are taken on the basis of influence (rather than on authoritarian decision based on ascriptive criteria). He also sees the associational principle at work in the increasing tendency of professionals to abandon a model of individual practice to organize in associations. All these cases show the emergence of patterns of social relations based on the social media of influence, that is “generalized persuasion without power” (Parsons, 1963, 53).

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Hence influence helps creating patterns of relationship and associational ties. In this context, the notion of ‘associative performance’ has been used to denote “the uses of judgment that preserve solidarity as an on-going quality of social relationships” (Lidz, 1991, 119). Associational performances denote, as the name suggests, social actions based on influence, and associations provide the natural arena in which associational performances take place, just as the market provides appropriate arenas for interest-based transactions. Hence associations appear as arenas in which specific types of interaction take place. Associational performances, as ideal types, are voluntary, in the sense that the exercise of influence requires the willingness to accept being influenced, as opposed to relations of power in which the basis of action is coercion. Hence: “[t]he capacity of associative performances to create new ties of solidarity by promoting common interests among previously competing groups is a mark of their integrative specialization in social life” (Lidz, 1991, 124). Even in its ideal typical dimension of influence through communication (rational persuasion), social integration through influence emphasizes the goal-oriented dimension of persuasion to the detriment of the expressive dimension of ‘being together’ conceived as an end in itself, what the pragmatists termed ‘social involvement’. This second dimension is, unfortunately, underestimated by Parsons owing to the overwhelming dominance he assigns to functional integration as the basis of social cohesion. Parsons conceives of integration as a societal function to be achieved through different media, so that the expressive meaning of democratic patterns of social interaction is overshadowed by their social function. As Andrew Arato and Jean Cohen note with reference to Parsons: “the analogy with money and power […] points to a modern principle of integration that reduces communication to the production and reception of codes and action to an adaptation to interconnections established ‘behind the back of actors’. This conception cannot ground the difference between the organizing principle of the societal community and those of the economy and the polity, and it treats integration through solidarity as a form of control” (Cohen and Arato, 1994, 132). Habermas goes a significant step beyond Parsons, replacing the still ambiguous concept of influence with that of communication, in which all traces of power-based and money-based forms of interpersonal ­pressure

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are eliminated. Habermas has notably attempted to distinguish the communication media from those of power and money by reinterpreting them in the framework of his distinction between the life-world and systems10 and, later, of that of the public sphere and the state. “With the concept of communicative action there comes into play the additional presupposition of a linguistic medium that reflects the actor-world relations as such” (Habermas, 1984, 94). At the heart of Habermas’ conception stands the interactional dimension. Communicative action “refers to the interaction of at least two subjects capable of speech and action who establish interpersonal relations” (Habermas, 1984, 86). “Thus I count as communicative action those linguistically mediated interactions in which all participants pursue illocutionary aims, and only illocutionary aims, with their mediating acts of communication” (Habermas, 1984, 295). Parsons’ unilateral concept of influence is overcome and replaced with the relational and interactive notion of understanding, hence communication is a two-way process at the heart of which is a situated interaction. The basic model of action is no more A attempting to influence B, but A and B trying to reach an agreement: “[t]he actors seek to reach an understanding about the action situation and their plans of action in order to coordinate their actions by way of agreement” (Habermas, 1984, 86). As is known, Habermas’ model is deeply linguistified, so that interaction is basically reduced to its discursive dimension, rooted in the three axes of communicative rationality: “the speaker claims truth for statements or existential presuppositions, rightness for legitimately regulated actions and their normative context, and truthfulness or sincerity for the manifestation of subjective experiences” (Habermas, 1984, 99). The importance of language is such that Habermas can define the modus operandi of the other two steering media—money and power—precisely by their non-linguistic nature. Habermas speaks of a “paradox of rationalization” to describe the tension between purposive and communicative rationality, according to which: “[t]he rationalization of the lifeworld makes possible a kind of systemic integration that enters into competition with the integrating principle of reaching understanding and, under

10

 On this aspect see, in particular, Habermas (1987b, Ch. 2).

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certain conditions, has a disintegrative effect of the lifeworld” (Habermas, 1984, 342–343). The interpretation of this tension in terms of an analytical distinction between action theory and systems theory prevents to rely on communicative rationality to explain the interactional dimension of human life, as the purification of the communication media from instrumental factors is paid at the price of loosening the connection with the complex experience of social interaction. Moreover, the coordinative function of rational communication is understood by Habermas always within the context of an actor-based theory of action. Hence communicative rationality is seen as a mean “to arrive at an agreement that will provide the basis for a consensual coordination of individually pursued plans of action” (Habermas, 1984, 295–296, italics added). As a consequence, the complexity of social interactions is reduced to the simplified form of a linguistic act: “coming to an understanding [Verständigung] means that participants in communication reach an agreement [Einigung] concerning the validity of an utterance; agreement [Einverständnis] is the intersubjective recognition of the validity claim the speaker raises for it” (Habermas, 1987a, 120). The ideal typical social situation where rational communication unfolds is no more that of a democratic association but the rather looser and informal context of a ‘situation’, conceived as a “segment of the lifeworld delimited in relation to a theme” (Habermas, 1987a, 127), in which linguistic interactions among two or more speakers take place with the purpose of coordinating individual plans of action. Habermas’ approach focuses too much upon the linguistic dimension of discourses to be able to fully take into account the broader interactionist dimension of social life. For him, the broader space of sociality, as well as the practice-based dimension of social involvement, are retrenched in the linguistic search for agreement through the exchange of arguments. As I have argued elsewhere,11 Habermas’ attempts to pragmatize critical theory, while praiseworthy, remain insufficient. Whereas pragmatists give pride of place to reason as an attribute of social interactions under the guise of a theory of rationality as inquiry,12 they embody rationality in a  See Frega (2013b, 2017c).  I explore this theme in details in Frega (2012b).

11 12

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thicker concept of experience which never lose sight of the deeper interdependencies of the mind with the body and with the outer world. The pragmatist view of the normative structure of the ordinary, of human beings as normative creatures, cannot be reduced to the Kantian-based approach of Habermas’ epistemology, nor can the prospects of rationality as inquiry be reduced to the justificatory task Habermas assigns to communicative rationality.13 Even if ‘reaching understanding’ denotes a significantly broader domain than ‘taking decisions’, its scope remains too narrow for a social theory of democracy. It will, therefore, come as no surprise that the democratic potential of the associational principle appears in Habermas’ theory under the guise of a theory of law, as only within this highly linguistic medium can the integrative potential of communicative rationality achieve full realization. Here the dualism of lifeworld and systems gives way to the dualism of the public sphere and the State as a different attempt to articulate the social-theoretic consequences of Habermas’ theoretical distinction between purposive and communicative rationality. Moreover, as Habermas explains, legal norms “make possible highly artificial communities, associations of free and equal legal persons whose integration is based simultaneously on the threat of external sanctions and the supposition of a rationally motivated agreement” (Habermas, 1996, 8). More relevant for an understanding of the democratic implications of patterns of interaction is Habermas’ insistence on the role of institutions in creating settings that are conducive to democracy. Trying to steer a middle path between the excessive demands of republican ethical commitments and the liberal lack of concern for the democratic potential of social practices, Habermas believes that “the success of deliberative politics depends not on a collectively acting citizenry but on the institutionalization of the corresponding procedures and conditions of communication, as well as on the interplay of institutionalized deliberative processes with informally developed public opinions” (Habermas, 1996, 298). He continues by explaining that “the socially integrating force of solidarity, which can no longer be drawn solely from sources of communicative action, must develop through widely diversified and 13

 See, for example, Habermas (1996, 5).

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more or less autonomous public spheres, as well as through procedures of democratic opinion- and will-formation institutionalized within a constitutional framework” (Habermas, 1996, 299). However, far from exploiting the associational potential of this idea, Habermas restrains its scope to the mediating function of the public sphere, conceived “as an arena for the perception, identification, and treatment of problems affecting the whole of society” (Habermas, 1996, 302), rather than as a social context in which democratic interactions are realized for their own sake. While this line of inquiry offers a fruitful actualization of Dewey’s theory of the public—a topic we will take on in Chap. 9, it has very little to offer in the way of a social ontology of democracy, as the democratic potential of organized forms of associated life is never considered for its own sake, nor is the democratic potential of institutions of the public sphere extended beyond their epistemic contribution to processes of informal opinion-formation. Surprisingly, the integrating function of communicative rationality as a vector of social solidarity is understood by Habermas only in the problem-solving terms of systems theory. In Habermas’ terms, deliberative politics—and the public sphere with it—is “a reflexively organized learning process that removes the burden on latent processes of societal integration while continuing these processes within an action system specialized for this relief work” (Habermas, 1996, 321). In more general terms, the democratic potential of society is reduced to the functioning of the public sphere, which in turn is constrained by its functional dependence upon its relation to the state. Indeed, the whole raison d’être of the public sphere has to be seen in its function as mediator between the lifeworld and the political sphere. Following in the steps of Habermas and Parsons, Mark Warren has developed the implications of the associational principle for a theory of democracy in ways that better reveal the political relevance of democratic patterns of social interaction. Warren’s interpretation of association as a steering media seems particularly apt to emphasize the social interactionist basis of democracy in ways that make Parsons’ and Habermas’ contributions more cogent. Warren relies upon Parsons’ and Habermas’ theory of social integration to develop a post-Tocquevillean account of the democratic potential of associations, one that is not limited to a conventional appreciation of voluntary associations. Building on the work of Parsons

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and Habermas but moving considerably beyond them, Warren explains the relevance of associations for democracy in a way that concurs with the pragmatist account of patterns of social interaction. In so doing, he does not confine his concern with associations to a type of social organization, as is current in political and sociological literature post-Tocqueville, but he rather conceives associational relations as a principle of social organization liable to find application in all spheres of social life. As he explains: “[t]he concept of association evokes the possibilities of collective action, but in a way that retains social (as opposed to legal/bureaucratic or market) modes of mediation among people, through language, norms, shared purposes, and agreements” (Warren, 2001, 8). Warren observes that, insofar as the three steering media of money, power, and solidarity may in principle steer social life in all social spheres, we can identify processes of democratization whenever in a given social sphere the steering media of associational relations replaces money or power. The basic intuition is that association as a principle denotes an alternative way of coordinating collective action to the state and market. On this point, a now vast literature initially prompted by reflections on the commons (Ostrom, 1990), emphasizes the integrative function of social norms in achieving forms of social cooperation that are irreducible either to the centralizing logic of governments or to the distributive mechanisms of the market’s invisible hand (Benkler, 2006). Associations and associational relations do not coincide, as association can indeed be organized according to any one of the three steering media of money, power, and solidarity. For example, primary associations such as families, schools, neighborhood associations, religious groups, and social and sports clubs tend to be primarily steered by associative relations. On the other hand, secondary associations such as political parties, political pressure groups, economic lobbies, corporatist organizations, think tanks, and professional associations tend rather to be dominated by the logic of power, whereas employers’ associations, consumer groups, or environmental and human rights groups that seek impact through market mechanisms are steered instead by money-based mechanisms. Therefore, more than the spread of associations as such, what defines trends of ­democratization is rather the spread of the principle of association conceived as a steering media, as a pattern of social interaction.

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Associational relations as the basis of democracy are defined by Warren in the system-theoretic terms of the Parsons-Habermas theory of communication: “in contrast to markets and bureaucracies, association is the form of social organization that thrives on talk, normative agreement, cultural similarity, and shared ambitions—that is, forms of communication that are rooted in speech, gesture, self-presentation, and related forms of social interaction” (Warren, 2001, 39). For Warren, what characterizes the association as a steering media is its reliance upon communication rather than money or force to coordinate social life: “Association involves consensual relations to a normative order” (Warren, 2001, 50). As he clearly states, “the democratic project depends upon identifying ways in which systems organized by power and money might be guided by associative relations” (Warren, 2001, 55). The strength of this argument relies, as Warren himself notes, upon the fact that the associational conception of democracy can be applied to the whole spectrum of social relations, as it holds equally well for primary associations based on mutual trust and face-to-face relations, as well as for secondary and tertiary associations based on thinner interest-based, side-by-side relations of the ‘bridging’ rather than ‘bonding’ type (Putnam, 2000). Warren makes two points that are relevant to vindicating the democratic relevance of patterns of social interaction. The first is the general acknowledgement that democracy provides an appropriate normative concept for the analysis of social life, and not only of formal political institutions. By defining democracy not in Tocquevillean terms of a society in which voluntary associations thrive, but in terms of an associational principle that can work in all social units and situations, Warren implicitly confirms the idea that democracy defines, first and foremost, a form of society in which specific patterns of social interaction dominate. The second point consists in showing that vindicating the democratic relevance of associations does not require accepting the contested and contestable claim that associations are, by definition, vectors of democracy. First of all, because not every association is steered by associational norms. Indeed, associations, like any other type of social unit, can be steered by power, money, or social norms, and this fact has an obvious impact on their contribution to the democratic quality of a society, as students of right-wing social movements and organizations have made

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clear. Hence, more than upon the associational form itself, the democratic quality of an association depends upon the patterns of interaction which dominate its way of functioning. Second, as associations may contribute to the democratic quality of a society in very diverse ways, their relevance to democracy cannot be explained in terms of a single principle. There exists a plurality of types of association, each type contributing in diverse fashion to the democratic quality of a polity. For example, lobbies, workers’ associations, or media have democratizing effects which do not necessarily depend upon their internal organization. On the other hand, primary associations can fulfill their democratizing task only if they promote democratic patterns of social interaction. Warren’s analysis raises an obvious objection to my characterization of democratic patterns of social interaction, as it clearly distinguishes between democracy as an internal way of organizing a given social group, and democratic effects that an association can achieve, independently of the way in which it is internally organized. According to the first view, which captures the expressive dimension of democracy, an association is democratic insofar as it complies with the three democratic principles of (a) relational parity, (b) inclusive authority, and (c) social involvement. In other terms, an association is, more or less, democratic according to the patterns of social interaction which dominate it. This definition captures the distinctively social dimension of democracy. According to the second view Warren develops, the democratic value of an association depends upon its capacity to induce democratic effects in the larger society, independently of how this association is internally organized. Students of social movements have, for example, noted that, while labour and civil rights movements have often been organized according to military patterns which emphasize vertical over horizontal integration, this fact has not prevented them from providing major and lasting contributions to the democratization of the societies in which they have thrived (Polletta, 2012). This specific contribution of associations to democracy is best captured by the functional dimension of democracy and is, therefore, best formulated in terms either of a theory of democratic experimentalism or of a theory of publics. One would be wrong, however, in reducing this difference to the conventional distinction between internal and external democracy. One

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could in fact merely argue that internal democracy is a prerequisite to other ends such as the efficacious production of democratic effects on the society (Warren, 2001) or the achievement of legitimacy (Macdonald, 2008). Yet, as the previous discussion should have made clear, democratic patterns of social interaction are constitutive of the primitive meaning of democracy14: Their relevance does not lie only in their contribution to achieving the external aim of realizing a fully functioning political democracy, but also in their quality as constitutive traits of a specific form of life which have an end in themselves. Warren’s analysis resonates with other researches that have highlighted the undemocratic or uncivil potential of associations. Nancy Rosenblum’s theoretical admonitions (Rosenblum, 1998) and Nina Eliasoph’s empirical investigations (Eliasoph, 1998) converge in showing the extent to which joining together may have also exclusionary consequences, leading to unequal and discriminatory outcomes that hamper rather than promote democracy. Pointing to the uncivil and undemocratic implications of some forms of association, Rosenblum and Eliasoph prompt us to render the connection between the associational principle and democracy more specific and less abstract. These and similar studies have two important consequences for our approach to social democracy. The first is that the idea of a positive correlation between associations and democracy is reinforced rather than weakened when formulated in the more nuanced terms of a multilevel and complex correlation between types of association and types of democratic effect. This view reconciles the idea of a positive effect of associational patterns of interaction with the empirical evidence that not all types of associations are necessarily conducive to democratic effects. The second consequence is that the democratic priority of patterns of social interaction acquires two distinct meanings. The first covers the extrinsic and instrumental function of associations as means to achieve democratic effects at the level of the larger society. This meaning is well captured by functionalist accounts such as those of Parsons, Habermas, and Warren. The second meaning covers the ­intrinsic and expressive function of associations. It implies that active involvement in associations organized according to democratic patterns of interaction  On primitiveness as a basic feature of democracy, see Chap. 3.

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is what democracy, at least partially, means. The focus here is no longer upon the causal effects of associations on the overall functioning of a society—on associations as serving as “schools of democracy”—but depends upon the fact that taking part to democratic patterns of social interaction is what democracy is about. These two meanings are complementary and should, therefore, be integrated. Whereas the functionalist account best captures the instrumental dimension of how associations contribute to democratic social order and help overcome the frequent objection to the democratic priority of associations, the interactionist account of democracy as an order of interaction reminds us that a purely functional account is necessarily incomplete. Indeed, as has already been noted, justification of the normative validity of the three principles of (a) relational parity, (b) inclusive authority, and (c) social involvement cannot rest upon a merely functionalist basis. Warren seems to perceive the weakness of functionalism when he criticizes the reduction of the associative principle to its steering function within civil society, noting that: “it is within intimate relations that we hope to find the ethical dispositions of reciprocity, empathy, and care that, injected into political domains, can underwrite democracy” (Warren, 2001, 57–58). Unfortunately, this intuition is not really developed by Warren, who is rather concerned with the democratizing effects produced by the progressive replacement of power and money with associational relations in social spheres traditionally dominated by market and power logics. Lack of concern for the expressive dimension of democratic patterns of social interaction prevents Warren from reaching a more complete account of why and how the associational principle permeates all spheres of social life in a democratic society, even beyond the public sphere. While the extension of the associational principle to the market and the state is certainly a fundamental achievement of the democratic way of life—one well captured by Parsons’ and Habermas’ theories of associational relations—their functionalism prevents them from understanding the democratic relevance of these more informal, interstitial patterns of social interaction which certainly include the trust-based bonds of primary associations, but which extend to interactions among s­ trangers in public places which contribute in important ways to the democratic quality of a society. By integrating a sociological understanding of ­civilities

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and democratic patterns of social interaction with a functionalistic account of democratic associations, the pragmatist concept of democratic patterns of social interaction seems, therefore, better suited to fulfill this task.

4

Conclusion

This chapter aimed to provide a more solid social-theoretic basis for the pragmatist social conception of democracy, while at the same time proving in reverse its empirical pertinence through a rapid survey of studies which give a thicker sociological account of the pragmatist social understanding of democracy. By relying upon diverse research traditions in social theory, I have shown how the idea of patterns of social interaction can be operationalized, opening up new ground for the empirical study of democracy which may prove promising in the attempt to identify conditions under which democracy as a form of society as opposed to democracy as a political regime can thrive.

8 A Democratic Experimentalist Theory of Institutions

According to the conception of democracy developed so far, social innovation, democracy, and the possibility of political emancipation are heavily dependent upon what pragmatists call ‘the democratic method’ and upon the creative potential embedded in democratic patterns of interaction sustained by a democratic ethos. As pragmatist ontology has taught us, these are necessary but not sufficient conditions for the achievement of a democratic society, as this also requires that organizations and institutions be consistently organized according to the three principles which define the normative core of democracy. Democratic institutions are stable forms of social cooperation which are based on, and promote, democratic habits and democratic forms of social interaction, while at the same time achieving the goals a polity sets for itself. They operate at the juncture of social and political democracy, combining expressive and functional dimensions. On the one hand, they contribute to democracy by creating and promoting durable patterns of democratic interaction at all levels of social life. On the other hand, they contribute to identify, articulate, and solve social problems conceived as problems of publics, that is to say, problems the public itself considers worthy of resolution.1 These  For a similar view of the democratic function of political institutions, see Elkin (2006).

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two functions are equally fundamental, and any attempt to design ­democratic institutions should be attentive to both of these normative dimensions. This chapter can, therefore, be seen to complete the exposition of the social account, or commence with exposition of the political view. As a matter of fact, it accomplishes both aims. With regard to the second, it should be noted that Chaps. 8, 9, and 10 share a common concern for the democratic relevance of innovative patterns of organizational life. The theory of democratic experimentalism (this chapter), theories of peer-­ production and the commons (Chap. 9), and theories of political consumerism and political entrepreneurship (Chap. 10) are unified by the exploration of new, bottom up, horizontal, and inclusive forms of social cooperation that attempt to go beyond conventional oppositions such as those between private enterprise and public bureaucracy, state and market, government and the public sphere, citizen and consumer. The underlying assumption is that new opportunities for democratic life can be opened up only if all the resources of creative action are experimentally attempted in new ways that must, however, comply with the normative requirements set by the three principles of (1) relational parity, (2) inclusive authority, and (3) social involvement. This is the task of a pragmatist theory of democratic experimentalism.

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 teps to a Pragmatist Theory S of Democratic Institutions

Institutions, be they social or political, are one of the pillar of the pragmatist conception of democracy: a society whose institution are not duly democratized is an undemocratic society. This judgment concerns at the same time institutions—particularly but not exclusively political ones— as possible agents of societal democratization, and institutions as locations where social life unfolds according to democratic patterns.2 Political pragmatism is aware that democratization is not something that is achieved once and for all, but the result of a continuous engagement with  For a classical statement of this idea, see Dewey (1937).

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changing and challenging situations. To that extent, the question that seems to better capture the pragmatist attitude is how the democratic quality of institutions can be preserved over time, entertained through change in environing circumstances. Democratic experimentalism is the answer political pragmatism gives to this question. The idea that experimentation plays a central function within pragmatist philosophy is a well explored and relatively uncontroversial idea. Indeed, Peirce convincingly showed the relevance of experimentation for scientific discovery, while Dewey showed its relevance as a decisive feature of human problem-solving strategies and, more generally, of human action once it is guided by intelligence. The philosophical grounding for this expansive approach to experimentalism is a view of human action shaped by the necessity to cope with highly uncertain and changing circumstances and by the idea that, in the course of their evolution, human beings have devised increasingly creative ways to cope with challenging situations. The idea of rationality as inquiry (Dewey), or of rationality as a method for the fixation of beliefs (Peirce), highlights the adaptive superiority of controlled methods of testing competing ideas and solutions to intellectual and practical problems. Dewey’s theory of dramatic rehearsal extends this model to the examination of moral dilemmas, contending that moral agents test in their imagination different courses of action in the same manner in which scientists test competing laboratory hypotheses.3 Classical pragmatism and contemporary ‘democratic experimentalism’ are unified by the way in which they understand the function of knowledge in social life, as well as by their understanding of the connection between democracy and social learning. Democratic experimentalism extends this approach to collective actors such as social movements,4 private and public organizations, and political societies. It does so by providing an institutional solution to the question of how to promote democracy by teaching organizations and institutions how to better solve social problems. To this extent, democratic experimentalism seeks to devise conditions under which practices of democratic problem-solving can be  See Frega (2006), McVea (2006), Caspary (2000), Fesmire (2003).  For a comprehensive view of social movements as pragmatist problem solvers faced with social and political problems see Serrano Zamora (2016, 2017b). 3 4

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generalized in society. By ‘democratic problem-solving’, two different but related ideas are meant. On the one hand, the idea of inclusive processes of inquiry capable of accounting for everyone’s perspective on a given social problem. On the other hand, the idea that experimentalist approaches to problem-solving should not be limited to the solution of technical problems, but should be extended to moral, social, and political problems as well. Indeed, institutions have deep implications for democracy insofar as they embody democratic ideals in these two ways: they tackle (a) problems of publics in inclusive ways via (b) democratic procedures and methods. In addition, they promote democratic habits and patterns of interaction. In general terms, an institution is a set of norms and practices that serves to coordinate social interactions. Thus understood, the term ‘institution’ covers two different levels of social life, what institutionalist theories usually describe in terms of institutions proper and organizations. Put simply, we can say that an institution is a set of tacit and explicit rules which codifies a domain of social experience, while an organization is an assemblage of individuals, material objects, procedures, and texts etc. constituted in order to foresee action and which is in agreement with an institutional arrangement. For example, the market is an institution while a firm is an organization. According to this perspective, organizations rather than institutions have the ability to act, while institutions codify shared forms of action and ensure cooperation and social organization.5 Considered in this twofold sense, institutions are central to a theory of democracy for two reasons. The first is that they play at collective level the same function as habits at the individual level, that is, they are organized patterns of response that leverage past experience for the sake of future action. Therefore they reduce the uncertainty of action, while increasing its efficiency. In that sense, they are necessary prerequisites for any effective and successful form of social action. The second reason is that, from a political point of view, institutions constitute the e­ mbodiment of the public, as they symbolize its existence and materialize its power to act.  Institutions and organizations have in common the fact of presiding over the coordination of social action, and it is in this sense that in what follows the term institution must be understood as referring to both institutions and organizations. See North (1990), Ansell (2011). 5

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In  the suggestive terms of Philip Selznick, institutionalization occurs when an organization ceases to be a simple means and becomes a ‘community’ (Selznick, 1994). Institutionalization denotes the process of constitution of the public as well as that of its externalization through action. This fact implies that institutions are the sites—real or virtual—where competing injunctions of legitimacy and performativity, as well as of expressivity and instrumentality, are likely to clash, challenging the democratic aspiration of a human community. Institutions are simultaneously instrumental agencies (means for ends) and expressive forms that shape collective identity (ends in themselves). As such, they must be accountable to the groups whose problems they are supposed to solve and at the same time they must develop efficacious analytical and problem-solving oriented strategies. A pragmatist theory of institutions need to articulate the relationships between these elements starting from the rejection of these dichotomies. In other words, institutions are situated at the crossroads of the instrumental and of the symbolic dimensions; they are simultaneously and inseparably tools for action and forms of reflexivity.6 As has already been noted, the relationship between habits, actions, and institutions is dynamic and unstable. Institutions, as well as habits, consolidate and systematize prior experience but are constantly challenged by the unexpected demands of new situations. Mediating between past and future, institutions need constant adjustment to incorporate new elements while keeping up with the past, so that every institution that does not integrate strong potential for innovation tends sooner or later to degenerate and no longer adequately serves the purpose for which it was designed. The democratic experimentalist view is based on the idea that an institution, as much as a habit, can fulfill its tasks only as long as it remains experimentally involved in this normative work of adjustment and maintenance which is required to integrate novelty into what is already established. Like habits, institutions too articulate particularity and generality. As forms of regularity, they incorporate rules, while as forms of action tailored to unique problematic situations, they must adapt to singular circumstances and respond in a timely manner. And like  For an overview of the influence of institutionalism in economics, sociology, political theory and organization sympathetic to pragmatism, see Ansell (2011, Ch. 2). 6

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habits, institutions tend to become rigid and, in time, they lose their capacity to provide meaningful and adequate responses to actual social problems, they lag behind the purposes for which they have been set up. A democratic experimentalist approach to institutions combines the principles of the social ontology of democracy with specific assumptions concerning the epistemic status of institutions which define their status as experimentalist units: (1) in a complex world knowledge of social phenomena is fragmented and localized, hence mostly available at the local level of individuals and small units; (2) the quality of collective will formation depends upon the quality of processes of collective knowledge production; (3) the coordination of complex knowledge is better obtained through non-hierarchical methods which actively involve members in processes of knowledge production, opinion, and will formation. Every institution must respond simultaneously to three levels of challenge, that is, epistemic, normative, and pragmatic. It must first satisfy information and knowledge constraints. Institutional economics has shown that epistemic imperatives expose institutions to challenges in their attempts to produce, use, and distribute knowledge, whether in the case of market, state, or other institutions or organizations such as the commons. Second, every institution is subject to normative constraints, as its acts and their consequences must be evaluated in terms of the normative demands (rights and duties) of the public whose expectations it is supposed to fulfill. This is the classical problem of the political accountability of institutions to their publics and of the legitimacy of institutional orders. Third, each institution can be assessed in terms of its ability to generate the effects for which it has been set up. It may be worth noting that these constrains apply equally to institutions operating in the market, under state control, or in settings governed by nonstate and nonmarket forms of social cooperation. This is a clear indication of the fact that democratic experimentalism transcends classical dualism of state and market, private and public, and politics and economics to provide an account of democratic institutions that is valid for the entire spectrum of social action. Democratic experimentalism is the general label under which reflections on the nature and function of institutions inspired by pragmatism has been proceeding for the last two decades. It is to some decisive moments of this debate that we now turn.

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 n the Very Idea of Democratic O Experimentalism

The expression ‘democratic experimentalism’ has recently come to denote a wide array of perspectives in legal theory, political science, political theory, and sociology which directly reclaim pragmatist ascendance in rethinking diverse institutional dimensions of social and political life. In different ways, scholars reclaiming democratic experimentalism believe that a pragmatist epistemology provides a promising starting point to rethink forms of institutional organization in ways that combine the political aspiration to democracy with the demands of contemporary life. At the heart of democratic experimentalist approaches is the idea that the pragmatist conception of rationality-as-inquiry provides a promising theoretical framework to understand how institutions should be designed if they seek to be at the same time reflective, effective, and democratic. Indeed, pragmatist epistemology emphasizes the collaborative dimension of science, and to this extent provides a reliable model to integrate the democratic requirements of equal inclusion of all those who are affected with the epistemic constraints of a controlled, reflective, and effective course of action.7 Yet the disparaging variety of uses of the label ‘democratic experimentalism’ invites caution and calls for preliminary clarification, before proceeding to explore in greater detail the contribution of democratic experimentalism to a contemporary pragmatist theory of institutions. In the literature we find three major families of interpretations, here briefly summarized. According to the first group of interpretations, the formula democratic experimentalism refers in rather vague ways to the adoption of an experimentalist attitude in politics. Experimentalism is equated here with fallibilism and the scientific mind in politics (Brunkhorst, 1998). Similarly, it has been argued that pragmatism conceives democratic experimentalism “as a non-transcendental, historical and democratic version of Kant’s method of the critique of reason” (Macarthur, 2015). In these terms, democratic experimentalism is watered down to a  On the pragmatist epistemology of inquiry see Frega (2011b, 2012b). For a pragmatist account of the relations between science and democracy, see Kitcher (2011b). 7

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Kantian-based justification of liberal democracy characterized by values of equality, inclusion, and the exchange of reasons, and does not amount to much more than a rather uncontroversial extension of the pragmatist conception of rationality beyond scientific inquiry, to the exercise of critical intelligence in all social situations, political decision-making included. In a similar way, Hauke Bunkhorst understands democratic experimentalism as a general trait of modernity: “modern democracy is experimental. Modernity understands itself […] as an experiment with open-ended outcome” (Brunkhorst, 1998, 7). ‘Experiment’ refers here mainly to the idea of a decentralized social system in which the scientific—i.e. fallibilistic—method is applied to the plurality of social problems as well as to social ideas and values. Their differences notwithstanding, these approaches share a basic assumption; the idea that the pragmatist conception of rationality as inquiry provides the theoretical framework within which to understand the pragmatist theory of democracy. This assumption is of course true, and as I have contended elsewhere it also provides the cornerstone of the pragmatist understanding of public reason (Frega, 2012b). If, however, democratic experimentalism referred to nothing more than the epistemological core of the theory of inquiry, its contribution to democratic theory would remain rather thin. Indeed, the idea of democracy as experimental and of experimentalism as encompassing political elements has a much broader reach, one that can be grasped provided we pay more attention to the plurality of social practices and institutions to which this expression can be applied. A first contribution in this direction comes from political sociology. In recent publications (Lamla, 2013a, 2013b), Jörn Lamla has argued for a democratic experimentalist approach he calls ‘pragmatist’ and which tries to combine Dewey’s theory of democracy with Bruno Latour’s, Luc Boltanski’s, and Laurent Thévenot’s sociologies. Lamla construes democratic experimentalism as a conception that integrates several ideas. The theoretical framework is provided by Dewey’s conception of inquiry and by the idea of a fruitful use of science in solving social problems. To this he adds Latour’s hybrid understanding of social practices. Third, he includes in the concept of democratic experimentalism Boltanski’s and Thévenot’s ideas of social worth, and the ensuing model of a democratic social practice based on practices of situated justification. So conceived,

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democratic experimentalism defines the framework of a pragmatist theory of action which emphasizes human beings’ capacity to revise their habits and beliefs in the face of crises brought about by new and unexpected situations. Democratic experimentalism then denotes a society’s capacity to generalize this problem-solving attitude based upon the critical revision of habits and procedures which organize individual and collective action in response to crises and external challenges. Democratic experimentalism appears here as a model for coordination of collective action (Lamla, 2013a, 348). This framework is then extended to the normative expectation that a similar model should be implemented at a political level through deliberative procedures which will avoid the ­epistemic and moral shortcomings of methods based upon sheer power or authority, under the assumption that public deliberation is the social equivalent of inquiry-based individual methods of belief fixation. According to Lamla, common to both processes is the reliance upon quasi-scientific, experimental procedures, and on social networks, that he interprets, with Peirce, under the category of the “community of inquiry”.8 Lamla then defines democratic experimentalism with reference to Dewey, “as […] the method of collective intelligence in the transformation of state community in complex societies” (Lamla, 2013a, 348). Hence democratic experimentalism implies that we understand democracy as a social rather than as a merely political process, insofar as collective problem-solving is a socially distributed process which also takes place outside formal political institutions. With the help of Anselm Strauss’ concept of arena, coupled with the Latourian material understanding of social processes, Lamla sees democratic experimentalism at work in the epistemic processes of social learning and problem-solving that traverse a society. While Lamla correctly points out the necessity of a wider social conception of democracy, his idea of democratic ­experimentalism remains, however, confined to a conventional understanding of experimentalism as referring to socially distributed practices of problem-­ solving based on epistemic (fallibilism) and political ­(inclusion) criteria. As a consequence, the experimentalist dimension of   However, in line with the German reception of Peirce, Lamla speaks rather of Kommunikationsgemeinschaft (community of communication). See Lamla (2013a, 348). 8

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democracy amounts to nothing more than a readiness to adjust one’s own theoretical assumptions to the changing dimensions of experience, to be ready to experiment with new perspectives (Lamla, 2013b, 333). With Dewey and Latour, Lamla sees the gist of democratic experimentalism in its capacity to handle complexity and uncertainty through integration into a single process of inquiry conducted by and involving heterogeneous actors and perspectives. Yet the general theme of opinion and will formation plays too big a role in Lamla’s understanding of democratic experimentalism to leave sufficient room for the examination of more specific implications of democratic experimentalism for a theory of institutions. The consideration of social processes certainly enriches Lamla’s account of democratic experimentalism as it points to concrete practices of social learning. In so doing, thanks to his sociological background, Lamla goes significantly beyond purely epistemic accounts of democratic experimentalism such as those mentioned above. While the dimension of social learning is clearly identified, no real contribution is, however, offered to explain what it means for a society (or a social group) to develop experimental ways of learning and interacting with its own environment. Doing so would have required a more articulate account of how institutions operate as agencies for promoting as well as for accumulating social learning. These two families of approach, while adequately capturing essential features of democratic experimentalism, remain, however, wanting on at least two dimensions. The first problematic dimension is that these approaches usually overemphasize the exploratory dimension of experimentalism—experimenting as testing—to the detriment of the dimension of how to consolidate the results of successful experiments. Yet experimentation without capitalization is evolutionary irrational, and fails to capture the essential dimension of experimentalism—be it in science or in society—which concerns precisely the development of appropriate ways of taking stock of experience in developing more effective patterns of action and in improving opportunities for additional social learning. As with the pragmatist tradition, the account of democratic experimentalism needs, therefore, to be completed with a theory of how social learning is fostered by democratic experimentalist institutions, of how institutional settings can help us take stock of successful experimenta-

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tions. This requires in turn that we ask not only how institutions learn, but also how institutions may improve the learning capacity of a social unit, how they can promote the collective learning of new collective strategies that are more effective but also more democratic.9 The second problematic dimension is that, once put in historical perspective, the characterization of experimentalism as the introduction of fallibilist methods in society loses part of its pathbreaking novelty. Indeed, while these elements were radically new in Dewey’s time, today they constitute rather uncontroversial pillars of democratic theory, particularly in its epistemic variants. As I have explained elsewhere (Frega, 2010, 2012a), these elements can be better subsumed under the heading of a pragmatist theory of public reason, with its inclusive, experimental, fallibilist, and open-ended conception of decision-making as extended and distributed social process. Democratic experimentalism, as I intend to show, includes more than this social and experimental—society-centred and practice-­ based—conception of reason. It particularly includes a theory of institutions, something that the classical pragmatists merely adumbrated without really developing its content. For these reasons, these conceptions of democratic experimentalism are doubly incomplete. First, they restrain it to the extension of fallibilism to social and political action. Second, they reduce experimentation to its disruptive and creative dimension. In both ways they neglect its institutional dimension. To appraise the potential of pragmatism for contemporary democratic theory, we should go significantly beyond these general statements. We should, in particular, be able to explain what requirements democratic experimentalism sets for a democratic society. To achieve this aim, we should be able to explain in greater detail what difference democratic experimentalism makes to democratic theory in the terms of a more specific theory of democratic institutions. James Johnson and Jack Knight’s theory of political pragmatism makes some significant progress in this direction. Johnson and Knight have developed a pragmatist theory of political institutions at the heart of which they place the idea of institutional pluralism, according to which regulative functions in society can be achieved through a variety of  Serrano Zamora (2016) asks this question with reference to social movements.

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i­nstitutional solutions, such as markets, democratic decision-making procedures, bureaucracy, adjudication through courts, private associations, economic hierarchies, and social norms. The pragmatic assumption embedded in their theory consists in claiming that the value and scope of an institution cannot be set in abstract terms but rather depends upon the contextual conditions in which it will have to operate. Therefore, decisions about which institution should rule which part of society will have to be taken on experimental grounds: “institutional experimentation is a useful instrument for generating knowledge about the effectiveness of institutions in various social contexts” (Knight and Johnson, 2011, 6). This theoretical presupposition calls for a meta-institutional framework within which to realize the experimentation of competing institutional solutions, the monitoring and assessing of the outcome of the experiments (the performance of the institutions), as well as of their ongoing performances. Experimentalism, therefore, does not denote a specific feature of given social practices or institutions, but rather a theoretical method for deciding which institutional solution to adopt in each case. This argument is then used by Knight and Johnson to formulate a justification of democracy, conceived as the meta-institutional setting that best promotes institutional pluralism. “Indeed, we argue that democracy enjoys a second-order priority precisely because it is uniquely useful in approaching the crucial, complex, and conflictual task involved in the ongoing process of selecting, implementing, and maintaining effective institutional arrangements” (Knight and Johnson, 2011, 12). This distinction between institutional orders is a decisive advance in the theory of democratic experimentalism insofar as it gives institutional form to the experimental principle of critical and reflective assessment of performances. It contends that democracy must by definition be experimental, and provides experimentalism with a method and a clear institutional goal. Knight and Johnson show that pragmatism has something important to say about the democratic importance of institutions, and they rightly connect the advantages of pragmatism to its conception of democracy as the capacity to valorize diversity in the solution of problems. Here they find the most promising ground for an epistemic justification of democracy, one which, to their merit, abandons the abstract domain of epistemology to enter the social field of institutional theory. This intuition is,

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however, not fully explored, as the justificatory preoccupation of the authors prevents them from exploring in greater detail the consequences of experimentalism for a theory of institutions. Their account of democratic experimentalism does not go much farther than providing a justification of democracy’s superiority over markets, technocracy, and community-based cooperation in solving problems of coordination. Moreover, by narrowing their focus to democracy as an institutional setting for the coordination of social life, they reduce the potential scope of democratic experimentalism to the operations of formal political institutions, as one can see from the place they assign to vote and deliberation in their argument—vote and deliberation being the factors that help differentiate democracy from market and other mechanisms of social coordination. As a consequence, the momentous question of how to transform and renovate democratic institutions in the face of their actual crisis unfortunately finds no answer in Knight and Johnson’s work. In contrast with these works, the hypothesis I formulate here is that democratic experimentalism delivers its highest potential not when it is conceived of as a general model of participatory and deliberative decision-­ making, but when it is conceived of as a concrete way of designing social institutions. Reaching this end requires that we leave the ground of debate over the justification of democracy to enter into more sociologically informed reflections on the organizational features of social institutions. Only in this way we will be able to grasp how institutional architectures influence an institution’s capacity to combine epistemic and democratic requirements. Indeed, if it is true that in highly complex societies it is only through well-structured institutional devices that social intelligence can flourish, and that the results of social learning can be accumulated and put to use, then a theory of democratic experimentalism must include an account of democratic institutional engineering. Useful hints to further this idea can be found in the contributions to democratic experimentalism offered by a fourth family of approaches, which has attempted to conceptualize it as a theory of institutions consistent with a pragmatist—mostly Deweyan—conception of democracy. Indeed, what democratic experimentalism has achieved, particularly in the works of Charles Sabel, Christopher Ansell, and Roberto Unger, is to provide some landmark for a pragmatist theory of social institutions.

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Hence this fourth conception of democratic experimentalism is deeply misunderstood when it is reduced to a mere “decentralized theory of government” (Macarthur). Yet, having been developed in the somehow specialized contexts of the sociology of organizations (Ansell), of constitutionalism (Sabel, Dorf ), and of governance theory (Sabel, Zeitlin), the all-encompassing theoretical implications of this approach for a theory of democracy have not been fully elaborated. In this chapter I build on these pioneer contributions to construe democratic experimentalism as a general pragmatist theory of social institutions that is consistent with, and indeed completes, the social ontology of democracy I have developed so far. Only in this sense, I will contend, can the expression ‘democratic experimentalism’ be endowed with a meaning which is precise enough to be more than a mere appeal to reason in politics.

3

 he Epistemic Component of Democratic T Experimentalism

Swamped by the recent proliferation of experimentalist discourses, we tend sometimes to forget that the relation between experimentation and democratic social life was somehow endemic in classical American pragmatism as well as in the contemporary Chicago School of sociology. Pragmatists have traditionally conceived of policy interventions as types of field experiment. Experiments generate learning either through confirmation or through surprise. In doing so, they contribute not only to the solution of complex technical problems but they also empower citizens to challenge contested or dominating views of social life. Indeed, as the discussion so far should have made clear, a problem denotes any situation which impedes or makes painful individual or social action. To this extent, experiences of social suffering, injustice, practices of discrimination are paradigmatic examples of social problems that democratic ­experimentalism faces. As a problem-solving attitude, democratic experimentalism adds a political twist to experimentalism; it proposes, indeed, a kind of democratic experimentalism. What remains still to be understood is what experimentalism so conceived adds to our understanding of

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the nature, place, and function of institutions within a democratic society. In this and subsequent sections I will, therefore, explore the question of what it means for an institution to be at the same time experimental and democratic. From the standpoint of the wide view of democracy, democratic experimentalism provides not only a fruitful general framework for rethinking democracy in complex societies but, more specifically, also a set of theoretical insights to explain why democracy correlates positively with social innovation. To that extent, democratic experimentalism offers helpful tools to explore the correlation between democracy and efficacy, at a time when the resurgence of authority of expertise seems to rule out democracy as a valid framework within which to think and produce social innovation, and when the trade-off between knowledge and participation sheds its disquieting shadow over the prospects of the democratic project.10 Democratic experimentalism, with its orientation toward methods of controlling the production and testing of new solutions to existing problems, seems to legitimate a plausible hope for reform in areas of social life in which entrenched obstacles to change seemed to allow none. Experimentalist approaches begin from the assumption that, in conditions of uncertainty, policy aims cannot be extensively defined in advance of implementation. They have to be discovered in the course of problem-­ solving through the direct participation of involved publics assisted by well-designed problem-solving institutions which implement procedures capable of maximizing social learning under conditions of democratic inclusion while reducing the costs associated with procedures of experimentation in real life. Democratic experimentalism seeks to devise effective ways to promote collective learning, which in turn requires that the practice of doubting is institutionalized in ways similar to what happen in scientific research. Democratic experimentalism operates then on the verges of a paradox. On the one hand, it proclaims that democratic problem-­solving must rely upon the distributed knowledge of affected publics rather than upon transcendent appeals to expert knowledge. On the other hand, it contends that, to cope with complex situations, institu This is a classical topos of realist theories of democracy. Among recent publications that have restated the point, see Somin (2016), Cain (2014), Achen and Bartels (2016). 10

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tions must rely on the best available knowledge. This tension between ordinary experience and expert knowledge is at the heart of democratic experimentalism. One can even say that the task of democratic experimentalism consists precisely in devising institutional devices capable of avoiding both extremes of populism and elitism. A democratic experimentalist theory of institutions should, therefore, explain how democratic forms of organization can fare better than hierarchical forms in circumstances of dynamic change and uncertainty. As several authors have noted, these challenges are not specific to formal political institutions. Indeed, the challenge of democratic experimentalism needs to be met at all levels of social life. Experimentalist approaches to democracy emphasize the epistemic benefits of democracy, yet they go beyond standard views of epistemic democracy. Consonant with the pragmatist approach that inspires them, they design political institutions as institutions dedicated to solving problems, rather than to building consensus, managing power, or redistributing resources. Therefore they express a rationalistic standpoint, however tempered by the consideration that rationality denotes the quality or attribute of a social process. We should note that, while standard experimentalism focuses upon the knowledge producing capacity of experimentally conducted tests in repeatable conditions, democratic experimentalism emphasizes rather the knowledge producing potential embedded in ordinary social situations, and searches for general patterns which can promote and consolidate social learning and innovation in heterogeneous ordinary settings. Its method, therefore, does not consist in treating society as a place for naturalistic experiments or for sophisticated institutional engineering, but rather in identifying the conditions under which the knowledge producing capacities and the learning potential which is already implicit in social life can be enhanced. To do this, and starting from the pragmatist assumption that doubting is the core of the experimentalist attitude, democratic experimentalism seeks ways to institutionalize individual and collective processes of doubting and learning. Its aim is to institutionalize the habit of doubting, of formulating new hypotheses, and of introducing fallibilist attitudes within social practices. The term itself refers to the experimental, reflexive, fallible, dimension of every cumulative learning process, one that is distributed

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among a plurality of social actors—what pragmatists would call a “community of inquiry”, that is spatio-temporally extended, and divided into phases, each characterized by its own epistemic quality. Democratic experimentalism takes as its starting point the pragmatist awareness that doubt is at the same time the most fundamental habit of the experimental attitude, and something that is painful and totally non spontaneous. As pragmatists have often emphasized, the development of a reflective method for the fixation of beliefs is the results of centuries of social evolution, an achievement that has been rare and costly in the history of human being. Similarly, they insisted that institutions, like individuals, have a natural tendency to rigidify and transform into permanent features what originally emerged as a temporary solution to a contingent problem. Democratic experimentalism, therefore, seeks to inject into the social body what Peirce called “the laboratory habit of mind”, ie a set of attitudes that contrast with the institutional tendency to consolidate and solidify its own routines. Hence the importance assigned to learning as an institutional process. A social process that is consistent with the principles of democratic experimentalism should be organized in ways that promote the accumulation of learning experiences, while maintaining constant vigilance over the quality of the solutions it offers to collective problems. Pragmatism contends that, to fulfill these tasks, institutions and social processes must be organized so as to reap the full benefit from epistemic pluralism, which means that they must be able to transform diversity and conflict from an obstacle into an opportunity. In similar ways, democratic experimentalist institutions should be equipped with routines capable of transforming doubt and uncertainty from sources of risk into opportunities for social innovation. Given these features, experimentalist institutions must comply with a plurality of partially conflicting injunctions: (1) the tension between the local validity of a contextual solution and the overall rationality of a repeatable solution, a requirement that defines the properly experimentalist moment; (2) the tension between the requirements of efficiency and of legitimacy; (3) the tension between the views of affected publics and the views of those in charge of decision-making as well as of experts, and (4) the tension between autonomy and individual creativity on the one hand and the added value of social coordination on the other. One of the

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most interesting features of democratic experimentalism, and more generally of the pragmatist epistemology, consists in identifying institutional conditions under which democratic inclusion has a positive epistemic pay-off. In doing so, democratic experimentalism can claim that the inclusion of the largest number of affected individuals is required not only for moral and political reasons, but also for its capacity to enhance the learning and problem-solving potential of a given social aggregate. Inclusion of the largest number refers equally to individuals (either those subjected or those affected) as well as the types of experience that are taken into consideration (the principle of the creativity of experience). Democratic experimentalism emphasizes the fact that failure to understand the deep entanglement between legitimacy and efficacy—a central and still ignored message of pragmatism and critical theory—is one of the major causes of democratic deficit. Indeed, in the framework of classical representative democracy, the increasing inability of political systems to solve social problems can only produce further lacks in legitimacy which in turn further weakens the problem-solving capacity of institutions, exposing them to the vicious circle of self-reinforcing democratic deficits.

4

 n Experimentalist Model A of Organizational Learning

In one among the earliest writings devoted to democratic experimentalism in its connection with pragmatism,11 Charles Sabel has developed a pragmatist theory of institutions consistent with these assumptions. Sabel takes as his starting point the following observations: (a) the socio-­ institutional conditions which characterize advanced capitalist societies  See Dorf and Sabel (1998). Ansell (2011) articulates a similar perspective by observing the constant and recurring tensions which exist between centralization and decentralization in contemporary organization theory. Also Knight and Johnson (2011) insists on the benefits of coordinated decentralization, considered as the specific advantage of democracy as a system for the coordination of collective action. More recently, STS scholars have begun to study political institutions as experimental organizations in ways highly compatible with the pragmatist assumptions here sketched. For an overview, see Law and Williams (2014). 11

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require the development of highly decentralized decision-making systems, as they respond better to social problems; (b) without coordination between different local decision centers, locally established experiments fail to consolidate in stable patterns of social coordination12; and (c) coordination among different centers of decision-making creates trade-off problems between democratic legitimacy (adequate consideration of the claims of those which are affected) and efficiency of action (speed of response, suitability to needs). Tackling democratic deficits through a pragmatist theory of institutions requires, therefore, devising suitable institutional arrangements to facilitate the experimental attitude of given social units, based on the observation that only an experimental and fallible attitude, one capable of institutionalizing change, can assure the ongoing adjustment of institutions to the needs and expectations of the social units they are supposed to serve. Such an approach is characterized by the conceptual integration of different approaches, including: (a) sustained attention to the dynamics of participation at any level of social life; (b) a thorough consideration of problems of information, cost, and economic efficiency; (c) the analysis of the indirect and unintended effects produced by any type of political structure, and (d) a non-biased openness to the consideration and integration of the various dimensions which concur to determine democratic legitimacy. This mix of participatory and instrumental concerns distinguishes democratic experimentalist approaches from purely participatory procedures on the one hand, and forms of institutional engineering on the other. Theorists of democratic experimentalism generally consider that one of the major challenges facing reform is that innovation usually takes place at the local level because only at this level knowledge of problems and solutions is sufficiently detailed. Unfortunately, local innovations are context bound and difficult to export to other situations. The singularity of solution and their reduced translatability is a great concern for democratic experimentalists, because the freedom to experiment is paid at the high price of a great loss in terms of social learning, which requires the cumulability of local successes. Decentralization, so often praised by  As remarked above, the tension between generality and context is a distinguishing feature of institutionalist approaches. 12

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­ articipatory democrats as the best avenue for self-government, appears p to be simultaneously the solution and the problem. On the one hand, it promotes social learning and solutions that are adjusted to the needs of concerned social units. On the other hand, its way of proceeding prevents the larger society from accumulating learning results. Good practices tend to remain local excellences but the system as such does not improve. To solve this problem, democratic experimentalism relies on three interrelated principles: (1) decentralization of decisions to enable local actors to use their own knowledge and experience both in defining problems and seeking solutions so that the solutions to the problems and the decisions are developed locally; (2) networking of solutions developed locally and maximization of opportunities for coordination between these units. The evaluation of solutions is provided centrally, as only a central instance is able to handle a large amount of information, compare the benefits of similar units, assess risks etc., and (3) the creation of standard procedures and ad hoc institutions to maximize collective learning and cooperation in solving problems, including revision of the assessment procedures themselves. Since learning, doubting, conducting investigations, and sharing information are not natural attitudes, an institutional experimentalist architecture is needed to devise approaches that promote the development of individual habits and patterns of interaction which are consistent with this approach. These three principles define the categorical framework within which to develop democratic and experimentalist institutional architectures, which can be put at work in a heterogeneous plurality of contexts such as school system reform (Liebman and Sabel, 2003), the functioning of political institutions at the national or supranational level (Unger, 2000, 13), and the networking of private organizations such as companies or public organizations such as administrations (Sabel and Simon, 2011). Compared with state institutions and the traditional ­central market, democratic experimentalist institutions produce more satisfactory results when the following conditions occur: (1) the sites at which a problem arises and requires to be addressed are too numerous and dispersed for easy or low-cost centralized monitoring of compliance with regulations; (2) the diversity of sites at which similar problems arise suggests that problem-solvers at different sites will want to employ v­ arious

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means to achieve similar aims and specify them differently; (3) the volatility of sites requires continuous reflection on means and ends, and requires their mutual adjustment in the light of new information about the environment, and (4) the complexity of problems and solutions— where problems are substantially the product of multiple causes and connected with other problems, crossing conventional policy domains and processes—implies that the appropriate strategy requires coordination across these domains. Literature on democratic experimentalist institutions has noted that the challenges to innovation imposed by the accelerated pace of social change threaten private firms and public institutions alike, and whilst private firms have been the first to encounter this challenge and devise institutional solutions, their findings can be adjusted so as to be applied also to public institutions. Indeed, from the vantage point of democratic experimentalism, “[l]earning is one thing democracy and economic innovation have in common” (Unger, 1996, 140). The parallel drawn between private firms and public institutions should come as no surprise, nor should it be taken as an attempt to reduce the logic of public institutions to that of private firms. If one admits that the organizational similarities that existed between state bureaucracies and Fordist organizations at the turn of the twentieth century were the result of selective strategies to adapt to the same environment, one should be equally ready to accept that, under changing environmental circumstances, private and public organizations may evolve along similar lines. Organizational innovations, now known under the labels of ‘learning organizations’ and ‘knowledge management’,13 have precisely aimed at transforming private firms into ‘pragmatist organizations’, which means into entities capable of integrating learning procedures within their adaptive strategies. Sabel refers, in particular, to practices such as benchmarking, simultaneous engineering, learning by monitoring, error-detection systems, peer review, and the Quality Service Review. From the standpoint of a pragmatist epistemology, these techniques have in common two major aspects. The first is the concrete involvement of all the m ­ embers  For an examination of the relationship between these discourses and pragmatist epistemology, see Frega (2006). 13

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of the social unit in problem-solving practices. Small scale makes involvement much easier. The second is the institutionalization of the practice of doubt, encouraging actors to call established practices into question in order to maximize learning opportunities. Their explicit task consists in introducing routines that oblige organizations to run continuous learning processes. Learning from mistakes, multiplying stress tests, learning by observing what others are doing, mutual error detection and correction are some of the technical devices whereby an obligation to doubt is embedded in the functioning of a social unit and routinized—which means habitualized. They are the institutional counterpart of what classical pragmatists called the habit of taking habit. Through these second-­ order procedures, what is being achieved is, therefore, the development of organizational habits—routines—which operate as forms of reflexivity in collective behavior. Consonant with the pragmatist ‘laboratory habit of mind’ praised by Peirce as the core of the experimental method and by Dewey as the first pillar of the democratic method, democratic experimentalist institutions share the assumption that any error, unexpected rupture, malfunction etc. should be considered the equivalent of a failed experimental test. As a consequence, rather than being remedied through the routinized application of ad hoc solutions—as is usually the case in the theory and practice of public administrations—errors should become the starting points of review processes aimed at understanding their causes. As he explains: “[t]he new firm is therefore a member of a new class of institutions defined not by the fixed routines to which they are oblivious, but rather by the routines they use for interrogating and altering their routines (including, of course, the particular methods of self-interrogation). Think of the new institutions as pragmatist in that they systematically provoke doubt, in the pragmatist sense of an urgent suspicion that habitual beliefs are poor guides to current problems” (Dorf and Sabel, 1998, 302). Note that the perspective adopted is not instrumentalist but fallibilist: the focus is not on instrumental rationality, efficacy, end-means, but on inquiry, fallibilism, reflexivity, ends-in-view. While most of the experimental techniques for institutionalizing experimental attitudes came from business innovations among capitalist firms, it is worth noting that organizational experimentation in the cooperative sector has equally

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relied upon experimentalist patterns whose logic reflects, at least in part, the model identified by Sabel, that is, high local autonomy combined with efficient central monitoring and supply of technical expertise and knowledge.14 Successful experiences such as Mondragon in Spain and the cooperative sector in Italy show that a significant share of their success is due precisely to their capacity to implement quasi-experimentalist procedures of centrally coordinated local autonomy. Democratic experimentalism begins from the simple and yet fundamental assumption that experimental routines are the organizational equivalents of habits of learning. It then strives to draw out the organizational implications of the claim that learning comes spontaneously neither to humans nor to organizations. In both cases, habits of doubt need to be learnt and stabilized, and this requires sustained efforts. That is, if the major problem afflicting organizations is stiffening routines—what Dewey called the problem of lagging—democratic experimentalism seeks solutions in the institutionalization of second-order routines whose task consists in recursively challenging existing routines. These second-order routines are the social counterpart of individual second-order habits discussed in Chap. 6. This approach should, therefore, be seen as a mere extension to organizational behavior of some basic principles of the pragmatist theory of action. In other words, democratic experimentalism tries to institutionalize an injunction to learn which is first of all an indispensable ingredient in the life of individuals and groups, and which does not develop spontaneously. In addition, and this is adds a political twist to the notion, this injunction to learn is, or at least can be made consistent with, democratic principles, insofar as it is consistent with the idea that its success reposes upon the active involvement of users, citizens, suppliers etc. in the collective process of inquiry. A second, potentially contested, element shared by democratic experimentalist approaches concerns the role of central instances in the coordination of social life. Democratic experimentalist approaches in fact share the view that decentralization without coordination is ineffective, with the corollary that spontaneous creativity which is not channeled into organized circles of improvement is highly inefficient and, in the end, 14

 See Dow (2003) for an overview.

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impotent to achieve the hoped for innovation. Hence democratic experimentalism insists that, to be conducive to effective social learning, local and participatory learning must be forced into a process of generalization, under the assumption that learning requires generality. Experimentalist approaches can, therefore, leave a considerable degree of autonomy to local units, which can even decide the standards on which they will assess their own performances, under the condition that evaluating procedures are conducted transparently and can, therefore, be monitored from outside. Such an institutional architecture exemplifies the sense in which democratic experimentalism combines the experimentalist drive toward learning and innovation with the participatory requirements of democracy. In conclusion, a democratic experimentalist institution is experimentalist because (1) it increases opportunities to experiment with alternative solutions to complex problems; (2) it institutionalizes the exercise of doubt aimed at permanently questioning routines; (3) it emphasizes that test experiments have, first of all, local validity because they are rooted in problems whose form is not universal but depends upon contextual variables, and (4) it defines standard procedures to allow comparison of data produced according to non-homogeneous procedures, hence preserving local autonomy while enabling collective learning. It is democratic because: (1) through decentralization, it increases the chance that those who are affected by a problem can participate in the search for solutions; (2) it promotes extensive inclusion, expanding participation from the initial perception of a problem until the final moment of decision-making across the entire process of social inquiry, and (3) it valorizes the epistemic resources of local actors, boosting active rather than passive involvement in social practices and institutions. The goal of democratic experimentalism is to enable forms of public inquiry that promote local experience and autonomy while avoiding the shortcomings and limitations of localism. Achieving this result requires that institutions establish self-critical routines which correspond to a model of self-correction capable of institutionalizing the practice of doubt as one capable of generating new solutions by unsettling established beliefs. The model privileges routines that encourage mutual learning, cooperation, and accountability, which are seen as the counterparts

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of local autonomy. So far, we have not considered the risks that vested interests may acquire control of organizations so as to monopolize the benefits of social learning. This aspect will be examined in the following sections.

5

 ow to Experiment: Combining H Democratic Procedure with Experimental Problem Solving

Since its inception, pragmatism has endorsed an experimentalist approach to social life. By this, pragmatists meant not only that social and political problems had to be tackled through experimental methodologies but, more broadly, that social life, particularly in its most dense and complex forms, was itself a social experiment, one that needed, however, to be studied and controlled if one wanted to orient it toward satisfactory results (Gross and Krohn, 2005). This experimentalist view assigns social actors a decisive role, as they are seen not only as subjects of experiments led by someone else, but also and especially as active inquirers. This approach, which transforms social actors in active inquirers is a decisive legacy of pragmatism for contemporary democratic experimentalism. Changing the nature of the inquirer transforms, obviously, the nature of the inquiry itself, and calls for new experimentalist practices of democratic problem solving. Because of the deep intricacies and complexities of their objects, debates on urban planning and environmental sustainability have pioneered reflections on new experimental practices. Both problems are characterized by the interaction of highly heterogeneous factors, and by the fact that system failures are endemic in socio-technical systems owing to institutional arrangements, technological infrastructure, existing networks, and path-dependency. This situation creates, among other things, a deep entanglement of facts and values. In this context, there has been a significant shift from approaches based on expert technological knowledge to approaches based on social learning (Bos, Brown and Farrelly, 2013). ‘Social learning’ refers to a broader process of social change which

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is not limited to the technological sphere but which potentially involves norms, values, goals, operational procedures, and actors that govern decision-­making processes and actions needed to translate policy ideas into practice. Because of its characteristics, social learning requires the involvement of larger networks of stakeholders and high levels of reflexivity and interaction. Social inclusion and reflexivity take centre stage for reasons that are simultaneously epistemic and political. On the one hand, devising appropriate solutions requires us not only to overcome the lay-­ expert divide, but also a more sophisticated way of involving diverse types of stakeholders, that is, groups of experts, politicians, administrators, interest advocates, citizens, because information is fragmented and distributed across a wide spectrum of agents. On the other hand, decisions will tend to affect different groups in diverse ways, so that their legitimacy and their efficacy require not only formal but also effective, concrete inclusion within processes of inquiry and, to a certain extent, within processes of management. The formula ‘governance experimentation’ has been coined to describe this more radical form of democratic experimentalism in which higher legitimacy, better knowledge, and increased efficiency are sought through effective involvement of diverse stakeholders in the concrete project of reform and management of collective resources. In this context, experimentation has assumed a double valence—epistemological and political. It follows that the very meaning we assign to democratic experimentalism is, to a certain extent, dependent upon the epistemological framework we use to define what an experiment is. It is therefore important to identify and differentiate different models of experimentation to show how they modify our understanding of democratic experimentalism. Moreover, a typology of forms of experimentalism will prove useful to better specify the conditions under which the adoption of an experimental attitude increases the democratic quality of a social unit rather than promoting potentially anti-democratic forms of expertocracy and epistocracy. There is agreement on the fact that, if pragmatists are experimentalists, they generally tend to share a peculiar understanding of what is an experiment. Particularly in the Deweyan tradition, the evolutionary conception of experimentation as the exploration of a new course of action with the aim of solving a pressing problem has been prioritized over the idea of

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experimentation as controlled action enabling the (repeatable) observation of isolated factors. An experiment is an intervention in reality undertaken with the aim of assessing its consequences in terms of goal achievement or problem resolution, with the hope of drawing generalizable lessons from it. This idea of experimentation is steeped in an evolutionary conception of life which conceives of interactions between human beings and their environments in terms of creative adaptation.15 The idea of experimentation underlines the superior control offered by critical thinking with respect to random trial and error. In Peirce’s terminology, it is the discovery that rational inquiry is a more reliable method for the fixation of beliefs than its competitors. Hence experimentation is a controlled intervention in reality, undertaken with the aim of drawing conclusions about an intended course of action, or the solution to a problem. Dewey’s method of “dramatic rehearsal” can be seen as an extension of this problem-solving orientation to the entire domain of moral and political reasoning, ie to problem that have a normative, and not only technical or practical dimension.16 To understand the specific conception of experimentation that is at the heart of democratic experimentalism, we can refer to the taxonomy proposed by (Ansell and Bartenberger, 2015), which distinguish three major conceptions of experimentation which they call (1) controlled, (2) Darwinian, and (3) generative. Controlled experimentation is the gold standard of experimental science, which refers to the expert construction of artificial settings that enable observation and test with the aim of ­verifying or falsifying a given hypothesis. Control of the environment, isolation of relevant factors, and repeatability of tests are the main features of this conception of experimentation, to which we should probably add that of a sharp separation between science and society. Indeed, control of the situation through its transformation into an experimental setting defines the basic model for this type of experimentation. Paradigmatic types of controlled experimentation are found today, for example, in  For an examination of the pragmatist theory of inquiry in relation to evolutionary epistemology, see Frega (2011a). 16  See Caspary (2000) for an account of the place of dramatic rehearsal in Dewey’s ethical and political theory, and McVea (2006) for an extension of this approach to moral dilemmas in business ethics. 15

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experimental economics such as choice and valuation experiments, willingness-­ to-pay experiments, common pool resource experiments, simulation experiments, and auction experiments. In all these experiments, the human or social factor enters under the guise of individual choice. Social reality is investigated with the aim of discovering, through an experimental setting, individual preferences, values, and orientations. For example, in the case of common pool resource experiments, researchers: “evaluate conditions of cooperation in use of common pool resource among sets of participants who make interdependent decisions in a controlled setting with rules that define a payoff structure” (Ansell, Farjoun and Boin, 2015, 10). These and all the other types of experiments included in the category of controlled experimentation attempt to validate a general hypothesis concerning human behavior. As such, their relation with democracy seems to be very limited. Experimentation is conducted with the aim of producing empirical evidence to advance scientific knowledge, rather than to identify and solve a problem that may be of common concern. Moreover, individuals are involved in the experiments as sources of information rather than as autonomous participants, that is, they do not contribute to determine the setting or the goals of the experiment. The conclusion as to what they want, feel, desire, and think is left entirely in the hands of expert researchers. The second category of experiments is that of “Darwinian experiments”, so called because of their reliance upon the evolutionary principles of variation, selection, and retention. The intuition at the heart of this paradigm of experimentation is, of course, the Darwinian model of random selection from a multitude of cases. The assumption is that, by multiplying the number of units experimenting, we increase the chances of reaching a better solution. Darwinian experiments embody a very high degree of pluralism and autonomy. Rather than emphasizing a unit’s capacity to design, run, and control a plurality of experimental settings according to a top-down logic, they rely upon the self-organizing capacity of autonomously selected social units. In the field of research, this may amount to a general design for generating scientific results by putting research units in competition with each other. In the social and political fields, it amounts to promoting freedom to experiment according to a bottom-up logic of discovery. Darwinian experimentation comes very

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close to a distinctive feature of democratic experimentalism, which is its combination of decentralization and coordination. As regards Darwinian experimentation, the main function of experimentation shifts from the confirmation/disconfirmation of a general hypothesis to the generation of new ideas and innovations in real practice. Thanks to this change, socio-political reality enters into experimentation. We should think here at methods of social research and intervention based on the search for “good practices”: a central unit finances local experiments with the aim of letting relevant knowledge emerge bottom-up. The democratic quality of Darwinian experiments becomes evident once local dispersion is combined with autonomy, so that local units are allowed to experiment with problems which affect members of the units themselves. Hence the major difference with controlled experiments is not only that Darwinian experimentation: “shifts the focus from individual experiments to systems or ecologies of experimentation” (Ansell and Bartenberger, 2015, 12). The democratic relevance of Darwinian experimentation comes in particular from the fact that this model of experimentation overcomes the separation between the agents of experimentation (the researchers) and the subjects of experimentation (the citizens). Experimentation here aims at discovering what may work in a situation, and from the standpoint of social actors in their double role of agents and subjects. Here the aim of extracting general knowledge from the experiment is inseparable from the success of the local test in solving a singular problematic situation. We solve a local problem and attempt to draw conclusions that can be generalized so as to be useful when seeking to solve problems that may have common as well as divergent features. But the main reason why the local unit experiment, and why the experiment may be said to succeed, is that the unit has a problem, and seeks for a solution. From the vantage point of this interpretation of Darwinian experiments, the third category of ‘generative experiments’ appears as a minor variation in which Darwinian principles of variation, selection, and retention are replaced by the idea of reiteration, but still within a problem-­ driven conception of why and how people experiment. Methodologically, generative experiments replace proliferation with iteration. Whereas proliferation found its paradigmatic principle in methods based on “good practices”, iteration is best exemplified by linear reform methods. A single

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experiment is repeated through time and redesigned to adapt to new findings and changing circumstances. This type of ‘adaptive’ experiment is, like Darwinian experiments, friendly to democratic experimentalism insofar as its temporal structure requires the adoption of a reflexive and recursive attitude and facilitates, and to a large extent requires, the extensive involvement of the stakeholder concerned with the problem at hand. As the authors also observe: “[i]n generative experimentation, relevant stakeholders are actively engaged in the conception, implementation, and refinement of the experiment. The degree of stakeholder engagement, however, can vary, especially when it comes to the involvement of the broad public. Generative experiments can range from open forums where the public has a say in all phases of the experiment to a more limited approach where the process is open to public feedback only during certain feedback periods” (Ansell and Bartenberger, 2015, 14). The Darwinian as well as the generative types belong to the broader category of ‘pragmatist experiments’ and are, therefore, consistent with a democratic experimentalist approach to social innovation. Their relevance to a theory of democracy lies in their better capacity to overcome the fact/value, means/end, and lay/expert dichotomies. They are both conceived in terms of a socially extended process of inquiry which benefits from extending social inclusion. Moreover, their problem-driven structure is suited to socio-political purposes of reform. In different ways, they contribute to the clarification of how social experimentation can be made more democratic, and why social innovation requires democracy to be most effective.

6

Democratic Experimentalism and the Problem Solving State

As I have remarked on several occasions, at the heart of political pragmatism is the connection between legitimacy and efficacy, that we have formulated in terms of the irreducible entanglement between expressive and functional factors as a key feature of social and political life. We have also seen that pragmatists see politics as a refined evolution of an ordinary function, just as they consider science to be the refinement of everyday

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intelligence, and art as the refinement of more ordinary forms of aesthetic experience. As political pragmatists such as Mary Parker Follett, John Dewey, and Harold Lasswell never tired of repeating, like any other form of collective agency, the State is not a moral entity, but an institution created with the aim of solving specific societal problems. Hence it appears, quite naturally, as the institutional embodiment of a collective actor, that finds its legitimacy in its capacity to solve the problems for which it has been instituted. According to this view, states are large-scale problem-­ solvers, and their legitimacy depends upon their capacity to solve societal problems, and bureaucracies, rather than parliaments, are the agencies devoted to this goal. Democratic experimentalism provides useful hints to our understanding of democratic states as democratic problem-solvers in the terms specified above. As we will see, this strategy is particularly helpful to reconcile pragmatic efficacy with democratic legitimacy, insofar as democratic experimentalism is based upon a political rather than technocratic understanding of social problems. Extending the democratic experimentalist method to bureaucracies is predicated upon three arguments. The first is that contrary to the Arendtian and Habermasian traditions, pragmatism do not consider bureaucracy as the locus of instrumental rationality. Hence, there is no a priori reason why the bureaucracy too should be steered by the media of solidarity (see Chap. 7). The second is that bureaucracies have far greater reach and engender more sustained, deeper interaction with ordinary citizens than representative institutions. As a consequence, administrative institutions are a powerful site for developing democracy. The third argument is that bureaucracies are, precisely, the sites where the two ­democratic normative goals of legitimacy and efficacy are constantly in tension, where the output legitimacy of problem-solving and the input legitimacy of the people’s voice are confronted. Doing this, as we have seen, requires that bureaucracies are designed as experimental institutions. The adoption of an experimentalist perspective implies that the issue of how legitimacy is transmitted from legislative bodies to those administrative agencies that are supposed to realize their will needs to be reconsidered along more sophisticated lines than it is usually done. Indeed, whereas conventional theories of delegation based on the principal-­ agent model tend to see any attempt to autonomize the

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a­ dministrative agent from his principal as a threat to the legitimacy of its action, democratic experimentalism contends that decentralization and delegation are a necessary step toward more effective democratic problem-­ solving. From the democratic experimentalist standpoint developed in this chapter, the added value of democratic participation in policy-­ making is twofold. On the one hand, as democratic theorists have long acknowledged, it lies in the opportunity to influence the policy-agenda. But there is another, usually neglected, added value, which stems from involvement in the concrete implementation of policies and delivery of services which happens in the aftermath of decision-making. Institutional reform proposals have usually reflected this perspective, so that focus has traditionally been on the input side of decision-making, much less on the throughput and output side of how decisions are translated in concrete practices. Democratic experimentalism, as we have seen, integrates both dimensions of democracy: participation in decision-making and involvement in problem-solving. When observed superficially, this position may resemble strategies promoted by neoliberal conceptions of the “Big Society” or managerial strategies of public administration such as New Public Management (NPM). Similarities among these strategies derive from the fact that in contemporary society the imperative to experiment and innovate is not limited to private firms, but extends also to public institutions. There are, however, significant differences between neoliberalism and NPM on the one hand and democratic experimentalism on the other, as most contributors to this debate have made clear. Comparing these approaches may, however, help dispel some potential misunderstandings, shedding additional light on the distinctive features of a democratic experimentalist approach to democracy. It is with this intent that such a comparison is here undertaken. Democratic experimentalism’s emphasis on the efficacy of devolution and delegation in solving societal problems must not be confused with the neoliberal tendency to dismantle the state and devolve duties and tasks to the market or to civil society. Promoters of the ‘Big Society’ project have notably argued that: “[T]he state, instead of augmenting the social world as it was, nationalised a previously mutual society and reformed it according to an individualised culture of universal entitlement” (Blond, 2010, 282). Similar remarks can be leveled at NPM,

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which some of its supporters present as a kind of experimentalist institution. NPM seeks to innovate in public administrations by importing organizational models developed in the private sector, inasmuch as democratic experimentalism, as Sabel has noted, can relies on them. Like democratic experimentalism, NPM emphasizes the need of institutional change, assigns positive value to innovation, seeks to promote accountability, orienting institutions toward the needs of those they should serve. In its standard form, however, NPM emphasizes unilaterally the drive toward efficiency and remains bound to a managerial rationalization of means in the pursuit of given ends, rather than seeking to reconcile efficiency with democratic accountability. In addition, far from being given the active role of involved experimenters, citizens are reduced to the role of customers, their rights being limited to the assessment of the quality of services, and only rarely extended to the right to question the nature of services themselves. Hence, despite the superficial similarity, democratic experimentalism has distinguishing features of its own. As we have seen, it is animated by the willingness to combine the problem-solving capacity of experimentalist procedures with democratic expectations concerning the inclusivity of social inquiry and collective decision-making. While, therefore, democratic experimentalism shares with NPM an interest in procedures and practices that have been developed within the private sector, it rejects its basic assumption that markets are better problem-solvers. Indeed, democratic experimentalism’s interest in recent achievements in the private sector concerns the discovery of new learning strategies which empowers individuals as well as groups. Whereas NPM seeks to improve citizens’ satisfaction by introducing commercial strategies aimed at ­reinforcing the consumer’s rights as the mainstay of citizenship, or by simply increasing competition in the provision of goods and services, democratic experimentalism seeks rather to enhance an administration’s capacity for social learning by transforming citizens into active stakeholders. Whilst democratic experimentalism insists on devolving and delocalizing decision procedures for the sake of inquiry, it continues to emphasize the importance of centralized mechanisms, be it for their function in coordinating experimentation (Sabel, Knight-Johnson) or for their function in collecting revenues and distributing resources according to need (Unger).

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In other terms, the democratic problem-solving state relies upon the experimental resources of society but shares responsibility with differentiated publics in the solution of problems, particularly with the most needy. Its operational logic is that of the agent of a political community, not that of the market. Hence it is responsible for creating the conditions in which societal problem-solving may eventually operate more effectively than state problem-solving. According to this perspective, institutional innovation requires consistent investment in developing the capacities needed to empower individuals and groups or, in Unger’s terminology, to bridge the gap between the few vanguards and the multitudes of rear-guards. On this specific point, it is worth noting, for example, that Unger’s project of radical reform (discussed in the next section) is based on an increase, rather than a decrease in state spending. Hence, whereas neoliberal projects are dominated by the desire on the part of elites to retreat from society and to betray democracy’s inclusive aspirations (Lasch, 1995), leaving large parts of society to their own destiny, democratic experimentalism emphasizes the embeddedness of political institutions within society. Their function must chiefly remain that of assisting the public to become more autonomous in the management of its own problems, but within the framework of shared responsibility for control of the indirect consequences that befall society and that affect its strata in different ways. Taking the social ontology of democracy as a starting point, we can say that the problem-solving state should intervene at the three levels of habits, interactions, and institutions. First, it has an obligation to develop needed capabilities in citizens and must, therefore, provide the required means to do so. In this sense, subsidiarity can be legitimate only insofar as it relies upon a distributive mechanism for the allocation of resources, rather than on voluntary work on the part of informal networks and communities. Second, it must continue to assume that citizens have a responsible share and are autonomous individuals who require support. Hence the importance of horizontal relations between citizens and the socio-political actors who are appointed to support them. Third, it must promote problem-solving agencies operating according to experimental criteria. The problem-solving state complies with the normative requirements of democracy only if it succeeds in integrating these three ­elements: it should promote the development of capacities by protecting patterns of

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democratic interaction within the framework of experimentalist institutions. Indeed, democratic ideals can be fulfilled only on condition that risks and costs of indirect consequences are collectively shared, no matter who bears them; individuals are treated by the state as autonomous and equal, and institutions answer to the problems of different publics and in this way they become their own agencies. This is where democratic experimentalism and the neoliberal project importantly part company. Although neoliberalism too adopts the language of autonomy and problem-solving, these terms are disconnected from the democratic ideal of social emancipation. They merely betray the willingness of the better-off to avoid sharing responsibility for the consequences of social and natural events, leaving those who suffer them at their own mercy. The political projects of the neoliberal state as well as of the Big Society set unrealistic goals as they do not provide social actors with the means to attain them. As it has been noted, “citizens and voluntary organisations [have] been left to deal with mounting problems themselves in the absence of sufficient state support” (Boswell and Corbett, 2018, 630). These new governance practices celebrate individuals’ independence and autonomy without providing them with the resources to become autonomous, and they praise society’s capacity to solve problem without catering to the resources needed. As critics of the Big Society project have noted, if not accompanied by the appropriate means, the appeal to the notion of a community turns immediately into a mechanism to exploit the weakest members, letting, for example, the burden of social care fall once again on the shoulders of women. In so doing, rather than promoting fuller relations within smaller communities, the Big Society reinstates older asymmetries and creates new forms of inequality. Supporters of both projects, indeed, fail—or simply refuse—to see that the consequences of modernization have a differential impact on the various strata of society, and that this cannot be accounted for in terms of ‘luck equality’ (Anderson, 1999). In short, they refuse to acknowledge that social cooperation can succeed only when the benefits and disadvantages generated by social life are shared in common. In the neoliberal model, the state ceases to serve as the agency whereby a public organizes itself. The expressive element of social democracy is lost, and political problem-solving fails. The owners of the problem, i.e. those who bear its

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consequences, are dispossessed of concrete involvement in its solution, and the State is transformed into a tool of domination, producing the diffuse and intense rejection of representative democracy that is on the rise in the early twenty-first century. The emancipatory potential of democratic experimentalism embedded in the idea of a problem-solving state is further scaled up in the idea of radical reform through which pragmatists have tried to combine the pragmatic dimension of problem-solving with the utopian ideal of universal emancipation, giving rise to a form of utopian pragmatism whose content is still in the making.

7

F rom Circles of Improvement to Utopian Pragmatism

Despite the clearly emancipatory ambition of democratic experimentalism, pragmatism has generally been considered a philosophy estranged from utopian thinking, a philosophy overly committed to projects of feasible but, perhaps, uninspiring reform. Indeed, if utopian thinking refers “to depictions of or reflections on highly desirable and hoped for social and political circumstances that include no necessary reference to the means, costs, or feasibility of achieving them from our present condition” (McKean, 2016, 1), then pragmatism, with all its emphasis on the means-­ end continuum, can hardly count as a form of utopian thinking. However, since at least John Rawls’ Theory of Justice but, in fact, already since Karl Marx, an alternative tradition has attempted to reconcile utopianism and a practice-oriented and reformist attitude. Within this context, the idea of a ‘realistic utopia’ has become a stable tool of critical thinking.17 According to this view, utopian thinking refers to the capacity to imagine alternative and better futures, to devise paths toward social transformation in emancipatory directions. It is about progress and our hope of achieving it. Pragmatism is easily inscribed within this tradition which sees utopianism as a productive style of thinking, directly endowed with transformatory expectations. If we take pains to imagine alternative and  For an overview of positions in this tradition, see Wright (2010).

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better futures it is in order to achieve them, or at least to change our present and near future in the direction indicated by the desired utopia. This conception of a ‘pragmatic utopia’ is of course distinct from more conventional conceptions, which see in utopia either a tool of critique or a form of symbolic compensation for present causes of evil and sorrow. ‘Concrete utopia’—Ernst Bloch’s catchword—is not an oxymoron, and reveals the willingness to render utopian thinking productive in real life, to empower the transformative potential of utopian thinking by making our hopes more informed. Hopes can indeed be educated, or concrete, while at the same time not demanding much in terms of the type of social transformations which they require if we wish our world to be a better one. By being realistic, or concrete, they need, however, to comply with a second constraint, which is the capacity to envision the path, the historical process, that is required if we want to achieve the emancipation utopia promises, moving from “a utopia that is expressive to one that is transformative, a move from wishful thinking to will-full action” (Levitas, 2008, 44). Historically, pragmatism has formulated this longing for another better world in terms of hope. Utopian thinking is here redefined in terms of the capacity to hope. Pragmatism’s reliance on “habits of hope” (Shade, 2001) to promote social change has been a mainstay theme since Josiah Royce and William James. Closer to us, Richard Rorty, Richard Bernstein, and Cornel West, have equally insisted on the political relevance of hope (Rorty, 1999; Bernstein, 2008; West, 2005). Rorty’s reliance upon hope is part of a larger anti-intellectual move which, in his words, prioritizes solidarity over justice and politics over philosophy, but whose concrete theoretical content has remained overly vague and elusive. While we could in principle concur with Rorty that “trust, social cooperation and social hope are where our humanity begins and ends” (Rorty, 1999, xii– xiv), Rorty’s own philosophy is extremely vague concerning the practical implications of this statement. Utopian thinking here remains idealizing and inspirational, conceived more as a motivation than as an intellectual undertaking. Bernstein too has emphasized the democratic implications of hope, and identified utopian thinking with a movement of constant return to the normative core of democracy. Yet far from being merely speculative, the utopia is seen as simultaneously a method of thinking

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and a situated practice of inquiring in the social world. In agreement with Leszek Kolakowski, Bernstein contends that “utopia is the striving for changes which ‘realistically’ cannot be brought about by immediate action, which lie beyond the foreseeable future and defy planning. Still, utopia is a tool of action upon reality and of planning social activity” (Bernstein, 2008, 38). The pragmatist take is visible in Bernstein’s concern with the negative role utopia can play whenever it is used to represent a paradisiac final state in the name of which any present violence and suffering can be justified. At the same time, he is aware that “[w]ithout a utopian impulse, without the imagination to conceive of a more ideal world and the courage and commitment to strive to attain it, we are always in danger of accepting blatant injustices” (Bernstein, 2008, 39). According to this view, utopian thinking is the necessary companion of social movements, their “mental counterpart”; its aim is to provide them with a narrative about the importance of their struggles. The utopia’s drive to exceed concrete historical achievements is at the same time the force and danger of utopianism. Hence the need to combine utopian thinking with “a robust skepticism about what it can be achieved” (Bernstein, 2008, 39). Probably for this reason Bernstein avoids the more elusive term ‘utopia’, preferring to speak of “democratic hope”, by which he means the aspirational thinking that is appropriate for a people that has set democracy as its normative standard. His solution for realizing a utopia consists in emphasizing the pragmatic preconditions for the realization of a normative ideal such as democracy, which essentially amount to the development of an appropriate democratic ethos. Like Dewey and Kolakowski, Bernstein thinks that we need democratic hopes in order to inspire and guide our action in achieving the democratic way of life. Hence utopian thinking inevitably has hermeneutical content. It is a way of “keep[ing] alive the cultural memory of what we have been at our best” (Bernstein, 2008, 48), in order to proceed through dark times without giving up the hope that a better world is possible. In this view, utopian thinking amounts to keeping alive the normative core of the democratic project, justifying its validity, proving its past and present achievements, identifying spaces for its expansion. For Bernstein as well as for Rorty and West, utopian thinking is essentially a matter of moral exhortation, the keeping alive of ideals. In both cases, the concrete question of which goals

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and how to reach them remains elusive, certainly because both thinkers believe that this task has to be accomplished by a society in its entirety rather than by a specialized vanguard of intellectuals. However, the question remains open whether something more specific, in the way of proposals, could be enunciated. Yet one may still doubt that utopian thinking can survive this over-pragmatic inner transformation. Doesn’t utopian thinking reduced to democratic experimentalism run the risk of becoming a mere variant of social engineering in which dominant positions are those with the best chance of being put to the test? What if, as in the present circumstances, many people feel that capitalist and representative institutions are both becoming illegitimate and unjust, and that democratic states are failing to keep up with their promises? How can the ideal of democratic experimentalism counter these doubts? A reformist strategy such as the pragmatist may prove difficult to sustain at times when all the solutions at hand seem to be unworkable, and revolutionary thinking seems to be the only option capable of rising hope for a better future. How then to recombine the pragmatist commitment to reformism with the need to think in radically new ways?18 More that Rorty, West, and Bernstein, Roberto Unger has developed a pragmatist account of utopian thinking which does not lose sight of the external constraints and engages in sustained projects of institutional innovation, that Unger frames in terms of democratic experimentalism. Utopian thinking is then transformed into a more concrete set of ­institutional concerns by conceiving institutions in democratic experimentalist terms. Like the other pragmatists, Unger too conceives of democratic experimentalism in terms of a society’s capacity to learn from its own experience and to innovate in solving shared problems. To this extent, institutions play a decisive role in providing space and organizing the resources to make social innovation effective and responsive to societal perceptions. Institutions and institutional innovation are given pride of place insofar as “both practical progress and the freeing of the individual depend upon the acceleration of collective learning through practical experimentalism” (Unger, 1996, 7). As a consequence, utopian thinking loses its exhortative moral content to become an ambitious 18

 On pragmatism and utopia see Levitas (2008), McKenna (2001).

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reflexion on the possible futures of institutional arrangements. Hence the interpretation of democratic experimentalism as a form of utopian thinking (Unger, 2000, 2007). Unger’s arguments are pitched in terms of the institutional structures of society, and a process of change in these economic, social and political structures and processes through step-by-step improvisation and collective learning. This utopianism revolves around the democratic experimentalist idea of “institutional innovation”. The gist of Unger’s utopian pragmatism is his willingness to combine imaginative thought experiments with an orientation toward institutional innovation. In so doing, he connects with the institutional bent of political pragmatism, developing in consistent ways the pragmatist intuition concerning the central function of institutions—and institutional thinking—within democracy. Unger inscribes explicitly his democratic experimentalism within the framework of a theory of democracy which combines the different strands of political pragmatism highlighted so far. As he explains, “[t]he first hope of the democrat, according to democratic experimentalism, is to find the area of overlap between the conditions of practical progress and the requirements of individual emancipation” (Unger, 2000, 5). As he sees it, the central problem of democracy as a general principle for the organization of social units consists precisely in the need to reconcile freedom and prosperity, to make democracy effective and legitimate at the same time. Unger grafts the need for utopian thinking precisely on the ground of this realistic, pragmatic, conception of the tasks of politics by admitting that often these tasks are in fact irresolvable, so that solutions to social problems that also reconcile ­individual needs and aspirations are not available. Classical liberalism and socialism saw in reform the automatic solution to this problem. Reconciliation through reform was a dogma. Other traditions in social theory today claim that the two requirements are incompatible. Hence democracy is reduced to a moral or political predicament, with no direct link with economic or technological advance. “By his first hope, the democratic experimentalist affirms that the conditions of practical progress and individual emancipation can intersect. A subset of the institutional conditions of practical progress also serves the purpose of individual emancipation. A subset of the institutional conditions of individual emancipation also promotes the goal of practical progress. The ­democratic

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experimentalist wants to find this zone of overlap and to go forward within it” (Unger, 2000, 6). The intuitive idea at the core of the conjecture of possible overlap is that both democratic experimentalism and individual emancipation require arrangements minimizing barriers to collective learning. A second assumption that Unger places at the heart of his project, and which is fully consistent with the core of political pragmatism, concerns the epistemic and political status of citizens. Dewey’s ‘democratic hope’ is reformulated by Unger in terms of a prima facie commitment to agents’ capacity for self-interpretation, “[p]eople may be mistaken about what they need, but they cannot, if the factual assumptions of democratic experimentalism are true, be incorrigibly mistaken. The advances of democracy—its institutional innovations and its spurs to practical progress and individual liberation—must move toward fulfilling people’s interests and realizing their ideals as they themselves see their ideals and interests” (Unger, 2000, 10–11). Differently put, the fact that publics may get things wrong sometime, does not meant that they get things wrong most of the time, as it is claimed by realists and epistocrats in their attempts to undermine the democratic project.19 This implies that the interpretation of individuals’ and groups’ emancipatory interests should not be left to intellectual and political vanguards—an idea shared by left vanguardists and right elitists, but should instead be articulated by the publics themselves, which in turn requires the spread of democratic ­practices of problem-solving. Unger then combines these assumptions with a methodological commitment to what Mary Parker Follett called ‘integrative method’. Like Follett and Dewey, Unger believes that, insofar as preferences and interests are not given in advance of social interactions but are modified and transformed in the course of social processes, then controlled institutional processes and procedures of social change are an essential ingredient of a democratic way of life. Indeed, social innovation can occur only on the assumption that incremental experimental processes provide the best chance of transforming social efforts into collective learning, promoting the mutual adjustment of interests and desires. In other words, 19

 For a critique in line with the normative core of political pragmatism, see (Frega, 2018).

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“[w]hether a certain alliance among social groups can be developed and sustained over time depends upon whether there is an institutional situation, or a trajectory of institutional reform, enabling the interests and ideals of the participant groups to converge” (Unger, 2000, 13) . Unger then redefines utopia in terms of radical reform. On the one hand, the reference to radicalism emphasizes the highly emancipatory ambition of democratic experimentalism. On the other hand, the reference to reform reminds us that there cannot be hope of social change outside the clear design of an experimental process whose steps can, at least in part, be designed and controlled. In other words, “[i]nstitutional debates and experiments are not a separate and subsidiary exercise; they represent our most important way of defining and redefining the content of our ideals and interests” (Unger, 2000, 18). For Unger, experimentation is not about setting up specialized agencies of social experimentation but aims, instead, at rendering each existing social institution more open to experimentation. It aims, also, at rendering the entire society more experimental and better capable of evolutionary learning. Hence democratic experimentalism tackles the utopian challenge in two ways. On the one hand, by showing under what conditions social and political institutions are capable of promoting needed processes of social change that can in turn produce structural transformations. On the other hand, by showing how society can set itself in motion through processes of social learning that are not led by existing institutions but are spontaneous. According to this view, the successful integration of cooperative—rather than ­competitive—forms of interaction with innovative strategies is an essential ingredient. The utopian moment of political pragmatism can be seen in the idea of radical reform. As Unger explains, “[r]eform is radical when it addresses and changes the basic arrangements of a society: its formative structure of institutions and enacted beliefs. It is reform because it deals with one discrete part of this structure at a time” (Unger, 2000, 19). According to Unger, achieving democracy demands nothing less than rethinking from scratch the whole socio-political-economic order based on the threefold institutional architecture of representative democracy, market economy, and free civil society. While they are important achievements whose results are by no means negligible, their actual capacity to solve societal

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problems proves insufficient. Unger insists, however, on the fact that the close to utopian—certainly radical—project of reform that is envisaged can operate only through a process of institutional innovation, and its end state should be new social, economic, and political institutions whose defining feature should be consistent with the basic tenets of democratic experimentalism. Unger has in mind two major sets of institutional innovation which are meant to shake the edifice of modern liberal democracy—the regime of property and the forms of democratic participation at all levels of social life. A major task of political pragmatism would, therefore, consist in developing “the institutional repertory of democratic and productive experimentalism” (Unger, 2000, 98). First, innovations in the regime of property are required because the actual system of property fails to promote social and economic innovation, combining different strategies that privilege elites and protect insiders rather than promoting innovation. He suggests the following examples of institutional innovation, “The development of decentralized strategic coordination between governments and firms, the creation of entities in between governments and firms as agents of such an association, the disaggregation of bundled property rights, the coexistence within the same economy of different property and contract regimes, and the enhancement of the powers of the individual by means such as social-endowment accounts available to everyone are all features of this needed enlargement of the institutional forms of the market economy” (Unger, 2000, 87). More than any other, the idea of a social-endowment account clearly expresses the radical content of Unger’s proposal. As he explains later in the same book, “people should inherit from society rather than from their parents: they should have a social-endowment account. Inheritance upon death or through gift should be limited to the patrimony required by a conventionally set standard of modest independence. The social-endowment account should include both a fixed and variable part. The variable part should increase by one measure according to a principle of compensation for special need, for physical, social, or cognitive disadvantage, and by another, countervailing principle according to a criterion of reward for special capability, through competition among individuals for increments to their account” (Unger, 2000, 267). Second, Unger insists on the need to

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go beyond what he calls a regime of “moderate democracy” which always affords citizens insufficient spaces for self-government. These spaces are enough to avoid social war but are insufficient to challenge the existing dualism between the privileged ‘vanguards’ and the underprivileged ‘rearguards’. Hence the need of radical innovation in political institutions and practices that should “favor the persistent expression of popular political energy, constitutions that resolve impasse while decentralizing power, and rules that promote the general, independent organization of civil society” (Unger, 2000, 88). Connecting with the tradition of political pragmatism, Unger is aware that political innovation cannot be the work of an enlightened élite, and that what is needed is not a new constitution delivered by intellectual vanguards. It rather requires active involvement of an organized society. The problem of social innovation then becomes the problem of finding the appropriate social processes and procedures that will be capable of producing it. Hence, contrary to standard accounts of deliberative and participatory democracy, Unger does not stress the legitimatory function of these procedures but rather their creative function. We need decentered social processes of political participation and deliberation because it is only through a distributed and coordinated use of social intelligence that new solutions today still unthinkable can be envisaged in the future. “The density of association in civil society is much more than a requirement for the effectiveness of compensatory social policy. It is a central aim and a basic condition of democratic experimentalism. Only a society that is densely organized outside government can generate an understanding of alternative futures and act upon it” (Unger, 2000, 185). The responsibility, but also the capacity, to devise alternative futures belongs only to society in its entirety or, as Unger aptly puts it, to ­organized society. Hence the kind of civil society that is needed to ­promote processes of social innovation is not merely the Habermasian communication-­based system of media nor the republican system of popular surveillance of power. It is a civil society that promotes and embodies a decentered exercise of inquiry, that takes an active role in reconstructing existing institutions and devising new futures, and that does so not only through debate but also through innovative ways of enabling interests to emerge and aggregate. In the terms previously

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defined, it is a society in which participation takes many forms of involvement (see Chap. 4 above). Given that the priority of institutional innovation is to achieve a better society, “institutional fetishism” and “structural fetishism” denote the two major obstacle to imagining new futures. Taken together, they describe entrenched attitudes within social and political theory, consisting in rigidified understanding of institutional arrangements as defined by fixed and unmodifiable sets of features. Institutional fetishism is at work any time a broad institutional arrangement such as representative democracy, market economy, or civil society is identified with a given formula. In this way, the institutional imagination is hampered and the invention of new institutional solutions through social experimentation is blocked. Institutional fetishism may degenerate into structural fetishism, which “finds expression and defense in an idea, hallowed in the history of social thought, that opposes interludes of effervescence, charisma, mobilization, and energy to the ordinary reign of institutionalized routine, when, half asleep, we continue to act out the script written in the creative intervals. An extreme version of structure fetishism is the political via negativa that celebrates rebellion against routinized institutional life as the indispensable opening to authentic freedom while expecting that institutions will always fall again, Midas-like, upon the insurgent spirit” (Unger, 2000, 26). Structure fetishism is at play anytime the tools of critique are used to tear down existing institution without having in view any concrete process of institutional innovation, as if political freedom exist only in the experience of “doomed but redemptive rebellion against institutional structures” (Unger, 2000, 110). On the contrary, as he explains, “[w]e do not need to choose between a low-energy institutionalized politics and a high­energy extra-institutional or anti-institutional politics of personal leadership and energized crowds. The political thinking of democratic experimentalism begins in the rejection of this choice” (Unger, 2000, 26). Looking at contemporary social and political theory from the standpoint of democratic experimentalism, one is forced to observe the astonishing shallowness of ideas about the forms and prospects of institutional innovation. In his radical reformist program Unger identifies three alternative pathways, each bearing a higher degree of radicalism, the three representing different degrees of pragmatic utopianism.

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The first pathway—enlarged democracy—refers to a radicalized version of existing social democracies in which a reformed system of taxation, combined with a restructuring of property rights, is conducive to higher individual freedom and the power to frame and achieve individual goals. This model is based on Unger’s grounding idea of “social endowment” or “social inheritance” as an alternative to classical bourgeois family inheritance. Part of this program is also the development of new forms of organization based on strategies that combine competition and cooperation aimed at increasing and better distributing the fruits of advanced capitalist economies. At the heart of this model of “cooperative competition” is the core of pragmatic experimentalism, that is to say, the idea that cooperative learning is the most adequate tool to achieve social innovation hence social emancipation. Yet the basic intuition is that the traditional avenues of politics as collective bargaining and mobilization should be superseded, leaving a greater space to individual strategies of experimentation. This is probably what we have effectively witnessed over the last two decades, and is a reason which appeals to those who would argue that we have entered a new, third, phase of modernity (Bluhdorn, 2013). The second strategy—radical polyarchy, takes a completely different route: “The basic idea of radical polyarchy is the transformation of society into a confederation of communities. These communities should not be shaped on primarily ascriptive lines, according to inherited race or religion. Instead, they should draw on the forces of shared experience and commitment” (Unger, 1996, 147). At the basis of this project of radical reform stands the idea that “the most important action in society takes place within settings of group life rather than in the biographies of individuals or the histories of societies. Creative diversity is, characteristically, diversity in forms of group life; and only against the backdrop of strongly marked but open-ended communities can true individuality develop” (Unger, 1996, 147). Achieving radical polyarchy requires that institutional and political strategies of devolution are put in place so as to transfer power at the lowest level possible, given the requirement that “to every stage in the devolution of power there should correspond an advance in the organization of civil society” (Unger, 1996, 150). Here the institutional moment proves necessary as Unger, far from believing in the ­infinite creativity of spontaneous self-organization, is persuaded that the

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State still has an important function to play, and that public law is an indispensable tool for shaping the institutional space in which new forms of interest-based publics such as parents, physicians, patients, workers etc. may coalesce and begin to play an active role in society. Here too Unger insists on the necessity to overcome traditional property law in order to promote an aggregation of group interests, according to a model exemplified by experiences of worker ownership and management of firms. Whilst relying on the language of communitarianism, what Unger here has in mind are clearly Deweyan publics: “[r]eal allegiance, in this view, is something we give to incarnate people, not to tribes or organizations. Each community, rather than accomplishing a merger of individual identities, presents simply a zone for heightened reciprocal engagement in some practical sphere of social life. The regulative ideal is not the relation of the child to his unchosen biological parents, a blind destiny that may be humanized, but the relation of a man or a woman, in marriage, to the spouse that he or she chose” (Unger, 1996, 154). The basic organizational principle is not that of classical Fordist organizations or associations of nineteenth century civil society, but those of post-Fordist flexible production and of skill-oriented cooperative learning. Here we again find at play the principles of democratic experimentalism: “[t]his family of forms of coordination flattens hierarchy, avoids fully articulate contract, and mixes cooperation and competition. By moderating the contrast between supervision and execution and enabling plans to be continuously revised in the light of experience with their execution, it encourages as well the ongoing revision of conceptions of interest and identity. It draws social arrangements closer to the procedures of practical reason, understood as an accelerated interaction between idea and experiment, between task-definition and task-­ fulfillment; between disaggregation and recombination; between assumptions and surprises” (Unger, 1996, 162). Central to this model is the idea, familiar to economists steeped in the tradition of the commons, that cooperative interaction is not the natural outcome of good-natured or good-educated citizens, but the positive result of cooperation-inducing institutions.20 20

 See, for example, Ostrom (1990), North (1990).

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The third strategy for the radicalization of democracy is mobilizational democracy. It favors neither individuals nor collectives as privileged democratic actors. “[R]ather, the favored theater is the whole of society; it wants to heat politics up, both the macropolitics of institutional change and the micropolitics of personal relations, and to loosen all factional strangleholds upon the key society-making resources of political power, economic capital, and cultural authority. It refuses to abandon, or to narrow, the space of society wide politics” (Unger, 1996, 163). At this level, the principles of democratic experimentalism, in particular that of the incessant revision of institutional designs in light of societal feedback, are generalized to the totality of social relations. Social stability is conceived as a succession of temporary and unstable equilibria that are constantly challenged as a result of the enhanced experimental orientation of individuals as well as social units. Experimental habits, routines, and organizational patterns receive maximum intensification at all level of social life, that is, the institutional forms of the state and the market, the civil society, and private life. Mobilizational democracy produces an astonishing acceleration of social interaction both at the level of political institutions and of organizational life in the market as well as in civil society. Unger’s idea is that the anti-democratic menace traditionally associated with more authoritarian political regimes can be countenanced through a heightened popular mobilization which, however, does not take the republican form of suspicious supervision. Indeed, Unger favors a kind of institutionalized participation based, for example, on “rules of mandatory voting, electoral regimes favorable to strong parties, public financing of campaigns, and extended free access to the means of mass communication” (Unger, 1996, 163). In the market institutional conditions favoring a heightened level of experimentalism are a legal system that promotes hybrid regimes of property, a system of welfare protection that reduces the cost of experimental failure, a system of norms that promotes new forms of cooperation through firms. Two general conclusions emerge from Unger’s theory of democratic experimentalism. The first is that “[t]he overriding task in the design of arrangements conducive to practical progress is therefore always to imagine and establish the arrangements for cooperation, in the small and in the large, that are least likely to prevent permanent innovation” (Unger,

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1996, 184). The second is that the great motor of human emancipation is the quest for freedom and self-assertion rather than the safeguard against governmental oppression. The reinvention of institutional forms is aimed at pursuing both these aims. On the one hand, institutional frameworks are required to promote new forms of cooperation. On the other hand, institutional frameworks serve to protect individuals while providing them with the resources needed to pursue their life-goals.

8

Conclusion

Democratic experimentalism celebrates the democratic—hence emancipatory—function of experimentation within society. It emphasizes the role of institutions and institutional innovation and reform in the promotion of processes of change and of social emancipation. The literature on democratic experimentalism clearly prioritizes institutions and organizations as the agents of social innovation for their capacity to promote more inclusive, open, fallible, and creative processes of collective decision-­ making. There are, however, forms of social experimentation that take place outside complex institutional and organizational settings, in more spontaneous social phenomena such as social movements. Here too, processes of social experimentation with high emancipatory potential play out. There have been several attempts to emphasize the learning potential of social movements, both in terms of their concrete achievements and, more rarely, of their capacity to devise new epistemic practices. In this chapter I have discussed a certain number of institutional configurations whose main feature is their capacity to make institutions doubt and learn. The general context of this book reminds us that a democratic experimentalist society also relies upon the creativity and innovatory potential of less formal social phenomena in which diverse but no less significant forms of social experimentation take place, where new languages, new interpretive frameworks, new visions for the future are constantly in the making. One need only recall the contribution to a culture of democratic participation that has been advanced by social movements in the course of the twentieth century, or at how new social movements such as Occupy Wall Street or The Indignados continue to

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c­ hallenge political institutions that have become rigid in forms of representation that preserve vested interests rather than promoting social equality and inclusion. But one must also consider how the culture of shared production that is rapidly developing thanks to the unique opportunities for cooperation and sharing that the internet has made possible (Benkler, 2006). Here, new patterns of social cooperation, new models of sharing, new cultures of care and mutual help are being deployed, from which we may expect new social models to emerge in the near future. Some of these social phenomena will be discussed in the next two chapters, in which I will attempt to draw some implications of the pragmatist group-based theory of politics for the contemporary world.

9 Democratic Publics

In Chap. 5 I have shown that the notion of public epitomizes a larger group-based conception of politics that was shared by a significant number of scholars directly or indirectly connected with American pragmatism at the turn of twentieth century. This notion has enjoyed a significant renaissance in recent decades, beginning with Jürgen Habermas’ appraisal of the role of civic actors in the public sphere (Habermas, 1996) and has also found independent echoes in theories of social movements (Cefaï and Joseph, 2002), in the revival of political visions that revitalize the social texture of political life (Barber, 2003), and in conceptions of politics that take stock of the decline of nation states and attempt to re-­ imagine politics beyond methodological nationalism through the notion of public (Beck and Grande, 2010; Bohman, 2007). We also see an indirect and yet theoretically relevant congruence with a pragmatist conception of democratic politics in the cooperative and horizontal forms of social coordination prompted by non-market and nonstate-based forms of social organization, particularly in the tradition of the commons (Ostrom, 1990) and in more recent theories of peer production (Benkler, 2006), in the new dynamics of transnational forms of political action (Keck and Sikkink, 1998), as well as in organized practices of political © The Author(s) 2019 R. Frega, Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18561-9_9

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consumerism (Micheletti and McFarland, 2015). In different ways, these and similar approaches adopt the stance of a public-based view of politics, one that is consistent with a broadened conception of democratic politics, which sees politics at work whenever a group of individuals strive to control indirect consequences which affect their lives, no matter whether this is accomplished by relying upon existing political institutions, by creating new ones, or by changing the boundaries of the political. But politics is also at work in situations in which publics no longer seek the institutional mediation of political actors, but intervene either directly or through the mediation of private bodies in the social and economic reality, insofar as the pragmatist notion of public inscribes politics within the larger space of social life. Political pragmatism proves particularly useful when used to interpret the political meaning of events which take place in contexts which transcend the standard practice of formal political institutions and defy standard divisions among social spheres. In a time of effervescence, instability, and institutional creativity, a public-based pragmatist theory of democracy provides useful tools to decipher emerging phenomena, to trace the evolution of forms of political experience, and to provide normative criteria more flexible than those fashioned to operate in the historically determined context of Western modernity. The aim of this chapter is twofold. On the one hand, I wish to re-inscribe the Habermasian theory of the public sphere in the larger context of a public-based theory of democracy with the aim of showing what we have to gain by radicalizing the pragmatizing move begun by Habermas. On the other, I seek to show that in the theory and practice of the commons we find a promising way to actualize and develop the pragmatist theory of democracy. While space does not permit me to discuss either of these traditions in detail, or to examine the role of social movements as instantiations of pragmatist public, the general argument I intend to defend is that the normative core of the pragmatist theory of publics enables us to explain the democratizing potential of a large array of social phenomena which include but cannot be reduced either to classical and new social movements or the diffracted civic life which takes place within the public sphere, interpreted in the terms set by Habermas and others. Pragmatist publics are at work not only in mobilizations that take place within the public sphere, but also where new practices of

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­ eer-­production, new forms of non-proprietary exploitation of resources, p and new types of partnership between consumers and producers seek to improve social reality. The pragmatist theory of democracy provides us with the normative concepts that we need to assess under which conditions any of these social phenomena may have a democratizing effect. In this and in the next Chapter I examine two of these phenomena—peer-­ production and the commons (this chapter) and the emergence of new forms of private authority in the global domain (next Chapter). What these phenomena have in common is the promotion of processes of collective self-organization with the purposes of directly solving perceived social problems. Rather than acting as mere opinion producing actors, publics are endowed with a real transformative power which Habermas considered incompatible with his theory of the public sphere.

1

 ublics, Communication, and the Public P Sphere

Richard Bernstein has recently noted that the notion of public has equal importance in the political thought of Hannah Arendt, Jürgen Habermas, and John Dewey, whom Bernstein sees as united by a common concern for the conditions guaranteeing the democratic quality of public life, a concern that unites pragmatism and critical theory (Bernstein, 2012). For all of these thinkers, ‘public’ is a category of special significance by reason of its connection with democracy, which all three conceive of in terms of the emancipatory potential of reason. There is now a wide consensus in seeing Dewey as a precursor of critical theorists, and his theory of democratic publics is now currently placed in the genealogy that runs from Arendt to Honneth and beyond.1 There are indeed profound similarities among these thinkers, particularly concerning the political function of a plurality of social spaces and actors and in their acknowledging the central importance of processes of discussion and deliberation at the heart of the life of publics. There are also, however, some significant differences  See the special issues recently devoted to this topic by the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy (2015/2), the Transactions of the C.  S. Peirce Society (2017/1) and by the Journal of Speculative Philosophy (2017/2). 1

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which need not be overlooked, as some of the most innovative traits of the pragmatist conception of democracy are indeed lost when Dewey’s publics are reduced to the manifold dynamics of the public sphere, even when this is conceived, as Habermas began to do in the late 1980s, in the more action-oriented terms of a theory of civil society rather than as a mere space where discourses were exchanged. The appropriate starting point for this reading is Arendt’s theory of communicative power, particularly if one concurs with Bernstein, as I do,2 that pragmatism and critical theory share a large set of theoretical assumptions and should, whenever possible, join forces to achieve theoretical and political goals which often happen to overlap to a large extent. While the story of these relationships is usually told according to a chronology that runs from Dewey to Honneth via Arendt and Habermas, here I would like to narrate it in the reverse order, thus hoping to show why we should return to the pragmatist theory of publics while retaining some of Habermas’ important achievements. My criticism of Habermas should not, therefore, be confused with the return to a pre-Habermasian model of politics, but rather be seen as a way of going beyond Habermas and in particular beyond the dualism of the public sphere and the State that he places at the heart of his two-track model of democracy, while preserving the profoundest intuitions that lie at the heart of his vision of democratic life.

1.1

F rom Communicative Power to the Democratic Method

Arendt has notoriously taken the position that publicity is nothing less than the condition of the possibility of freedom. Distinguishing revolutions from movements of liberation, she identifies the birth of political freedom—the only type of freedom which for her really matters—with the type of public discussion in which a public use of reason can take place. To be free, or to act politically, means for Arendt to be able to appear in public to express one’s opinion in an uncoerced exchange aimed at forming a common will. The essence of politics lies in the communicative  I have explained the reasons for this move more extensively in Frega (2013a, 2017c).

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freedom that results whenever human beings discuss together their life in common on equal terms. As she explains, “binding and promising, combining and covenanting are the means by which power is kept in existence” (Arendt, 2006, 175). Arendt set her views explicitly against those who, like Charles W. Mills, Max Weber, or Karl Marx, held the opposite belief that at the bottom of power only violence lies, so that political institutions cannot amount to much more than an instrument of oppression at the disposal of the ruling classes (Arendt, 1970, 35–36). Against mainstream conceptions which reduce power to an asymmetrical relation of domination of one person or group over another person or group, Arendt formulates the idea that power refers to action in concert. “Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together. When we say of somebody that he is ‘in power’ we actually refer to his being empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name” (Arendt, 1970, 44). The discursive dimension is central to Arendt’s definition of power, as it is through discourses that men organize their plurality in public by creating something in common. Unsurprisingly, Arendt’s preferred paradigmatic example of power is not the good institutional functioning of a democratic society—a well ordered society in Rawls’s terms—but rather the revolutionary moments in which the only type of action which is accomplished is…. discursive. As Habermas notes, “[i]t is fascinating to see how Hannah Arendt traces the same phenomenon over and over. When revolutionaries seize the power that lies in the streets; when a populace committed to passive resistance confronts alien tanks with their bare hands; when convinced minorities contest the legitimacy of existing laws and organize civil disobedience; when the “pure desire for action” manifests itself in the student movement—these phenomena confirm again that no one really possesses power” (Habermas, 1994, 218). Whilst praising Arendt for having discovered the communicational roots of power, Habermas has notoriously criticized her account for having severed the discursive dimension of opinion and will-formation from the concrete exercise of power, particularly when this exercise takes place under the guise of an impersonal administration that Arendt epitomizes in the gruesome image of bureaucracy “as the rule of an intricate system of

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bureaus in which no men, neither one nor the best, neither the few nor the many, can be held responsible, and which could be properly called rule by Nobody”, that she saw as the profoundest form of tyranny, “since there is no one left who could even be asked to answer for what is being done” (Arendt, 1970, 38–39). Habermas’s critique of Arendt resonates with a central theme of political pragmatism, particularly when he notes that Arendt “becomes the victim of a concept of politics that is inapplicable to modern conditions” when she asserts that the “intrusion of social and economic matters into the public realm, the transformation of government into administration, the replacement of personal rule by bureaucratic measures, and the attending transmutation of laws into decrees ‘necessarily frustrate every attempt at a politically active public realm’” (Habermas, 1994, 219).3 As Habermas correctly points out, the disconnection between political freedom and a state’s capacity to act contradicts a basic intuition concerning the nature and aims of power. As he further insists, “a state which is relieved of the administrative processing of social problems; a politics which is cleansed of socio-economic issues; an institutionalization of public liberty which is independent of the organization of public wealth; a radical democracy which inhibits its liberating efficacy just at the boundaries where political oppression ceases and social repression begins—this path is unimaginable for any modern society” (Habermas, 1994, 219–220). These critical remarks aim to show that the discovery of communicative power as the primal source of political life is a precious intuition to be preserved but inscribed within a different conception of political action whose seeds can be found in pragmatism, notably in Mary Parker Follett’s theory of power. Indeed, Arendt’s notion of communicative power resembles to a considerable extent Follett’s notion of ‘power with’, and it is certainly unfortunate that Arendt did not know her work. By distinguishing power with from power over and by privileging ‘integration’ over ‘coercion’ and ‘bargaining’ as forms of decision-making,4 Follett proposes a model of social coordination based on the binding force of discourses which explicitly sets power against violence as different and incompatible means of managing social units. Moreover, ‘power with’, like Arendt’s ‘action in concert’, proposes a cooperative model of power  For a more extensive treatment of this topic, see Habermas (1996, Ch. 4).  See the discussion of Follett in Chap. 4.

3 4

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as acting together. Follett notoriously privileges the creative potential of integration—a form of reasoning closely tied to Peirce’s model of abduction—over the use of force and the instrumental use of reason in bargaining. Yet Follett’s understanding of power differs from Arendt’s on a significant point, her pragmatic conception of the relation of power to action. It is indeed not by chance that Follett discovers the discursive dimension of power not in the irreducible alterity of politics from administration, but rather in the functioning of administrative units—organizations, whether public or private. Particularly interesting is the fact that Follett’s theory of power emerges at the confluence of her political theory of the State and of her theory of management. Indeed, what matters for Follett is not the institutional context within which power is exercised but, rather, the specific patterns of interaction that are instituted among individuals who submit to a common destiny and must act together. For this reason, the opposition between two forms of power—instrumental and communicative—or between two forms of political action—self-­ government and administration—is replaced with the distinction between two patterns of interaction. On the one hand, the group logic that characterizes the democratic method; on the other hand, the crowd logic that characterizes authoritarian systems. Power with denotes the way in which social coordination is achieved through use of the ‘democratic method’ (see Chap. 4) under the democratic conditions specified by the three principles of (1) relational parity; (2) inclusive authority, and (3) social involvement. Power with has a wider reach than Arendt’s communicative power, as it does not presuppose the precise separation of the political realm from the other social spheres. There is also a significant difference between the two conceptions, which concerns precisely the integration of the functional and the expressive moments. Whereas for Arendt communicative power can be grasped only against the background of the irreducible alterity of political action and everyday praxis, for Follett power with exists only when self-­ government is combined with a successful functional differentiation, which means when authority and responsibility are distributed according to capacities. Indeed, the aim of sharing power, of exercising power as power with rather than power over liberates individual creativity to solve the problems affecting a social unit. There is no possibility of imagining

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power with on the assumption of the autonomy of politics from society and economy. In this sense, rather than power to begin, power with is the power to create, to innovate in the face of uncertainty and of the problems which a social unit—no matter which—has to face. Hence power with may equally concern the family, in its ways of dealing with education, care, and shared plans, but also the enterprise, in which projects of shared management are envisaged by Follett, and the State and the functioning of public administration, as the debate on democratic experimentalism has made clear. Arendt’s notion of beginning, or of natality, is simultaneously the closest and the farthest from the pragmatist notions of creativity or innovation set forth by Follett and Dewey. Indeed, the sharp separation between political freedom and administration—and between labour and action— obstructs full appreciation of the political meaning of innovation and of the vindication of societal problem-solving as a central feature of political action. To be free in this perspective means certainly to be able to live collectively on one’s own terms, but with a focus upon how joint problems can be addressed and solved. According to this view, more than the quasi-mythological event of constitution building, it is the ongoing practice of its adjustment through use which takes centre stage. Hence, for reasons different from those indicated by Habermas, Arendt’s conception of politics, by prioritizing beginning over innovation, fails to grasp the political moment embedded in the broader dimension I have called ‘involvement’ (see Chap. 4). To Arendt, the social encroachment of politics is a historical event which precedes a golden era—more imagined than real—in which political freedom reigns untainted by social needs and urgencies. At the heart of her thought, Arendt maintains a distinct separation between political freedom as self-government and political power as administration. This dualism is, for example, the basis of her interpretation of the place of councils within and after Revolutions. She sides uncompromisingly with councils as they incarnate the search for political freedom, whereas parties all “agreed that the end of government was the welfare of the people, and that the substance of politics was not action but administration” (Arendt, 2006, 265). In conclusion, a dualistic opposition of politics and government, even for analytical purposes, hampers rather than advances our understanding of

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political life, overshadowing the rich and manifold spaces of authentic social creativity and political freedom which are embedded in everyday social practices and in the functioning of institutions. According to this perspective, examples of failures in council experiments are a clear proof not of workers and revolutionaries’ naïveté, but that the dualism of freedom and administration is misguided. Probably the fact that the councils envisaged only political aspirations and disregarded social and economic questions is the cause of a failure that would have happened anyway, even if parties did not decide to suppress them. If “the chief reason for their failure was […] their political qualities” (Arendt, 2006, 267), we should probably pause a moment and reflect at the possibility that freedom in administration is a concrete possibility whose democratic and emancipatory potential is certainly greater than the ideal of freedom from administration.

1.2

Publics Beyond the Public Sphere

I have taken my starting point from Habermas’ critique of Arendt because, as I intend to show, Habermas’ conception of democracy falls under the same critique, so that nothing less than a radical pragmatization of critical theory is required if the Habermasian program is to be realized.5 Habermas’ solution to Arendt’s mistaken understanding of power consists, as is known, in a dual conception of power, in which communication is endowed with the task of generating power, whereas instrumental action is left with the task, equally necessary, of translating communicative power into administrative action. Consistent with his broader theoretical framework, Habermas proposes communicative power as that which empowers, legitimates, and at the same time keeps instrumental rationality and strategic action under control. Habermas and Dewey—and more generally pragmatism and critical theory—share a common concern for the degradation democracy undergoes when public opinion replaces better qualified forms of ‘Offentlichkeit’. The critique of the media is a standard argument not only in the tradition of critical theory from Adorno’s critique of the culture industry up to Axel Honneth. Similar arguments can be found in Dewey’s texts too, and with the same  See Frega (2017c).

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critical force. Given this terminological proximity, there lies, however, a significant difference, as the Offentlichkeit to which Habermas refers corresponds to the discursive public sphere, by which he means a process of opinion-formation steered by communicative rationality. Whereas the kind of Offentlichkeit to which Dewey refers is that of the broader democratic experience in which opinion-formation is inscribed but which can by no means be reduced to the communicative dimension. Certainly, we find in Dewey anticipations of Habermas’ critique of the degradation of publicity into public opinion, particularly in The Public and its Problems, in which Dewey deals with the obstacles preventing the formation of new publics. Dewey’s notion of public encompasses, however, a larger dimension, irreducible to the notion of communication and better captured in the idea of acting together. This theme was already at the heart of Arendt’s theory of politics but was somehow overshadowed by Habermas’ reorientation of normative theory toward communication and discourse. Habermas’s theory of democracy, as he developed it in the late 1980s and early 1990s, can be seen as an attempt to preserve Arendt’s intuition concerning the nature of communicative power while rendering it compatible with the conditions of modern social life. According to Habermas, the central problem a constitutional state must solve is how power as capacity to act in common can be translated into the administrative power of the state without losing its legitimacy. As is known, Habermas’ solution consists in locating a ‘two-track’ system at the heart of democratic politics. At the first level, Habermas separates the communicative space of the public sphere from that of state power, that is, while communicative power is produced through the discursive medium, discourses are themselves devoid of concrete power. The function of the discursive medium is twofold, as it consists in “filtering of reasons and information, topics and contributions in such a way that the outcome of a discourse enjoys a presumption of rational acceptability”, and in “establishing relations of mutual understanding that are ‘violence-free’ in Arendt’s sense and that unleash the generative force of communicative freedom” (Habermas, 1996, 151). Habermas separates the power producing dimension of popular sovereignty—“all political power derives from the communicative power of citizens” (Habermas, 1996, 170)—from the exercise of power

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by state apparatus, and sees in parliamentary practices of lawmaking the dimension capable of combining the power-generating capacity of discourses with the functional dimension of goal-attainment. Indeed, lawmaking integrates the three forms of practical reason—moral, ethical, and pragmatic. As he explains, “[i]n the discursively structured opinionand will-formation of a legislature, lawmaking is interwoven with the formation of communicative power. We can clarify this connection with the help of a highly abstract process model that starts with pragmatic issues, advances along the branches of compromise formation and ethical discourse to the clarification of moral questions, and ends with a judicial review of norms” (Habermas, 1996, 162). Habermas describes lawmaking in terms of a process model, proceeding through the steps of pragmatic, ethical, and finally moral reasoning. The process is explicitly described as sequential. The pragmatic, the ethical, and the moral are successive stages of political deliberation. However, Habermas’ normative reconstruction of law finds a powerful limitation in the sociological conditions in which lawmaking is exercised, so that the normative transfer of the capacity to generate communicative power from citizens to representatives is blocked by the empirical conditions under which it inevitably takes place. At the second level, a different principle of separation between the space where communicative power is created and the institutions in which administrative power operates is then sought in the dual separation of the State from the public sphere, “the principle of separation of state and society requires a civil society, that is, a network of voluntary associations and a political culture that are sufficiently detached from class structure” (Habermas, 1996, 175). Whilst in principle Habermas seems to be willing to adopt a very wide view of democracy according to which “democracy becomes equivalent to the political self-organization of society as a whole” (Habermas, 1996, 297), the scope of the ­democratic method remains significantly constrained by the theoretical framework set by Arendt, that is to say, the idea that preserving the purity of communicative power requires its uncoupling from administrative power. The solution consists in separating the state—perceived as the instantiation of a steering mechanism based on power and instrumental reason— from the societal continuum of the lifeworld, through the mediating

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space of a public sphere conceived “as an arena for the perception, identification, and treatment of problems affecting the whole of society” (Habermas, 1996, 301). The very idea of a two-track system requires, as Habermas explains a little later, that deliberation be confined to a specific subsystem. According to the dual division of patterns of rationality, Habermas is persuaded that “[i]f deliberative politics is supposed to be inflated into a structure shaping the totality of society, then the discursive mode of sociation expected in the legal system would have to expand into a self-organization of society and penetrate the latter’s complexity as a whole. This is impossible, for the simple reason that democratic procedure must be embedded in contexts it cannot itself regulate” (Habermas, 1996, 305). Habermas’ theory of the public sphere has obvious advantages when it comes to explaining the role different institutions play within a constitutional democracy. Nadia Urbinati (Urbinati, 2006) and Nancy Fraser (Fraser, 1992) among others have explained with sufficient clarity the added value of his two-track model, and why it is important to uncouple the moment of opinion-formation from that of will-formation, that is to say, the moment at which discourses are exchanged in order to transform individual into collective opinion, from the moment in which public opinion is transformed into the power to act. And indeed, as Urbinati argues, the two-track model provides a strong argument in support of representative democracy insofar as it does conceive the process of delegation as the most appropriate instantiation of practical reason. As Habermas himself concludes, “[d]eliberative politics thus lives off the interplay between democratically institutionalized will-formation and informal opinion-formation” (Habermas, 1996, 308). Another aspect worth noting in Habermas’ democratic theory is the idea that political systems are refined problem-solvers that intervene to discharge societal processes from this duty. According to this view, which cannot be closer to the pragmatist understanding of rationality as inquiry, “democratic procedure and the discursive mode of sociation found in the legal community are simply reflexive refinements and specializations of a general mode of operation of social systems” (Habermas, 1996, 319–320). Hence deliberative politics can be seen as “a reflexively organized

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learning process that removes the burden on latent processes of societal integration while continuing these processes within an action system specialized for this relief work” (Habermas, 1996, 321). Problems begin, however, at the juncture of communicative and instrumental rationality, as Habermas is at pains to re-unite in social practices what he has so sharply divided in concepts. Communicative rationality, even articulated in its two-track form, clashes with the unsurmountable wall of the so-called ‘administrative system’, with its instrumental logic and its lack of communicative resources. Habermas here pays a heavy price for his allegiance to systems theory. Whereas pragmatists see the specialization involved in social systems such as art, science, and politics as a refinement of ordinary practices which, while gaining in complexity and specialization never lose contact with their roots in everyday experience, Habermas sees specialization through the lens of systems theory as the advent of a different steering logic, in this case that of power. The system of sluices that mediate between the lifeworld and formal political institutions is not only excessively complicated. Moreover, it is caught in Zeno’s Paradox, as no matter how many intermediate steps are introduced, the administrative power required to implement collective action continues to remain beyond reach. In the end, Habermas cannot get rid of a principal-agent model of political action which can overcome the dichotomy of communication and administration only through the untenable logic of an equally troubling dualism between justification and application.6 It is as if the entanglement between will-formation and will execution had no impact on the formation of will itself. Democratic power, as it happens, remains torn between the legitimating function of a process of opinion- and will-formation which cannot but be incomplete, and an a posteriori process of supervision and control which attempts to redress the evils that inevitably occur in the always imperfect translation of communicative into administrative power. Such a model, which is shared by the republican tradition, conflicts, however, with the second imperative Habermas locates at the heart of politics, that of problem-solving, whose relevance is not merely pragmatic but concerns also the sphere of political legitimation.  See Habermas (1993), and Frega (2013b) for a critique.

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Habermas’ defective epistemology (Frega, 2013b) bears heavy consequences also for his theory of democracy. By assigning to the public sphere the monopoly of communicative reason, he has no resources to explain how institutions think, how social intelligence also penetrates the peculiar labyrinths where administration unfolds. I concur with Habermas that public agencies and other pieces of the administrative archipelago are probably not likely to host many instances of communicative power. But precisely because, according to Habermas’ model, beyond the exercise of communicative reason there is space only for instrumental proceedings, he has no further epistemic resources to explain what happens outside the communicational complex composed of the lifeworld, the public sphere, and parliamentary instances, other than to reduce it to the opaque proceeding of a blind instrumental rationality that either applies decisions formulated by the organs of communication, or becomes the blind agent of a process of rationalization which threatens the very existence of the lifeworld itself. In other words, space for the exercise of social intelligence and institutional innovation appears to be extremely limited, and a society’s problem-solving capacity handicapped. On the one hand, because the public is de facto disempowered, as, “to generate political power, [the public spheres’] influence must have an effect on the democratically regulated deliberations of democratically elected assemblies and assume an authorized form in formal decisions” (Habermas, 1996, 372). Hence direct political action, unmediated through formal politics, lacks legitimacy and is, therefore, excluded. On the other hand, because the reformist potential of experimental democratic institutions is denied by the dualism of communicative and instrumental power. Habermas’ reasons for constraining publics’ political power are in part well-founded. As he explains, “democratic movements emerging from civil society must give up holistic aspirations to a self-organizing society”. Indeed, “civil society can directly transform only itself, as it can have at most an indirect effect on the self-transformation of the political system” (Habermas, 1996, 372). This limitation derives from the restraint that Habermas imposes upon the public sphere and civil society’s functional role, thus “the core of civil society comprises a network of associations that institutionalizes problem-solving discourses on questions of general interest inside the framework of organized public spheres” (Habermas, 1996, 367).

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Yet precisely this limitation democracy imposes on the functioning of the formal political system, and the ensuing subordination of the democratic function of publics to the task of opinion-formation within the dual-track model, severely hampers the concrete emancipatory function of publics. While in fact it may be true that “[t]he capacity of the public sphere to solve problems on its own is limited” (Habermas, 1996, 359), this is certainly not true for the entire organized society. In other words, it is an oversimplification to interpret the diverse types of association and organization which are to be found in a democratic society only in terms of their contribution to the public sphere, which is to say merely in terms of their communicative capacity in signaling and problematizing issues. If we understand the public sphere “as a network for communicating information and points of view” (Habermas, 1996, 360), we must then acknowledge that organized society as the network of intermediate associations that exist between the lifeworld and the formal political system largely exceed the Habermasian conception of the public sphere. Society has indeed a democratic problem solving capacity that Habermas’ two-­ tier model fails to grasp. This problem-solving capacity is in play whenever an organized public attempts to solve a problem rather than influence the core of formal political institutions. Participatory construction sites (Pruvost, 2015), critical consumers’ and permaculture networks (Centemeri, 2018), patients’ collaborative groups (Strandburg, Frischmann and Cui, 2014) are but a few examples of publics which self-­ organize having in view the democratization of their society (that is, making the society more democratic, more egalitarian, more inclusive). Yet they do not act as agents of a communicating public sphere with the aim of influencing legislative bodies, but rather as organized social actors striving to change reality through direct action. Hence the idea of a public sphere endowed with communicative power but confined to communicative acts should be replaced by that of a plurality of heterogeneous public arenas (Cefaï, 2002) where individual and collective actors gather and struggle around a plurality of issues, only a fraction of which can be accounted for in terms of their communicative power. Whilst the idea of a communication structure—implying the normative ideal of a logical space of reason—can be preserved, what should be abandoned is the subordination of the main function of these arenas to the task of a discursive

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problematization of issues that will then have to be handed over to the system of formal political institutions. As I will later show, an interesting feature of commons-based forms of social cooperation consists precisely in their capacity to empower publics with a direct problem-solving capacity. By cooperating within commons-based networks of peer-production, publics can produce social innovation in ways that do not depend upon the mediating function of representative formal political institutions. As we saw in the last chapter, the literature on democratic experimentalism has likewise shown that innovative institutions embed at least a modicum of communication power, insofar as their learning potential is based on their capacity to include affected citizens within their routines. Pragmatist experimentalist democratic institutions tear the instrumentalist logic of administrative power into pieces, showing that communicative rationality permeates private and public institutions alike, where it combats administrative power on its own ground, and where it invents new problem-solving strategies based on wide inclusion and creative, abductive, ways of thinking. In this way, experimentalist institutions blur the dividing barriers Habermas erects between the two types of reasoning and between the opposing logics of the lifeworld and systems. We arrive here to the heart of the pragmatist critique. Whereas Habermas’ two-tier model is built on the assumption that only a sharp separation of logics can prevent social and administrative power from disempowering citizens, pragmatists believe that the two principles are inextricably intertwined in social reality, so that what needs to be found are strategies to enable the democratic method to extend its reach to the widest possible range of social situations. Habermas believes notably that, to avoid the transformation of social and administrative power into political power, a complex institutional system of one-way conduits and sluices is required. This model can, at best, succeed in explaining how binding decisions taken by formal political institutions can be legitimate. This partial ­success comes, however, at a heavy price, as large spaces where democratization may occur inevitably remain beyond the scope of Habermas’ theory of democracy. On the one hand, the problem-solving practices diffused throughout the social body remain outside the reach of the model, hence an assessment of their democratic quality proves to be impossible. On the other, the emancipatory potential embedded in

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the private and public organizations which compose administrative power is equally disregarded. The question then emerges of how Habermas’ seminal ideas concerning the public sphere’s capacity to engender and diffuse communicative power can be integrated into a wider view of how social intelligence can be exercised in democratic ways in a greater plurality of settings. Habermas is right when he acknowledges that the seeds of a conception of the public sphere as the mediating space where communicative power is produced are already present in Dewey. And, as we have shown, the same holds for Follett too. Indeed, political pragmatism is based on a broader understanding of practical rationality, one that is not hampered by the many dualisms through which Habermas understands reason.7 Not only is the use of social intelligence—what pragmatists call the ‘democratic method’—to be found at work potentially throughout the whole social body, from primary groups to secondary associations. It is also to be found within the administrative branches of public and private power. It is, therefore, no accident that pragmatists prefer to speak of democratic method rather than of communicative power. In so doing, they contend that the prospects of democracy depend heavily upon our capacity to embed processes of social learning right at the heart of apparently undemocratic institutions such as private organizations and administrative bodies. In the footsteps of Hilary Putnam, we should, therefore, conclude that, after fact/value, analytic and synthetic judgments, means and ends, and other well-known dichotomies, the dichotomy of the state and the public sphere too needs to be superseded. Whilst this move in no way implies that the concept of the public sphere itself is to be rejected, it nevertheless requires that its use be freed from the strictures in which Habermas’ dualisms forces it. By claiming that the dichotomy of the State and the public sphere is overinflated, I mean that it transforms a potentially useful conceptual distinction into an absolute dichotomy that ends up producing a distorted view of public life, one in which the meaning of basic social facts is lost. As Dewey insisted throughout his entire intellectual life, and as Putnam has recently reminded us, a distinction is not a dichotomy. Hence, by criticizing the  For a more extended critique of Habermas’ epistemology, see Frega (2013b).

7

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dualism of the state and the public sphere, what is targeted is by no means the functional distinction among these two concepts, but rather their overinflation, operated and reinforced through other dualisms, among which the dichotomy between communicative and instrumental rationality plays a central function. As this and the next chapter show, the democratizing potential of publics—be they local, national, or transnational—is misunderstood when limited to the communicative power unleashed in the public sphere. Indeed, publics act in many ways, engaging collective life through a plurality of normative practices all essential to the democratic experience. On the one hand, there is the emancipatory potential of democratic experimentalist institutions. On the other, publics have direct ways of realizing their goals, which are not captured by the dual-track model.8 For this plurality of practices, the category of social learning seems to be more adequate, once its use is inscribed within a regime which is consistent with the basic requirements set by the social ontology of democracy described in this book, and in particular with the three basic principles that define democratic patterns of interaction: (a) relational parity; (b) inclusive authority, and (c) social involvement. In conclusion, to fully understand the democratic potential of publics we need to acknowledge that communicational and instrumental dimensions are inextricably entangled, as the pragmatist epistemology of inquiry shows. We must also admit that Arendt’s power to begin is but a dimension of a broader power to innovate and that natality is but a specific form of creativity. Like innovation and inquiry, creativity refers to situated practices in which normative and factual elements are inextricably enmeshed. Hence a public’s freedom is visible in its capacity to innovate in the forms of its own organization, in its creativity when seeking new solutions to the problems that affect it. This, in turn, requires the mobilization of instrumental and technological ways of dealing with the world. In Axel Honneth’s recent work we find some useful hints at how these ideas could be pursued by combining themes stemming from the two traditions of pragmatism and critical theory.  See Chap. 5 and the next chapter.

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337

 onneth’s Pragmatism and the Rehabilitation H of Ethical Life

Honneth is probably the representative of the Frankfurt School who is most hospitable to pragmatism. In his work on political theory he completes the project of pragmatizing the province of critical theory begun by Habermas half a century ago9 through a more thorough consideration of those dimensions of democratic life which do not directly square with Habermas’ model of deliberative democracy. Honneth’s pragmatization of critical theory proceeds in two steps: (a) after having reclaimed the superiority of pragmatist epistemology as the proper basis for a critical theory of society, (b) he draws on pragmatism as a complement to Habermas to develop his own theory of democracy. Particularly in (Honneth, 2014), Honneth accomplishes this task through a process of rehabilitation of sociality that, inspired by Hegel, he sees as accomplished in the institutions of the “Sittlichkeit”, that is, the family, the market, and the state. The emphatic attention devoted by Honneth to the communicative resources he sees at work throughout the whole social body pursues a possible way out of the theoretical impasses of Adorno and Horkheimer’s neglect of the social. On this point too, Honneth proceeds in the footsteps of Habermas, so that in his account democratic politics is defined by the two complementary halves of the public sphere and the constitutional state. The public sphere is indeed conceived of as the core element of democratic ethical life (Honneth, 2014, 253). Compared to Habermas, Honneth places much more emphasis upon the social dimension of democracy. He is less concerned with the functioning of the formal political sphere and emphasizes rather the emancipatory potential of the public sphere insofar as it institutionalizes a space of social freedom. Like Habermas, Honneth continues, however, to see the central core of formal political institutions as not only devoid of communicative power but also deprived of the appropriate knowledge of social reality, which the public sphere is called to provide by establishing informal bi-directional channels of communica For a deeper examination of Honneth’s relationships to pragmatism, see Frega (2013a, 2015a). I reconstruct the historical process of the progressive pragmatization of Critical Theory in (Frega, 2017c). 9

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tion. “As soon as these processes of reciprocal communication take on a reflexive form by passing over into shared deliberations on communicated issues, the state’s solution to these problems will be all the more intelligent” (Honneth, 2014, 269). It is, therefore, in the public sphere, more than anywhere else, that social freedom is realized. Its aim, in quasi-­ Habermasian terms, consists in “establishing the communicative conditions under which citizens can clarify and realize their own political intentions in an unforced manner and by reciprocally taking up the role of speaker and listener” (Honneth, 2014, 269). From this perspective, the problem-solving capacity of the state is either identified with it—this is the Durkheimian solution Honneth rejects—or subordinated to the quest for legitimacy—the Habermasian solution Honneth endorses (Honneth, 2014, 269). Honneth conceives of the public not as a collective social actor engaged in social processes of action and inquiry, but as a spectator essentially concerned with the task of forming a political opinion. As he notes, “all our normative attention is turned away from state organs and directed toward the conditions of non-coercive self-­ legislation among citizens” (Honneth, 2014, 305). State institutions and public administrations then remain subject to the instrumental rationality of power, a position which, as we have seen, is unfortunate as it leaves beyond the scope of democratic theory a far too large set of practices and experiences. To this extent, Honneth’s theory of democracy remains exposed to the same criticism previously addressed to Habermas. As Honneth notes, however, the public sphere can exercise its liberating function only on conditions that a similar degree of freedom is achieved in the two non-political spheres of social life, those of intimacy and the market. So “if the conditions of social freedom are not realized in personal relationships and on the market, then the social relations that enable citizens to take part in the process of democratic will-formation in an unforced and unrestricted manner will be absent” (Honneth, 2014, 254). Here Honneth comes extremely close to the pragmatist wide view of democracy, that he conceives, too as a set of normative values that should inform habits, patterns of interaction, and institutions throughout the whole society. Hence Honneth goes a step beyond Habermas by explicitly extending the reach of the normative principle of communicative power beyond the public sphere, so as to coincide with the normative core of the other two

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social spheres, those of intimacy and of the market. Honneth extends Habermas’ interactionist model of communication, providing it with a more robust social basis and embedding it in the three social spheres of ethical life. The normative core of democracy is, therefore, defined by a socialized version of communicative reason which permeates the whole social body, and whose kernel is provided by the idea that communication is not only a means of achieving understanding but, more deeply, the basis of social cooperation. It engenders the democratic forms of social cooperation which lie at the heart of democratic life. What Honneth calls ‘social freedom’ is a specific pattern of social interactions in which communicational exchanges generate forms of mutual obligations. Whereas these obligations vary across social spheres, the principle remains the same, that is, through communication we create social bonds which are based on freely accepted forms of mutual obligation which in turn create a space of interdependence and reciprocity that sustains social life. According to Honneth, this normative ideal fixes the normative core of democracy and is to be found at work not only in the public sphere, but also in the market, “whose integrative function primarily derives from a normative agreement grounded in the idea not of negative but of communicative freedom” (Honneth, 2014, 197), as well as in the sphere of intimacy, where he credits the modern family to be “on a path of normative development that allows it to train and practice democratic and cooperative forms of interaction” (Honneth, 2014, 174) among its members. According to this wider view of communicative power, Honneth can describe movements of workers and consumers in terms close to those used by pragmatists to describe the political life of publics, for example, when he notes that the labour market must be “equipped with discursive mechanisms that allow participants to influence the interests of the others and thus gradually give shape to the overall cooperative aims of the group” (Honneth, 2014, 232). In his latest book Honneth brings this challenge to a further step, endorsing explicitly a democratic experimentalist approach to politics explicitly developed in reference to Dewey and pragmatism.10 As mentioned in the previous section, he sees in Dewey’s experimentalism a methodological way out of the strictures of the socialist and Marxist philosophies of history, and 10

 See, in particular, Honneth (2015, Ch. 4).

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the mark of a more ambitious emancipatory project. Such a project takes as its normative core the idea that, through social struggle, groups may succeed in having their voices heard and may access a democratic space of will-formation based on the resources of communicative rationality. Honneth, like Dewey, sees the normative core of modernity consisting in the fruitful integration of the three ideals that sprang from the French Revolution. Honneth’s description is useful to further clarify an oftneglected aspect of the pragmatist theory of publics. The problem-solving function pragmatists assign to publics is inseparable from the group-constituting effect of processes of inclusive collective inquiry. Implicit in the three normative principles of (1) relational parity, (2) inclusive authority, and (3) social involvement is the idea of democratic method, which in turns implies the idea of an inclusive method of collective inquiry capable of integrating the diverse perspectives of all participants. This method, as Honneth shows, has no exclusionary relation with the kind of procedural reasoning that is appropriate to formal political fora, nor is its use limited to purposes of collective opinion-­formation as Habermas thought. More broadly, the democratic method is at work any time a plurality of individuals interact either in the framework of an existing system of social cooperation, or with the aim of establishing a new one. Hence, as the pragmatists insisted, the democratic method of social cooperation provides an appropriate normative standard for social interactions in all spheres of social life. At this point, pragmatism and critical theory achieve the highest point of integration. A pragmatist view of democracy, committed as it is to a highly demanding conception of practical involvement in social activity, cannot but welcome Honneth’s idea that the economic sphere should be organized so as to multiply opportunities for inclusive participation on an equal basis. To this extent, no matter whether the term ‘socialism’ is used, pragmatism and critical theory agree on the idea that, rather than the market itself, it is its neo-liberal conception which should be superseded. Both pragmatism and critical theory agree, therefore, to reject the assumption which sees “the capitalist market as the unique efficient means for the coordination of economic action” (Honneth, 2015, 107). Indeed, Honneth’s suggestions about how political philosophy should tackle economic issues today outlines a research program fully consistent with the kind of political pragmatism developed in this book.

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Honneth’s proposals about the contemporary creative potential of the normative core of democracy remain, however sketchy and overall wanting. This is partly explained by the backward-looking orientation of the methodology of ‘rational reconstruction’ that he adopts. Indeed, by retracing the emergence of normative standards within social practices themselves, he tends to formulate these last in the same terms as those used by the social actors engaged in the struggles he discusses. As a consequence, his analyses tend to remain stranded on the horizon that these normative ideas project onto present life. From this vantage point, specific historical configurations may take the form of universal ideals, so that historical evolution inevitably takes the form of decline. For example, his account of the normative validity of the idea of political democracy is tied to the historical manifestation of the public sphere in the context of nation states. It is undisputed that, historically, the public sphere has played a decisive function in processes of democratization, reflecting the fact that during this period the State has been a monopolistic political player, so that processes of democratization had to rely upon its capacity for self-reform. Labour reform, political rights, civil rights, and social rights—the highest achievements of the democratic project throughout this period—are all the outcome of state reform prompted by processes of opinion-formation that took place in the public sphere. In a similar way, the classical social movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries conceived of their role in terms of forms of protest aimed at forcing the State to reform itself and society. Simultaneously, the integrating function of work noted by sociologists since at least Durkheim has played a decisive role in forming collective identities and in so doing they have shaped our image of how communicative reason, identity-­ formation, and social cooperation interact. The progressive relativization of the political role of nation states, and the tremendous transformations that are affecting contemporary life in the spheres of production and consumption render, however, the normative principles distilled through a merely reconstructive procedure less cogent. In the face of rapid social and institutional change, a reconstructive methodology risks projecting onto the future normative solutions that were devised to solve problems tied to a socio-technical situation that belongs to the past. This is indeed what happens, for

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example, when Honneth attempts to revitalize the socialist project by re-actualizing some of its traditional core themes, such as cooperative workplaces. However, under our present circumstances, a normative core built around the public sphere and classical requirements of market freedom, even if purified of some of its most problematic aspects, does not seem solid enough to sustain the whole conceptual weight of a normative theory of democracy. Such a task requires a conceptual core less dependent upon past historical circumstances so as to be freer to experiment new forms of democratic innovation. Forging it requires, therefore, a more open consideration of new phenomena, of how new democratic experiences may emerge in the wilds of a social experimentation that blurs the line between the public and the private, between politics and economics, and between political acts of freedom and commercial acts of consumption. It requires, in other words, that we look with fresh eyes at a brave new world of experiments with democracy. Consonant with this orientation, it seems to me that reflections developed over the last two decades about the commons may provide a promising starting point to further develop the pragmatist notion of public in a direction that could, among other things, provide the starting point for a clearer expansion of the normative core of political pragmatism to the economic sphere. The following two section and the next chapter provide a first hint of such a program.

2

From the Public Sphere to the Commons

Unsympathetic readers have generally scolded pragmatists for their supposed lack of understanding of conflict and their supposedly ungrounded and optimistic assumptions about the goodness of human nature. There are now quite a few publications that show the extent to which this received reading is unjustified.11 What has, however, not been clearly shown so far is the positive side of the pragmatist argument which supports the self-organizing capacity of publics, in other words, how the democratic life of publics is one of the constitutive pillars of democracy.  See, for example, Hildreth (2009), Rogers (2009), Wolfe (2012), Frega (2015b), Hogan (2015).

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The notion of public has indeed suffered from a double misunderstanding. On the one hand, there are those who have criticized it for its supposed lack of realism. The critique assumes that a public-based view of politics betrays a naïve faith in the spontaneous, good-natured orientation of humans toward social cooperation. On the other hand, following the successful use of that notion by Habermas,12 there has been a tendency to confuse the public with publicity or public opinion, and to reduce the practice of public-making to the discursive practices of deliberative democracy.13 Yet, as I have shown, neither the nostalgic longing for bygone communities nor the rationalistic sublimation of practices into discourses fairly capture the political potential of the pragmatist theory of public. Recovering the full content of this notion requires—in accordance with our ontological approach—that this notion is inscribed within a wide view of democracy. One must in particular drop the simplistic idea that pragmatists thought that individuals congregate spontaneously into groups and that groups naturally cooperate for the common good. This naïve anthropology is nowhere to be found in the pragmatist tradition, if one takes the time to go beyond superficial readings. Quite to the contrary, pragmatists have insisted that the formation and life of publics requires appropriate institutional support. As it should by now be clear, the pragmatist conception of group-based politics is better grasped once decomposed into three more basic assumptions. The first is normative, and consists in identifying in social cooperation through democratic patterns of social interaction a positive norm of social life. This assumption has been developed in terms of a social ontology of democracy. The second assumption is provided by the identification of political democracy as an ensemble of social practices whereby publics organize themselves and struggle to solve their problems. This assumption has been developed in terms of a public-based theory of politics. The third assumption makes the success of political democracy dependent upon institutional innovation. In other words, it emphasizes  In German ‘public’, ‘publicity’, and ‘public sphere’ are all translated with ‘Offentlichkeit’. This has given rise to some misunderstanding, particularly in the wake of Habermas’ discursivization of this notion. 13  For an alternative interpretation of Dewey as the forefather of participatory democracy but not of deliberative democracy, see Jackson (2015). 12

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the function of institutions in creating circumstances that promote cooperation, as we have seen in the discussion of democratic experimentalism. This more precise definition of the pragmatist theory of publics reveals surprising points of convergence with institutional theories of social behavior, in particular with economic theories of the commons, insofar as these theories attempt precisely to (1) justify the preferability of cooperative and autonomous organizational strategies over market-based strategies based on selfish motives, and (2) explain under what conditions individuals sharing an economic interest—a sub-set of the pragmatist notion of public—may succeed in self-organizing and self-managing their joint undertaking. The parallels established by theories of the commons between economic and political behavior authorize us to extend application of the set of principles defining the normative core of democracy to the economic sphere, insofar as both spheres are concerned with problems of collective action which may be solved through a plurality of competing strategies. In the more conventional perspective of rational choice theory, the fact of social cooperation is generally explained by invoking an external principle capable of developing or enforcing cooperative habits. Whilst in economic theory this function is traditionally fulfilled by firms and prices, in political theory since at least Hobbes it is the state—seen as an external agency—that is endowed with the role of producing social coordination. In either case, the self-organizing capacity of publics tends to be neglected. Whilst economists such as Joseph Schumpeter or Anthony Downs have interpreted these parallels through the reductive explanation of political behavior in terms of economically maximizing individual behavior, institutional theorists have rather attempted the reverse strategy, showing the importance of social cooperation in all kinds of economic transactions. Once this principle is accepted the door is open to extending the normative core of democracy to the functioning of economic institutions. By emphasizing the related notions of public and community, pragmatists have asked under what conditions cooperative routines can be achieved internally, through processes of self-organization enacted by those directly concerned—principals in the language of economic institutionalism, groups in the language of politics—without the external intervention of an entrepreneur or of a ruler. According to this perspec-

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tive, the literature on the commons opens promising lines of inquiry for a public-based theory of democracy. Indeed, the political question the pragmatist theory of the public tries to resolve is precisely to understand under what conditions a scattered collection of individuals can organize itself so as to produce a shared set of norms suited to the solution of their perceived common problems, and to assure their appropriate functioning and adjustment in time. While the theory of the public sphere explains under what conditions the process of will-formation of a public is legitimate, a political theory of institutional behavior should explain under what conditions democratic processes of self-organization can succeed. In so doing, the reach of democratic patterns of social interaction is easily extended into more encompassing domains of social life. I contend, therefore, that a promising line of research to update the pragmatist theory of publics consists in taking lessons from the recent debate about the commons, insofar as this has shed new light on alternative forms of social cooperation that are characterized by patterns of self-­ government which, at least to a certain extent, are consistent with the pragmatist account of the democratic life of publics. Indeed, the literature on the commons highlights forms of collective self-government that are characterized by high autonomy with respect to external coordinating instances, forms of inclusive coordination, and a tendency to develop horizontal rather than hierarchical forms of decision-making. In the terms set out in Chap. 7, we can say that the commons create spaces in which the social media of solidarity supersedes, or at least complements, the steering media of administrative power and money as a principle of social coordination. Indeed, one of the main arguments advanced to defend the idea that the commons define a new pattern of social cooperation is precisely that, to achieve social cooperation in the management of economic resources, the members of the commons rely neither upon the market’s competitive logic nor on state-like mechanisms, having developed instead a different pattern of social cooperation. This principle is that of selforganized communities endowed with self-created and self-­managed local institutions. The idea behind the commons is that a group of individuals sharing given resources can succeed in designing and managing its own governing institutions without having to rely upon the invisible hand of a competitive market nor on the visible hand of a transcendental power

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endowed with the authority to design, run, and supervise these institutions. A group of individuals deciding to pool and share resources according to such a model embodies in close to paradigmatic ways the pragmatist idea of the public. In this section I wish to show that, taken as a model of social cooperation, the commons fulfill the normative requirements set up so far: (1) democratic habits of social cooperation based on shared trust are generally found where resources are managed following the logic of the commons; (2) interaction among members is generally organized in ways that promote horizontal relations and active involvement of members also beyond decision-making, and (3) experimental problem-solving institutions are designed by the publics and managed in common.

2.1

Democracy in the Commons

Whilst the affinity between the commons as a social mode of production and democracy as a political regime have been remarked, the largest plurality of scholars have tended to focus on the economic consequences of the theory and practice of the commons. Whereas all these traditions acknowledge that the commons identify an organizational form alternative to the state as well as to market, they diverge in their interpretation of their relation to these two better established forms. At one hand of the spectrum we find radical thinkers which consider the commons as a form of economic production that should replace capitalism, whereas at the other end of the spectrum we find liberally oriented approaches, which conceive of the commons as a third and complementary position which coexists beside the state and the market.14 The view I will defend in this section differs from mainstream contemporary approaches insofar as it puts the emphasis on the political, rather than economic meaning of the commons, and particularly on their democratizing potential. I will, therefore, focus on the democratic potential of the commons as a principle of social organization capable, however, of radically transforming patterns of interaction even in a context in which states and markets  For an exhaustive overview of rival interpretations of contemporary interpretations of the commons, see Papadimitropoulos (2017). 14

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continue to exist. To reach this goal, I will focus on some of the most relevant economic contributions in the field, replacing them, however, in the political perspective of the wide view of democracy. In its classical formulation, which we owe to Elinor Ostrom, the notion of commons denotes a principle of social, political, and economic organization. In a vast historical and anthropological inquiry, Ostrom has shown that “[c]ommunities of individuals have relied on institutions resembling neither the state nor the market to govern some resource systems with reasonable degrees of success over long periods of time” (Ostrom, 1990, 1). In Ostrom’s reconstruction, the commons defy traditional accounts of collective action based on models of individual instrumental rationality, showing that social cooperation can be achieved on the basis of democratic means, provided adequate institutions are put in place. Notably, she has shown that, under favorable institutional circumstances, self-interested individuals can be motivated to cooperate. Specific institutional settings are required in order “to enhance the capabilities of those involved to change the constraining rules of the game to lead to outcomes other than remorseless tragedies” (Ostrom, 1990, 7). In this formulation we recognize the problem which lies at the heart of pragmatist democratic experimentalism, ie the design of institutions promoting effective and inclusive cooperation among autonomous local units. The study of the commons, like that of democratic experimentalist institutions, shows that one of the most daunting problems raised by social cooperation consists in the fact that identifying the appropriate rules of cooperation within complex systems demands very detailed knowledge of the local sub-systems, which only local actors can have. While the ensuing problem for establishing experimentalist institutions has consisted in how to achieve coordination among local units, the theory of the commons is first of all concerned with the problem of how to avoid free-­riding without resorting to external coordinating authorities such as the firm or the state. In political terms, the problem can be formulated thus, “[h]ow a group of principals—a community of citizens—can organize themselves to solve the problems of institutional supply, commitment, and monitoring” (Ostrom, 1990, 29). Hence the problem of governing the commons is exactly that faced by pragmatist publics. It consists in organizing individual action into collective patterns that are better suited to solving problems affecting a plurality

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of individuals. It is interesting to note that, from this perspective, the private firm and the political State are isomorphic actors which follow similar logics, that is, “[b]oth involve an outsider taking primary responsibility for supplying the needed changes in institutional rules to coordinate activities” (Ostrom, 1990, 41). Whereas the theory of the commons, at least in its classical formulation, limits the types of problem studied to those relating to the exploitation of natural resources which cannot be easily privatized—pastures, fisheries, water etc.—its potential reach is much larger. To achieve social cooperation without relying upon an external agent, social actors must solve three major problems, which once again turn out to be crucial for a pragmatist theory of democracy. They are: (1) how to set new rules and institutions; (2) how to make credible commitments, and (3) how to monitor and enforce compliance with commitments. A social unit organized as a common must in fact distribute across its members a plurality of functions which have to be managed immanently if the solution of an external regulator is to be avoided. Social units organized as commons have existed for centuries and provide a clear example of self-governing communities which operate like pragmatist publics. Like pragmatist publics, commons require the direct involvement of participants well beyond the mere ‘political’ level of direct or mediated decision making. As empirical investigations have shown, in most if not all existing commons direct involvement in the wide array of activities required for the existence of the common is expected, and for reasons that go beyond material contributions to the accomplishment of tasks. In several instances, individual members are in charge of monitoring and judicial functions, generally assigned on a rotating basis. In the famous case of the Spanish Huertas, for example, the Tribunal de la aguas operates without the intervention of professional lawyers. In the Philippines’ system of Zanjeras the farmers elect among themselves a manager on a rotating basis. Ostrom contends that high levels of personal involvement in the management of the system are necessary to ensure commitment to common institutions, willingness to cooperate and refrain from free-riding. In other words, compared to anonymous citizens or market maximizers, members of the commons are more willing to cooperate because joint involvement in common activities produces higher levels of identification

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with common goals and shared norms. In particular, empirical investigations have shown that participation beyond the level of decision-­ making—ie social involvement in the pragmatist sense, particularly in monitoring and sanctioning activities, keeps levels of compliance higher. It would be hard to find a description of social life closer to the pragmatist social theory developed in the second part of this book. A further condition that promotes social cooperation in the management of the commons is the existence of fora in which problems can be debated and cooperative strategies envisaged and voluntarily adopted. Mutual trust and open channels of communication are also required in order to set up processes of inquiry to understand the problems faced by the social unit, to gather knowledge, to formulate and test hypotheses before setting up a common scheme of social cooperation. Both principles have a direct bearing on the democratic quality of the patterns of social interaction that the institutions of the commons promote and contribute to diffuse. The commons have further relevance for our pragmatist theory of democracy for at least two reasons. The first is that, as we have seen, authors such as Unger place the very idea of a reform of regimes of property at the heart of pragmatist projects of radical reform. The second is that the commons do not operate as pure economic mechanisms. By relying upon social norms rather than prices or coercion, and by emphasizing self-government and social cooperation, their way of functioning blurs the distinction between the spheres of society, economy, and ­politics. In the terms introduced in Chap. 7, they concretely extend the reach of the associational principle to the sphere of economy, whose elective steering mechanism is money. To reiterate what was said in that chapter, if we admit that democracy advances whenever the steering media of money and power are replaced by that of association, then the institutional principle of the commons has unmistakably political and not merely economic relevance.

2.2

Democracy and Peer-Production

From the standpoint of the wide view of democracy, relations of production and patterns of consumption have a direct bearing on the democratic quality of a society, insofar as they shape in decisive way the way we

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encounter other individuals. Hence, a further step in the direction of a radical pragmatization of democratic theory is achieved by exploring how new experiments in what is being called “collaborative production”, by developing more horizontal patterns of social interaction, may contribute to increase the democratic quality of work. In this vast and rapidly evolving set of economic practices, the digital commons stand out as exemplary, as in this context new technologies are increasingly expanding the scope of non-market and non-state models of production and consumption, contributing in significant ways to the decommodification of work and consumption.15 As several studies on peer-production have pointed out, the participatory economy harbors significant risks of domination, and gives rise to new forms of exploitation, of which I am well aware.16 But this is true of any form of social activity. Having these risks in mind, this chapter focuses instead on their democratizing potential. Over the last decade, several studies have mapped the emergence of new practices of collaborative production prompted by the peculiar conditions created by the rise of knowledge and information to the status of dominant production factors, significantly boosted by the internet. Here, unprecedented material conditions open up new spaces for social ­innovation and cooperation. In the case of the new collaborative forms of production spread by the internet, the elementary fact to be considered is that knowledge is a non-rival good, whose enjoyment by one actor does not exclude others from enjoying it too. A salient feature of non-rival goods is that their exploitation renders non-proprietary strategies more effective than in the case of rival goods, where the economic value of the good is tied to the possibility of granting exclusive access. As economists have shown,17 proprietary and non-proprietary strategies for resource exploitation have competing advantages and, therefore, prove more or less advantageous according to what the dominant material and technological circumstances are. Historically, the model of production developed during the modern industrial revolution has relegated  For an overview of the relevance of pragmatism in the study of the digital commons see Antic (2016). I thank Andreas for his useful comments and suggestions. 16  See, for example, Morozov (2011). 17  Useful readings in a now burgeoning literature in economics include Hess and Ostrom (2006), Bollier and Helfrich (2012), Frischmann, Madison and Strandburg (2014), Benkler (2006). 15

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non-proprietary strategies and peer-production to the margins of economic life. Mass production centered upon material goods required increasingly large capital investments and relied upon production factors that were rival in nature. Under these conditions, peer-production and non-proprietary strategies have generally proven less competitive and have, therefore, tended to disappear from the centre of the economic system. As a consequence, during the last two centuries they were relegated to traditional practices for the exploitation of natural resources. The advent of a knowledge economy increasingly based on transforming information and knowledge into productive factors has significantly changed the material conditions in which economic activity takes place. As a consequence, commons-based institutions, practices of peer-­ production, and non-proprietary regimes of economic exploitation have begun to proliferate again. Moreover, they resurface not only at the periphery of the economic system but often at its center, where innovation is most intense. Here, forms of cooperation that are based neither on market prices nor on hierarchy have achieved extremely important results in innovation. But the potential for innovation of the commons is not limited to technology and production, but reaches also the domain of social organization. Indeed, the commons create the institutional conditions within which non-market patterns of social interaction can be developed, where specific types of habit can flourish, and where personal involvement in the different phases of social and economic activity is encouraged. The kinds of habit, pattern of social interaction, and organizational form that are promoted by commons-based socio-technical systems are significantly consistent with the normative requirements of democracy as we have defined them throughout this book. Studies of social practices of peer-production show in fact that the creation of more cooperative socio-economic spaces is not the prerogative of traditional commons and are, therefore, not doomed to remain confined to a nostalgic longing for bygone times untainted by capitalist evils. The importance of direct involvement becomes even more central in the case of knowledge commons than it is the case in traditional ones, “[u]nlike commons in the natural resource environment, knowledge commons arrangements usually must create a governance structure within which participants not only share existing resources but also engage in producing

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those resources and, indeed, in determining their character. In fact, knowledge commons members often come together for the very purpose of creating particular kinds of knowledge resources” (Frischmann, Madison and Strandburg, 2014, 16). Moreover, unlike natural resources, knowledge and information exist only insofar as they are produced by human beings, hence participation in producing and sharing is directly implied by the participation in knowledge commons. Indeed, peer-production and knowledge commons create opportunities for a more democratic form of society right at the heart of its technological core, in the practices and professions which rely upon knowledge and information as their major asset. As has been noted, the importance of non-proprietary strategies of economic exploitation reaches an unprecedented level thanks to internet technologies, which reduce to zero the cost of sharing knowledge and information. This fact explains why it is expected that in the near future increasing areas of economic and social life will be managed as commons. The availability of huge amounts of information and knowledge to anyone connected to the internet has a third major consequence, which is the steady emergence of coordinate effects, where the aggregate consequences of individual action generate social cooperation. In other words, the availability of non-rival productive resources at near to zero costs with extremely low spatio-temporal constraints makes human cooperation extremely convenient and easy for a huge array of social, economic, and political activities. There is today ample evidence that “resources necessary for information production and communications systems can be managed as commons in ways that are sustainable and desirable” (Benkler, 2003, 7). The impact of this transformation on the material conditions of existence is huge. An unprecedented amount of individual creativity is set free. On the one hand, individuals can access infinitely greater opportunities for learning and self-expression without the need of investing significant personal resources, or the need to participate in stable patterns of social cooperation. On the other hand, they can set up flexible and informal patterns of cooperation in which personal involvement becomes easier and less demanding. At the base of this revolution is the collaborative and distributive structure of the internet, which implements a model of heavily distributed and localized social knowledge. As economists have noted, “[t]he most important aspect of the networked information econ-

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omy is the possibility it opens for reversing the control focus of the industrial information economy. In particular, it holds out the possibility of reversing two trends in cultural production central to the project of control: concentration and commercialization” (Benkler, 2006, 32). The technological paradigm of the internet promotes the voluntary cooperation of individuals outside the market, particularly in practices of shared production, epitomized by the free software movement. Peer-­ production is characterized by the voluntary access of individuals to activities, the much reduced impact of hierarchical mechanisms of coordination, high levels of decentralization, and high reliance upon shared norms and methods of self-government.18 It is also characterized by forms of involvement that are irreducible to the market search for gain as well as the statebased principle of compliance with publicly justified obligations. Moreover, peer-production is less dependent upon high capital investment and in this sense is more accessible to small users. Against this background, peer-production assigns to individuals much greater levels of autonomy as well as opportunities for more direct and satisfying involvement in their activities. As has been noted by several commentators, individuals involved in peer-production projects are not mere passive consumers of goods but rather active participants producing information, sharing goods, and collaborating in maintaining common networks. On the side of personal motivation, individuals join in collaborative projects of peer-production for a host of reasons among which two need to be singled out. The first is that they create new spaces for creativity and self-realization. The neologism ‘prosumer’ conveys the idea of a progressive shift from the passive role of the consumer to the more active one of creator. Far from being merely cosmetic, this transition opens up spaces for personal activation and involvement in the social world, and creates the conditions of possibility for more sophisticated forms of self-­ expression. The second reason is the willingness to participate in cooperative projects for the sake of achieving a common good, rather than for commercial purposes. Both reasons emphasize the emancipatory value of involvement and its political relevance for the creation of a democratic  These traits describe tendencies rather than absolute achievements. We need to assess their democratic impact in comparative terms, by comparing the degree of realization of these principles to that we can find in traditional forms of organization. 18

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society, if by this term we mean a society based not only upon horizontal forms of decision-making but also on direct involvement in joint undertakings. When considering the democratizing effects of peer-production, we also have to include recent phenomena such as ‘citizen science’ or ‘citizen journalism’ (Madison, 2014), the collaborative platforms on which patients and physicians cooperate to find solutions to rare pathologies (Strandburg, Frischmann and Cui, 2014), collaborative projects for creating new software for all, and the ‘wiki’ and ‘moocs’ methods for the creation and distribution of knowledge free of charge (Frischmann, Madison and Strandburg, 2014). Peer-production innovates the world of economic production in more democratic ways for at least two reasons. The first is the introduction of models of cooperation that are less hierarchical and require higher levels of personal involvement which favor individual activity and personal investment in social practices. The second is that it opens up new opportunities for citizens to contribute to the common good. Creation of collective active value through cooperative ­practices of peer-production takes place at two distinct levels.19 The first concerns the production of, and respect for, social norms. New technologies make possible flexible forms of social coordination that have nothing to do with the specter of a surveillance society, relying instead upon voluntary and cooperative forms of production and compliance with shared social norms. Examples include projects of collaborative mapping, or the use of smart technologies to monitor the use of private means of transportation and reward virtuous behavior, contributing to common goods such as cleaner air and reduced traffic jams. These and similar cases show how peer-production helps reinforce individual contributions to communities and show how social units can maintain and preserve their own normative order without necessarily having to rely upon external instances. The second level concerns the creation of economic wealth. Value creation may happen either in the form of a real increase in economic value or in the form of cost reduction in the provision of social activities and services. A paradigmatic example are practices  For a more detailed analysis see Frega and Cristoforetti (2015), Benkler and Nissenbaum (2006).

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which pool knowledge and individual experience, as in the health commons, in which physicians and patients engage in collaborative investigations of rare diseases. Thus the link established between individual actions and shared goals opens up unprecedented opportunities not only from a redistributive perspective, but also for the creation of new forms of citizenship based on sharing and belonging to communities of several types. It is certainly too early to say whether and to what extent practices of peer-production will help create a more egalitarian and inclusive world, and certainly these practices also open up spaces for new forms of inequality and exploitation. We should, therefore, be open to exploring their democratizing potential while remaining vigilant regarding the potential threats that any new practice or tool brings. Political pragmatism provides some basic principles against which new practices, patterns of social interaction, and organizational forms can be assessed, and their positive or negative contribution to the further democratization of society examined.

3

Conclusion

The upshot of this chapter is that there is no going back from Habermas in the way of political pragmatism, but that there must be, however, a going forward. To that extent, the theory of the commons provides useful hints and contributes to updating the pragmatist theory of publics. Liberal democracy and market capitalism are twin siblings, united by what divides them, that is to say, the clear distinction between competing and irreducible logics: instrumental versus communicative rationality; self-interest versus other-regarding orientations, private versus public, freedom versus obligation, fabrication versus action. By way of their organization and ways of functioning, the commons blur these established lines and in so doing call for a different articulation of our basic political concepts. As we have seen, peer-production in the commons combines commercial and political concerns, mixes self-regarding and other-regarding motivations, achieves social cooperation where we would expect none, and mixes production with consumption. In so doing, it calls for different forms of personal mobilization, establishes alternative

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patterns of social interaction, brings about more horizontal and cooperative institutions, and invites fuller forms of individual involvement. Whether in the management of natural or highly technologized resources, in traditional or in post-modern settings, commons and peer-production provide the opportunity to develop new models of associated living, which at least in principle are more consistent with the normative ideals of pragmatist democracy. The next chapter will pursue this line of inquiry by discussing the political implications of the rise of private forms of authority in the global space, and how they may contribute to the creation of a more democratic global society.

10 Pragmatism and Democracy in a Global World

1

The Democratic Project Beyond Borders

Pragmatism has recently attracted increasing attention in international relations and global studies. Several authors have seen in pragmatism a promising theoretical framework for discussing central issues in the discipline, focussing in particular upon the theoretical benefits associated with pragmatism’s epistemology and theory of action.1 These promising efforts notwithstanding, pragmatism is far from having achieved the status of an established tradition and its possible contributions to the field remain insufficiently discussed. This chapter purports to extend the reach of the wide view of democracy to global democratic governance. Given the increasing capacity transnational actors display to influence people’s lives, and given the structural legitimacy deficits which affect  See among others Cochran (2002), Bray (2011), Isacoff (2015), Brunkhorst (2002), Hellmann (2009), Friedrichs and Kratochwil (2009), Brighi and Bauer (2009), Chandler (2014), Abraham and Abramson (2015). Pragmatist themes are also at the basis of Ulrick Beck’s idea of methodological cosmopolitanism (Beck, 2006, 10). Beck notably enlists John Dewey among the forerunners of methodological cosmopolitanism. Indeed, by replacing nations or peoples with publics, Dewey was consciously staging democratic theory in cosmopolitan rather than national terms. In this project he was not alone, and authors such as Walter Lippmann and Mary Parker Follett were also leading in this direction. 1

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global governance (Zürn, 2018), the question of the practices through which this space can be democratized has become momentous. In continuity with the previous chapter, in this chapter I will focus on normative practices accomplished by collective actors which defy established theoretical dichotomies such as those between state and market and between private and public. Given the extension of the domain, this chapter will ask a rather limited question, which is that of the democratizing potential of a specific set of normative practices and actors. As I will show, the pragmatist conception of group-based politics can shed new light on normative practices enacted by non-state actors, which can be seen as Deweyan publics with a democratizing potential that so far has gone largely under appreciated. I will focus in particular on emerging practices of normative entrepreneurship accomplished by private authorities which operate largely outside the legitimating scheme of state authority. The focus on apparently minor and informal practices, rather than on better institutionalized international organizations as is common in international relation studies is justified on two grounds. On the one hands, because the democratic deficits of international organizations as well as the extremely demanding conditions that would promote their democratization are very well studied. On the other hand, because these practices are better suited to highlight the theoretical value of the wide view of democracy. These examples will provide, therefore, an empirical background against which to test the explanatory potential of political pragmatism, compared to the two alternative mainstream explanatory approaches in global studies, that is, the theory of the transnational public sphere and the theory of global representation. I will show that both these rival approaches endorse methodological nationalism, and that, mostly for this reason, neither can satisfactorily account for normative practices that violate some of its basic assumptions, such as the dualism between the private and the public. According to the wide view of democracy, we qualify as ‘democratic’ all the normative social practices through which publics coalesce, self-­ organize, and pursue jointly shared goals under conditions of (a) relational parity, (b) inclusive authority, and (c) social involvement. From this perspective, democratic deficits occur anytime publics fail to set in motion self-constituting and self-activating processes. Dewey famously

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defined situations of democratic deficit as those in which a public was ‘lost’, or ‘eclipsed’ (Dewey, 1927). These are situations in which individuals fail to achieve a shared perception of social reality, hence to build a ‘we’ identity supported by institutions capable of translating it into joint action. According to this public-based perspective, the central problem of democracy is how to empower citizens in their capacity to act as members of interest-based publics ranging from small neighborhood communities to national peoples and, increasingly, to transnational publics brought to life by the awareness of a shared affectedness produced by the global reach of risks related to environment, security, health, social welfare.2 No matter the size or the organizational logic followed by these types of social units, pragmatists contend that their collective action should be explained within a unified theoretical scheme, that of a publicbased theory of politics. As we have seen, the pragmatist theory of publics has been at the basis of two major theoretical achievements of twentieth century political science—Jürgen Habermas’ theory of the public sphere and the theory of social movements. In both cases, a central intuition of the pragmatist theory of democracy has received fresh impetus. Indeed, as we saw in the previous chapter, Habermas’ revision of his theory of the public sphere heavily relied upon Dewey’s theory of publics to provide a more concrete and socially plausible account of the functioning of the public sphere in contemporary political democracies. Social movements theory provided the missing link between the historical experience of twentieth century social movements and the interpretation of the democratic significance of processes of collective mobilization. Both approaches succeeded in creating a legitimate political space for organized collectivities in a democratic regime, one that explicitly denied the realist thesis that confers this aggregating function exclusively to representative mechanisms. Yet in both cases this success came at the price of a simplification which in the end perverted the very idea of a publicbased conception of politics. This simplification consists in conceiving the public as a pre-political agent, one whose main task lies in constraining the state to do its job.  Bohman (2007) develops consistently this pragmatist paradigm to explore the normative consequences of a pluralization of publics in contemporary politics. See also Bohman (2010) for a discussion of Dewey’s notion of public in the context of post-Westphalian politics. 2

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The shortcomings of this theoretical move become again visible once we shift from the level of national politics to that of global politics. At this level, as I will show, theories of the public sphere fail to provide an encompassing framework for the analysis of social processes through which publics develop and organize themselves. Similar problems also plague the other two dominant theoretical paradigms—cosmopolitanism and representation theory. The reason for this failure lies in their shared commitment to theoretical assumptions that depend upon the historical circumstances of modern western politics, and in particular upon the pivotal role of states in coordinating the political process and in generating and distributing political legitimacy. Indeed, whereas Dewey made the category of the state a derivative of that of the public, the aforementioned theoretical schools operate under the reverse assumption that conceives of the category of the public as parasitic upon that of the state. As a consequence, the fate of a pragmatist approach to politics depends upon its capacity to get rid of ‘methodological nationalism’, plagued as it is of theoretical assumptions that the reality of contemporary politics renders increasingly implausible. In so doing, the wide view of democracy can help us better understand the democratizing potential of new practices that are neither controlled nor promoted by territorial organizations, and that defies traditional political assumptions, such as the identification of politics with the operation of public rather than private actors, the binary opposition of state and market, or that of citizenship and consumerism. By going beyond these dualisms, the wide view of democracy can see private actors such as certification agencies as relevant actors of democratic politics, insofar as they help a public to emerge, drawing however on logics which are private rather than public, market-­based rather than state-based, and targeted to individuals as consumers rather than citizens. While these and similar practices cannot and should not be seen as an adequate and complete solution to problems of legitimacy that arise beyond territorial states, they provide at least useful hints at how some pressing problems of collective coordination can be solved through logics that are incompatible with the normative requirements that has been developed out of the historical experience of the territorial state. Yet, as said, to understand their democratic potential we must first abandon some of the most entrenched theoretical assumptions on which democratic theory is built.

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361

Overcoming Methodological Nationalism

Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande have listed John Dewey among the rare modern political philosophers who have not subscribed to what they call ‘methodological nationalism’ (Beck and Grande, 2007). Although they do not develop this intuition further, they rightly identify in Dewey’s public-based theory of politics the key feature for understanding what pragmatism has to offer to understand the prospect of democracy in a post-Westphalian world.3 Consonant with their view, I understand political pragmatism as a theory of politics which does not subscribe to the territorial-based assumptions of modern European political thought which have become problematic, and that in so doing can provide more useful tools for understanding trends in global politics. Hence I will rely upon the distinction between methodological nationalism and methodological cosmopolitanism to highlight two different theoretical strategies that can be adopted to conceptualize democracy across state-borders. As the names indicate, whereas the first strategy essentially relies upon categories that were developed to explain political phenomena in the age of nation states and proceeds by extending their reach beyond nation-states, the second strategy tries consciously to emancipate itself from historically received frames of thinking in order to develop more abstract political categories the validity of which does not depend too heavily upon the historical circumstances under which modern western political thought has developed. As Beck has noted, one of the defining principles of methodological nationalism is the idea “that the nation-state defines the national society […] It imposes a territorial understanding of society based upon state-­ constructed and state-controlled borders. This ‘container model’ of mutually delimiting national societies is reinforced by the principle of the reciprocal determination of state and society” (Beck, 2006, 27). As we know, this territorial model had its counterpart in a conception of international politics as a system of interaction among state-based actors, whether governments or institutions created directly through inter-state agreements. This model starts from the assumption that territoriality is  For a recent restatement of this claim, see Narayan (2016).

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the only valid source of legitimacy, insofar as democracy requires a stable people who, through elections, legitimate its own rulers. Whilst this model has long since ceased to adequately represent the reality of international relations (Koskenniemi, 2001), political theory and philosophy continue de facto to accept the basic premises of methodological nationalism, or at least of a territorial conception of politics.4 It should be noted here, however, that the most relevant feature of methodological nationalism is not the idea that the state is the only legitimate source of normative power, nor that national states are the only legitimate units of analysis in international relations. More profoundly, methodological nationalism is characterized by the subscription to the wider normative framework and the set of normative categories that were historically developed to account for the genesis and the legitimacy of territorial states. As William Connolly has remarked, “this political imagery fosters a sense of connection between the life of the members and the common meanings within their most significant totality, between the search for legitimate standards of collective action and the ability to identify them in one place, between the desire to shape the common fate through democratic politics and the construction of territorial institutions of public accountability and between the territorialisation of democratic politics and the production of the national security state” (Connolly, 1991, 463–464). While in modern European history the territorial hypothesis has at least for a long time-span coincided with a national conception of the political unit, the idea and reality of territorial states is by no means reduced to the idea and reality of political nations. As a consequence, the territorial hypothesis needs not be confined to this restrictive interpretation of the political community as being a nation. As I understand it, methodological nationalism denotes the theoretical attitude consisting in interpreting all new emerging normative actors and orders through the conceptual apparatus developed to account for the  This situation is particularly evident where attempts have been made to overcome the boundaries of a nation-based model of political theory. If one thinks at contemporary theories of cosmopolitan politics developed among others by David Held (Held, 1995), at Jürgen Habermas idea of a postnational constellation (Habermas, 2001), at James Bohman’s admitted pluralization of the notion of people (Bohman, 2007), or at David Saward’s generalized model of representation (Saward, 2010), one can easily see that the boundaries of the nation state are overcome while at the same time the theoretical assumptions of methodological nationalism remain unquestioned. 4

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normative legitimacy of territorial forms of power. Methodological nationalism is problematic insofar as many of these newly emerging actors and practices stubbornly resist being explained through its conceptual scheme. Methodological nationalism so conceived defines a normative framework based on the following assumptions: (a) the identification of politics with the domain of coercive power (coercive vs. voluntary); (b) the priority of input over output as source of political legitimacy (input vs. output); (c) the identification of the realm of politics with the public domain (public vs. private); (d) the sharp separation of citizenship from consumerism and politics from economics (state vs. market); (e) a formalistic interpretation of the problem of congruence (all subjected vs. all affected), and (f ) the preference for hard over soft forms of normative regulation (formal vs. informal).

3

F rom People to Publics: Pragmatism and the Public-Based Theory of Politics

Whereas mainstream political science considers the very existence and constitution of publics unproblematic—the territorial hypothesis settles the question—globalization weakens the importance of territoriality in defining the boundaries of publics. Hence the interest-based model of politics shifts from the classical question What are our interests? to the question Who is affected by this phenomena? This view implies that the process of politics is bidirectional, as the identification of the relevant consequences is expedient to the constitution of publics (we are not a public until we realize that we share a condition of common affectedness), while simultaneously the constitution of publics aims at mastering specific sets of consequences. Especially in a time of rapid change, publics become unstable and changing entities, so that their constitution cannot be taken for granted but should, by contrast, be conceived of as the first task of politics. Political pragmatism claims, therefore, that the definition of the identity and boundaries of the public is a constitutive part of the process of politics itself. What are the interests around which a public can coalesce? Pragmatists such as Cooley, Dewey, Follett, and

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Mead understood the functional role of politics as consisting in the realization of tasks which pertain to the function of social organization in the pursuit of collective goals. In several texts Dewey resorts to the idea of ‘basic human needs’ to explain the genesis of political institutions. By ‘basic human needs’, he refers to values such as: (a) support and sustenance; (b) protection and security; (c) reproduction, and to expressive needs such as (d) recreation and leisure, and (e) language and sociability.5 He also insists on the positive feedback individuals receive when they are allowed both to take part in processes of decision making and in the concrete fulfillment of these tasks.6 Such a taxonomy is not very distant from contemporary understanding of the basic functions of political institutions,7 which can be defined in terms of: (a) internal and external security, (b) material well being, (c) symbolic identity, and (d) self-development, to which a fifth task can be added, which is procedural, and which consists in providing fair conditions under which the members of the public contribute to the identification of the problems, to the setting of the agenda and to the eventual implementation. One of the central implications of this public-based conception of politics is that nation-states have no explanatory privilege over collectivities that do not share a territorial basis. A national people is a public among many others, and the state is only the contingently successful institutional solution to the historically determined problems faced by an equally historically contingent type of public that is the national population. Other types of publics—such as the horde or the clan—have existed in the past and continue to exist, and other types of publics are already crossing the scene of history, for example in the form of transnational movements, diasporic communities and, perhaps in a short time, global communities of refugees.8 In other words, the political notion of the state is conceptually derivative with respect to that of public, politics being the art of creating and organizing effective publics and states being a histori See, in particular, Dewey (2015), and Frega (2015b) for an interpretation.  See, in particular, Dewey (1927). 7  For example Zürn (1998) provides a nonstate based definition of governance in terms of the following four dimensions: (a) internal and external security, (b) symbolic identity, (c) material wellbeing and (d) legitimacy. 8  See, for example, Keck and Sikkink (1998). 5 6

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cally contingent institutional solution to this problem. Even normative categories such as democracy or legitimacy are primarily attributes of publics, therefore they should be defined in conceptual terms that do not depend too heavily upon the historical experience of specific and contingent specimens of publics such as nation-states and governments. To grasp the political relevance of the notion of the public, we should avoid a frequent mistake consisting in opposing publics to more formal political institutions, in the manner in which, for example, Habermas opposes agencies of political power to the public sphere. We should, however, also resist the opposite mistake, which consists in reducing publics to weak political entities, mobilized collectivities, social movements, and other fluid aggregates which in the future will have to give way to more stable and structured collectivities. This strategy, as I will show in the next section, is doomed to fail, as it preserves the logic of methodological nationalism which the theory of publics aims to overcome.

3.1

 either Weak Publics Nor Strong Publics: Just N Publics

Hauke Brunkhorst has provided to date the most thorough examination of Dewey’s notion of publics in relation to post-Westphalian politics (Brunkhorst, 2002). While commendable, his attempt is hampered by the commitment to methodological nationalism, which in the end compromises his whole project. Brunkhorst tries to reconcile the notion of publics with more classical assumptions concerning the territorial basis of politics, and to this extent he proposes distinguishing between what he calls ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ publics, a solution which results in reintroducing the territorial state as the ‘Urbild’ of normative validity. Following Parsons’ distinction between ‘influence’ and ‘power’, Brunkhorst defines a strong public as an organized collective which disposes not only of moral influence but also of political or administrative power. To be strong, a public needs to rely on institutions and on formal procedures for decision-­making. According to Brunkhorst’s definition, it is “a public framed by a constitution in a well-ordered egalitarian society” (Brunkhorst, 2002, 676). On the other hand, a public is weak when it disposes only of

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means of moral influence. Brunkhorst claims that, in order to achieve inclusive discussion and binding egalitarian decisions, the informality of weak publics is insufficient. We need to have stronger constraints, and these require in turn a working system of basic rights, norms, and institutions. Brunkhorst attempts to avoid the obvious limitations of a state-­ centered account of the public by claiming that the existence of a strong public does not require the notion of a state but merely that of a constitution. This strategy is, however, doomed to fail, as the notion of a ‘constitution without a state’ will prove an untenable and in the end failed attempt to overcome the theoretical framework of methodological nationalism. In classical Habermasian terms, a strong public requires a public sphere framed by constitutional norms, which is necessary to render public decisions binding. As he contends: “a strong public is a weak public plus the political and administrative power enabled and organized by a constitution” (Brunkhorst, 2002, 677). Whereas a weak public can count only on moral persuasion, a strong public can rely also upon political and administrative power. Starting from this assumption, Brunkhorst thinks that pragmatists and deliberative approaches are equally vitiated by confusion between communication and decision-making. Democratic decisions require not only good communication but also institutions ensuring that decisions are taken according to egalitarian principles. A weak public can deliberate but cannot decide because it lacks the institutional outlets needed to enforce these decisions. To sum up, without the organizational norms of a constitution, a public can only be weak, its moral influence being only loosely coupled with administrative power. So conceived, the notion of strong publics is derived from the political experience of modern Europe. Indeed, a strong public has historically existed only in the context of modern nation-states. A strong public is a nation. Brunkhorst is however persuaded that this model can be extended to the circumstances of global politics, and to that extent he proposes to consider organizations such as the WTO and UN as belonging to a world constitution without a state. To extend this paradigm to global politics, Brunkhorst has to assume that the global society, supranational organizations such as the EU, or functionally specialized global subsystems such as the global economy and the global financial system possess, in some

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respect, a constitution. These constitutions provide the legal framework that enables to transform weak into strong publics. Through the joint action of political, legal, civil society actors at all levels of global social life, international law and global human rights are created by a weak public of social movements and networks of associations. These rights are then selectively implemented and enforced by a community of states and national courts which perform this kind of ‘universal jurisdiction’. In so doing, weak publics are converted into strong publics. This is how far the notion of the public can be stretched within the theoretical framework of methodological nationalism. Indeed, it is Brunkhorst himself who in the end admits that, while these forms of selective implementation and enforcement are very important, they are but an insufficient step toward legitimate authority, so that: “compared to democratic nation-states this constitution lacks the legal body of egalitarian and democratic organizational norms” (Brunkhorst, 2002, 687). Unsurprisingly, the global version of strong publics cannot satisfy the normative expectations Brunkhorst derives from methodological nationalism. Indeed, seen from the vantage point of methodological nationalism, these publics remain inevitably weak, as even their most promising institutional embodiment lacks a decisive pillar of methodological nationalism, which is to say input legitimacy: “what our global constitution (and by the same token the European Treaties’ constitution) lacks is public autonomy: the rights and organizational body of norms that allow or enable addressees of law to transform themselves into its authors by procedures of self-legislation. Our global order has a kind of inherent output-legitimation through the positive effect it has for the people or peoples of the world, however what it lacks is input-legitimation by and through these peoples. But freedom without self-legislation is no freedom at all, in the end” (Brunkhorst, 2002, 687). In a conceptual reversion that appears paradoxical, Brunkhorst concludes that “from the point of view of the democratic constitutional revolutions of the eighteenth century, the global society has no constitution at all” (Brunkhorst, 2002, 689). Indeed, as Brunkhorst is forced to admit, “The lack of a functional equivalent to parliamentary representation and legislation on the global level eventually causes all faults of the global legal order”, which is an indirect way of admitting that the very notion of

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a constitution without a state is inconsistent. We are caught once again in the theoretical net of methodological nationalism. It is then the very notion of the public that loses its theoretical relevance. Conceived as a strong public, it is but the good old nation state. And conceived as a weak public, it is vitiated from the start by conceptual presuppositions that exclude a priori any intrinsic legitimacy. A weak public is what its name says: a feeble and insufficient instantiation of the unique political subject which is the source of legitimacy, that is to say, a strong public, a people. What Brunkhorst sees as a limitation of Dewey’s notion of the public is indeed its strength. Yet to grasp the theoretical force of this notion we should free it from even the last remnants of methodological nationalism.

3.2

Completing the Pragmatist Model

Not everything is however satisfactory in Dewey’s public-based account of politics. Indeed, his analysis leaves unexplained two aspects that a public-­based theory of politics needs to tackle. The first concerns the distinction between autonomous and heteronomous publics, or the question of the role of external actors in promoting public-making processes. The second concerns the type of normative order which the existence of a public presupposes. Theories of public activation are generally based on either of two models. The first, exemplified by social movements, is that of a process of self-activation based on practices of self-organization which promote awareness of shared affectedness which sets publics in motion. According to this model, the natural dynamic which brings a public into existence is internal and idea-driven. Leaders emerge from within the public itself, communicative rationality tends to take priority, and political leadership is shaped by partaking in the common situation. Historically, feminism and the student movement are the paradigmatic examples of how a public is set in motion by a process of internal and self-engendered dynamism. The second historically prominent model in the explanation of processes of public activation is that of the political party, particularly in the avant-garde version developed by Lenin. Here we find a clear distinction and even an opposition between the public as a mass incapable of

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self-organization and a group of leaders which may also be exogenous to the mass but shares its goals and aims. However, none of these models alone nor their combination can account for the whole possible array of processes of public formation. For example, both models fail to account for contemporary processes of “entrepreneurial authority” (Green, 2014a) as well as for the way in which international cooperation mediated by NGOs takes place. The second aspect that the mainstream theory of publics has insufficiently explored concerns the form of relation uniting a public to the normative order that governs its life. We generally tend to think that the existence of a polity depends upon its capacity to institute the norms which regulate its behavior or, in more conventional terms, a legitimately constituted public is that which also authors its laws. This is the standard account of democratic legitimacy. Yet publics may also exist in the absence of such systems of positive rules, insofar as other less formalized ‘soft’, steering systems allow the control of undesired consequences or the generation of desired ones. One of the lessons we learn from the pragmatist public-based theory of politics consists precisely in the idea that accounting for the multiple variety of publics and for their normative existence requires a much more finely articulated normative theory in which normative requirements vary according to the type of publics concerned as well as the type of political functions involved. Such an enlargement requires that the state is no longer considered to be the reference model for political normativity but rather as a specific type of public which has developed its own normative order and expectations. This move implies in turn that normative concepts such as those of democracy or legitimacy need to be defined in larger and non state-dependent ways. This argument should by no means be understood as striving to delegitimize types of democratic expectations, requirements, and procedures developed within the experience of nation-states, but rather at enlarging the very idea of normative expectations, requirements, and procedures so as to encompass a wider plurality of standards, whose appropriateness will have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis, with reference to the type of public concerned. Hence, while we should remain vigilant about the democratic quality of sources of legitimacy, we should also try to understand if and at what conditions new sources of democratic authority can

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be imagined, in particular with reference to the increasingly larger plurality of nonstate publics and actors crossing the scene of global politics and for which classical democratic forms of legitimation are difficult to realize. Political pragmatism addresses both issues. On the one hand, it avoids reducing public dynamics to processes of self-organization, acknowledging that in a plurality of situations a public may actually be incapable of formal self-organization yet possess the resources to accompany processes of democratic improvement. On the other hand, it proposes a plural and stratified conception of normative validity which extends continuously from the domain of coercion to that of more spontaneous forms of social coordination.

4

In Search for Global Publics

I have stated before that the theoretical paradigm of methodological nationalism is based on a simplified assumption, derived from the peculiar conditions in which nation states emerged. This assumption concerns the territorial constitution of the public. Under conditions of homogeneous correspondence between a group of individuals and the territory they occupy, a central agency can produce the normative closure states successfully realize. This “territorial strategy” (Taylor, 1994; Connolly, 1991) has not only practical but also normative implications. The three normative consequences of the territorial strategy that are most relevant for our understanding of politics are: (a) the priority of input over other sources of legitimacy; (b) the formal solution to the problem of congruence, and (c) the identification of political authority with public actors. Within the framework of methodological nationalism, these requirements are the preconditions for the existence of a legitimate democratic form of government. However, as we have noted above, there exist publics which do not enjoy such a territorial basis and, as a consequence, there exists publics that have no clear territorial constitution. Three major strategies have been tried to rethink the democratic legitimacy of publics that have no clear territorial constitution. The first has attempted to enlarge the notion of legitimacy beyond the classical dimension of input so as to include procedural and output sources of political legitimation

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(Schmidt, 2013). The second has directly challenged the principle of the formal constitution of publics, claiming that entitlement to a political voice should not derive from formal subjection to a normative power but from de facto affectedness by it (Schaffer, 2012). The third strategy calls the conventional idea of political authority into question, and attempts to enlarge the concept of legitimate authority to include private actors that operate outside boundaries set by public authorities (Hall and Biersteker, 2002). My hypothesis is that a public-based pragmatist theory of global democracy can offer original solutions to all these debates, showing in particular: (a) that under specified conditions output and input legitimacy can be successfully integrated into a unified account of democratic legitimacy; (b) that the ‘all affected argument’ duly reformulated to provide a plausible solution to the problem of congruence can avoid obvious problems that plague the standard notion of legitimacy, and (c) that the standard assumption that the private/public dualism provides a reliable proxy for the identification of a political sphere can safely be dropped. This three-pronged strategy offers a way out of the strictures produced by the extension of methodological nationalist assumptions to the domain of global politics. Its starting point is the awareness that in post-­Westphalian conditions the problem of democratic legitimacy can be solved neither by extending classical ideas of constitutionalism (Held, 2004), nor by enlarging the scope of the concept of representation (Saward, 2010; Bray, 2011), nor by transnationalizing the concept of the public sphere (Fraser, 2014).9 Yet, as I intend to show, these moves can become successful when coherently integrated into the wide view of democracy For the sake of clarity, I will discuss these points in the reverse order. I will proceed first by showing why strategies for adjusting standard theories of representation and public sphere to the circumstances of global politics cannot but fail due to their endorsement of methodological individualism. In the following two sections I will then contend that whereas  All these strategies follow the same logic, which consists in scaling up notions which have proven essential in conceptualizing politics in the modern era. Curiously, they all move from the awareness of the limitations of the ‘Westphalian frame’ and yet end up with proposals which merely consists in expanding beyond the state level categories originally developed in order to account for politics as it took shape in the ‘Westphalian’ age of nation-states. 9

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both these approaches fail to grasp the democratic potential of emerging global normative practices and actors, political pragmatism has the resources to specify under which conditions they can be seen as legitimate agencies of a democratic public.

4.1

Transnationalizing the Public Sphere

In a much discussed article, Nancy Fraser has contended that the traditional concept of the public sphere as developed in the Habermasian tradition was theoretically dependent upon methodological nationalism and to this extent unsuited to tackle political questions emerging in the open space of post-Westphalian politics (Fraser, 2007). She has then proposed an updated version of this concept that in her view does not suffer from these limitations. As she admits, in the standard theory of the public sphere: “democracy requires the generation, through territorially bounded processes of public communication, conducted in the national language and relayed through the national media, of a body of national public opinion” (Fraser, 2014, 14). The connection between these dimensions is an essential ingredient of the notion of the public sphere, since the function of the public sphere consists precisely in the formation of the national political will. Indeed, the concept of the public sphere as developed by Habermas is inseparable from a dual conception of power based on the idea of a dynamic interplay between a public sphere steered by communicative rationality and political institutions dominated by the instrumental rationality of power. Starting from the assumption of the normative ideal of a deliberative democracy in which all should be capable of participating to deliberations on the basis of fair terms of undistorted communication, the idea of the public sphere defines the normative standard for a national political community. The two dimensions of this normative standard are legitimacy, which depends upon the effective capacity to generate undistorted communication among all members of the community, and efficacy, which depends upon the real control that communication can exert on political action. As Fraser notes: “the publicity debate in critical theory contains a major blind spot. From Structural Transformation through

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Between Facts and Norms, virtually all the participants, including me, correlated public spheres with territorial states. Despite their other important disagreements, all assumed the Westphalian framing of political space—at precisely the moment when epochal historical developments seemed to be calling that frame into question” (Fraser, 2014, 18). Fraser rightly admits that with increasing intensity public opinion is mobilized around issues that are no more related nor can be handled within the confines of territorial states. As the notion of public sphere makes sense only in the theoretical framework of a dual conception of power, a trans-­ nationalized public sphere which does not find its counterpart in trans-­ nationalized power lacks both normative legitimacy and political efficacy. Hence the question emerges of how the legitimacy and efficacy of the public sphere can be preserved beyond the Westphalian state. Rethinking legitimacy requires, for Fraser, challenging the ‘all-­subjected’ principle to emancipate it from identification with citizenship. The resulting normative requirement is that “what turns a collection of people into fellow members of a public is not shared citizenship, but their co-imbrication in a common set of structures and/or institutions that affect their lives” (Fraser, 2014, 31). Elsewhere, she defines her version of the ‘all subjected principles’ in terms of “[people’s] joint subjection to a structure of governance that sets the ground rules that govern their interaction” (Fraser, 2008, 65). Both of these definitions, however, beg the question they intend to resolve, as they presuppose the existence of political institutions to which publics would be subjected, which is precisely what is lacking at the global level. Also the conditions of efficacy in the global world are defined through the generalization of the efficacy p ­ rinciple as it was developed within public sphere theory: “public opinion is considered efficacious if and only if it is mobilized as a political force to hold public power accountable, ensuring that the latter’s exercise reflects the considered will of civil society” (Fraser, 2014, 31). In the same way in which ‘post-Westphalian’ legitimacy requires a transnationalization of the public sphere, achieving efficacy at global level requires the construction of “new addressees for public opinion, in the sense of new, transnational public powers that possess the administrative capacity to solve transnational problems” (Fraser, 2014, 33). As Fraser acknowledges, historically the state has been considered the only actor capable of combining legitimacy

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and efficacy, by associating political authority (monopoly of force) with the administrative power granted by a powerful material infrastructure, both being considered necessary conditions for converting public opinion into common will and for its concrete realization. Accordingly, Fraser candidly admits that it is not clear how or even whether the theory of the public sphere can be extended to the transnational domain, given its strong legitimacy (priority of ‘all-subjected’ over ‘all-affected’) and efficacy (dual model) requirements. A transnational theory of the public sphere can be viable only to the extent that we can identify a legitimate transnational public—consistent with the ‘all-subjected principle’—and an efficacious transnational political power that can be the addressee of public opinion. According to Fraser, this transnational public and this transnational structure of governance can be found in the international system of interstate and global governance institutions: “a regime that spans the whole of political space and sets the parameters for institutionalization at lower levels” (Fraser, 2014, 153). Back to utopian cosmopolitanism. Whilst, according to Fraser, overcoming the Westphalian frame requires us to look for transnational equivalents of state-based public opinion and state-based political powers, overcoming methodological nationalism requires a much more radical move. Indeed, as I have shown, the notion of public sphere presupposes the very Westphalian framework it is supposed to help overcome. This internal contradiction makes it unlikely that a theory of democracy based on the notion of the public sphere can remain a useful tool for understanding and criticizing normative practices in a post-Westphalian world.

4.2

Globalizing Political Representation

A similar strategy has been pursued in recent years with respect to another central pillar of methodological nationalism, the notion of representation. Proceeding from an acknowledgment of the inescapable relevance of representation for any theory of legitimate government, authors such as David Saward have attempted to develop a theory of representation general enough to be emancipated from its contextual dependence upon the nation-state. Drawing upon Saward’s seminal work, IR scholar Daniel

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Bray has attempted to formulate a theory of political representation explicitly aimed at meeting the circumstances of contemporary global politics, and which is directly inspired by pragmatism (Bray, 2011). Both these attempts fail however to fulfill the requirements of methodological cosmopolitanism, for reasons that, once again, have to do with their incapacity to tackle the shifting, dynamical, and issue-based constitution of global publics. Aware of the problems that plague the notion of representation once we extend its use beyond the boundaries of territorial politics, Saward has recently proposed a theory of political representation based on the notion of dynamic claims. Underlying his proposal is the awareness that in many contexts formal political representation is undergoing declining participation, while at the same time new social and political claims are emerging in the political arena but lack representation. To understand the truly political meaning of representation, Saward suggests taking a pragmatic approach aimed at “understanding what representation does, rather than what it is; to explore the effects of its invocation rather than its institutional embodiment; to stress its dynamic character rather than its correctly understood forms or types” (Saward, 2010, 4). Accomplishing this task requires that a conventional conception of representation as delegation through vote be replaced by a wider understanding of representation as a complex social act which combines together aesthetic, cultural, and political perspectives. At the heart of this view we find the notion of claim: “At a deeper level, representation is a dynamic process of claim-­ making and the reception of claims” (Saward, 2010, 8). This approach seems to be very promising, as it consciously strive, at least in principle, to uncouple the representative principle from its embedding in state-like formal political institutions. At first sight this approach seems a promising candidate to frame politics for a post-Westphalian world. Moreover, it resonates positively with a public-based conception of politics, insofar as it stresses the expressive and constitutive function of claims and rightly acknowledges that the constitution of publics precedes the genesis of institutions. Saward emphasizes correctly that representation has a constitutive, rather than merely representative, function. Indeed, uttering a political claim is in itself an act that contributes to the political constitution of a collective. Saward is indeed onto

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something important when he acknowledges that, conceived as a claim, representation reverses the standard order of explanation. Whereas classical political theory understands representation as an act which can take place legitimately only within the context of pre-­existing formal institutions, Saward insists that representational claims are constitutive of the political process as such. In his account of representation as a claim Saward identifies five basic ingredients: (a) the maker is the one who formulates the claim; (b) the referent is the thing that is being represented in the claim; (c) the subject is that which represents; (d) the object is the idea of the constituency as developed by the subject, and (e) the audience is that which receives the claim and is supposed to accept, reject, or revise it. The interest of this matrix lies in its capacity to identify legitimate representative practices even in the absence of democratic institutions such as parliaments, parties, and elections, which is typically the case in global politics. For example, an NGO may be the maker of a claim the subject of which may be a constituency of peasants and whose audience may be western governments. Saward does not assume that claims presuppose constituencies; rather they create them. Hence claims are formulated in the expectation that the intended constituencies and audiences will accept them. Saward correctly points out not only that activists, spiritual leaders, intellectuals, interest group leaders, all make representative claims without having been elected or in other ways formally entitled the status of representatives. He also acknowledges that even in democratic states, representative claims are constantly formulated outside the boundaries of formal political institutions. Indeed, “the representative limits of electoral institutions by their very structure leave open the possibility for nonelective representative claims that can call on differing notions of interest and invite different forms of reception and action by constituencies and audiences; these differing modes of operation may in some ways echo but in important other ways are distinct from electoral criteria” (Saward, 2010, 89). He also notes that, in its wide sense, representation is not merely formally effected through electoral procedures, but also often pragmatically attributed on the basis of different criteria such as previous success in dealing with an issue, expertise, and shared identity.10  On this specific point see also Bray’s analysis referring to global contexts (Bray, 2011, Ch. 5).

10

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While his analysis contributes to a better understanding of how authority may be entrusted to special agents, it is unfortunately silent about the content, boundaries, and forms of control that characterize this authority, or about the forms of relation that connect claim-makers, subjects, and audiences. As a consequence, the normative implications of Saward’s wider view of representation remains unspecified. While indeed the entrepreneurial and dynamic dimension of claims is important for challenging methodological nationalist assumptions, we may question to what extent the notion of representation can fulfill the ambitious task Saward assigns it. The main reason for being skeptical is that his idea of representation is parasitic upon its standard political meaning. As a consequence, it remains unclear how these representative claims can find a political outlet if not through their progressive incorporation within the bounds of formal representative institutions. In other words, political claims seem to have no other real audience than the national public, and no other concrete form of agency than representative government. In conclusion, the idea of representation, even expanded to include all practices of representative claims, fails to extend its reach beyond the realm of a nation-based ‘Westphalian’ public sphere. Daniel Bray’s attempt to apply Saward’s theory to the context of global politics is also affected by the limitations of the original model. Bray sees representation as a better model of political legitimacy than deliberation or cosmopolitanism. He correctly points out that practices of democratic claim-making can appropriately complement existing attempts at building transnational public spheres. He also correctly observes that, whereas the realization of global political institutions within which political representation could be implemented is merely utopian, and whereas even attempts at building a public sphere governed by communicative rationality often remains an unattainable ideal, representative claims have the advantage of requiring less demanding normative conditions. Bray’s analysis also has the merit of bringing into focus the pragmatic dimension of representation, i.e. the idea that what is politically relevant is not the formal connection between represented and representatives, but the fact that an audience accepts someone’s claim as being uttered in their name. While Bray is of course right to signal the wide representative deficits that emerge beyond the national level, his account of how representative

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claims might improve the democratic quality of global politics further confirms to what extent the notion of representation is inextricably intertwined with basic assumptions of methodological nationalism, and in particular with the idea of a dual relation between a constituency and a political agency which has the force to command obedience. Given the flagrant absence of similar institutions at the global level, representative claims are destined to remain ineffectual unless we explain how new agencies can emerge which are effective not only in uttering normative claims, but also in initiating action. Bray tackles the problem of effectivity by inscribing the notion of representative claim within a theory of political leadership, “a notion of democratic leadership that centers on the roles of individuals and organizations as ‘representers’ that help to constitute, guide and inform transnational democratic publics” (Bray, 2011, 175). Paradigmatic examples of representative leaderships are figures such as M. L. King, insofar as they exercise a form of political authority devoid of political power, hence external to and disconnected from formal political institutions. Such a move cannot however solve the problem of efficacy as it displaces representation from the political domain of formal authorization to the communicative domain of the discursive public sphere. According to Bray, “leadership involves performing communicative acts aimed at persuading people to accept a particular interpretation of a problem and to join in or support a particular course of action that ameliorates this problem” (Bray, 2011, 179). Not surprisingly, exemplary types of representatives—leaders—are, for Bray, activists, journalists, intellectuals, scientists, experts, celebrities, and religious leaders. Their main task consists in defying and changing existing definitions of the problems and, besides this, orienting individual and collective action by force of example. With reference to the transnational dimension, Bray sees representation as taking place essentially within new fora: “These can be considered sites of democratic representation not because everyone has the status of being elected by the constituency they claim to represent (even parliamentarians advocating national interests are elected by a local territorial constituency, not by the nation as a whole), but to the extent that the advocacy taking place within them provides meaningful representation for all relevant viewpoints relating to the problematic social transactions in question” (Bray, 2011, 200). As it

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was already the case with Saward, Bray’s conception of representation as “a purposeful process of making, judging, and contesting representative claims” (Bray, 2011, 187) does not take us out of the troubles associated with the concept of a transnational public sphere. Thus the crisis of representation (Tormey, 2015), and the crisis of the public sphere, can be seen in this perspective as mere consequences of the reduced centrality of the state as a normative power. These limitations notwithstanding, the theory of the representative claim has some important contribution to offer. In particular, by putting the notion of claim center-stage, it gives a pragmatic twist to political theory and opens up the conceptual space for understanding the political meaning of pragmatic processes of normative advocacy that would otherwise have fallen outside the scope of legitimate political authority. In a sense, we may say that Saward and Bray have discovered the political phenomenon of normative entrepreneurship without clearly identifying its political meaning. I turn now to this theme. As I will show in the next two sections, the democratic potential of political practices as private authority and certification schemes cannot be understood until we remain within the theoretical framework of territorial politics. To that extent, even promising attempts such as these of Brunkhorst, Fraser, and Saward are useless to this task, as their appraisal of transnational politics is still too dependent upon assumptions that commit them to methodological nationalism. On the other hand, ­political pragmatism can provide us with the appropriate tools not only to understand these political phenomena, but also to devise criteria to assess their contribution to democratic ways to solve global problems in the face of which state-based politics utterly fails.

5

 lobal Publics and Norm G Entrepreneurship

5.1

The Question of Normative Entrepreneurship

We’ve seen that processes of globalization have promoted and amplified the development of networks of consequences that are outside the reach of national states, and that supra-national and inter-national order seem

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equally unable to control. In such a context, new powers that cannot be fully explained using the theoretical tools of methodological nationalism have affirmed themselves as accepted sources of legitimacy. The theoretical relevance of these new actors and practices is twofold. By shaping the ways in which authority is produced and exercised, they simultaneously challenge our expectations in terms of concrete political reform, and the received categories through which we analyze and understand political processes. While the real impact of these new forms of nonstate authority has been considered by many as not—or not yet—very significant,11 their theoretical implications are incontestably relevant. As we have seen, from the point of view of their normative status and ways of operating, these actors cannot be analyzed using the categories once developed to describe the normative power of states. For example, in situations in which authority is shared between private and state actors, governance is co-produced by actors whose sources and conditions of legitimacy differ. Under these circumstances, the legitimacy of state power does not appear to be a sufficient condition for the legitimacy of global governance practices, since it cannot directly translate into processes and outputs produced by or in accordance with decisions taken by politically legitimated actors. In a context in which states have to share their power not only with other states but also with non-state actors, the fate of publics depends from a plurality of actors, none of which can reclaim the monopoly of authority. The emergence of non-state actors with normative powers in search for legitimation has been remarked since at least the late 1990s. For example, the seminal work of Claire Cutler has emphasized the neo-medieval trend in merchant law and the increase of governance powers by transnational corporations (Cutler, 2003). A few years earlier, Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink pointed out the increasing influence on dynamics of global governance in what they call transnational advocacy networks (Keck and Sikkink, 1998). These and similar trends were soon associated with the idea of private normative powers that were instituting private forms of authority challenging the state’s traditional monopoly in the exercise of authority (Hall and Biersteker, 2002). As Hall and Biersteker  See, for example, Vogel (2010); Green (2014a). For a more positive assessment of achievements, see Bernstein and Cashore (2007); Zürn (2016). 11

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note, private actors: “claim to be, perform as, and are recognized as legitimate by some larger public (that often includes states themselves) as authors of policies, of practices, of rules, and of norms. They set agendas, they establish boundaries or limits for action, they certify, they offer salvation, they guarantee contracts, and they provide order and security. In short, they do many of the things traditionally, and exclusively, associated with the state” (Hall and Biersteker, 2002, 4). Subsequent work focusing in particular on certification and standardization agencies has shown in more precise ways the contours of this new phenomenon.12 These and other new normative practices are contributing to the rise of a new global public domain, that has been described as “an increasingly institutionalized transnational arena of discourse, contestation, and action concerning the production of global public goods, involving private as well as public actors” (Ruggie, 2004, 504). In this context, the idea of private authorities reclaiming political legitimacy signals that another pillar of methodological nationalism, i.e. the normative separation of the private and the public, is being undermined. Whereas in fact traditional political theory had conceived of the domain of the political as the sphere of the legitimate coercive authority in opposition to the market as the domain of private voluntary transactions, the very idea of private authority blurs this line of separation, allowing for the possibility that non-state actors such as NGOs, transnational actors, and multinational corporations can legitimately exercise political authority, even in cases in which their legitimacy is not obtained through state delegation. The emphasis here is not on the fact that these actors exercise power. They have indeed always done so. The novelty resides rather in the fact that they claim to exercise legitimate authority in the autonomous production of norms, even in cases in which they do not derive their legitimacy through state delegation. This statement should at least in part be tempered by observing that private entrepreneurial authority as such isn’t of course a completely new phenomenon. For example, nonstate norm-setting bodies have played an important function during the last two centuries, fulfilling functions that  See, for example, Cashore (2002), Cashore, Auld and Newsom (2004), Green (2011), Mattli and Woods (2009). 12

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states were incapable or unwilling to fulfill. Indeed, voluntary associations have traditionally played a major role in activities such as the production of standards, operating within world-views based on methodological nationalism. To a certain extent, the very idea of regulatory practices that are neither market- nor state-based finds its origin within the bounds of methodological nationalism. Indeed, these and similar experiences evolved initially under the benevolent eye of national states that simply decided to leave to intermediary bodies tasks they could have otherwise taken onto themselves. The recent fragmentation of normative orders has on the contrary brought about a situation in which states and traditional means of inter-state regulation prove powerless or at least too inefficient to play any significant steering function. But there is more, as also the object of regulatory practices has changed in the course of time, acquiring a political relevance previously unknown. To that extent, we have to distinguish at least between two major types of regulatory practices. On the one hand, practices whose function is essentially technical, as is typically the case of standard-setting associations working in technically complex domains such as communication. In this context, standard setting practices aim essentially at reducing transaction costs, rationalizing production, or increasing market efficiency. On the other hand, one can identify practices that take on more directly political goals. Such is typically the case of certification practices that target politically sensitive topics and that in so doing bear a distinctive moral-­political quality: they aim at providing social actors with additional information concerning products and practices’ compliance with environmental, social, moral, and political norms, and in so doing they aim at transforming the world. Certification practices in normatively sensible areas such as work exploitation and environmental pollution have therefore a higher political relevance for democratic governance insofar as they directly target political goals such as combating inequality, fighting injustice, preserving the environment. Practices of private entrepreneurial norm setting in sensitive area combine these two traits together: (1) they autonomously introduce forms of private regulation (2) in politically relevant issues that have traditionally fallen under the legitimate scope of state authority. The novelty resides in the fact that private actors claim to exercise legitimate authority in the

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autonomous production of social and political norms, rivaling states in a domain traditionally reserved to them. As Bernstein and Cashore explain, “NSMD [nonstate market-driven] systems do not derive policy-making ability from states’ sovereign authority. […] this feature does not mean that states are unimportant: some state agencies have provided financial support for particular NSMD systems, and domestic and international regulatory environments potentially affect their activities. However, even in cases where governments supported their formation, NSMD systems do not derive governing authority from states nor are they accountable to them” (Bernstein and Cashore, 2007, 349). In addition, the very idea that private authority bears political legitimacy implicitly violates another pivotal distinction of methodological nationalism, that between the political and the commercial sphere. As the debate on the public sphere and representation has shown, actors outside formal political institutions can still be part of the political sphere under the tacit assumption that they operate non-commercially as critical agents of the public sphere. This conceptual framework however allows no space for commercial enterprises such as standard-setting agencies or certification bodies. Indeed, none can be conceived of as a legitimate actor in the public sphere as they do not operate as mediators between the public and the state, but as mediators among different types of private actors. Hence, according to a methodological nationalist view, either we have activist responses from civil society which claim to speak in the name of the public interest, such as social movements, or we have private actors who maximize their own market-based interests, such as corporations. The private and the public continue to be sharply separated. And indeed, even within global governance discourses, in which methodological nationalism is considered passé, remnants of this model persist in the interpretation of private authority through the lens of the state versus market dualism, private authority being conceived as a way of replacing state-based with market-based forms of regulation. Whilst it is indisputable that elements of market logic permeate these forms of private regulation, what is often misunderstood is the fact that private authority, at least in some forms, represents a new opportunity for publics to emerge. The kind of legitimacy these actors seek is, therefore, of a political kind (Bernstein and Cashore, 2007). Not only their activities

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have political relevance insofar as they tackle highly politicized issues such as global poverty and climate change (Zürn, 2018). Moreover, they bear, at least implicitly, a democratizing potential that needs to be seriously examined. To understand the theoretical relevance of this fact we have to shift our analytical focus from the study of enterprises’ reasons for compliance to the study of the political role of citizens as consumers.13 Entrepreneurial authority in this sense represents something radically different from other forms of private regulation developed by the business sector. What is at stake here is not the autonomization of the business from the state, but rather the opening up of new practices whereby a public can have its voice heard and its agenda considered, in situations where the public authority no longer has (or refuses to exercise), the power to intervene. This situation is increasingly frequent in sectors where the externalities produced by economic globalization are greater, such as the environment and the labor market. It is now clear that the three dichotomies of citizen versus consumer, market versus state, and public versus private stand in the way of a satisfactory understanding of how norm-production operates and how efficacy and legitimacy are combined. Indeed, although these regulations address individuals in their capacity as consumers and not citizens, they do so by appealing to their sense of the common good, rather than of their private interest. To that extent, “these rules are somewhat akin to a moral code that fosters an environmental ‘civic virtue’, hoping that a shift in consumer demand for such goods will lead to a commensurate shift in supply, thereby fostering ‘green markets’” (Hall and Biersteker, 2002, 133). Until today, the most significant cases of private entrepreneurial authority have been developed in the environmental sector, in particular through certification schemes for the exploitation of forests.14 Other schemes have been developed to reduce exploitation in sweatshops or to offer fairer trade conditions to peasants. Still other schemes are emerging  This analytical transition seems to be particularly tricky. On the one hand, scholars in international relations have firstly noted the institutional dimension of the rise of new types of actors, but have generally tended to disregard their meaning from the perspective of publics. On the other hands, sociologists have perceived the changing attitude of citizens and the blurring of lines between politics and consumerism, but have failed to see the institutional implications of this fact. An example of the first trend is (Green, 2014a), an example of the second is (Lamla, 2013b). 14  See Cashore, Auld and Newsom (2004). 13

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in fields such as food, tourism or fisheries.15 These schemes follow the same logic, which consists in politically empowering citizen-consumers by offering them socially and environmentally relevant information. Whereas these actors operate on a commercial basis, their action consists in helping emerge a still inchoate public of socially and environmentally aware citizens which hasn’t found yet political voice through the traditional forms of representation and civil society. What is conceptually relevant in these new practices is that they show that a democratic public can emerge and achieve political goals of social and environmental justice, not only by electing governments sensitive to these issues—as methodological nationalism would prescribe, but also by being empowered to act through newly emerging institutions whose democratizing credentials cannot be explained either by enlarged theories of representation or by theories of the global public sphere. These conscious schemes of social coordination pursue by other means the same goals sought by practices of ‘naming and shaming’ undertaken by NGOs, social movements and other actors in civil society whose s­ trategies are based on communicative rationality and, to that extent, are more consistent with traditional account of political legitimacy. Private norm entrepreneur operates according to a different logic of political action, as they do so aim at influencing political actors, that would be missing anyway. They do not exercise blame and shame—the classical weapons of civil society—but invent new forms of alliance between citizens and firms. As Cashore and his collaborators have shown for the case of forestry certification, these new schemes have emerged following a series of failures of states and international organizations to find suitable regulations for forest exploitation. It is remarkable that the development of certification schemes was seen by all the participants as more helpful than traditional naming and shaming campaigns, as it offered more reliable and precise information to those who decided to comply with the newly created label (Cashore, Auld and Newsom, 2004). What is interesting about these practices is the very logic through which these schemes operates, that is, not by forcing public actors to  For an overview see Hall and Biersteker (2002), Mattli and Woods (2009). See also Vogel (2008) for a very informative review of the field. 15

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introduce new regulations reflecting values expressed in the public sphere, but rather by directly empowering the publics themselves to action. This logic of political action is systematically misunderstood by political theories subscribing to methodological nationalism. Indeed, if the state is only one among many normative authorities which compete to produce social innovation—emphatically, to change the world, if they are one among a plurality of agencies upon which publics can rely to control the consequences of external events affecting their lives, why should publics entrust states and state-like public actors with full and exclusive authority? Why should they accept that the only legitimate form of collective action requires submitting to the complex system of conduits and sluices (Habermas) that transform communicative power into politically legitimate administrative power? Competition between States and certification agencies therefore does not concern only the objects of policy, but also the very logic of political action and its legitimacy. What is at stake, in particular, is the possibility that the representative mediation of the public sphere may be bypassed by a public capable of direct action, and this not through forms of collective mobilization, but through the support provided by commercial enterprises. Admitting the principle that publics may legitimately choose whether to rely upon states or private actors to realize their agenda shakes the foundations of our received understanding of politics. Indeed, the idea of a multi-level, multi-polar, and multi-actor political setting enabling differential political strategies on the part of citizens takes us from a state-based to a public-based conception of politics. These are some of the momentous theoretical challenges raised by the proliferation of normative practices and actors for which the label of entrepreneurial private authority (Green, 2014a) seems most appropriate. Indeed, in a Westphalian world based on the idea of state sovereignty the very idea of normative entrepreneurs has no place because authority is monopolized by states, whereas entrepreneurship belongs to a private sphere ruled by the market. So what happens when the state’s monopoly over authority is weakened to the point that new actors engage in norm-production and norm-implementation? Can we content ourself with saying that these practices do not satisfy the normative expectations we have developed to govern a world so different from the one in which we live today?

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While political theorists contend that the solutions to the normative problems raised by globalization require the creation of new public supranational institutions capable of restoring the right of a strong global public—which may well be the most convincing theoretical solution in the long run, individuals and group have begun to look for viable solutions in other directions, giving rise to heterogeneous actors attempting to fill this normative void, sometimes rivaling, sometimes cooperating with states. To that extent, the notion of normative entrepreneurship captures well this unprecedented situation in which heterogeneous types of actors compete to regulate a set of social practices that were traditionally managed by public powers, either directly or by delegation. This situation has two possible interpretations. According to the first, actors compete among themselves to achieve normative leadership to which publics will in the end submit. The second interpretation requires us to adopt a reverse perspective and consider that it is indeed publics that can now “shop norms” by choosing among competing normative actors and freely submitting to their authority. While the first case seems to be more typical of what has been termed ‘private authority’, the second best characterizes situations in a polycentric and pluralistic normative world (Krisch, 2010). As a consequence, the notion of private authority as such is not fully informative. As is known, states have systematically relied upon external agencies to fulfill some of their tasks. Yet through the process of delegation private agencies’ action is kept under the direct control of public powers, and hence within the boundaries of legitimate political authority. Things change, however, as soon as we enter the domain of entrepreneurial private authority, by which is meant “the organization and control of economic, political and social activities by means of making, implementing, monitoring and enforcing rules” (Green, 2014a, 80) that are, however, not promoted by any state. While states can and often are involved in these entrepreneurial regulation processes, they do so while renouncing “their sovereign Westphalian authority to require adherence to the rules” (Cashore, Auld and Newsom, 2004, 21), and intervene rather as facilitators of processes in which authority is widely shared and distributed. The distinctive feature of entrepreneurial authority is that its legitimacy relies upon purely social sources. It does not derive from processes of delegation of state authority but is based only on freely obtained consent.

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Certification Agencies as Norm Entrepreneurs

The idea of normative entrepreneurship is therefore politically interesting for several reasons, all directly relevant to a public-based conception of politics. In the context of global studies where it has arisen, it was mainly intended to signify that in the absence of legitimate political actors, private actors may fulfill normative tasks usually accomplished by political ones. The crucial dimension of entrepreneurial authority is that these private actors initially have no constituency of their own, that is, they have to create their own public, in rivalry with competitors for public allegiance. Precisely because private authority relies upon voluntary adhesion rather than coercion, the dividing line between the private and the public is blurred and the principle of exclusive subjection to authority looses grip. Certification schemes for controlling the environmental and social consequences of economic processes are, to date, the most important example of entrepreneurial activity with a clear political goal in view. Certification agencies provide citizens with different political ­opportunities. On the one hand, the conventional option to express their political voices, ie to pressure political agencies in order to intervene and solve the problem. On the other hand, and more interestingly, they provide citizens with a different political option which consists in intervening directly in the control of consequences related to economic externalities. The logic of these two forms of political action is remarkably different. One has also to acknowledge that for Westphalian conceptions of politics only the first can count as a form of legitimate political action and can therefore be considered as a candidate for democratizing global politics. Political pragmatism sees things differently, as from its public-based perspectives both types of action fall within the framework of legitimate democratic action. Therefore, the political role of private entrepreneurs can be explained as a type of bottom-up and non-state-driven process to develop new regulatory schemes which embed values widely shared by the public. Consistently, we must acknowledge that the norm entrepreneur has a dual function16: (1) he gives voice to widely shared values and  On this point, see Bernstein and Cashore (2007).

16

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(2) he sets up the process of change. While it can certainly be said that he ‘represents’ the public in the enlarged sense proposed by Saward’s theory, what seems to be most relevant is the fact that he is also its ‘armed wing’, hence he acts in his behalf. Indeed, the major task of the norm entrepreneur does not consist in either representing or protesting. Rather, it consists in activating processes of change, for example by involving other actors—including states and other public actors, firms, civil society actors. These processes are meant to directly intervene in the world by changing current practices of production and consumption and by spreading new norms. It is to be expected that at this stage actors will follow their own strategic calculations rather than complying with shared norms of common good. In other words, an orientation toward public goods is neither expected nor required. Hence the task of norm entrepreneurs will consist in creating conditions in which the initially diverging ‘logics of consequence’ of different social actors may converge so as to produce positive externalities. Indeed, from a public-based perspective, it does not even matter whether these agencies act on the basis of a ­self-­interested business orientation (logic of consequences), or in the name of a disinterested search for the common good (logic of appropriateness): what matters is, rather, their contribution in helping a public to organize itself and to directly act in the world. As Bernstein and Cashore show, successful norm entrepreneurship requires setting up a complex social process with several recursive loops which are aimed at building mutual trust and at the same time creating environments in which new norms can be envisaged and experimented. In other term, a process of mutual influence and adjustment should take place between the norm entrepreneur and the public. If the experiment succeeds—transaction costs do not exceed expected benefits, consumers adopt the new norms, NGOs find them appropriate—its expansion can be envisaged. These processes contribute to the formation of new publics through the transformation of practices and the adoption of new norms and values which in turn sustain the altered practices of firms. When these processes are successful, new institutional schemes are developed, which include not only norms but also institutions devoted to monitoring and enforcing compliance.

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These institutional schemes should, however, not be understood, as Bernstein, Cashore and others do, as mere innovative strategies that merely operates within the bounds of markets. Indeed, rather than market-­driven, they should be seen as following the public-driven associational logic. In other terms, they address consumers, but in their capacity as citizens. The constitution of a public is in fact at least partially indifferent to the classical distinction between citizens and consumers, which are blurred through the very politicization of consumerism.17 Being private actors, norm entrepreneurs can address themselves only to individuals in their capacity as consumers, ie as actors operating in the economic sphere of consumption and production. In so doing, however, they capture a truly political demand, one that cannot be satisfied through the standard channels of political representation. In that way they contribute to the political formation of a public and to the satisfaction of its political claims—claims to greater global justice and environment protection, and in so doing, fulfill a genuine political task. Seen from this perspective, public actors, certification agencies, firms, and NGOs are all agents of the public, fulfilling different roles but all contributing to the establishment and management of a normative order. A public-based conception of politics sees market logic, state logic and civil society logic as different ingredient of a more complex pattern of collective action that can no more be separated into autonomous spheres. Because legitimacy reposes ultimately on communities and community-building, seeing these processes as steps to public-formation in the pragmatist sense helps us understanding their political relevance as well as the status of the different actors involved in them. While the political role of these actors remains difficult to explain with the tools of public sphere and representation theory, a public-based conception of politics has no difficulty in grasping their political meaning and relevance. This is possible precisely because a pragmatist public-based conception of politics has emancipated itself from methodological nationalism. Indeed, the integration of state-based, market-based, and civil society-based logics directly follows from the explanatory priority assigned to publics. Such logics merely identify different spheres of action  On political consumerism, see Micheletti and McFarland (2015).

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within which publics develop their own forms of agency. These agencies, as indicated, can belong to the public as well as the private sphere, can operate directly as representatives of the public (political institutions), can exercise a controlling and monitoring function vis-à-vis state activity (civil society), but can also directly intervene in the world (normative entrepreneurs).

6

Conclusion

Literature on transnational public spheres, advocacy networks, and transnational social movements has increased the plausibility of a public-based conception of politics as an appropriate normative framework for debating issues in global politics. In so doing, it has contributed to overcoming state-based and nation-based approaches too heavily dependent upon Westphalian assumptions. Similarly, efforts to expand the scope of the concept of representation have led to an awareness that processes of delegation of authority occur on a much larger scale than political theories of representation assume. Its considerable merits notwithstanding, this literature also displays clear limitations in understanding the new normative practices that are emerging at a global level. In particular, it fails to understand the intrinsic logic that governs a public-based politics, in which delegative and discursive practices cannot entirely fill up the political space. The reason for this failure is a lack of understanding of the political meaning of participation-as-action which characterizes these forms of political consumerism as well as other forms of active involvement in managing collective problems. Indeed, from the vantage point of a wide view of democracy these practices are constitutive of what it means to be a citizen. Contrary to what public sphere theory has taught us, we should begin again to look at publics as being constituted by actors, not by spectators. As long as we remain committed to methodological nationalism we will fail to understand how publics can be constituted and become effective in ways that are largely external to the classical patterns of a renewed vision of representative government or of civil society. The case of certification agencies and, more broadly, of forms of private entrepreneurial

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authority shows that publics can organize themselves and produce political outcomes by following patterns of collective action for which constitutionalism, public sphere, and theories of representation have no place. As I have shown, a public can indeed emerge through patterns of critical consumerism and be sustained in its efforts by private actors which act in his behalf. Yet these agencies are not public in the conventional sense, and their role is not discursive but rather pragmatic. Their aim is not to constrain public authorities through discourses, but rather to change the world by empowering publics with adequate instruments to intervene in it. Contrary to mainstream theories of cosmopolitanism, of transnational public sphere, and of global representation, a public-based theory of politics possesses the theoretical resources needed to explain the political relevance of private authority and to provide normative criteria for assessing their democratic relevance. These criteria refer to actors’ capacity to: (a) foster processes of public formation; (b) sustain processes of collective inquiry; (c) take a public’s need into account; (d) contribute to resolving widely shared social problems, and (e) endow publics with new ­instrumentalities and possibilities for collective action. These actors may be public as well as private and their democratic performances will have to be assessed according to criteria that varies according to the type of actions they regulate and the forms assumed by regulation. In this perspective, the legitimacy conditions required by coercive regulation will continue to be stronger than those associated with voluntary schemes. Nevertheless, the political role these private actors play cannot be reduced to that of discursive agents of communicative rationality, as their democratic function with respect to publics will also consist in assisting them to achieve the goals they have set for themselves, notably by intentionally trying to change market logic. This action-theoretical and public-based perspective is probably the most relevant feature that distinguishes pragmatist from other approaches to democracy. As I have attempted to show, a public-based perspective helps us to overcome the central dichotomies of methodological nationalism, replacing them with a continuous transition between the terms composing the six dualisms on which it is built. From this perspective, the constant de facto overlap of input and output legitimacy, and the existence of private-­

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public mixed forms of authority appear as legitimate conditions defining the socio-political arena within which consumer-citizens organize themselves into publics. In conclusion, political pragmatism provides important resources for understanding the political relevance of normative practices that so far have been only marginally integrated into political theory, but whose theoretical and practical relevance may prove much greater than is currently estimated.

Conclusion. A Research Agenda for Political Pragmatism

Throughout this book I have contended that, in its broadest terms, a wide view of democracy can help us revive and advance the democratic project, insofar as it reconnects the political phase of democracy to its social roots. Such a theory provides us with precious theoretical resources to tackle some of the most pressing challenges of our time, such as the rise of populism, democratic deficits, the ongoing crisis of formal political institutions, and the emergence of new forms of discrimination. By including the whole of social life in the concept of democracy, the wide view is better suited not only to the critical task of identifying the cracks and tensions that threaten the democratic project, but also, and especially, to the reconstructive task of providing concrete guidance for reform projects, whether for democratizing the workplace and other social institutions, for extending the scope of the associational principle to new production practices, for reducing global inequality by politicizing consumerism, or for achieving greater degrees of accountability in global politics. Indeed, it seems to me that it is only by radically broadening our conceptual framework that we can hope to overcome the practical and theoretical deadlocks that democracy faces today, precisely because this enlargement allows us to come closer to the true reasons that render the democratic project so important and so inescapable, even when its political performances appear © The Author(s) 2019 R. Frega, Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18561-9

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so shallow and the legitimacy of its formal institutions so wanting. Those who contend that democracy does not matter to us, that our representative institutions have been emptied of meaning and are therefore worth nothing, or that we have entered a post-­democratic phase, should look at the immense achievements that the democratic project has brought to our societies in terms of freedom, equality, and social involvement in all spheres of social life. They should also consider that the democratization of our habits, patterns of social interaction, and forms of organization are not only incomplete, but also badly in need of furtherance, and that no jeremiad against neoliberalism or post-­democracy will be of much help in this task. What a wide view of democracy can provide is an all-encompassing scheme within which practices of reform and transformation can find their broadest meaning, so that diverse projects and practices such as those discussed in this book will finally appear as coherent instantiations of a single unifying vision of the future we desire and for which we strive. In concluding, I wish merely to recapitulate the three major normative statements that this book has vindicated. The first is that the democratic project advances or retreats according to how patterns of social interaction evolve throughout society. We should, therefore, consistently refer to democracy as the appropriate norm to assess the quality of social life at all its levels, and not only of its political institutions. The second is that experimental democratic institutions provide the most adequate strategy to identify, face, and meet social challenges and generate social innovation. This assumption should guide us in inventing new projects of social and institutional reform aimed at designing private and public institutions more suited to our times. The third statement is that social involvement matters as much as freedom and equality. We should, therefore, pay more attention to the inclusive nature of social practices, and be less content with merely formal, or legal, patterns of recognition. Democracy is inseparable from an imperative of social involvement, as only active participation in social practices create the concrete belonging which is required by any community to exist. Developing social settings in which not only freedom and equality but also social involvement are effectively achieved, devising new experimentalist democratic institutions, and rendering patterns of social interaction consistently democratic throughout the social body define the guidelines that committed democrats should prioritize in their agenda.

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Arguments supporting these general claims have been developed throughout the book. They vindicate the claim that adopting a wide view of democracy is a necessary step if we are to engage more consciously in the never-ending pursuit of the democratic project, one that is unachievable not because of its supposedly elusive or utopian content, but because it requires constant adjustment and transformation of the temporary and fragile solutions with which we meet ever-changing social circumstances. These are the normative implications the wide view of democracy bears for political theory. If this picture of democracy is correct, then we have a clear indication for a new research program in democratic theory, as well as some decisive indications for a new political agenda.

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Index1

A

Abbott, Andrew, 113n9, 131n26 Abensour, Miguel, 16 Achen, Christopher, 6, 12, 18, 283n10 Addams, Jane, 12, 104, 114, 118, 127, 127n24, 130, 137, 141 Adorno, Theodor, 58, 327, 337 Almond, Gabriel, 35, 35n1 Anderson, Elizabeth, 80n12, 81, 85, 105n1, 121n16, 129, 130, 303 Ansell, Christopher, 150n34, 166, 272n5, 273n6, 281, 286n11, 295, 297, 298 Antic, Andreas, vii, 350n15 Arato, Andrew, 41, 258 Arendt, Hannah, 26, 50, 115, 124n20, 137, 160, 321–329, 336

Aristotle, 34, 75, 180, 213, 215–217 Arneson, Richard, 81 Association, principle of, 131n25, 168, 257, 263 B

Bartels, Larry, 6, 12, 18, 283n10 Bartenberger, Martin, 295, 297, 298 Bayat, Asef, 15, 94 Beck, Ulrick, 319, 357n1, 361 Benkler, Yochai, 263, 318, 319, 350n17, 352, 354n19 Bentley, Arthur, 25, 104, 114, 131, 162–166, 162n1, 163n2, 172, 180, 186, 192 Bernstein, Richard, 113, 138n29, 305, 307, 321, 322, 390

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2019 R. Frega, Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18561-9

421

422 Index

Bidet, Alexandra, 240, 251n9, 253 Bohman, James, 41n5, 197n27, 319, 359n2, 362n4 Bray, David, 42n6, 357n1, 371, 375, 376n10, 377–379 Brennan, Jason, 6 Brown, Wendy, 5, 293 Brunkhorst, Hauke, 275, 357n1, 365–367, 379 Burtt, Shelley, 215n2, 221, 224 C

Campbell, James, 176, 183n14 Cashore, Benjamin, 380n11, 381n12, 383, 384n14, 385, 387, 388n16, 389, 390 Cavell, Stanley, 56, 57 Cefaï, Daniel, 194n22, 196n26, 251n9, 253, 319, 333 Centemeri, Laura, 333 Ceva, Emanuela, 69n3, 71n6 Christiano, Thomas, 70, 71n7, 82n15 Cohen, Joshua, 37n3, 41, 258 Cole, G.D.H., 39, 182 Connolly, William, 362, 370 Cooley, Charles, 12, 25, 104, 105, 114, 119, 120, 125, 132, 133, 137, 141–145, 145n33, 147, 148, 150, 156, 166, 168, 169, 202, 233, 363 Cutler, Claire, 380 D

Democracy deliberative, 40, 118, 337, 343, 343n13, 372

form of society, 7, 8, 10, 17, 33, 35, 44, 52–56, 52n11, 54n12, 60, 61, 83, 85, 99, 103, 104, 107, 108, 111–113, 123, 127, 134, 161, 210, 240, 249–251, 253, 256, 264, 268, 352 global, 371 method of, 117–122, 152, 157, 269, 290, 322–327, 329, 334, 335, 340 participatory, 35, 174, 312, 343n13 social, 2, 11, 14–18, 25, 34, 54n12, 77, 80, 84, 96, 113, 140, 163, 193, 194, 210, 247, 266, 303 way of life, 11, 52n11, 56, 57, 65, 86, 88, 104, 105n1, 112, 113, 122, 127, 134, 150, 160, 169, 178, 209, 219, 231, 233, 249, 250, 267, 306, 309 wide view, v, vii, 2, 4, 12–14, 22–25, 32–34, 39, 43, 51–60, 64, 65, 84, 92–94, 97, 103, 107, 116, 119, 150, 159, 173, 206, 207, 209–211, 231, 239n2, 250, 283, 329, 338, 343, 347, 349, 357, 358, 360, 371, 391, 395, 397 Democratic experimentalism, 20, 26, 88, 106, 149, 155, 196, 265, 270, 271, 274–287, 289, 291–295, 297–304, 307, 309–317, 326, 334, 339, 344, 347 Dewey, John, 11, 11n2, 15, 25, 40, 40n4, 41n5, 52n11, 56, 96, 96n20, 104, 105, 109, 111n8, 114, 116, 116n10, 117, 119,

 Index 

119n15, 120, 122n17, 123, 124, 126–131, 131n25, 135–138, 140–143, 140n30, 148–150, 152, 155–157, 156n36, 161, 162, 162n1, 164–166, 166n3, 167n4, 170, 174–206, 174n7, 180n12, 180n13, 185n17, 192n21, 195n25, 197n27, 207n29, 228, 230–234, 262, 270n2, 271, 276, 278, 279, 290, 291, 295, 295n16, 299, 306, 309, 321, 322, 326, 327, 335, 339, 343n13, 357n1, 358, 359n2, 360, 361, 363, 364n5, 364n6, 365, 368 Dorf, Michael, 282, 286n11, 290 Dunn, John, 110n7 Durkheim, Emile, 105, 233, 242, 341 E

Eckstein, Harry, 35, 38, 81 Ehrlich, Stanisław, 176, 180n12, 180n13, 181 Elias, Norbert, 26, 109, 112, 248 Eliasoph, Nina, 38, 240, 254, 255, 266 Elkin, Stephen, 269n1 Estlund, Cynthia, 90 Ethnomethodology, 79, 240n3, 241, 247 F

Fesmire, Steven, 125n21, 271n3 Follett, Mary Parker, 12, 25, 26, 90, 104, 105, 114, 118–121, 133,

423

136, 138, 150, 150n34, 151, 153, 154, 161, 162, 166–174, 166n3, 179, 180, 180n13, 186, 197, 232, 299, 309, 324–326, 324n4, 335, 357n1, 363 Fraser, Nancy, 330, 371–374, 379 Fricker, Miranda, 80n13 Frischmann, Brett, 333, 350n17, 352, 354 G

Gamson, William, 246n8 Garfinkel, Harold, 239, 240n3, 241, 242, 243n7, 247, 248 Gayet-Viaud, Carole, 240, 251–253, 251n9 Goffman, Ervin, 239, 241, 244, 246–249, 246n8 Gould, Carol, 35, 70n4, 89n18, 113 Green, Jessica, 369, 384n13, 386, 387 Green, Judith, 184 H

Habermas, Jürgen, 18, 21, 26, 32, 40, 40n4, 41n5, 73, 86n16, 118, 125, 138n29, 139, 240, 240n3, 242n6, 256, 258–262, 259n10, 261n13, 264, 266, 267, 319–323, 324n3, 326–335, 331n6, 335n7, 337, 338, 340, 343, 343n12, 355, 359, 362n4, 365, 372, 386

424 Index

Habits, 7, 8, 16, 17, 25, 26, 35, 37, 61, 90, 105n1, 106, 111, 114, 126, 131–139, 131n25, 138n29, 141, 144, 154, 155, 157, 160, 187, 210–238, 233n6, 249, 251, 255, 272, 273, 277, 288, 290, 291, 302, 305, 316, 338, 344, 396 Habits, democratic, 15, 26, 35, 90, 119n14, 126, 136, 138, 157, 174, 236, 250, 269, 272, 346 Hess, Charlotte, 350n17 Hirst, Paul, 15, 37n3, 113, 176 Honneth, Axel, vii, 18, 26, 40n4, 58, 73, 79, 86n16, 122n17, 321, 322, 327, 336–342, 337n9, 339n10 Honohan, Iseult, 215n2, 223 Hook, Sidney, 12, 104, 114 Hughes, Everett, 90, 132 I

Inclusive authority, 8, 21, 23, 64, 80, 81, 84, 89, 91, 92, 99, 127, 132, 157, 159, 172, 173, 205, 207, 209, 244, 265, 267, 270, 325, 336, 340, 358 Inglehart, Ronald, 35, 78n10 Interest, concept of, v, 20, 25, 106, 129, 130, 151, 156, 162–167, 172, 175, 179n10, 180, 189, 191–193, 196–198, 201–204, 212, 217, 221–223, 256, 258, 264, 294, 301, 315, 332, 344, 355, 359, 363, 376, 383, 384

J

Jaeggi, Rahel, 18, 58, 59, 95n19 James, William, 15, 108n3, 135, 166, 177, 183, 197n27, 211, 228, 229, 233, 234, 279, 305, 362n4 Jefferson, Thomas, 184, 185n15 Joas, Hans, 113n9, 125n22, 134n28, 140n31, 239n1 Johnson, James, 121n16, 279, 280, 286n11, 301 Jörke, Dirk, 6 Justice, vi, vii, 6, 18, 24, 64, 66–68, 70n4, 71–77, 81, 86–88, 98, 184, 225, 234, 244, 255, 304, 305, 385, 390 K

Kalyvas, Andreas, 44n8, 45 Keck, Margaret, 319, 364n8, 380 Kilpinen, Erkki, 134n28, 228n4 Kitcher, Philip, 145n33, 275n7 Kloppenberg, James, 108n3, 127n23, 168n5, 180n13 Knight, Jack, 121n16, 279, 280, 286n11, 301 Krisch, Nico, 387 L

Lamla, Jörg, 276–278, 277n8, 384n13 Laski, Harold, 166, 166n3, 180–182, 180n12 Lasswell, Harold, 12, 119, 119n15, 137, 138, 299 Laugier, Sandra, 56n14, 57 Lefort, Claude, 7, 35, 52, 52n11, 53, 54n12, 55, 55n13, 56

 Index 

Levitas, Ruth, 305, 307n18 Lidz, Victor, 256, 258 Lippmann, Walter, 155, 176–178, 178n8, 178n9, 179n10, 180, 182, 185, 187, 357n1 M

Macarthur, David, 275, 282 Macedo, Stephen, 135, 215n1 Madison, James, 350n17, 352, 354 Mansbridge, Jane, 15, 16, 39, 76, 113, 154n35 Marshall, Thomas, 50 Marx, Karl, 16, 122n17, 180, 304, 323 Mayer, Arno, 109, 111, 112 Maynor, John, 135, 215n2, 219, 226, 226n3 Mead, Herbert, 12, 25, 104, 113n9, 114, 125, 125n22, 127, 130, 132, 135, 137, 141, 142, 202, 364 Medearis, John, 122n17, 124 Medina, José, 233n6 Merkel, Wolfgang, 3, 85 Meyer, Thomas, 16, 113 Micheletti, Michele, 320, 390n17 N

Nondomination, vi, 24, 64, 68, 88, 212 Normativity, paradigmatic, 12, 24, 43, 43n7, 45, 66–72, 67n1, 67n2, 69n3, 74, 75, 77, 84, 86–89, 92, 98, 172, 202, 203, 210, 231, 242, 282, 295, 297, 323, 346, 354, 368, 378 Norris, Pippa, 6, 37n2, 38

425

O

Ogien, Albert, 56n14, 134n28, 251n9 Oldfield, Adrian, 218, 219 Order of interaction, 241, 244, 246–255, 267 Organizational forms, 7, 17, 40, 61, 62, 90, 108, 133, 148, 149, 157, 160, 179, 199, 355 Oskian, Giulia, vii, 54n12 Ostrom, Olinor, 263, 315n20, 319, 347, 348, 350n17 Ottonelli, Valeria, 69n3, 71n6 P

Palmer, Robert, 107, 108n3, 110, 110n7 Park, Robert, 105n1, 114 Parsons, Talcott, 240, 240n3, 256–258, 262, 264, 266, 267, 365 Pateman, Carol, 15, 35, 39, 76, 89n18 Patterns of interaction, 3, 7–10, 16, 17, 20, 23, 25, 26, 36, 37, 39, 61, 78–81, 83, 84, 87, 90–92, 98, 104, 105n1, 108, 109, 111, 112, 123, 126, 129, 132–134, 138, 142–149, 142n32, 152, 157–160, 168, 169, 171, 173, 174, 179, 197, 208–210, 231, 239–269, 272, 288, 325, 336, 338, 343, 345, 346, 349–351, 355, 356, 396 Peirce, Charles, 117, 119, 139, 140, 151, 174n7, 228, 230, 232–234, 237, 271, 277, 277n8, 285, 290, 295, 321n1, 325

426 Index

Peterson, Andrew, 215n2, 218 Pettit, Philip, 68, 74, 219, 222, 225–227, 226n3 Pharo, Patrick, 240, 251n9 Pruvost, Geneviève, 333 Przeworski, Adam, 13, 110n7 Public reason, 276, 279 Putnam, Hilary, 18, 37, 37n2, 90, 256, 264, 335 Q

Quandt, Jean, 105, 176, 183, 183n14 R

Rancière, Jacques, 33, 44n8, 45, 48–51, 48n9, 60 Rawls, John, 21, 67–68, 73, 241n5, 304, 323 Relational parity, 8, 21, 23, 64, 80, 81, 84, 85, 89, 91, 92, 99, 127, 132, 157, 159, 172, 173, 205, 207, 209, 244, 265, 267, 270, 325, 336, 340, 358 Rodgers, Daniel, 168n5, 180n13 Rogers, Joel, 37n3, 342n11 Rorty, Richard, 12, 305, 307 Rosanvallon, Pierre, 35, 52, 54n12, 55, 110n7, 156n37, 161 Rosenblum, Nancy, 37n3, 266 Rostbøll, Christian, 70, 71n6 Royce, Josiah, 104, 183, 305 S

Sabel, Charles, 281, 286, 286n11, 288–291, 301

Sandel, Michael, 216 Sartori, Giovanni, 31, 73n8 Saward, Michael, 15, 42, 362n4, 371, 374–377, 379, 389 Schaffer, Johan, 371 Scheuerman, William, 140n30 Schneewind, Jerome, 213 Schubert, Hans-Joachim, 11n1, 113n9, 140n31, 239n1 Schumpeter, Joseph, 31, 109, 110n6, 344 Scott, James, 15 Seligman, Adam, 41, 110–112 Serrano Zamora, Justo, viii, 19, 271n4, 279n9 Shalin, Dmitri, 239n1 Shapiro, Ian, 16, 73, 76, 77 Sikkink, Kathryn, 319, 364n8, 380 Smith, David, 179n11, 197 Social interactionism, 8, 26, 77, 79, 79n11, 80, 82, 89, 89n17, 116, 239, 239n1, 240n3, 244, 248, 253, 262 Social involvement, 8, 23, 64, 80, 82, 84, 89, 91, 92, 99, 122, 124, 127, 131, 132, 157, 159, 172, 173, 205, 207, 209, 215, 244, 258, 260, 265, 267, 270, 325, 336, 340, 349, 358, 396 Social ontology, 8, 15, 17, 22, 25, 34, 36, 56, 61, 63, 64, 78, 88–93, 89n18, 97, 103, 113, 117, 131–133, 131n25, 131n26, 136, 142, 142n32, 149, 163, 168, 169, 175, 205, 214, 231, 237, 241n5, 262, 274, 282, 302, 336, 343 Sullivan, Shannon, viii, 233n6, 235

 Index  T

Terzi, Cédric, 194n22, 240, 251n9 Thompson, Michael, 11, 142n32 Tocqueville, Alexis, 5, 26, 34, 36, 52, 53, 54n12, 55, 91, 263 Transactions, 126, 188, 189, 196, 258, 321n1, 344, 378, 381 Turkle, Sherry, 143

427

Virtues, vii, 18, 26, 34, 35, 37, 39, 60, 135, 138n29, 140, 185, 211–238, 384 Virtues, civic, 222, 227 Vogel, David, 380n11, 385n15 W

Unger, Roberto, 12, 281, 288, 289, 301, 302, 307, 309–316, 349 Urbinati, Nadia, 5, 42, 42n6, 330

Walzer, Michael, 73, 124n19 Warren, Mark, 37n3, 114, 240, 256, 262–267 Welzel, Christian, 35, 78n10 Wolin, Sheldon, 33, 44n8, 45–49, 60, 160 Wood, Gordon, 110, 112

V

Z

U

Veblen, Thorsten, 109, 109n5, 112 Verba, Sidney, 35, 35n1

Zürn, Michael, 358, 364n7, 380n11, 384